Co-writing across continents: process and rituals

How do you know when it's time to wrap up one phase of your life and move on to the next? What's the secret to staying connected as a writer when you're working alone? And if you have multiple passions and endless ideas, how do you actually finish things instead of constantly starting new projects? Pilar Orti gives her tips in this interview.

In the intro, Writing Storybundle; An honest accounting from an extensive self audit of an indie author publishing business [The Author Stack]; Money books; Direct purchases through ChatGPT; Book discovery and GEO; The ultimate guide to AEO [Lenny's Podcast]; Conversions through Chat [SearchEngineLand]; SORA video app; AI for eCommerce and Amazon Sellers; Deliciously twisted Halloween book sale.

This podcast is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo eco-system. You can also subscribe to the Kobo Writing Life podcast for interviews with successful indie authors.

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

Pilar Orti is a nonfiction and memoir author, as well as a voiceover artist, podcaster, and Pilates instructor.

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

Show Notes

• Wrapping up life phases with books. Using writing to process and close chapters of your personal and professional journey
• Connection strategies for remote workers and writers. Understanding your own connection style and respecting others' preferences
• Co-writing across continents. The practical process of collaborating with someone you've never met in person
• Using AI as a writing collaborator. How generative AI helped overcome the blank page and create a unified voice
• Knowing when to end projects. Recognising the signs that it's time to stop versus push through challenges
• Being a finisher in a world of ideas. Balancing multiple interests while actually completing projects

You can find Pilar at PilarWrites.com or on LinkedIn.

Transcript of interview with Pilar Orti

Jo: Pilar Orti is a nonfiction and memoir author, as well as a voiceover artist, podcaster, and Pilates instructor. So welcome to the show, Pilar.

Pilar: Thank you very much, Jo. Hello everyone. Hello creatives. It's exciting to talk to you.

Jo: Tell us a bit more about you, how you got into writing and podcasting, and your multi-passionate career.

Pilar: I'm going to try and give you the bit that's more related to writing, because if not, we'll be here for half an hour just with me bubbling on.

I always liked writing, and I was thinking about this, I wrote my first play to be performed when I was seven. I got all my friends together and we did this little show. I think it was about a soldier or something, I don't know why.

All throughout my teens I kept writing plays and got my friends together to do them, and we put on the shows. Looking back, I think for me writing has always been about sharing. All the writing I've done, I've always wanted it to be public, so I've never journaled or anything like that.

I continued writing plays. Eventually I set up a theater company with a friend and we did some plays. Then I did a translation of a Lorca play, When Five Years Pass. That was the first time that I started to think that my work could be published in some way.

So I looked for literary managers in theaters to see if they were interested in the show. I even sent it to Samuel French and Oberon Books, all these small presses that specialized in theater. They all came back with that same thing: “It's a great translation, but it's really niche and nobody's going to want to see this Lorca play.”

So I started to think about how to put it out there and came across self-publishing. Once I saw that my work could get out there relatively easily—I didn't have to go through the whole trying to find a publisher process—I started to write a lot more.

I continued doing some stuff for the theater company and then I started blogging as well. We're talking now about the end of the 90s, 2000s.

Then I wrote a book called The A to Z of Spanish Culture, which was supposed to be a nice project with lots of friends. We would each take a letter of the alphabet and of course, like these projects go, everyone dropped out and I ended up doing the whole thing myself.

Jo: We should just say at this point, you're Spanish.

Are you writing at this point in English or in both?

Pilar: So I went to an English school. I landed there when I was five, in Madrid. So I'm bilingual. My first written language is English and my first spoken language is Spanish. Unfortunately I've dropped writing in Spanish and I really struggle, but my entire academic career has also been in English.

So I think English is the language I feel most comfortable in when I'm writing. Everything I've written has been in English.

Looking at The A to Z of Spanish Culture, I was sharing an office with a theater company and a couple of other theater companies at the time. At some point I mentioned this book, and someone said, “Oh, you're a writer or you want to publish some books. You have to listen to this great podcast called The Creative Penn.”

That was my gateway into the whole world of podcasting. I mean, I knew about podcasting because I'm also a voiceover artist—I've been one since '98—but that really opened up that world.

