4.10 The Academic Writers' Studio with Jo VanEvery

In this episode of The Mindful Academy, host Jennifer converses with Jo Van Every, a veteran in helping academics refine their writing. They discuss Jo's background, career transitions, and her move from Canada to the UK. Jo explains her work with the Academic Writing Studio, emphasizing her methods with neurodivergent clients and her approach to accommodating different writing styles and needs. They also explore the importance of personalized strategies, the value of co-working, and the development of supportive writing routines. Additionally, the episode covers tips on managing long-term projects, the balance between prescribed methods and individual quirks, and the role of enjoyment and self-care in sustaining a successful academic career. Jo offers insights into her new small group program for book writers and touches on her personal practices for maintaining mental and physical well-being.

Learn more about Jo VanEvery

Timestamps:

00:00 Welcome to The Mindful Academy

00:51 Jennifer's Journey into Coaching

01:53 Introducing Jo Van Evry

02:08 Joe's Background and Current Work

03:56 The Academic Writing Studio

05:28 Group Coaching and Neurodivergence

08:41 The Magic of Co-Working

12:44 Writing Challenges and Strategies

20:50 The Importance of Reflecting on Progress

27:23 Balancing Writing with Other Responsibilities

29:56 The Process of Writing a Book

37:03 Finding Motivation and Purpose in Writing

39:47 The Value of Group Support

46:51 Choosing Your Own Path

47:27 Building Long-Term Relationships

49:37 Daily Routines and Community Engagement

55:29 Experimenting with Writing Techniques

01:01:41 The Importance of Regular Practice

01:07:00 Balancing Work and Self-Care

01:17:50 Finding Joy in Simple Pleasures

01:24:43 Final Thoughts and Resources

Transcript

Jennifer (2): [00:00:00] Hello everybody and welcome back to an episode of The Mindful Academy. I am Jennifer Askey, your host and coach, and I'm continuing my series of discussions with fascinating people who work in this, who work for themselves in this space of assisting folks in higher ed with something. And today I have the amazing honor of talking with let's call her the OG in helping academics get their shit together.

Joe Van, every and I will pass the mic to Joe in a minute, but I just wanna tell a tiny little backstory here why you will. I think it was in the last podcast episode I interviewed Jen Polk from PhD to Life, and I said, when 24. 2016 rolled around and I knew that my contract was not being renewed, but was ending because I was a humanist and no university had [00:01:00] need for people who were gonna teach in the humanities.

I worked with a coach and then I trained as a coach and I immediately knew I wanted to help academics 'cause all of these great questions that I was being asked to force me to evaluate my life and where it was at and how it was working. It's like nobody's ever asked me these things before.

I need to offer this to people. And so I went looking, who else is doing this? And the only people I found who were doing something like what I wanted to do were Joe Ben Evry and Jen Polk. And I think once in the middle of some career crisis, I actually reached out to Joe from my office in a university and cried at her on the phone.

So that might have been our first conversation like 11 or 12 years ago. I hate this.

So there's there's a little bit of my background with Joe and Joe, I will pass you the microphone to introduce yourself [00:02:00] and where you are and how do you define your job, 

Jennifer: Yeah, introduce myself where I am. So currently I live in the uk. When Jen first reached out to me all those years ago I was living in Canada, in Ontario, and so I am Canadian, but I have probably lived half of my adult life in the UK in two different stints.

And I have recently, and it's like a month and a half ago. Become a British citizen. Congratulations and congratulations. Have just today received a text from the passport office saying that my passport application has been approved and they will let me know when it's in the mail. So that's, I'm here now.

I've never moved somewhere and thought I'm going back. But I have moved an entire household across the Atlantic Ocean more than once. I can say I don't recommend it. Jen, also, I was gonna say we could have another podcast, some long moves, but yeah, another podcast 

Jennifer (2): on how Moving [00:03:00] Destroys Wealth, that's a whole other podcast.

Oh yeah. No. Would you like to light tens of thousands of dollars on fire? Do we have an idea for you? 

Jennifer: Yeah. Ever. Great. To the uk, like even without the moving costs, just the immigration process lights thousands of pounds on fire. Up and smoke, but there you go. There you go. But anyway, I really enjoy living here.

So I live in a district called the High Peak which is a very steep place in the north of England within commuter distance of both Manchester and Sheffield. But it's lovely. It's like it's a great place to live. I really enjoyed here. My academic career was in Britain and then I went back to Canada, and so I started freelancing when I was in Canada, and then I moved back here and brought all my, on a coaching stuff with me in 2016.

What I do now is I run something called the Academic [00:04:00] Writing Studio, which has weekly coworking sessions for academic writers hosted. And planning classes. I'm not sure when this is going out, but I'm doing a annual planning class in two days from recording this. Because we start the I recommend thinking of your year as starting in the middle of the summer, like the 1st of July.

Yeah. So that you can start your sense year with writing and when you're most in control of what you're doing in the middle of July, and then you can add in all the other things. So I'm doing some of that and I also do some sort of group coaching kind of community sessions as part of that studio.

So that's a membership thing. There's a sliding scale for membership, that sort of thing. And then I do individual coaching, which I call guide for the journey. I really like doing longer term coaching with people. I've had a couple of clients who've been with me for five [00:05:00] years. Maybe meet.

Start out every two weeks, but at some point usually shift to once a month, checking in. Often their goal, what they want from that is shifting and changing. And it, I think your description of I help get shit done, it's it, but not in a sort of pressy way. It's more in a kind of what kind of shit do you want to get done and what's making it hard for you?

And how can we work with your brain to make that work? And that kind of thing. This spring I decided to try something new and it's working really well, so I'm definitely gonna do it again. But I'm doing a small group of book writers and it's 12 weeks and we meet every two weeks. So there's seven meetings to bookend and then have two weekly meetings for about an hour and a half.

There's only six people in the group, which is a really good size, so everybody gets to talk about what's going on for them. That week and we get to coach people around whatever's happening for them. And and they were, they're all [00:06:00] working on books. And what I realized when I was writing something recently is that my strength is really in helping people get that first draft down and get over the kind of emotional hurdle.

Like I'm not an editor and there's plenty of people that once you have a first draft will help you turn that into a really good book. Yeah. But I'm like much more of a how do we get you writing? How do we keep you writing? How do we, how do you just kinda do this work? And what is making it hard for you to do that?

What is making 

Jennifer (2): it 

Jennifer: hard for 

Jennifer (2): you? How are you gonna get outta your own way if you think you're climbing a mountain instead of just writing a book?

Jennifer: Yeah, exactly. And but also it turns out that almost by accident I've ended up with a lot of. Clients with various forms of neurodivergence. So I'm learning a lot about that.

I suspect I'm probably some flavor of neurodivergent myself. But so a lot of it is [00:07:00] also people who diagnosed or undiagnosed, but are battling against a kind of, I think I'm doing this wrong and my approach is very much, it's probably not right. It's just that what's right for you might not work for other people.

Yeah. Yeah. And so we need to work out how to work with your brain instead of trying to become somebody that you absolutely are not. Yeah. Because yeah. I've got a really good example of that from my little book group if you wanna talk about that. I would 

Jennifer (2): love to hear about that because you and I both know, and we're of a very similar age and generation.

Like when we were growing up in the seventies and eighties, girls didn't have a DD.

Jennifer: I didn't even know that many boys that day. It was even 

Jennifer (2): uncommon for boys, but when it became a diagnosis, it was always hyper little boys. And so yeah, the number of friends and acquaintances I have most of them in the academy who at this, who at some stage in their life after [00:08:00] their mid thirties find out that oh I'm having an issue with this.

Whether it's a DHD or autism, all of these late diagnoses are affecting people. And I did, one of my first interview episodes with was with Rebecca Pope Brewer, who I think it's available for pre-order now of many minds. The book that she and Lee Gallup Bassett are editing, a collection of essays, first person essays by people in the academy with neurodiversity.

So it's very much of a piece with, gosh, we're also individual and. I think we can all benefit from some kind of support. But if you're working with neurodiversity Yeah. What does that look like? 

Jennifer: So one of the, like basic things is that one of my A DHD clients, who had been diagnosed and was very aware and whatever said that, a meeting with your writing, which is the virtual coworking group that I've been running since [00:09:00] 2012 and we now have four sessions a week.

I have people that help me host those. But that just, that structure is incredibly helpful. So the whole kind of, buddy working, kind of thing. And also the structure of it at least the way I do it, I don't I. Is very much the opening prompts are very much about thinking about what you already know about what helps you do this work you wanna do, and what will help you focus.

