Recycling Day

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Alrighty. Welcome to episode two of Secrets and Lies, a Storyteller's podcast. This is Carolyn and this is Vicki. I'm calling this one this episode Recycling Day. [00:00:15] Speaker B: Like it? [00:00:16] Speaker A: I like it too. [00:00:18] Speaker B: All right. [00:00:18] Speaker A: So we mentioned on our last episode a little bit about how we try keep ourselves engaged with our writing projects and everything. And I find it, I don't know, ironic because part of my day job, or a big part of my day job is teaching other people project management and prioritization. Yeah. Have I gotten a whole lot done on my work in progress since last time? No. [00:00:52] Speaker B: I could relate. [00:00:59] Speaker A: What do you do to help keep yourself on track? [00:01:03] Speaker B: Well, I can get into a good run of writing my memoir and revising my memoir by doing it first thing. [00:01:15] Speaker A: In the morning before the day encroaches on. [00:01:19] Speaker B: Exactly. Sometimes I don't even want to eat breakfast. I just want to come in and write before that desire to write disappears. I can't look at my cell phone, I can't Facebook because then I get distracted and I'm off on some kind of rabbit hole online or something. Or I'm getting looking at my planner and going, okay, what kind of other stuff am I going to do today? So it has to usually be the first thing I do in the morning. [00:01:55] Speaker A: I am not as disciplined as you, but I will say that it has happened where I'll get an idea. It's usually when I'm trying to go to sleep or like I'll wake up or it'll be really early in the morning, earlier than I want to get up. And I'll think of an idea and I know that I will not remember it later and I will have to get up and write it down. And if I'm going to do that, if I'm going to get up, I might as well write as much as I can. [00:02:23] Speaker B: Well, there you go. [00:02:24] Speaker A: See, so I will do that. But that's not a thing that happens to me every morning. And I for sure in the morning am not going let me just put off this coffee and breakfast thing until after I knock out these no. [00:02:39] Speaker B: I do have to have the coffee though. I have to have the coffee and because I have to have the coffee, I usually set my coffee maker every night. So all I have to do is push the button no matter when I get up. Because if I get up early are. [00:02:54] Speaker A: You usually the first one up? Yes, I am too. [00:02:58] Speaker B: It's not necessarily true, but I am too. [00:03:01] Speaker A: My dog doesn't even get up with me anymore. She stays in bed. [00:03:07] Speaker B: She's like, what is this? Getting up in the morning? [00:03:09] Speaker A: Yeah, she's not about it not about that at all. Do you find it easy or hard to write in your own house? [00:03:22] Speaker B: I get distracted. I get distracted easily. And sometimes because of that, I will do a retreat. [00:03:33] Speaker A: Yeah, I remember. You've gone. What, Waynesville or you go just to get out of the house? [00:03:43] Speaker B: Well, I've been to Waynesville to stay for, like, a week or so. And our retreats and this might be a subject for another day, but we both love Waynesville. We almost moved there, but it's too small for us. But I thought, it's only an hour from here, so I can get, like, this super cheap airbnb for, like, a week. And I can go and write there. But when I'm not doing that, I can find some coffee places around here. [00:04:17] Speaker A: Yeah, I get distracted. There's a number of things I mentioned in the last podcast that my mom has moved in with us, and her apartment downstairs isn't finished yet. So she will pop in. She'll do the pop in into my office. [00:04:39] Speaker B: Is your door open? [00:04:40] Speaker A: Is your door oh, no. Doors closed. Knock, knock, knock. Come in. And then she'll be like, quiet or waving at me, and the damage is done. Okay. But I'm also distracted by the fact that there's a refrigerator in my house full of delicious things. And so I can be like, writers will come up with any excuse to not write. Like, I'm hungry. I'm just going to get a snack, or I'm just going to get a drink. [00:05:13] Speaker B: There's a little bit of dust on. [00:05:15] Speaker A: The corner, whatever it is. Yeah. Anyway, so sometimes, like, you have to get out of the house if I want to focus my attention. And when I lived in Baltimore, my favorite place to do that was to go to Gocher College, which is right there in Towson, and they had, like, the most amazing library, and I would go