So I continued writing, and my relationship with writing up to a couple of years ago was just that I wrote mainly nonfiction about things I wanted to write about, looking back at where I was at that time.

Then I published a book on physical theater, a very small book, just as I was leaving the theater company. I also wrote a little book about my life as a voiceover as I saw that work was starting to dry out. I think I'm wrapping up parts of my life with books.

Last year, as I came to the end of my consultancy career talking about working with remote teams, I spent some time just writing, either editing something I was working on or writing. I decided after trying it for a few months that now was the time to write all those books

I wanted to write and to also start looking at my writing as the main thing I was focusing on, because as you said, I always do lots of things. So that's where I am with the writing.

Jo: I like this idea of wrapping up parts of your life with books. I actually think that's a really interesting comment and I definitely feel that. I guess I've started to do that too. I feel that it's true for me, for my fiction as well.

My Desecration, Delirium and Deviance series, I wrote when we were in London and they're about London. When I moved to Bath, I wrote my Matt Walker series, which was set in Bath. Then the Pilgrimage book was about that pilgrimage. So I really like that insight, that sort of wrapping up parts of your life with books.

Just coming back, you said you finished the consulting side. Was that a decision? I really wanted to get your insights on this finishing up things.

Why did you stop doing the consulting side of things?

Pilar: It's a mixture of things and I think also a great reflection of why do we end things, especially professional ones. I set up a consultancy called “Virtual Not Distant” around maybe nine, ten years ago to help leaders of remote teams and remote teams. Of course that was a different world then.

Then through the pandemic, as we know, it all exploded. So I started to get more work, but maybe not the kind of work I really wanted to do. I was coming into helping remote teams and remote work as an alternative way of working and something that could be embraced and set up carefully and in a sustainable way.

What I found after all the lockdowns and all the remote work—the forced remote work—and as organizations started to adopt maybe a little bit more flexible working, hybrid work, the clients or the people I would end up working with were not the ones that I should be helping.

Or at least I couldn't help them in the way I wanted to help them because I have my vision. What had been left was a very different world. I just wasn't comfortable anymore with what I was finding when I was going in.

At the same time, let's be honest, the work started to dry up. There wasn't this need anymore for people who needed to work remotel. They'd figured out some version that worked more or less for them. I see it with my peers as well, that the whole cohort, almost everyone has pivoted or shifted.

So it was a mixture of both. I have to say that I don't think the market wanted me anymore as much, because before the pandemic it was great fun. But also I couldn't shape that way of working like I wanted to. So I decided to write more instead about it, as you say, to wrap up.

Jo: That's interesting. So this new book, Connection and Disconnection in Remote Teams, this is really, as you've said, summing up all your thoughts and what your ideal situation is, I guess. Lots of people listening work their day jobs separately and often write alone.

Writers, we're often disconnected in many ways and we are not really in teams, but certainly I feel like connection and disconnection are huge themes for writers.

Give us some tips for connecting with other humans when we work disconnected.

Pilar: Unfortunately one of the reasons I left consultancy was because all my answers were “it depends,” and that's why I moved into Pilates teaching because that is very set and “it depends” very little. A few things—when I'm talking about wrapping up, I think that's going to be my theme.

In 2019, this season of Connection and Disconnection in Remote Teams was a podcast season that I created with a collaborator and with lots of other people actually, to talk about this theme of loneliness in remote teams, because we saw that was something that remote teams were struggling with a lot then.

We created a seven-part episode series around it. For all these years I've been looking back at that and thinking there's a lot of material here which could be useful for a lot of people. We don't want this loneliness thing of working alone becoming a problem because of loneliness.

What this book shows, what the podcast showed, and my co-author Bree Katy actually led most of those interviews, is that you need a high level of self-awareness to really find how you connect with others and then a level of awareness about how other people like to connect. So that's why it really “it depends.”

I think that level of self-awareness is:

What does it mean for me to feel like I belong in a community?

Like I belong with other professionals? Like I connect to my collaborators? What is it about it? I came up with three things which you can look at.

Do you connect across the work? So is that where you really get your value of “Yes, we're doing something together and this is interesting. This makes me want to be with you. We are together in this.” So is it across the work, or is it around the work?