I frequently remind people of things like, you don't have to use willpower if you have other options. If you're getting, if you're getting distracted just by the fact that your email is open and you're waiting for something, you are allowed to quit your email program. I know this is a shocking piece of news for many academics, but it is actually like there is a quit button on it and you can turn it off [00:10:00] and then turn it back on later.

Similarly, if there's a bunch of noise around you, you can wear noise canceling headphones. You can there's just what is it? And so it's very much around what's gonna help you what's going on for you today and what does that mean about your focus and what might help you.

And then you're just in a virtual room with a bunch of other people and you're all writing. We do those on Zoom. But when I started in 2012, we used a conference line and basically we did like a 15 minute thing and everybody hung up and then they wrote, right? And then they came back at the end and people and we had a little closing thing where we just talk about like noticing what you've done and, leaving yourself some breadcrumbs.

And it's funny, like a lot of people would say it's really weird 'cause I don't know who any of these people are and I can't see them. And I like, we don't know anybody's name. But it does feel like I'm really writing with other people. And then there was one day and one of the participants said to [00:11:00] me.

She said, last week I looked up and it was 10 o'clock in the morning. I'm like, oh my goodness, I should be, or it was 10 15 and she thought I should be in meeting with your writing. She says, okay, they will have hung up by now. I will write and then I will call in at the end and and I'll do the thing at the end and it'll be all fine.

So she wrote for 90 minutes and then she phones in at the end and there's nobody on the phone and there's nobody on the phone. And then she realized it wasn't even the day that meetings already,

but she was committed. But just the idea that there were other people writing and she was part of this group meant that so there is some kind of real weird magic around coworking. And the fact is like our groups are hosted. So also like I stay or whoever the host is, and now that I have more hosts.

We stay out of the breakout room and in the main room. Yeah. So that if you get stuck, you don't have to sit there pulling your hair out and staring at what you're doing and wondering what to do next, you can come [00:12:00] back into the main room and be like, I'm stuck. Yeah. And we'll ask you a few questions and help get you going again.

And sometimes that's five minutes of coaching, like Yeah. Or 10 minutes of whatever. And sometimes it's just can you just give me permission that I don't have to worry about this other thing and I can work on my writing. And sometimes it's I'm really stuck here. Can I talk to you about when I'm writing?

And it can be all kinds of things. So that was when I first really started realizing about the neurodivergent friendly thing. And now I'm just much more kind of aware of a lot of the, I've listened to Lee Scholar's podcast with Amy Morrison and I've. Done a lot of that stuff. So I know more about what various things are.

So recently with this new small group for book writers so the structure of that is very much like we talk about what went well, and then we talk [00:13:00] about where we're struggling and get some help. And then we set some intentions for the next two weeks. That's the basic kind of structure.

And so in the first session, like everybody set in intentions, so the next session we're just checking in, like what went well, but also a lot of people talked in terms of I, my intention was to do this and this is what happened. Yeah. And one of the people was like, my intention is to do this, and this.

So of course I didn't do that, but I did these. So I said to her, I'm like, oh, is that a pattern? The, and she goes, oh yeah, if I put it i'm like, so do you know what demand avoidance is to me looking at me? And I'm like, so it's often called pathological demand avoidance. I don't like to call it pathological unless it's actually preventing you from doing the things you want to do.

But demand avoidance is a thing that a lot of neurodivergent people deal with in to different degrees. And it's basically that if somebody tells you to do [00:14:00] something, your immediate reaction is to be like, no, I don't wanna do that. And that's even if the somebody telling you is yourself, right?

So you put it on the list. So like she said, I set an intention to do this. Of course I didn't do that. And so I said, so we need to work out how you can work that doesn't involve. Telling yourself what to do. And so it's that kind of thing, right? It's not like you have to get over yourself. You just have to be like, this is a pattern.

This is how your brain works. You don't have to keep beating yourself up to try and make yourself do the things that are on your list and create all kinds of resistance. What you need to do is work out what helps. I think the best thing, and I need to go look it up, but I'm pretty sure it's a blue sky thread, and I don't know if she's ever written anywhere where I can find it again, but Courtney Milan has some very severe demand avoidance, and she wrote a really long thread on Blue Sky months ago about how [00:15:00] she has to organize herself to do the things, and she sets herself some big challenges.

Like she set herself a challenge that she wanted to climb Mount Fuji and she needed to train for that. She lives in Colorado, so but yeah and she did blog about the. Climbing Mount Fuji thing. But I remember her writing this really long thread about her own demand avoidance and how she managed to, to get stuff done anyway and the way she had to organize things.

And it just I find those kinds of personal stories really helpful in terms of thinking about could you try this? Could you try this? What works for you? So I think like that's part of it is the sort of, but I also feel like I just, I don't know what the research says, but my personal feeling is that a lot of the rejection sensitivity dysphoria is like a fucking rational response to being told you're doing stuff wrong your entire life.

And if you get diagnosed in your thirties or forties, [00:16:00] and some of my clients and some of my friends have been diagnosed when they have been in the process of getting their children diagnosed and. This is this is hereditary, right? And have you Right? And one of my local friends was like, her kids, she's got three kids and they're all very neuros spicy.

And the school had, she'd had to like, with the two kids, she had the whole thing through the school and then the, the

Jennifer (2): ed psych assessor person? 

Jennifer: Yeah. Them, they had said to her, oh, and they'd given her this form to fill in about herself. And she said to me, she's describing it to me, she says, so of course, like that got all crumpled up and I lost it and I couldn't find it for ages. And then I found it and I crumpled it and I filled it in with a purple glittery pen.

And then I had to go and meet with them in their office, which was in a place that I'd never been to before, and she lives locally. So [00:17:00] this just, there's a lot of rural and very windy roads and things. And so I was really stressed kind of finding their place. I walk in and I've got my forearm on Crumply paper in purple, glittery pen.

And and the first thing I say to them is could we turn these lights off? Because they're like really bothering me. It just takes a form and says, I think we know everything we need to know. Thank you. 

Jennifer (2): Check check.

Jennifer: Yeah. It's just like that kind of thing, but also like you've been trying to go through and I'm working a lot of the time with very successful people, right? They have. Tenured jobs or tenure track jobs, like these aren't all people that have been failing, but they have been failing to do, like finish that book that's been going on for a long time or to do, whatever, or they're just struggling.

And then, the more we learn about women our age, of course, 'cause when we were younger [00:18:00] they didn't think a DHD had anything to do with us. We're learning as we all get older, we're learning how the hormonal fluctuations of because then you can add 

Jennifer (2): perimenopause and menopause on top of A DHD, all autism.

And then you're just like, stay away. Just stay away. 

Jennifer: Some people are coping really well and then they're not, or they get to a certain level. With their job, right? Yeah. Where they're coping and then it's oh, wait a second. This is creating some challenges that are harder for me, that kind of thing.

So now I'm department 

Jennifer (2): chair. 

Jennifer: Yeah. How do you do that? So yeah, it's it's interesting. But mostly I just work on the basis of Okay. What does work for you? I've started to be much more deliberate about asking people at the beginning of coaching sessions what's been going well for them.

Because of course you don't come to coaching to talk about what's going, you come, [00:19:00] what's going badly. But I think it's really helpful to notice that some of what's going on is going well and then to be able to build on that. So that's. That's I think, reminding 

Jennifer (2): people of their essential resourcefulness and wholeness.

And

Jennifer: also that they're actually doing a lot of really good things. You're really competent. I read a thing and that was talking about memory. There were things about this book that I really didn't like. There were a couple of really good insights in it that, and one of them was about memory and the ways in which, you know, the way we store and actually there's two different pieces that I've pulled together from different places, but they're just little snippets about how memory works.

And one of them is, apparently there's some study been done with restaurant servers and their memory for their ability, like a really good restaurant server. Like they remember what everybody's ordered and blah, blah, blah, blah. As soon as you pay your bill, they wipe that out like that.

Just like an [00:20:00] Etch a sketch, gone, while you need it, it's there. As soon as you don't need it, it's gone. Beautiful. And so what that tells me is also that like for academics who are really super busy, right? There is so much on your to-do list that when you finish things like you don't need to remember that anymore.

Like you're done. That you've got all these things to focus on, so you forget that you finish things. My planning classes, we always start with like just getting people to think back over the last three months or year or whatever, depending on the length of clock. And just notice some of the things that they did.

And not even just finished, but what did you work on? All of that kind of thing. Yeah. And every time people are surprised, oh, I completely forgot I'd finished that article. Oh, I completely forgot. Because you're so focused on the next thing that you forget. So I'm just really much more conscious now of getting people to really notice what they've done.