there. [00:05:39] Speaker B: I haven't even been to the library here. [00:05:42] Speaker A: You're going to have to turn in your writer's card, like, right away. No, I have been to the library. I did get my library card here in Hendersonville, but I haven't actually been back to the library to check it out. As far as is it a good writing place yet? [00:05:59] Speaker B: I think we'll have to go do that. [00:06:01] Speaker A: Yeah. I have been to a few coffee shops that I like I may have a problem with the coffee thing, but I like a good coffee shop. [00:06:18] Speaker B: Yeah, there was a couple here that I've actually worked at. I worked at Appalachian Coffee, and they closed. And then I worked at Second Act, and they closed. Go to another coffee shop. [00:06:35] Speaker A: So worked at as a patron. [00:06:40] Speaker B: Yeah. So I was writing there. I was working and writing from there and enjoying the music and whatever else was going on there. Second act had some great you're going. [00:06:50] Speaker A: To have to come up with an alias if you want to go, like, visiting other might have to do that. Local business. [00:06:56] Speaker B: There's a new one called The Buzz, which is really cute. [00:07:00] Speaker A: Where is that? [00:07:01] Speaker B: Been there, but I haven't gone to right there. It's off a grove. [00:07:06] Speaker A: I feel like I should know where that is, but I'm still new to town. [00:07:11] Speaker B: Actually. It's a new place that is dry. [00:07:15] Speaker A: I read about it. I want to say in the paper, but I don't get the paper so I don't know where I heard about it. But yeah, a place that doesn't serve alcohol but still gives you all of the social interaction that you would other get that you would get at a pub. [00:07:33] Speaker B: And they have games in there and. [00:07:35] Speaker A: Just the place cool. [00:07:36] Speaker B: Cute. A lot of picnic tables outside. [00:07:38] Speaker A: I'll have to check it out. Yeah, we can go check it out. But yeah, there's a couple of good coffee shop. Actually there's a Bajillion, really good coffee shops. I don't know what it is about Hendersonville and Western North Carolina, but there are cideries and breweries and 800 different coffee places and it's a very drink oriented location. [00:08:01] Speaker B: Lots of music too. Yeah, tons of music. [00:08:05] Speaker A: So anyway, all of these things which should be conducive to good writing habits. [00:08:14] Speaker B: I found a cool writing spot and I posted about this on Facebook. But David and I went hiking about a week or two weeks ago in Dupont Forest. And there's this one hiking hike. This one hike has about three waterfalls and at the very top is High Falls. There's a shelter there and I took pictures of these picnic tables overlooking the waterfall and just a little bit of waterfall noise just to block all the noises or whatever. Out. I haven't been back yet to try that out. [00:08:50] Speaker A: I have to try. I haven't made it all the way up to High Falls, but I have been to Dupont. It's like state recreational forest or something. That's where Triple Falls is, which was used in a bunch of movies. I think they did Hunger Games there. [00:09:09] Speaker B: Yes. [00:09:09] Speaker A: And anyway, it's just beautiful. It is just beautiful. But I'm not schlupping my laptop up to the top of some mountain. [00:09:21] Speaker B: There's another parking lot which I haven't tested. [00:09:24] Speaker A: I suppose I could bring like a notepad, but I'm not doing it. I'm telling you. I'm sure it would be very inspiring and yeah, not doing it. If I'm hiking up somewhere, I will bring snacks and drinks for sure. [00:09:44] Speaker B: So I'm going to try it. I'll let you know how that works. [00:09:46] Speaker A: Yeah, let me know because that's a pretty spot and I don't know anyway. [00:09:52] Speaker B: You can't live in the mountains without trying to write in the mountains. [00:09:56] Speaker A: Yeah. And then I'm curious to see if there are other places and if any of you out there have good suggestions about interesting creative places where you've gotten some work done. Like, I don't know, local parks or I used to go to a bar that I liked and you could sit at the bar and get yourself a drink and then organize your thoughts or come up with some ideas. But I don't have that spot landed here. [00:10:31] Speaker B: We have a brewery not far from here that I adore. Huge tables, and I want to go right there, but they don't open till four. [00:10:44] Speaker A: You know you have a problem when you're like your local place. Your local watering hole doesn't open