Is it actually the conversations like this one, Joanna, that we're having, which is around what's happening? Or is it away from the work? So some people do not connect through the work they do, but they really connect with somebody else's personal story or personal life or hobbies, etc.

I think work connection has a general meaning that's out there, but it's very wide. In understanding how you connect or when you prefer to connect in each way—because that also happens—then you can seek those opportunities, which can be, as you're saying, in our case, online communities.

But is it enough to be on a forum-type community and that's enough for you to feel like you belong? Or do you actually need to find people who will go on a Zoom call with you? The technology has opened up lots of avenues and this is what's exciting and complicated.

If you're someone who connects through writing and through being okay being a little bit anonymous, you've got that. And if you're someone who likes to have a more interactive experience, seeing people and being real time, you can look for meetups online or in person.

Jo: I think, like you said, it's understanding yourself and being self-aware and then respecting other people too. For example, we've emailed for many years. I was on your podcast years ago, but we've not hung out. Right now we're on audio only. We're not on video because I prefer audio, especially later in the day.

So we are connected, but we are not closely connected. And yet, I would say we're aware of each other and we are in a sort of adjoining community. That's completely different from somebody who wants to be on video talking to people on Slack every day, wanting to be always chatting with other people.

We have to learn how we can do this sustainably because that's the other thing, isn't it? I can do video, but it's so tiring to me that I can't do it sustainably.

How can people learn more about what works for them in this connection way?

Pilar: And I think you mentioned as well, respecting other people. I would add to that asking people and learning to find out about other people. That's how we can respect each other.

The learning aspect, there's something that my friend Lisette Sutherland is very hot on, which are called personal manual. These are things that people in remote teams do where they say how they work best or how they prefer to connect with other people or how they like to spend their day.

Because what happens when you're away from people is that you're missing a lot of information and sometimes we have to make this information explicit.

If I'm trying to build a relationship, a professional relationship with someone, or if I want to connect a little bit more around the work, then I can say a little bit more about, “Well, I much prefer an audio conversation next time. Can we do audio?”

Or “Hey, I had a great time doing this video thing. Do you ever meet up with other colleagues?” or “When we talk together, do you prefer email?”

I think questioning how other people want to connect as well will help us then to strengthen those relationships. Sometimes we can maybe try something that we hadn't tried before or find out how other people are doing it.

For example, I get a lot of pleasure from reading people's comments on Google Docs when I'm working on something together. So for me, working on a shared document really gives me something more than if an email is coming backwards and forwards because the comments are always there.

In a way, when I go into a Google Doc, it's like I'm going to see someone else. I'm going to see the people I'm working with in the shared document. So that says to me, okay, if I can, I'll ask if we can work in this way.

Whereas other people prefer email for whatever reason, or audio as well. Audio recordings. So I think, like you said, being aware of all the different modes of communication and seeing when we go, “Ah, yes, okay. Now I'm really comfortable,” or “I'm really excited now about this.”

Jo: It's funny, I was just thinking then, a lot of people pitch me by sending a video and I never ever, ever, ever, ever will click on any video if they recorded some Loom or even a personalized YouTube video. I literally will never look at them.

Even people will send me an audio message and then expect me to listen to it. Even though I am generally audio, I'm like, definitely not. So this is about understanding for pitching as well.

Sometimes you just assume something because you might be comfortable with it, but that other person on the other end just might not be.

It's also fascinating to me that you love Google Doc comments because I hate that too. Is it our age as well, do you think? I'm 50 and I feel like Slack messaging, for example, completely passed me by.

Pilar: I don't think it's age because I'm only three years older than you. As you say, I love Slack, but I have a way of using it. That's another thing, this feels very strange, but when you're working with someone in remote teams, you have to make explicit things like this.

So if you decide you're going to use Slack, okay, how are we going to use it? When can I get you urgently? And is it okay to wait two days to reply to your message? It is, by the way, unless it's urgent. But it's the use of it. That's another very important thing, Joanna.

When we are going more into the working together or even in communities, the technology is really widespread, is ubiquitous at the moment, and a lot of people have used either this technology or something similar. We all have our own ways of doing it.

So we need to agree on one or two things so that we use it in the same way, so that we don't get frustrated. For example, if you prefer to wait three or four days, and I'm the one that wants everything urgently.