And the same, the but the other little piece about memory [00:21:00] was and this was when somebody was talking about being a working mom and about time with your kids and stuff. And one of the things is she said, you need to actually like actively store the memories you want, right? If you're doing things, you have to make sure that gets stored in a way that you can pull it up in a way that feels good later.

And so what I took from that, in terms of say, I. The writing is like at the end of a meeting with your writing. Like it's, people write for 90 minutes and it's really rare to get into flow and stay in flow for 90 minutes. Some people do and like you can really get into a hyper-focused place, but I don't want people to feel bad for not doing that.

They sometimes break up the 90 minutes, whatever they do, but at the end I'm like, think back over what you have just done. Look at what's on the page. Think about the stuff that isn't on the page yet, all that kind of thing, and make a list of what you did because I wrote for 90 minutes and I'm not finished [00:22:00] is absolutely not gonna feel good in three days time.

Like it's great while you're in it. I don't wanna stop you being in flow. But afterwards you absolutely have to go back and store the memory in a way that is not, I wrote for 90 minutes and I'm not done. 

Jennifer (2): And that's the flip side to how I frame the problem when people when I was working at the University of Alberta and then I do it for academic impressions or I have done this for academic impressions and I should probably do it on my own.

I developed this workshop that's essentially figure out where you're headed and then let's get you there. It has gone under various names, but it's a half day essentially of what's, what does success look and feel and how do we plan from that point at the top of the pyramid down to day-to-day stuff that all feeds up into that vision that you have of success and, and so when people in the humanities and social sciences are like part of success in my field is writing a book, I need to write a [00:23:00] monograph. Great, but like you cannot put on your calendar like Tuesday afternoon at three write book, right? Write the book is not a to-do list item because you can't cross it off.

Like it's not a task. And so spend 90 minutes writing, that's a task and then reflecting on, okay, how far along have I come? Or when you set out on that process of giving yourself time to work on the book what are the chunks you're gonna break it down into so that in those 90 minute increments you're like, oh, I have a job today and it's this chunk of it.

Jennifer: Okay. So one of the other things is people have a really hard time breaking stuff down into increments. Yes. Particularly big things like a book. Yes. Especially if they haven't written one before, but even if they have, yeah. And so one of the things I've realized about that question, which is also, or that prompt to look at what you've done, is it's also easier to break it down.

Like to look at the chunks. [00:24:00] You intuitively broke it down to backwards. And you can't do that for a really long period because you forget 'cause memory is the way it is, but at the end of a writing session, like if you've sat there and written for an hour or an hour and a half or two hours, or if you've had been on a writing retreat or whatever, if you can, I, and I think I would not wait till the end of a writing retreat.

I would do it like frequently throughout, like at the end of each little block of time. It's helpful to notice what you did. Because that will help you understand all the things that go into writing a book or an article or whatever it is you're writing. Yeah. And one of the things I frequently remind people is not to ignore the stuff that's not on the page yet.

So in a 90 minute writing session, you probably spent some of that time staring into the middle distance. And that was not you being lazy. It was not you losing focus. It's that you, there is intellectual [00:25:00] work to be done before you can get the words on the page. Like you are not just transcribing a stream of consciousness, you are trying to use writing to organize your thoughts in a way that makes sense in this linear format.

And sometimes you need to get them on the page in a format that isn't linear yet before you can get it there. But. It's just, it's a complicated intellectual process depending where you are in the writing process, right? Yeah. And so that time you spent thinking right, is actual work that does move your project forward, and it's helpful to acknowledge that you did it and to try and articulate how it moved your project forward.

You won't be able to quantify it in the way that you can count words or written or paragraphs revised or whatever. But a lot of times people will say, I didn't write very many words today, but. I think I now know [00:26:00] what I need to do to solve this problem. Or or like I know, or if you've been away from your writing for a while and you come back to it that first session, you might spend a lot of it being like, what the heck am I doing here?

And what blah, blah, blah. And so noticing how long it takes you to kinda refamiliarize yourself with the project and being able to reading and thinking and planning and what's different at the end of your session and what's different at the end is often, I. I know what I'm doing now.

I have some next steps. Yeah. And so you don't actually have to have that, like this is the goal and how do I get there? And I have to be able to break it all down backwards. You can just be like, if I'm going to write a book, I need to be writing regularly. 'cause there's a lot of writing that goes into that.

And then it's what helps me get started? What do I need? Yeah. At this stage. Yeah. What do I, what are some concrete things I could do now? What are some concrete things I can do next? How is this moving and looking up occasionally and going, is this getting me closer to this [00:27:00] book I wanna write?

Yeah, 

Jennifer (2): absolutely. A and recognizing if you're looking at it, if you're looking at notes from the end of each session, that recapitulate what you've done, it allows you to work with what I think of as our magical thinking around time. Oh God, yes. Like frequently. And I was as guilty of this as anybody.

It's oh, I am not teaching in the summer, therefore I have fill in the blank hours a day to write. Now I actually do have a client who just sub, she's worked with me for years. She just submitted her tenure year documents Monday and is well into book number two when she is writing. She writes for four hours a day.

It's, I don't know, that's long. I don't know how she does it. No, three or four 

Jennifer: hours a day is really tiring. And today she 

Jennifer (2): was commenting that she's [00:28:00] noticing that her body doesn't like that as much. I'm like yeah. 'cause that's a long time. So if you say, I have eight hours a day to write.

You're not gonna write for eight hours a day. Like our brains will combust before we write for eight hours a day. 

Jennifer: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So 

Jennifer (2): do you pomodoro it for a couple hours? Do you do a couple hours in the morning, a couple hours in the afternoon if you have, big chunks of uninterrupted time.

But to have big chunks of uninterrupted time and imagine I'm going to fill them all with writing, is also 

Jennifer: And I think here's another thing where there will be at least some neurodivergent people who will be Yeah. Be like no, I can. And I so there are some people that really can take advantage of that hyper focus and do that.

But if you, but you can't do it consistently all the time for the whole summer. Sometimes they will actually like work in that very hyper-focused way over a couple of days and write for amounts of time that you, and I feel oh my gosh, I would be dead. [00:29:00] But the fact is, at the end of it, they are dead and and they need to then rest just as hard as they just worked.

And so I think that's the other really useful thing is to know, is to pay attention to what works for you, but to also allow yourself the I think of it as a, like a wave form. Around energy. So it's like that really intense work for many of us. We can't do it for many hours at a time, which doesn't mean we can't work a full day.

It's just like the kinds of work. Need to vary, right? Like you might be able to do a couple of hours really intense thinky wordsmithing, getting words on the page kind of work. And then you're gonna be able to take a break and go for a walk and then come back to it. You're not gonna be able to do the same kind of work, but you could still be working on the book.

And I think part of the magic about time and about how long [00:30:00] it's gonna take to write a book is also about forgetting how many different kinds of work go into the book. And also how you personally get from, I've got these great ideas and I've done this research to a thing that looks like a book with an argument and a, and a structure and all that kind of thing.

And one of the things that I have increasingly said about early drafts. When you start, you are not writing for your readers when you start your book or your article or whatever you are writing for yourself to figure out what it is you want to say about this material you've been researching and to like really figure that out, right?

Like even if you have a sense of, I think this is what my argument is gonna [00:31:00] be, to really dive into your primary sources, your data, like whatever you're using, research materials and really be like, okay, can I say that thing? How can I say what does this evidence actually show? And I think one of my clients that's working on a book, her experience of writing the first draft, very much focused on the primary sources.

She's a literary scholar. She's it's like close readings of these specific books. Is that she now has, and this is a topic she's been wanting to write about for 20 years and has finally got the time and space to write it. And what she now has is a much more nuanced understanding of that argument.

The argument hasn't fundamentally changed, but it has got deeper and stronger not and through this. And now she's like in revision, turning that into something that speaks to other people that [00:32:00] engages with the other work, which was there as she was writing because she is, has been immersed in this literature for a long time, but she wasn't like, what do I need to say to convince this guy over here?

She was like. I think there is something important about this concept going on in these novels. Let me do this really basic. I'm doing this close reading to really pull that out and really clarify my, for myself, what to say. And then I can turn it so that the, my thing is that your first draft, like what you want outta that first draft is confidence.

I actually love, right? Like you want, you wanna know what your argument is and you wanna be confident that you can support that argument with the evidence in your research, right? And you will have made whatever adjustments you need to make to that. And then from there, then there's loads of people that have structures that'll help you get there.