early enough for you to okay. [00:10:55] Speaker B: All right. [00:10:56] Speaker A: So one of the reasons why I was thinking about this episode as recycling day is because of the massive amount of times where I've had to remove something I thought was really cool from a piece that I had written. And I know you're in the middle of separating a very large project into two also very large projects, so I'm sure that you can relate. But actually the last story that I had published is a short story called The Ski Lesson. And that started from a piece that I had removed from another project. And I just loved the idea of this little nugget, this little opening piece, which was inspired by summers I had spent visiting my grandparents. And I ended up finding a different way to use that piece, and it turned into its own story, but it had been something that had been edited out of a completely different project. So that led me to think about how do I collect and keep my story ideas. When you're editing your own work, you cut your darlings. Yeah, you murder your darlings. [00:12:26] Speaker B: Murder your darlings. But you can cut them and you can put them in prison somewhere. Where do you put your prison darlings? [00:12:35] Speaker A: I know I probably should have a better system for this, but I used to have a whiteboard in my office and I called it the Crazy Idea Board, and I would write these things. [00:12:47] Speaker B: In wait, a Crazy Idea board? Is that anything like the writing you had all over your sliding glass doors. [00:12:56] Speaker A: That came to visit you? [00:12:58] Speaker B: And it looked like some kind of I don't know, it was a cross between some project plan because I used to be a project manager or something that A Beautiful Mind would have written on the wall. [00:13:10] Speaker A: Gosh, I'd love to figure out a way to make anything related to work I've done like A Beautiful Mind. But no, that actually was a to do list for these contractors doing work in my house because they were so bad at finishing things because it was the middle of your cup. [00:13:29] Speaker B: Like, to keep it, you had an. [00:13:30] Speaker A: Idea, you probably were very visible, but the theory is a bit the same in that I tend to like we project managers call this information radiators. These things that I want to keep top of mind or think about some more or whatever, I will put in some visible place, like up on a whiteboard. Or in that case, I wrote it in chalk marker on my sliding glass door so that it's always there. And then I find that your subconscious processes it for you. And if you're stuck or you don't know what to do with some of those things, the answer will come to you when you're doing something else. When it is least convenient. [00:14:11] Speaker B: I like to similar to that, I like to read kind of like what I'm working on, where I left off before I go to bed. [00:14:19] Speaker A: A lot of people do that. I don't, but a lot of people do that. That's very common as like the starting place to get you kind of back in gear. Yeah. And that works for you? [00:14:30] Speaker B: No, you would think that it would cause you to wake up in the middle of the night and go running for the laptop. [00:14:39] Speaker A: But no, I like to think of whatever the issue or the problem or the challenge is. Like, I have to come up with something, and then I will run it through in my mind, and then I will set it aside, and then I will do something else. And then it'll come to me that's when I'm cleaning the trash out of my car or shower. Yeah. [00:15:03] Speaker B: Okay. So your crazy idea board, what's on there now? I mean, how many things are on there right now? [00:15:12] Speaker A: There are a few things and they don't really seem to go together. I don't know that they will all end up well in any project, but they certainly won't end up in the same project. But I find that when I have to cut something out, if it's something that I really like, I'll put it there rather than throwing it out. I know some writers will have like a clips or notes section. When they pull something out, they'll drop it in there. And then when they're looking for inspiration or they're looking for something that they want to set up, they'll go to their clips and see what's in there. I tend to stick things up on the board. [00:15:53] Speaker B: You've reminded me I've started like a list of characters that I just didn't use or cut at one point. But I forget that I even have that stupid list somewhere. So I forget I'll create documents and then forget about them. So maybe it's just not organized enough. So