I think it's just being explicit. I don't really know because I only worked with people who were like 10 years younger or, well, my collaborator Bree is 20 years younger and we got on well with the docs.

Jo: Yes. It's just not imposing judgment on other people based on how they prefer to do things. It's just like, well, we have to agree on a way to work together. But as you said, you've co-written this book, Connection and Disconnection, with a writer in Australia without meeting in person. So obviously you use Google Docs, but—

Tell us more about that process of co-writing.

Pilar: I love co-writing, and to be honest, I've been waiting to co-write a book for ages. I did co-create a book together, which was a collection of blog posts with my colleague Maya Middlemiss, a long time ago.

This has been getting something almost from scratch, so I think the fact that we had done that podcast season is important because we'd already worked together. So there were a couple of things that meant that the book got—as I'm talking to you, it's not finished yet, but hopefully when this comes out, it will be at least on preorder.

There were a few things: one, we already had the material, but the material needed shaping. That actually took a few years because we started one process that didn't work and then we started a new process which has worked.

I think that has been finding that we could both hook onto a process that was sustainable and that would get us both onto the computer. That's been really important.

I'd met Bree more or less a few times working on the season together. We also did do about a monthly catch-up on Zoom or Google Hangouts, whatever, online. I think that was quite important because it just meant that we could just relax a little bit more in the conversation, and the conversation could go anywhere.

Of course we could make faster decisions, so we had that. We didn't have that as a rule, but it happened and neither of us are very meeting people. So we were fine with that.

You would've hated this process—we had so many Google Docs. But what we decided was instead of using a chat-based application or email, we started talking in a Google document. It could be a Word document, so a shared document where we would work a little bit on the book.

Then we'd check out at the end of the day and we just write a few things. Or if something had happened in our personal lives that the other person needed to know, we wrote it there.

What's really nice about that is, one, we didn't end up with more chat messages. We always knew our conversation was only there, our written conversation. And now we have a record. We have a whole year of this project from the start, right to the end. We might not do anything with it, but it's really nice to have.

From the practical point of view of working on the text, we've used shared documents. We split up the chapters—we had one person writing the first draft and then we went in and commented, etc.

The one thing I do have to say, and thanks to you, Joanna, because you've introduced me to generative AI—I'd been playing a lot with ChatGPT, Claude, feeding into my own writing work, and that's why I approached Bree again last year in 2024 to start to work on this again.

We'd already tried to put the book together and we'd found it very daunting because we had transcripts from seven episodes plus all the full interviews of about seven or eight guests that Bree had done. We were finding it really difficult to come to the page.

So I ran by her, I said, “What do you feel about generative AI?” I ran some ideas via Claude. I asked it to maybe generate some text based on the transcripts from our interviews. We saw that there could be something there. What Bree was saying was really useful for her was the fact that we created a project in Claude, which had all the transcripts.

So you could say, “Oh, at some point we talked about somebody who had moved to the middle of nowhere and suddenly realized that their career prospects had decreased or something. Who was that? What episode was that in and what did they say?”

Then instead of having to dig through all these transcripts, suddenly we had our own assistant that pulled it out.

The other thing was that for some chunks it started to give us a common voice. It's not that Claude was writing everything, but it started to smooth the differences in both our voices. So we found one voice for the book without, and you can't really tell who's writing which bit, but it's still us. It's really still us.

So it's been interesting. We've had technology as an intermediary, not just in the communication process, but also in the writing process.

Jo: I think that's great. I certainly think these tools are really useful for when you have your own material. I'd also suggest to people listening, Google's Notebook LM, where you can actually load the transcripts and it will only use those. Whereas the other models will kind of bring insights from the rest of the model. So I think that's super useful.

You did mention that you basically failed the first time around and the process didn't work the first time around, so you said it was just too daunting. Was it literally just the volume of stuff and you didn't know where to start?

What other insights do you have from failing that first time around? Because I feel like a lot of people when they approach any sort of big project, do maybe fail at things and then they don't come back to it.

Any insights from the failure and getting over that?

Pilar: I think it was the fact that we were always coming to a blank page. So we had the material, and especially Bree, she was closer to the material and she had less time than I had as well. So I think time was definitely a factor, which is why I went back to her and said, “Look, I think this can save us some time,” as well as help us in other ways. So time was really a factor.