The Alison Van Deter and [00:33:00] Caitlin Knox book, the dissertation to book workbook. Which is published by University of Chicago Press and they run some workshops based on it, both for institutions and for individuals. But I've had several clients either do their workshops or use their book, and it's a really nice structure for getting you from, okay, I now know what I wanna say, whatever, into, okay, this is what the book is gonna look like then and here's the organizing principle, and here are the next steps to turn this draft into something that other people can read and engage with and that we'll meet.

And and developmental editors, that's what they do, but they need, you need to do that in initial work. And one of the things that stops people from writing is they wanna figure it out before they write it on the page. Absolutely. And you have to write it on the page.

That's part of the process figuring it out. But none of us know how long that is going to take.

Jennifer (2): And I have met people who have it all mapped out in their brain and then just write it [00:34:00] and it's pretty clean. But most of us do exactly what you just said. Like we use the writing to figure out what we want to say.

I believe there's a quote from em Forster in there about I need to. Write it down before I know what I think or something. But that permission that you give that draft one isn't, should not suffer under the weight of how many people, readers, reviewers, audiences do you need to please with this.

But draft one can be like, what do I know about this? What is my deep knowledge? What am I figuring out? How deep am I getting into whatever I'm getting so that when I zoom back out, then I can take my deep knowledge and engage with all of the members of the potential reading audience for it. I really like that permission.

Jennifer: Yeah. Yeah. And it's really about, 'cause sometimes if you read too. You need to know what the debate is about and what the key things are. You need a certain amount of knowledge and early in career, it's harder to judge that than later [00:35:00] on or when you're going into a new field. But you can go back and forth, right?

You don't have to have that whole idea of have I read enough to start writing is but sometimes that feeling you get like some of the imposter syndrome, some of the, I'm never gonna be able to do This comes from engaging with this other work that is the final product of a very long process of learning and refining and whatever from a place of, I haven't even done that work on my own primary sources to really get the nuance.

I just have this idea. And then you're trying to have this kind of not very well formed yet, yet idea. Against their final version. And that, that that then makes you feel, and it's partly not 'cause you aren't capable of that, it's because you have to do that initial work and whatever. I think we also have to get away from the idea that we're trying to convince other people to change their mind.

It's I don't like the argumentative 

Jennifer (2): model [00:36:00] is. 

Jennifer: Yeah. Yeah. You're not necessarily, you're trying to build on and contribute to an ongoing conversation where we're all learning together. It's just like a big. Seminar scholarly 

Jennifer (2): conversation is the phrase that I come back to all the time.

What scholarly conversations are you a part of? Do you want to be a part of as you are working on topic X? Yeah. 

Jennifer: And also there's some people who, like I, I have had people say I'm writing this and I know, and they can picture like an a, a specific academic in their field and they're like, they're gonna hate this.

I'm like, okay, so they're not gonna read it and or there's nothing you can do, right? They hate your premise, so they're either not gonna read it or there's nothing you can do to convince them, so don't write for them. There are how many other people who are gonna be really fascinated and interested and who are also thinking similar things and are gonna be like, oh, I'm so glad somebody finally published something about this.

And and so you need to [00:37:00] write for. Those people. And I think especially, here's the other thing, which sounds harsh, but given the state of the academic labor market and the university and all the other things, right now, if the only reason you're writing a book is to get a job, to get tenure, to get whatever, don't bother writing the book.

It's just gonna be too hard. And you might not get those things anyway, right? So what you wanna think about is what is the book that you absolutely want to write? I have this one client who's I have been wanting to write about this topic, since I finished my PhD and I've never figured out how to do it.

And I finally know how to do it and I have enough experience and I've written enough other things and I now I'm gonna write this book. And I have, another client that's been working on a thing. And even though the institution where she works has. Announced that they're gonna be making cuts and there will be redundancies [00:38:00] of academic staff and there's, all the rest of it.

When I look her in the eye and say, so if this is the end of your academic career, wouldn't it be good to like at least have this book out there? And she's absolutely no question. It's no, even if I no longer have an academic career, I absolutely wanna finish this book. And similarly, I had a new client came to me recently, had finished a PhD, had done a bunch of teaching only contracts that she just decided were not for her.

She's I really want to write this book. There is an important thing here. Even if this is just a creative project for me and I end up with a completely different career. This work, there was something important about why I did it. I think it makes an important. Contribution to the conversation. I think I have done things in this that are important to other people working in this field, and I really wanna get it out there.

That right is more, and you need to have [00:39:00] that 

Jennifer (2): conviction to take on. You'll 

Jennifer: have to have at least a little bit of that. 

Jennifer (2): Because you're gonna hate it at some point anyway. So to have that conviction to draw back on is at some point in a long project like that, you're like, oh dear God, no.

I know. 

Jennifer: Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. And I think that's that's basically it. Like you have to, there has to be a reason beyond checking a box. I need this for, yeah. Checking a box. Checking a box is not very motivating. No, not a, I wanna pick up on, and especially for neurodivergent, people who are interest motivated.

Jennifer (2): It needs to scratch an itch. And the itch isn't, like I get to tell somebody I wrote a book and put it on my cv.

Jennifer: Yeah. No. 

Jennifer (2): So I wanna circle back to a couple things that you said at the beginning about this relatively new program you have that's a small group program for people writing books.

Because you [00:40:00] said something that I wanna build on, and one is the magic of co-working in the meeting with your writing. Yeah. And then you have this small group that also does some co-writing, but is specifically targeted at people writing monographs. And when you said the magic of coworking, and that's totally true.

I have tons of clients who use body doubling, right? I'm gonna do something, but I need a buddy to do it with me. If I had known about that back in the day, maybe I would've balanced a checkbook once in my life. Like we could sit and balance our checkbooks together. That'd be great. 

Jennifer: Absolutely. Yeah.

Jennifer (2): But I just wrap, I'm wrapping up this weekend, next week, some cohort coaching that a university contracted for. So I have two cohorts of six-ish mid-career, so post tenure, but not full professors. And the university was interested in coaching them to support the vitalization slash revitalization slash focus slash whatever of their research [00:41:00] agendas.

And it was an opt-in thing. It wasn't like performance improvement, it was who wants to try coaching as a way to think about what's next. And I was contracted to do this. I didn't make the contract with the university. I got it through a third party. And so I wanna talk a little bit about the magic of groups and whether it's the looser structure and the sort of all comers of a meeting with your writing or this focused monograph thing because heterogeneous groups not all at the same institution, not working all on the same thing, having a structure that meets people where they're at and builds trust quickly enough to, do the things that you might wanna do in that kind of space.

Because I think it's really valuable and really magical and having just wrapped up. A couple sessions, like a couple commitments like this where I didn't set up the structure. I have really [00:42:00] strong thoughts about what I think would work there. So I'm super curious, what is the magic of your group? And yeah, what's the, so I'm not 

Jennifer: entirely sure.

So like I said, this is something I've just started trying and I have been holding back, like my own coach has been saying, have you thought about groups? And I'm like, oh, I don't know. And and so this, I just had this idea, and it was partly based around some things that I do within the studio in what I call writing clinics, which are just I run them quarterly and they're just a sort of open session where anybody that's a member can come and ask.

And I use some questions I borrowed from somebody else, which is what's going well or what are you working on? What's going well? What can we help you with? Basic structure, go, rant, whatever. And now that I've been doing those for a while and seeing how they work, but it's and some people come every time and sometimes it's just different people, whatever.

Yeah. And I just thought, [00:43:00] that might work. Because a lot of the group things for writing books that I see are things like, and Allison and Caitlin's dissertation to book workshop is awesome, but it's like very structured. It's structured around the book. There's a bunch of people that do similar kinds of things with the writing your journal article in 12 weeks book, where it's here's a process I'm going to teach you and I am not a process.

I'm going to teach you kind of person really. And so I had been like I'm not gonna do that. So I just thought I could do what if we did something like that? But we made it the same people for a set period of time. So they get to really connect. And that it's, it's like we've got the time boundary.

'cause that's one of the things that works about coworking groups is the bounded time helps you focus during that time that all that kind of thing and that sort of commitment and that you're committed to turning up every week. And I don't actually they do write together all the time, but they organize that on their own.

Like one of the things I asked them at the beginning is do you give me permission to share your [00:44:00] email address with the other people in the group? And they all did. So then I like shared it, organize their own co and then they contact each other and are like, I'm gonna be writing at three o'clock this afternoon.

Anybody wanna join me? Kind of thing, right? So they do a lot of that, but that has nothing to do with me really, other than the fact that I brought them together for this group. But the other thing I did was I didn't wanna spend a lot of time marketing and doing whatever to fill this group. I only needed four to six people.