if anybody's got organization ideas, let me know. [00:16:15] Speaker A: Yeah. If you've got some tips for what to do with these clippings or whatever. I remember in the olden days, people would have like actual filing cabinets with story ideas, but I don't have that. If I put things in a drawer, I'm never going back in there to get it. [00:16:33] Speaker B: Yeah, just out of sight, out of mind. [00:16:35] Speaker A: That's right. [00:16:37] Speaker B: I'm recycling some stuff. Yeah. I used to do nonfiction editing and I had a column in Prick of the Spindle a few years ago, I remember, and it was the Art of Nonfiction was the name of the column. So I had a few articles in there and now it's unfortunate that the journal is no longer with us. So I have these old articles sitting around and I'm kind of repurposing them for my editing website. [00:17:13] Speaker A: I think that makes sense. I have several pieces. I have some mostly fiction, but some nonfiction pieces that were published online. I had a couple of pieces published as part of a group or a project by an online site anyway, and that project doesn't exist anymore. So they have been previously published, but they're not currently available. I have a list of links that don't go anywhere. [00:17:47] Speaker B: Now on my LinkedIn page, I got that. [00:17:49] Speaker A: So I have been thinking about what can I do with those things that were published at one point somewhere but aren't really available anymore or were published somewhere obscure. My very first published story, by the way, was published in an anthology in Australia. [00:18:07] Speaker B: Oh, wow. [00:18:08] Speaker A: Yeah. And the editing team there misspelled my name, so there's that. And they also misspelled my title. And so it was like that high and low thing where I'm, like, super pumped that I got my first short story published and I was super excited. And then no one could find it because you had to search it under a completely differently spelled version of my name. But I would love to take those kind of, I don't know, orphan projects back and collect them and put them somewhere, but I don't really know what to do with them. [00:18:46] Speaker B: Yeah, that might be a little bit of research. [00:18:50] Speaker A: I mean, I guess I could bundle them together and self publish on Amazon. [00:18:55] Speaker B: You could. [00:18:56] Speaker A: So anywho also curious about if any of you out there have ideas or suggestions or have done something with those kind of random stories that are out in different places. [00:19:12] Speaker B: I have an essay that and I just did this, too. Like last week it won an award from the Florida Bibliophile Society and it was published in their newsletter. And I was going to actually get up and read at their annual dinner, except there was COVID, so we didn't have it. But I just recently took that essay and revised it and submitted it. And I'm not saying where because I might curse myself. [00:19:45] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:19:46] Speaker B: But it is probably the first thing I've submitted in a long time. And I'm happy, but I need to submit more stuff. [00:19:52] Speaker A: Yeah, I definitely feel like I need to kind of run down some of that stuff that is out there and it's not available anymore. [00:20:06] Speaker B: Want to play truth or fiction? [00:20:07] Speaker A: Let's play truth or fiction. I've got one for you. [00:20:09] Speaker B: Okay. All right. [00:20:11] Speaker A: Okay. Imagine there is a man and his wife. It is their anniversary, and on their anniversary every year, he takes her on a trip someplace. This particular year, he took her to Rocky Mountain National Park near Estes Park. [00:20:32] Speaker B: Famous for flooding. Oh, something just fell in my studio. [00:20:38] Speaker A: Famous for the hotel that The Shining inspired, actually. [00:20:44] Speaker B: Not the flooding. [00:20:45] Speaker A: No. The Shining. Yeah, the shining. So anyway, the national park, and they go off to have this picnic and see these beautiful scenery and whatever. And then there's a 911 call, and he's calling 911 and saying his wife has fallen and she needs some help. And the Park Service has to send somebody, like a rescue team out there because this is the wilderness. [00:21:16] Speaker B: Okay. [00:21:17] Speaker A: And they finally get out there. He keeps calling to find out if they're on their way and then hanging up because he says he needs to save his cell phone. Yeah. So they get out there, she's in bad shape, and she dies. [00:21:36] Speaker B: Okay. [00:21:39] Speaker A: The park