The blank page was a factor, whereas this time we felt that we could start with something, even if it was that I prompted the generative AI with this prompt to write, I don't know, chapter one, and this is what it's come up with.

“Okay. Well I like this point. I like this point. Yes. Okay. So we can now work on chapter one, but at least we've got something that we could both start from as well,” which is quite important.

So I think it was the classic, it was time and it was the blank page, and also this feeling of how we had organized the material. Again, technology, you need to find the right space for you to work in.

We were using Notion, which has a lot of moving parts, and in the end we just went back to transcripts, PDFs, Google Doc, which are nicely set in our folder. So that was another learning—we needed our own office space that worked for us and the first time it didn't quite work and the second time it helped us.

Jo: I've tried Notion several times. I even had like a tutorial with someone and it just didn't work for me. It didn't click at all. I think this is really important for people listening.

You can hear people say, “Oh, well this transformed my process. It's just amazing,” but it doesn't work for your brain.

You can't force it into a different way. Try things. I have tried Notion several times and I'm like, no, I just cannot get it. I still use Scrivener for my first drafts and I just paste everything into Scrivener.

When I co-write, I have co-written several times using Google Drive and Google Docs as the sort of beginning place. It is still probably the simplest idea, isn't it?

Pilar: Yes. I think Google Docs is definitely simple because you've got a blank page, but now of course you have to push away the AI that's trying to do everything.

I think what you said about why—what was it about the first time that didn't work—is really important because this is something that is often missing, one as individuals and then also definitely as collaborators and in teams, is that we try something, it doesn't work, and we don't stop to think why.

It doesn't mean we go, “Why?” and then we try and make it work again. No. We think, “Okay, why didn't this work? What else could work?” Or sometimes we've got the right technology, but we need to adapt something.

So we ask “Why didn't this work?” and we went, “Okay, maybe what we need to do is something different.” Or actually, like you say, “Well, this is not going to work, but now we know that when we look for the next thing, it's got to have this, this, and this.”

But that step, especially because we don't like to think back, “Why didn't that work?” It's quite hard work for the brain. But I think it's quite important. I feel like some apps, I find them so easy to use and other ones they just…

I mean, technology and humans, they go together. For me, technology, sometimes you have to have that connection with it. It's easy. You can get your brain around it, you can get your hands around it in a way, metaphorically. I think we should acknowledge that and it's fine.

Jo: Yes, exactly. Use what works for you.

I wanted to circle back on the sort of ending things, because you have paused and you've done the seasons. Like you said, this book was born out of a seven-part season. You've paused some of your shows, you've ended others. Maybe just talk about how do you know when something is ending? When is it not failure?

Because you've just explained how something didn't work, so that was a failure, but you did decide to end that. Whereas some of your podcasts, and like your consulting, you ended that. It wasn't a failure. You made a decision to end it.

How do you know when something is finished and end it in a way that feels positive and satisfying?

Pilar: For me it's when I really don't want to do something anymore or when something is a bit of a drag. Sometimes there are some signs.

I'll go back to a very long time ago. I used to teach physical theater and acting a long time ago. I was doing maybe two hours a week only in a drama school around the corner. I went on my way there and every now and then, because this was before lots of email, I would turn up and my class would've been canceled.

It was great because I still got paid, but my class would've been canceled and no one had told me. I found myself walking one day towards the school going, “I wish, I hope that the class is being canceled” and I went, “Okay. That's it. This is something I don't want to do anymore.”

So there are those kinds of signs that I really listen to—when I really don't want to do something.

Then the podcasts, the podcasts are creative projects, so they're driven by a curiosity at that moment. Or I have to say, a lot of the shows I've done, I've done with co-hosts. Sometimes I've just done it because I wanted to do something with this person and something has come up.

I think that even with podcasting, because you mentioned the podcasts in particular, I didn't have anything else to say. I had nothing more to say and I thought, “Well, that's it.”

So I was doing a show called Management Cafe with Tim Burgess, who is actually the boss of Bree, who I'm writing with. Both of us have left the organizational world. Neither of us lead people anymore. We were like, “What are we doing?”