And I already have this whole bunch of people that are in my studio and I've got a newsletter list and I thought, okay, I'm just gonna put it out and see what the interest is. And so I got the four to six people from people that were already in my orbit. And many of those people have been coming to meeting with your writing for a long time.

And so even though they hadn't necessarily talked to each other a lot, they did recognize each other's faces. They've seen each other, right? They've it's that it wasn't a kind of complete strangers kind of situation, even though they are all in different countries and [00:45:00] whatever and working on different things.

So I think that might be part of it. I think though there's also a thing where they came to a thing that I'm organizing and they know what my style is and their So they trust you to agree. I think that already filters, right? So one of the decisions I made at some point, fairly, I can't remember if I said this on the recording or just before the recording, but this past April was the 20th anniversary of me going freelance.

And I've done, it took me like I did a few things in the beginning before I got to what I do now. But one of the things I decided probably back in about 20 14, 20 15, 10 years ago was I do not want to work for universities anymore. I want to work directly for people because even when the university contracting me is fairly hands-off about how I approach things, the people in their institution coming to this thing [00:46:00] are still like coming to a thing that they're university organized and therefore in their head, there's also a thing about, so when I started out, I was helping people with grant applications. So for them, they're coming in with the university wants me to bring in grant money, and that's the end game here. And it doesn't in a way, I there's quite a lot I can do that's saying, no, look, the grant is not your goal.

And I honestly still believe this. The grant is not your goal. The grant is a step that will help you achieve your goal, which is the research you wanna do, that the grant is gonna help you do because there are things, there are questions you're not even asking yourself because you can't imagine doing them without some more cash, right?

That's. That's right, but like when they're still in the, I need to get a grant in order to, da. And so I just felt like I don't really want to do that. I wanna work directly for people and then people who don't like my approach and my personality and [00:47:00] the way I approach things don't have to work with me.

They can go somewhere else. There are other people who approach these things differently. And so I think that's part of it is that I selected from people who had already self-selected into my orbit. Even if they were just people that are on my waiting list, like on my newsletter list, and had never paid me for anything before.

They had been hanging around long enough to be like, oh yeah, if Joe's organizing this, I wanna be part of it. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that's part of it. But I think there's also just something, and I guess the thing about meeting with your writing, 'cause honestly some people have been. 'cause of the various moves and various computer changes and bookkeeping system changes.

I can't easily track how long some people have been with me, but some of them have honestly been part of that off and on for over 10 years. Certainly I had one client who I met early on in my journey because I helped her with a grant [00:48:00] application in the first or second year I was doing that.

So like 2005, 2006. And then at some point she started coming to meeting with your writing. She mostly only came in the summer because she found like she just, that was how she organized her writing and whatever. And, she would still be coming if she hadn't died a couple years ago, which was very sad.

I was very sad to lose her. But I've got people that yeah, have been coming for 7, 8, 10 years and so people are there and even though we don't talk, like I, the host does the opening thing. You go in a breakout room, you write for 90 minutes at the end, and we're talking five or 10 minutes.

At the end, I ask a couple of questions, what did you know? Leave yourself some breadcrumbs. What exactly did you do? Allow yourself to be pleased with what? Look at that. List yourself to be pleased. That is enough for this session. You turn up every week, it will keep going. Everything's fine.

Don't worry if you're going fast enough. This is how fast you're going today. And then I invite [00:49:00] people to share, usually just in the Zoom chat. Share something about your session today for the purposes of mutual support and encouragement. So all they discuss with each other is some little, I wrote this many words, or this went really well, or I had a really slow day today, but I got this done or whatever.

That's it. But they see each other regularly. They sometimes come to these writing clinics or other kinds of, or planning classes that have group coaching and where they might chat more about other things. Really, I think it's just that kind of low stakes engagement is super important. And I've been thinking about that.

'cause I, a year ago now, I realized that I had stopped leaving the house during COD because of various kinds of anxiety around how people, my dogs and various other things. So I wasn't even really walking the dogs. My partner was doing all that. And and so there would be like, I would often go like three days without leaving, going outside at all.

I might [00:50:00] open the front door to get the milk off the step, but apart from and that went on for like until, and then last summer I was like, I need to be doing more exercise. Right now there are only so many roots from my front door that are not steep. That number is one. So I go out my front door and I walk. I've looked on Google Maps and it tells me it's a mile to this one park bench that I walk to at the end of my road. And then I walk back and I started, I decided I was gonna do that every day. And initially I got my partner to come with me, and now I go and I had to, it's, I started in the summer, so then I had to switch in the fall.

We've talked about this. We live in northern altitudes. It's very dark. So I switched to lunchtime. I've now realized lunchtime's better for me anyway, but I go, I no longer have dogs. Every, all my elderly animals are gone now. But there's lots of people walking their dogs. And the thing is I do that every day.

I've been doing that every day for a year. [00:51:00] And I see a lot of the same people. And initially we just acknowledge each other's existence. Like it might just be brief eye contact, it might be a nod. We might say, hi, that's it. Some of them, I, now, I talk to their dogs. I've trained one of their dogs not to jump up on me

like that. 'cause the guy was like, you probably, she jumps and I don't, she's nine. There's and I'm like, it's okay. And then I, she doesn't jump anymore. She doesn't even try. But yeah. Okay. So in your next 

Jennifer (2): career, you'll be a pound trainer, please. 

Jennifer: I'm not, no. There's another, there's a golden lab that really doesn't like me.

She's just you are very suspicious. And she barks at me and we, none of us know why. And for people are very anyway, but but the thing is, I feel like, it's like months of just saying hi or nodding. Then makes it like lowers the bar to having some other kind of conversation. And it's not about necessarily imposing conversation on people like, or anything like that, but there's now people who, live [00:52:00] at the other end of that road who when they drive by, stop and roll down their window and chat to me and ask me how I am and all that kind of thing.

So I think that's part of it. It's like you're not going in with this big expectation. You're just going in, I have this work to do. Yeah. And these people share enough of my values that they all wanna work with me. Yeah. And therefore, I feel safe with these people. It's gonna be okay, we're gonna talk about some things.

Yeah. But then you're talking about stuff like, I'm the kind of person that if I set myself goals, I don't I automatically decide I don't wanna do them, or I, I'm struggling to do this or this, or, whatever. Yeah. And then, or I had a really bad week this week, or whatever. You're admitting those things and that just builds the trust.

But I think it has to start, and maybe that's where the doing it yourself, like offering it yourself rather than doing it under contract to other people gets that, because then people are coming for you. [00:53:00] And that you've put your values out there and those are, and they're like, the 

Jennifer (2): people know you.

They know this is the kind of space Joe is likely to create for me to do this work together with other people. 

Jennifer: Yeah. And the people that don't like my space. It's I'm totally, I'm like, yeah, I, you're not my people. That's okay. You'll be somebody else's people. Yeah. And that's, I only need and for this, it was like, I only need four to six people.

And the fact is that some of the people, when I put that out there, people, other people contacted me to say, this sounds awesome. I'm not like, this timescale isn't working for me, but I am on sabbatical in the fall and I would be interested then, or whatever. I'm, I was this is just trying it and now I'm trying it and I'm a, we're a little bit more than halfway through and I'm just like.

This is going really well. So I've identified some dates to do it. So we're probably gonna start again in August. So I guess people listening to this who are like, oh, she seems like a cool person. I think I could work with her. You wanna get on my newsletter probably.

Jennifer (2): Which will be, [00:54:00] so Joe's site her website, which has get on her newsletter, LinkedIn, any other place that you want me to direct people, Joe, you let me know and I'll make sure that shows up.

But it's Joe Van every co uk Yep. 

Jennifer: Yeah. 

Jennifer (2): And Van every, so it's J-O-V-A-N. EVER y.co. Yeah, man. 

Jennifer: Like a truck every, like every day. 

Jennifer (2): You've said that once or twice in your life. So in thinking, so when I think of, and it will be interesting maybe to revisit this after you've concluded the first round with these monograph writers, because I mean you, I'm sure if I gave you a pen and paper and said, write down like the 10 biggest struggles that people have writing their first book, for example, you could probably come up with here are the things that I hear about all the time.

And so when I think of like a group [00:55:00] coaching opportunity, I think about this balance between having facilitated this kind of work on, in your case for 20 years. More or less. A big chunk of that 20 years probably. 

Jennifer: Yeah. 

Jennifer (2): Having facilitated this work for this long, I know some things and so maybe I can, give you some pointers or pro provide some structure when it comes to problem A, problem B, problem C.