rangers, because they're in a national park, find the story a little suspicious. They're off the main trail. They'd been taking pictures. She went off like a cliff and was found at the bottom of a cliff. He was saying she slipped. They were taking pictures. They had other pictures on their phone. However, in his car, they found a map of the area where he and his wife had gone hiking, where they had decided to leave the main trail and go to this overlook. And on the map, there's like a little red X right about where her body was found. [00:22:25] Speaker B: So he mapped out. Did he hit the target or just like pretty close? Yeah, that's suspicious. [00:22:32] Speaker A: A little bit. And then looking into who is this guy and what is happening, it turns out he doesn't actually have a job. [00:22:43] Speaker B: Okay. [00:22:44] Speaker A: And even though he travels for work and everything, he doesn't actually have a job. What he does have is a bunch of life insurance policies on his wife. And as it turns out, he also has a first wife who also died mysteriously. [00:23:05] Speaker B: Okay. [00:23:05] Speaker A: And tragically. [00:23:07] Speaker B: Okay. This sounds like everyday life. [00:23:11] Speaker A: No, honey, let's go out on our anniversary to this very rocky high cliffy place. [00:23:20] Speaker B: Sounds true. Is there more? [00:23:23] Speaker A: No. I mean, there is. [00:23:25] Speaker B: Okay. [00:23:25] Speaker A: But yeah, it is true. Actually. It is true. And there was a really good Netflix documentary or no Hulu documentary about this. And I'll post the link so that you can check it out. I think they even did a Dateline episode about this guy, too, because lots of super sketchy things. [00:23:52] Speaker B: Yeah, it sounds like it. So taking out life insurance policies on your wife and then pushing her off. [00:24:01] Speaker A: A cliff is like six life insurance policies? Six of them, something like that. Yeah. [00:24:05] Speaker B: That sounds like a job. [00:24:06] Speaker A: Well, I mean, he was living on the money he made from his first wife life insurance policies, and he must. [00:24:12] Speaker B: Have already been working on who the next wife would be. [00:24:16] Speaker A: He was, actually. [00:24:17] Speaker B: Was he? [00:24:18] Speaker A: He had started taking out life insurance policies on a new lady. [00:24:22] Speaker B: See, that's a job. [00:24:23] Speaker A: So, yeah, he's in prison now. [00:24:25] Speaker B: Okay, then. [00:24:27] Speaker A: But yeah. All right, let's talk about writing tools. [00:24:33] Speaker B: Writing tools to get shit done kind of tools. [00:24:40] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:24:41] Speaker B: Okay. Well, I like to use scrivener. [00:24:46] Speaker A: I tried to learn scrivener. I think I have it still. I don't understand it. [00:24:52] Speaker B: I avoided it for a long time. I had it and I was scared of it. It was a lot. There's a lot to it. And the learning curve isn't very quick, but I kind of got in there and started playing with decorating and labels and changing colors. [00:25:13] Speaker A: That sounds like procrastinating to me. Let's make it look pretty. [00:25:18] Speaker B: But it is fun to do that. But then I got to a point where I was actually rearranging the structure of my memoir and it became helpful. [00:25:29] Speaker A: Well, see, that's what we project managers do that kind of rearranging for our projects using sticky notes and those kinds of things, which you can arrange around on some kind of board or whatever. But I have not found a good way to do that with long writing projects. [00:25:52] Speaker B: Well, there is a cork board on there that looks really cool with index cards. You haven't seen that? [00:25:59] Speaker A: Well, it's been so long since I've been in my very long project. [00:26:02] Speaker B: Okay, but it's there. There's a cork board kind of process you can use or you can rearrange them with folders on the side. And it worked for me this time. And then I started dumping everything in there. I put my research in there and I put pictures in there and it just became like more of a workspace than a file of a book. [00:26:29] Speaker A: That sounds really cool. [00:26:30] Speaker B: Yeah. And character, I like character sheets on people, which helped me realize that I didn't have my mom's character really built up very well in the memoir. So it helped me realize I need to work on that. But I like it now. I even opened one for my editing work, which isn't even a book. It's like a little project thing. [00:26:54] Speaker A: I have a very low tech, large