The show Management Cafe was just like therapy and reminiscing of how it used to be and what happened to this and what happened to that.

I think understanding, especially if it's a creative project that you keep doing, and suddenly you're like, “I don't know why I'm doing this. I have nothing more to say. I'm getting tired of the sound of my own voice” in whatever way.

Then wrapping up, I think especially with creative projects, we need to try so many things to understand what it is we want to do, what it is that we like doing, and I'm being very lucky in that respect that I've been able to try lots of different things in my life.

Because of that, I've learned to try things that don't work out without thinking that there's something wrong with it. Of course some things don't work out and they have larger consequences than others.

So understanding that, especially in a creative process, whatever you're doing, you touch on one thing and then that doesn't work. Well, maybe that's not the right thing for you right now. You can always come back to those kinds of things.

So I think it's recognizing that that's not the right thing to be doing anymore, and just seeing it as something that I'm going to put to one side now because, okay, it might be doing well, but I'm not getting anything out of it.

Jo: It's funny though. I was thinking there, you mentioned earlier that your voiceover work, that there's less work there than there used to be. I guess that's a lot to do with AI, digital voice.

I guess for some people sometimes the decision as to things ending is not necessarily theirs. Or they need to do it for money or something. I think this is probably happening to a lot of people. They're seeing some streams of income begin to dwindle because of whatever reasons.

How do you pivot into something new? What's your process?

Do you end something and then learn something new? Or do you make sure these overlap so you have periods where you're still earning from the old ways?

Pilar: Just going back to the voiceover, because that's a very good example, as you said. I still work as a voiceover, but not very much. When we're talking a few years ago, actually, my own work didn't decrease because of the AI.

It decreased because of the internet, great internet connections that we can now have with voices in Spain. So I'm a Spanish voiceover in London, and before we always did our recordings in London. Whereas as the internet connections got better, they can now beam into Spain and they have a wider talent pool there.

The other thing that happened was the home studios. I don't have a home studio. My bedroom's good enough for podcasting, but not for client work.

I started to see it was pre-pandemic that the artificial intelligence was taking all the small jobs, like the “press one for this, press two for that.” That was actually a decision, talking about when to shift.

I saw that coming and I had to make a choice for myself, which was do I set up a home studio? Or do I get out and do something else? Which is why I started the consultancy on the side. Of course, I love voiceover and it still brings some income. So talking of that—

I think starting to do something and trying it out while you're still doing your income-generating work is a very good idea.

You can start to try it. Like maybe I'm going to do this thing, I don't know, could be writing.

“I really want to write, but I don't have the time. I'm going to try and do two hours a day and see if I still like it if I have to do it.” Because I think that when you discover that you can go into a profession is if you have to do something, is it still that joyful?

So finding out how sustainable your new career might be by doing little experiments before you decide to take a big plunge.

Again, you've said it many times and your guests have as well, that when we leave something that is a recurring income at the moment, we have to look at our figures. We have to look at how we are going to live before we take that plunge and then start making our plans around that.

Can you work a little bit less at your full-time job, you know, four days a week instead of five, and things like that? And not be afraid of the fact that that might not happen.

We might try it and it's okay if actually we discover that, “You know what? The stress of thinking that I'm going to have to earn an income with this is making me sick.” That's fine. Pull right back. It might not be the right moment as well. Again, see what it is bringing up in you.

So I've recently trained as a Pilates teacher, which actually, talking of income, it's going to be a small part of my income, but I just noticed that I was really enjoying the classes that I was taking, getting really curious about it.

That's how I know that it's time to move on to something else. I might not leave behind what I've already got, but I need to start looking into something else. I find myself listening to podcasts around the subject. I read around the subject. I start to want to know more, and that's when I know.

When I start to bring in the input from other places, and when I start to really soak in lots of other information, that's when I know, “Okay, something is shifting. I have to look at this.”

I've tried lots of things. At one point, I started doing cartoons, and I've got this happy daisy. So I looked into merchandising, could that work? Well, no, because the money coming in from all the print-on-demand merchandising side is really small and also they treat you not very well.

Okay. That won't do, I'll put it to one side. It might turn into a comic at some point, but for now I've got to do something else.