So a balance of that versus, 

Jennifer: and I think the other things, yeah, there is, but there's also, and part of that is also I've worked with a lot of people, so I've seen a lot of different ways of tackling the problem. So one thing for me is I do give advice and suggest specific things, but I am never, ever attached to you doing the thing I suggest.

Yeah. I suggest it as a way to prompt some thinking. So if your [00:56:00] reaction to something I suggest is, oh my God, that's never gonna work for me. My hope is that it does prompt you to be like why? That's not gonna work for me because of this, but that, and either you're gonna be like, okay, you're gonna tell me that and that's gonna help me come up with a different suggestion.

Or you're gonna, it's gonna prompt you something for yourself, right? Yeah. You are gonna be like, okay, I can't, that's not gonna work. I know I can't do it that way, but I could possibly do this instead. Or I could though. The other thing is I think sometimes it's worth trying some stuff like, do you know that a certain thing doesn't work for you and could you try it?

So one of the things that I've recently I wrote this, a version of this over 10 years ago, and I've finally updated it, and it's now like a little tiny free email course called the 15 Minute Writing Challenge. This is part of the, like one of the big things I do is I help you figure out that you do [00:57:00] actually have time to write.

You just look at a lot of the time you have available and go, I can't possibly do anything useful in that time. And so I absolutely agree that you cannot only use chunks of 15 minutes and that would feel terrible, but using those little bits of time can often get you a lot further than you think. And also it compliments the longer bits of time in ways that can be very surprising and that can make a huge difference to how much you can get done when you only have so many, like when you only have the summer to do that really big, deep thinking.

And when you only have one or two slots in the week, you can schedule for longer sessions. And so I've set this challenge up as just a way to experiment with using these shorter chunks of time and figuring out what they are good for you. And how you might use them. And so it's a little bit of email, sort of explanation of [00:58:00] different things you might do.

And then it's a kind of, okay, try this, figure out what you're gonna try and you're gonna try it for four weeks and I'm gonna check in with you two weeks in, and then I'm gonna check in with you at the end. And so when you sign, you can sign up for my newsletter and get that cool. And or if you're already on my newsletter, there's a way to go and just add that on.

And so I think there is a thing about trying stuff that seems implausible to see what you learn. Because even if you figure out, yeah, 15 minutes doesn't work for me, one of the people that hosts for me who is autistic says it doesn't work for her because of the whole transitioning. Like little short chunks of time involves too many transitions.

It's not good for her, but thinking about it helps her. Then be like, okay, what? That is the problem I have with it. So how do I have to organize my time so that I can not have those little transitions all the time? So even if it doesn't work for you in the way you think or hope, when you start, you will learn something about yourself that will enable you [00:59:00] to reach the goal you have.

Which is, I need to do more writing or I need to, 

Jennifer (2): but Right. So you're getting data either way. Your data is either the result of words on page or data about yourself and how you work. Yeah. 

Jennifer: Yeah. You're learning something about what's gonna help you and what works for you. And 'cause nobody is gonna be able to tell you that other than you, no matter how well I know you, I never know all the things and also stuff changes.

And one of the people in the group, in this small group, she has, she's got a busy academic job and she's got small children and in the first check-in, she was like, I just don't, I have no time. Like I have done some writing since we last talked, but it's been like, I've been like writing for 20 minutes while the dinner's cooking, or I've been, and she's I can't run my whole life like that.

That's gonna be really stressful. And so we talked a lot about how you can use some of those and never have to feel obliged to use every single 15 minute thing you can find. But using some of them means that [01:00:00] you are actually doing something on your book and then trying to find some bigger chunks to go with it.

And using some of those, like what can you use them for? Like sometimes she was writing words, but sometimes it's just like writing down some ideas that mean she has a place to start when she has more time or whatever. And it, and honestly in the second one, she's okay, I got more writing than I, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, my intention is to add 2000 words to this book in the next two weeks.

Then the next time she says my intention was 2000 words, but I somehow wrote seven and I don't know how to practice 'cause I still don't have any time. 

Jennifer (2): But those 7,000 words manifested themselves onto my computer, manifested 

Jennifer: themselves in this document. And it's like sometimes when you're like, okay, the conditions seem unlikely, but I'm gonna see what I can do regardless.

And that's partly I'm not like, I'm, I've always been a bit, and maybe this is my own nerve, but I'm like always a bit resistant to here's [01:01:00] your goal and let's get some steps to get there, because there's so many things out of your control about reaching that goal. And also sometimes you work out on the way that's not the goal you want and it's okay to switch.

So mostly. I like the idea, the language of intentions. And I like the idea of, building a practice. It's if writing and writing about these and this thinking and reading is stuff you wanna be doing, then you just need to create the space where you're doing that.

And then intention, 

Jennifer (2): practice, experiment, those are all like really good. Again, like bite-size, low stakes 

Jennifer: yeah. Yeah. Reducing the stakes. Figure out I think the other advantage of committing to something like me meeting with your writing or any kind of regular, I'm gonna sit down and write every Monday for an hour and a half.

Like even if you only do that once a week, it's but if you do it every week, even if you skip once or twice over time it really adds up. But it also takes the pressure off any [01:02:00] individual session, right? If you are there's no way I can write during term time. I can only write in the summer.

Then you just put a whole lot of weight on whatever you're able to do in the summer. It makes it harder for you to take a vacation and get the rest you need during the summer. Which is another thing I bang out on about a lot. But also it means if you have a bad day, you feel like, oh my God, I've only got like 30 of these days to work on it and I've now just blown one.

Whereas if you are doing things regularly, then the occasional bad day just becomes less 

Jennifer (2): of a problem because it gets put into perspective against

Jennifer: it's just it's just an I'm gonna turn up tomorrow. It'll be another day. 

Jennifer (2): Yeah, or I do this every Monday. And some are great and some are less than great.

It's like my Tuesday night yoga class. Some days it's awesome. Some days. I'm an 85-year-old lady, wriggling around on the ground, hoping that a lightning bolt strikes me. 'cause nothing works. And the yoga teacher's whatever your body can [01:03:00] reach today. However, 

Jennifer: exactly. Exactly. I've learned a lot, like yoga has been a huge influence even though I'm not I'm a, I do 10 or 15 minutes every morning.

I started that in about 2014. I was just looking at some stuff I wrote back then earlier today. I decided I was gonna do, I wanted to have a daily practice and I started with, it's just gonna be 15 minutes. And basically I have now had a daily yoga practice for that long. That doesn't mean that I never have days.

I don't u don't do it, but, but it is only five or 10 minute, 10 minutes maybe in the morning. It's not nothing huge, doing it ever. It makes a big difference. And I now really notice when I don't do it, like I notice the impact it has on me when I haven't. Done that in the morning and, but that, 

Jennifer (2): that same concept of practice yeah if you're only doing 10 minutes of sun salutations in the morning or whatever it doesn't feel like much, but then you notice, oh wow, it [01:04:00] is having an impact if you go two days without doing it.

So like we, 

Jennifer: but also on the goal setting, right? Like when I started, so I was doing some yoga classes. There was a time when I had to drive my kid like 25 minutes away from where we lived to go to a drama class. So it was too far for me to go and come back and go, right? So there was a yoga class happening in the same town at about the same time.

My kid was old enough to walk over there when they were done. So I was just like, okay I'm gonna do this yoga class and I really liked that teacher and whatever, and that, had a big influence on me. But, at that time, like to do a forward fold. I needed the blocks up on their tallest thing, right?

That's as far as I could go. And I never set a goal, oh, I wanna touch the floor. Partly because I knew enough that like some people, it depends about the relative proportions of the length, your leg and the length of your body and all the rest. Like my partner has a really long body, so for him to do a [01:05:00] forward fold and touch the floor is a completely different situation.

He's got these Diddy little legs and a big long body, right? Because the way he is built. But for me I was just like, oh, okay, so I need these blocks. So I use these blocks, right? And one of the things over the last is now, I hurt my back at Christmas time, but apart from about a couple of weeks while that was healing, 'cause I'd stretched a ligament.

It wasn't anything really bad, but I'd stretched a ligament at the base of my spine. I couldn't do a very deep forward fold while that was healing. But apart from that, now, pretty much first thing in the mor, I've had a shower, like a bit of warmth to loosen up my middle aged muscles. But I can touch the floor at least with the tips of my fingers on the first go.

And that's just, not because I was aiming for it or anything else, it was just like, I am doing this movement to where my body wants to go, and if I need to put blocks on the floor, then I will put blocks and I will go to the blocks and and [01:06:00] now I still have the blocks they need them.