piece of paper that I will put up and then I will arrange sticky notes and then set up different colors for different story arcs or components to kind of keep track of it. And then if I want to move something, I have to go peel a sticky note off my timeline and stick it somewhere else. But it's not super great if you want to go on a writing retreat and you want to take your thing. I've got a giant piece of paper with notes all over it. No, it doesn't work out for me so well, so finding a better tool might be cool. I find that I am addicted to buying sarcastic little notepads and things, little journal things. [00:27:45] Speaker B: And do you use them? Because I also have like a bunch of well, I have a bunch of notebooks that I've started using. [00:27:56] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [00:27:57] Speaker B: And then I like, well, I want to clean that out and save it for something else. So I'll rip the pages out and I'll leave it there and they just keep adding up. [00:28:08] Speaker A: The nicer journals are like that. I've got some nice people will give them to me as a gift, like a leather bound thing. I never use those. [00:28:18] Speaker B: I've gotten one of those and I didn't use it either. It's really pretty. You don't want to use it? No. [00:28:22] Speaker A: I know you don't feel like my scribblings are not worthy of this book, but yeah, so I have several of those that are really nice. But then I found this company called WTF Notebooks, and they have just really super snarky little things, and you can get them either as, like, college ruled notebooks I love those. Or you can do them, like, as a planner, you can get them set up. But back when I would have to go into the office, which I don't do anymore. [00:28:56] Speaker B: What was the name of that? [00:28:57] Speaker A: WTF. [00:28:58] Speaker B: WTF. Okay? [00:28:59] Speaker A: Yeah. WTF I'll put a link in the chat okay. For those things, but yeah, and they have really funny ones. I think the one that I have today says something like meetings that could have been an email or meetings I want to socially distance myself from or something. But they all have funny little, whatever, things on there. I had one for a while I used to take with me into the office, and it said, List of bodies I've buried in the woods. And again okay, again, people who are just meeting me are like, don't know that I am, in addition to a project manager, also a mystery crime writer. Find that maybe a little odd. [00:29:45] Speaker B: Okay. [00:29:46] Speaker A: Yeah. So notebooks. Notebooks and pens. I have them all over the house. I have them everywhere. I will think of ideas and not have something to write them in. I've been known to call my own voicemail or to voice memo myself or whatever in order to get the idea down before I forget it. [00:30:07] Speaker B: I think I've emailed myself ideas before. Yes, that works. Because I've tried to do a voice memo, and then I forget about it. [00:30:16] Speaker A: And then it's stuck in there. I do actually find it, like ten years from now, you say that. And I have no idea how many voice memos I have on my phone right now, or even notes, the little notes thing, I have a bajillion of them, and I don't remember the last time I went through and actually looked at the stuff that I threw in there. But I do try and capture things every that would be a good idea. Take them out of there, put them on the crazy idea board. [00:30:38] Speaker B: There you go. That's what I and then they would all go through your head again. And some of them might actually come. [00:30:46] Speaker A: Together into a story, make their way into some kind of project boy. [00:30:52] Speaker B: So I have a planner. I still have a planner that you write out with pen and pencil, not the online calendar or anything like that. I don't use those digital tools. They may 1 day be helpful. But I still like to write everything on a planner, and I have to write it down in pencil and cross it out in purple ink because I love purple. [00:31:19] Speaker A: That seems like a lot of rules. [00:31:21] Speaker B: It is. Sometimes I'm in the mood for green ink, but crossing them out, crossing out pencil with a nice gel pen, it's very satisfying. [00:31:35] Speaker A: I can't say as I've ever tried that. However, I do have a thing where I prefer pens with blue ink, especially if I'm marking something up my own work or somebody else's work. Red is too aggressive. [00:31:51] Speaker B: Red is aggressive. [00:31:52] Speaker A: Red is too aggressive. And if it's black ink, you don't see it like you do blue ink. So I have a favorite line of blue ink pens, which might be a little weird. [00:32:05] Speaker B: No, I don't think that's weird. Do your pens get like do you get really specific, like a real fine point for one pen? I like that medium point for another pen. [00:32:15] Speaker A: No, I like the medium point. I like the whole, like, free flowing ink thing. No scraping on the paper. I like the really nothing slowing me down. All right, I have a good writing tip for this week, for our writing tip wrap up. And that is I mentioned it before, but when I'm stuck on something, I will either write what I'm stuck on up on the board where I can see it, or if I am stuck at a point and I don't know what's going to happen next, I try and imagine that same scene that I've already written. I don't have to come up with what happens. That same scene that I have already written from somebody else's point of view, usually that unsticks me. [00:33:06] Speaker B: That sounds like a good idea. [00:33:08] Speaker A: Yeah. Usually thinking about it from a completely different perspective, even if I don't use that in the finished product at all, will usually unstick me or give me some ideas about how things could be misinterpreted or how things could be misunderstood. And having things misunderstood in a story are really great for the story. [00:33:31] Speaker B: True. For fiction, it's kind of like exploratory writing a little bit. [00:33:36] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:33:37] Speaker B: And you're practicing at the same time, which is good. A lot of people oh, man. I used to think if I wrote the scene over again that I'm wasting my time, or I have wasted my time. But it's not. It's all practice, every bit of it. [00:33:52] Speaker A: Yes. And you have to, I think as a writer, whether you're writing fiction or nonfiction, in order to get the work moving, you have to give yourself permission to suck at it. You have to give yourself permission to just write terrible, terrible stuff, knowing that no one is going to look at it. You're going to have plenty of time to go back in and rework it. And I think non writers are concerned about writing things that. Are bad or that it's so much work to fix it. But what I found to be true and I'm curious what you think, but what I found to be true is it is much easier to fix a thing that is written down than it is to try and come up with the thing the way that you intended it to be. It's not like building a physical project where it makes sense to do all of the planning up front. And you do it once, like, measure twice, cut once, or whatever that thing is here. It's like, get anything down. Once you have it down, you lose the anxiety over, my gosh, I won't remember this. And you can manipulate it until it turns into a thing that is what you want. [00:35:12] Speaker B: And that's a lot of what I do in my day job. [00:35:16] Speaker A: Oh, for the editing? [00:35:17] Speaker B: Yes. A lot of folks come in with that first draft, and it's where they've gone, got everything down, they got all the events down, they've got all the characters down, and they just don't have like they want to build on that going forward, so they may have to rearrange the events or just elaborate on them. [00:35:44] Speaker A: This brings us back to sort of where we started, too, because I tend to overwrite my first draft again. I had a very good writer mentor when we were at UT, and she said that your first draft are like notes to yourself. [00:36:03] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:36:04] Speaker A: So that you don't forget. [00:36:05] Speaker B: Yep. [00:36:06] Speaker A: And I will oftentimes find that I have to cut huge sections out of my first draft, and it's still valuable to do it because you need to have that information, but it doesn't necessarily you can allude to it in more. [00:36:21] Speaker B: Subtle ways in your text. Notes to yourself. That's good. I think. I have this book written by Alison K. Williams, and she calls the first draft The Vomit Draft. [00:36:32] Speaker A: Well, that's. [00:36:37] Speaker B: About it. That way, when you're going in, then you take a lot of the pressure off when you get it down. [00:36:43] Speaker A: All right, so there you have it, listeners. The vomit draft draft. [00:36:50] Speaker B: I love it. [00:36:51] Speaker A: Get that first draft down, those are your notes to yourself, and then you can fix it in post, as they say. All right, well, until next time. [00:37:01] Speaker B: Thank you, Vicki. Thank you, Carolyn. [00:37:03] Speaker A: Thank you, listeners. [00:37:05] Speaker B: Yay. Until next time. Bye.