So when I was coming back from that injury to my back, then I was using the blocks again for a while. But, it's just I think it's like sometimes a practice, like stuff changes that. You didn't even know was possible and you're in a different place. And the same with the writing.

Like you're writing regularly, you're learning stuff about how it works for you. You're getting more comfortable with it. You get more comfortable with a lot of the emotional blocks around what you're doing. You're like, all of that kind of stuff. And if you're doing it regularly it just bloody will get better.

Yeah. Yeah. 

Jennifer (2): And there's no way to do it without doing it. That's the, whether it's writing, just, it seems like the most common hurdle, but there are other hurdles also like conflict and planning, like all sorts of strategic things that fall into this category as well. We cannot think our way to the outcome.

Like at some point you actually just need to do the work. [01:07:00] And so what I'm appreciating about where our conversation has gone is, this notion of figuring out what works with you for you via experimentation, via self-reflection, via, writing reminders to yourself of, look what I went, look what I did, look back and see what happened last week.

That working with your idiosyncratic patterns is your path to success. And I was thinking about a conversation again that you and I had ages ago about Harvey Brooks and. Her way of moving through the world, which obviously is very neurodivergent and very idiosyncratic to her in terms of she doesn't talk about pathological demand avoidance.

She talks about the scary iguanas she has to deal with. 'cause each horrible task was an iguana that she had to feed and get out of her house and whatever. But [01:08:00] like this notion of as quirky or as individualistic or as custom to you as it needs to be as the yoga pathway. 'cause that was the overlap there.

Like yoga as a lens for life. And then on the other hand have you, I'm sure you have read Stephen Pressfield's the War of Art? 

Jennifer: No, I have heard of it, but I have not. And

I'm sure I've heard people who have used his context, right? 

Jennifer (2): His whole premise is that. If you're making art, if you're in a creative endeavor, and I will argue that writing a book, I don't care what the topic is, yeah, creative endeavor, right?

That where you are feeling resistance, that's where you need to go, which, has like super alluring, interesting, whatever, but there's the head-on going for it. The I'm just gonna charge right into the breach and meet my demons on the page versus the find your flow [01:09:00] using the entry points and tricks and experiments that are gonna work for you.

So if you need to not have a to-do list, but have like little sticky note reminders or if you don't want to talk about. Your to-do list, you wanna talk about your tribbles or your gremlins or your iguanas or whatever. All of that is fine. We don't have to meet things head on. And or our version of head on may look different from somebody else's version of head on, like Steven Pressfield's version of Head on.

I really appreciate that, if there's more than one way to do this and somebody's checklist, somebody's six step formula or 12 week plan may work for you in some respects, but not all may not work for you at all. May need something that you have to slow down or need a partner with, right?

So just not assume that because Joe Blow is doing it that way, that it's the way to get it done. 

Jennifer: And also I think sometimes [01:10:00] those things, so like the, the Wendy Belcher book about the writing your journal article. I know loads of people that have found that really useful. And when I've recommended to people, I've said, it might be useful to go through it in the order it is the first time because she does break down the process into steps and whatever.

But once you're familiar with that and the principles that underline it, which she explains, you can then adjust it for yourself. Like you do not have to be like rigid about how you use it. You can use it as a way to learn a process, right? So that you have a baseline for figuring out which parts of this work for you, work well for you.

Which parts of this are not so working so well, and how do I fix the bits? You don't have to start from scratch and build a whole new process. You can be like, let's take their processes of baseline. Loads of people use it, [01:11:00] they find it really helpful, right? It's already worked out. And then just build on the parts that work and use what you know about yourself to adjust and experiment with the other parts to find an adaptation that is gonna work for you.

We're both knitters. I have design sweaters from scratch before, I don't wanna do that every time, right? But,

Jennifer (2): Why didn't anybody tell me that knitting involved geometry and math? Because I'm

Jennifer: I don't wanna do that every time. Sometimes I like to follow somebody else's pattern, but also, I've been knitting I've been knitting for longer than I've been freelance, so I don't know. I've been knitting for a long time. I'm pretty good at it. Once you have more experience, then I can be following somebody else's pattern and go, oh no, I know a better way.

I know a different way to do this that I like better, but sometimes I will learn new techniques from somebody else's pattern too. They'll be like, oh, we do our short rows this way, and I'll be like, okay, I'll give that a [01:12:00] shot and see how I like it. I, you can adjust like the, there, there are no kind of police that are come and say yeah, you produced this great journal article, but the way you did it was totally wrong and you're not allowed to do it that way.

And I, yeah, and one of the people in the book group, like she has had some mentoring and she was just really struggling to get started and her mentor. It's clearly somebody who works very differently. And he was a person who's when you wanna write a book, you figure out what you wanna say, and you write an outline, and then you just write to your outline.

And she had got stuck in a loop of restructuring her outline. I'm like, okay, stop. That's not working for you. Let's think what do you wanna do? And she talked a bit about what was at attract, whatever. And I'm like, okay, start here. And I, picked something from what she said, and then she went with that and it's working really well.

She's the one that has no time to write and is somehow writing 7,000 words every, 

Jennifer (2): and not just retooling an outline every other week because yeah. No, actually on the page starting 

Jennifer: point. Yeah. It's partly like sometimes other people's, and that works great for [01:13:00] him.

I think he should keep doing it. Fill your boots as the Canadian Oh, your boots. Yeah, exactly. And also like I have people in the meeting with your writing, I have at least one person who's written, I think she's on her seventh book, which is really the third one. She's written a lot of books and she says every single one is different.

Yeah. And it's just it's a thing and you do the thing and you've done it before and you've figured it out before. But that none of them are gonna be easy. And that's, wait a second, that reminds me of another thing that I frequently end up saying to my coaching clients.

'cause you get frustrated at how like hard some of the work you're doing is right, but it's like you would not be doing this work if you did not enjoy an intellectual challenge. Nobody becomes a philosophy professor. Because that, like that is just, most people are like, why would you wanna do this?

The people that are being paid to [01:14:00] write books about philosophy right, are the kind of people who really like a difficult intellectual challenge. Even though on any given day you may really wish you had picked an easier job, 

Jennifer (2): right? Gardening, why am I not a board tro? Let's 

Jennifer: figure out how to engineer the conditions in which you can actually enjoy this thing that most people are like, why are you beating your head against that wall?

Jennifer (2): Yeah. So this also interestingly connects back to things that Javi wrote on her. Now, I think shuttered blog, don't know what she's up to, but she talked about creating the book of me, right? 

Jennifer: Oh yeah, I remember that. Yeah,

Jennifer (2): also, so each of us gets to create the book of me.

So as you learn a thing about yourself I am not gonna work really well from an outline that I've meticulously completed because I will get lost in the outlining process. Like that's a note for the book of [01:15:00] me. I can actually keep the ball rolling a tiny bit with 15 minute chunks for a while, but I really need a weekly deep dive.

For an hour in order to feel progress. That's a little tidbit for the book of me. I need to get out of the house at lunchtime every day and breathe in the air and feel the wind and rain on my face. 

Jennifer: Not the rain. I mostly don't go if there's a lot of rain to be felt, a little bit of drizzle is okay, but yes.

Jennifer (2): If you didn't go in, there was a little bit of drizzle, like you might not leave your house in Northern England is my sense. 

Jennifer: Yeah. That's your sense. Yes. Just if had, except for the last three months when we have had glorious sunshine and the grass is actually brown in May in Northern England.

Jennifer (2): Yeah. Signs of the apocalypse are everywhere really. So but this notion of the book of me and figuring out like what makes 

Jennifer: Yes, what 

Jennifer (2): makes it work for you brings me to like my roundup question in all of these interviews, which is how do you. As somebody who works for yourself by [01:16:00] yourself in your house, which is the case for me.

And I think all of the other people that I've interviewed, with the exception of Rebecca who has a day job. But it also applies to so many academics. I know at least during the summer, and oftentimes for days at a time during the school year where it's like you and your computer and your thoughts doing work.

How do you take care of yourself in a way that keeps you mentally resilient and happy? 

Jennifer: So for me, that I think speaks a lot to this sort of business model that I have chosen because I am, if I ever do any of those tests, and I'm sure this will come as no surprise at all. I am a pretty extreme extrovert.

So the fact that I work on my own in my upstairs room by myself on a regular basis and have spent many days not leaving the house is particularly weird. But I think for me, one of the [01:17:00] things is just even online interaction works for me in terms of the energy. And doing meeting with your writing and being in a room with other people who are writing and that kind of thing works.

Having lots of coaching clients. I have, I sometimes have four clients in a day like my, my, my assistant. Is an extreme introvert. And when I say, oh, I've got five clients that day, I am not gonna get much of anything else done. She just visibly shutters at the idea she would have to talk to five different people in a day.

I'm just okay, I am not gonna do anything else 'cause that'll be too tiring, but oh my goodness, I get to talk to people. Since that's part of how I keep myself sane, is that the talking to people and helping people is part of the work I do is part of what does it for me. I also have found this practice of going for a walk every day has been really helpful.

I sing in choir. Which and singing, there's a lot of research about it [01:18:00] apparently. So there's a whole bunch of stuff about, the ways that it stimulates your vagus nerve and all the rest of it. But basically you're in a room and you're singing and you're, it's awesome. I sing in a choir that sings pretty like.

Classical big pieces. We did the heen mass in time of war in April, which is an awesome mass, if you are not familiar with it. It's also called the kin mass. Mass Kin Mess. Kin Misses. Yeah. Yeah. Drums, there's some really good symphony things. So it was written during the Napoleonic War, and it's like, there is this one section where you really, you're singing the Agnes De and it sounds like you are there and the soldiers are outside the door kind of thing, like the, there's like trumpets and 

Jennifer (2): Right. While you but like that choir singing, like you're blending your voice with yeah. The harmonies 

Jennifer: and the whole you're a soloist. 

Jennifer (2): And so that, that work of being in

Jennifer: yeah. Yeah. It's just, and it is there is like something about actual like resonances in your body and all that kind of stuff.

It's awesome. But [01:19:00] anyway, I really enjoy that. And I read I read a lot, mostly romance novels really. I discovered the Smart Bitches Podcast and website and I support them and I hang out in their discord and they are very good, smart bitches. Trashy books is the website and anyway, it's a lot of really fun people who read some truly trashy books.

Genre 

Jennifer (2): fiction, man, I, so as somebody with a PhD in literature, there was a time when I might've been like, oh my gosh, you are not reading go to. But the first time, my husband and I have been crazy things to be employed and remained married, but one of them involved him living in Germany with a kid and me living in Kansas with the other kid for a year.

And if trashy Vampire Romance had not existed, how would I have gotten through that year? I do not know. 

Jennifer: I don't know. Yeah, that, and a friend on the vampire, like 

Jennifer (2): always ready with a bottle of wine and a dinner, like those were the [01:20:00] things I read. Trashy, vampire Romance Suki Stackhouse, bless your soul.

Jennifer: Yeah. Yeah, so yeah there's a lot of that. I don't watch a lot of TV though, so I read a lot of books, but I don't, like other people will be talking about, oh, have you seen, I don't even know what all the things are and, which is great if that's your thing. That's not my thing.

I prefer to consume my stories in books. I've been getting more into audio books, especially if I wanna knit at the same time. Yes. And then there's the trick of finding audio books that both my partner and I will like, that we can listen to on long car journeys. And I will recommend L cos, El COO's, Finley Donovan series.

It is very funny and has no sex on the page, so you don't have to be in a car on the motorway listening to some sort of really detailed sex scene with your partner sitting next to you. Which I just feel like even if you wanted to listen to that with your partner, you probably don't wanna do that on the motorway.

So it's like [01:21:00] useful to know in an audio book is they're gonna, are we gonna be ambushed by some sort of sex scene? No, there are sex scenes, but they're like mostly, closed door kind of things. 'cause there is a little romantic interest, but it's mostly the premise of the first one, which is called Finley Donovan is killing it, is the Finley Donovan, the main character is an author who writes romantic suspense and she has a meeting and she is divorced and she has a couple of little kids and she has a meeting with her editor in a Panera and they're talking about the book.

But the woman at the next table doesn't realize they're talking about the book and they, and thinks she's actually a hitman. And leaves her a note saying, can you please kill my husband? I'll pay you $10,000. So that's how the whole series kind starts. I, it's very funny, and you're listening to 

Jennifer (2): this with your husband

Jennifer: yeah, it's great.

[01:22:00] Yeah. He, yeah, it's great. It's, they're the, we're now on about the fifth one of, anyway, like we've got the most recent one, but there's been several and it's hilarious. The characters are great and the whole, it's very funny about how you accidentally get mixed up with the Russian mob.

Jennifer (2): Beautiful.

For all of our listeners in Montreal, here's one for. Oh no. 

Jennifer: But yeah, I don't know. Anyway there's just good stuff like, like sometimes stuff like that. I don't know, like I just read, I don't know. Some of it's funny, some of it's, whatever. It's all good. And then I have a two week holiday in July where I just sit around in a warm place.

Mostly we tried going to Norfolk last year and partly it's England and partly last year was a cool summer and so that wasn't quite as pleasurable, even though it's a lovely place. But Brittany, we have discovered yeah. So you know, we go there and hang out and read books in the sunshine and swim in a pool.

[01:23:00] And, 

Jennifer (2): As a colleague of mine said when we were at a big convention recently, and it was a beautiful day in early May. I'm not gonna go to the next session. I'm gonna go out on the. Patio and photosynthesize for exactly. Which is a very northern latitude thing to say. 

Jennifer: Yes, exactly. 

Jennifer (2): Vitamin D, 

Jennifer: a little bit of vitamin D.

Look at all the vitamin D I'm going out there. I'm gonna, and also, I'm a pretty rich and I only work a four day week. Okay. And I alternate between Mondays and Fridays off. So every second weekend is a four day weekend for me. I make sure to try and take at least six weeks holiday a year. But I do have a part-time assistant now who does a lot of editing, social media, that kind of stuff.

And she and I have a meeting once a week to talk about projects and what's going on and where we are and that kind of thing, which really helpful. I have a team, a small team of people that host, I have, and the thing around planning my work and my time, that really helped [01:24:00] me a couple of years ago so that I now have plans that feel feasible and I don't get panicked when I get behind.

I just reschedule things. Is to think about pacing,

right? Yeah. Not how much can I do, but like pacing. What's a useful way to pace this? Like I wanna do this thing, 'cause I do generate a lot of ideas and I do sometimes impulsively start a small group coaching group. Most of the time it's are we gonna do the, and then it's okay, how can I keep my interest?

Also, how can I pace things so that to get the balance between this is possible and this is still interesting enough to me that,

Jennifer (2): yep. Yep. Balance and intention. Excellent. Joe, thank you so much for spending. Thank you. This chunk of time with me and as I said earlier, like the show notes.

On the website, we'll have a link to your website where you can find all things Joe, including her newsletter [01:25:00] to be in her orbit. So the next time she offers something that you think is gonna help you move from point A to point B you'll know about it because I know so many people in my orbit who have been in a meeting with your writing on and off or for longer times or during your project because as I said, you are one of the OG people in this space.

And so knowing that there is not a program you have to sign up for, not a yeah the low stakes. Constant engagement, like it is there when you need it, and it helps provide a rhythm and a practice. I know so many people for whom it has been a lifeline in their projects. If you are listening and you are writing and you are not loving every minute of it and you want support from people who've been there, done that check it out.

Anything else you want me to point people to Joe? 

Jennifer: Probably not. I don't know. The academic writing [01:26:00] studio has its own website, but it's linked right at the top. It's linked. Okay. The other one I mostly, in terms of hanging out social media wise, I'm mostly casually hanging out on Blue Sky.

I am on LinkedIn. I have a Facebook page, but Facebook is such an annoyance that we schedule stuff to it, but I don't really pay much attention to it. My personal Facebook is mostly for hanging out with my friends. All the knitters and homeschoolers and all those people I've met on the internet over the years who do not live.

Oh, I got to know your dogs. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. Okay. 

Jennifer (2): All of those things, blue sky's 

Jennifer: probably the best bet. Blue sky blue. That. Okay. 

Jennifer (2): That's good to know. Alright, I will make sure that shows up in the notes. And again, thank you and listeners, thank you. I will be back, I think with a solo episode next, if I recall what's on my little recording schedule where maybe I will pull together some threads or maybe I will offer something new.

We will figure it out [01:27:00] as we go because we're working with flow and not with a rigid outline because we understand. How we work. There you go. Now I have my language for my particular idiosyncratic brand of getting this stuff done. 

Jennifer: Exactly. What are we doing today? What's exciting? What's interesting enough to keep me focused and do it.

Jennifer (2): 12. Exactly. I live in Edmonton. It is the city of mag pies, which might be my spirit animal. 

Jennifer: Ooh, shame. We have a colony of Jackdaws that live in the park at the end of the road. 

Ooh, shiny.

Jennifer (2): Alright, Joe, take care. And to everybody else, I will be back in your ears in a couple of weeks.