I've had to train myself because you can hear that I can go anywhere, anytime. I've had to train myself now to go, “No, that is for later. Write it down, make notes, have a place where you can record your thoughts around that thing you really want to do. But now is not the right moment.”

So now I'm doing this book and I'm doing the Pilates thing. That's it for now. I've got lots of things that are going to come after, but for now, not everything all at once.

Jo: Because you are also a finisher. I think this is really important. It's interesting because I do talk to a lot of creatives who are similar to both you and me. We have lots and lots of ideas and start lots of things, but a lot of people can't finish them. So they've got too many projects on the go at the same time.

People say to me all the time, “Oh, you must be so busy.” And I'm like, actually, I'm not that busy. It might sound like I work on a ton of things, but I don't really. I'm kind of launching one book, and then writing another book and doing this show.

I feel like the finishing energy is just as important.

So is that something you've had to learn or is that just something you have naturally, which is, I must finish this thing before I move on to the next thing?

Pilar: It's natural. I've always had this. When we first set up the theater company, I remember my friend Philip, who we set it up with, he said, “I'm like an ideas person. You're a finisher.” Yes, I am. I think it comes naturally. I don't like open endings and open loops.

It also comes back to this knowing that because you don't succeed at something, it doesn't mean you are not a great person. You know what I mean? So finishing for me sometimes is not doing it anymore. It doesn't mean I've completed the project. It doesn't mean that I've made a success of this thing I wanted to do.

It means I've gone, “You know what? In one year, how much have I enjoyed this? How successful was it? If it was supposed to bring income, did it bring an income?” You know what? Okay, let's wrap that up and that's okay. Put it away.

Sometimes it is about, “Okay. This book, it's dragging.” My books, Joanna, they take like three or four years. If it's worth it, then I finish it. I have put some books away. I put some ideas away.

I had some brilliant ideas about things and I thought, “Am I going to be able to do that? It's going to take me three more years and I have to do all this research.” Put it in the ideas list, and being okay with that.

Jo: I think being okay with it, I mean, I'm the same. I have a massive drive, so I use Dropbox for my main drive. I've got this “for later” kind of folder structure. Sometimes I do indulge myself, especially now with like deep research on ChatGPT.

Sometimes I'll be like, “Do a deep research into this topic,” to just see if I want to go deeper into it. I always say, “Recommend like 20 books on this subject.” Then if I want desperately to kind of get into all that, it's like you said, if I feel that need to research, then I will dive into that more seriously.

Like right now by my desk, I have about 20 physical books on gothic cathedrals and architecture and beauty and awe and wonder. I just needed to go down that rabbit hole. But a lot of the time I'll be like, “Okay, I am not quite ready to do that.”

It sounds like we have a similar process on what to spend the time on and projects that are worth spending the time on.

Pilar: Yes, and I think you develop an instinct at some point, or a process, or you trust that the right thing will kind of stay you in the face or something. Because I think that that is also a process and it'll be different for everyone, is learning to trust how we manage our ideas.

There was something else I was going to say. Oh, the other thing is, of course, that it's also okay to dream. So sometimes I know I'm not going to do something. I would've loved to be a cozy mystery writer. I still have my first novel there waiting for me and sometimes I just dream. I dream I have this series and it's okay.

I don't have to then turn it into anything. I wonder sometimes when something we love doing, like writing, can be so close to how we want to earn an income. I think that sometimes we forget that it's okay to dream about plans and then we let them go and that's fine.

Jo: I think that's good. Hold some of them lightly or hold them lightly until you decide to commit. Then if you're going to commit, then absolutely commit. This has been super useful and we are out of time.

Where can people find you and everything you do online?

Pilar: I have one website that I'm sure will be there for a while, which is PilarWrites.com. That's P-I-L-A-R-writes, as in writing. Then on LinkedIn, I'm Pilar Orti.

Jo: Fantastic. Well, thanks so much for your time, Pilar. That was great.

Pilar: Thanks Joanna. Thank you so much. I've been listening to your show forever, so this has been amazing. Thank you everyone for listening too. Thank you, Joanna.

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This transcript has been edited for clarity and readability while maintaining the authentic conversational tone and key insights shared by both speakers.

The post How to Pivot Careers, Co-Write Books, And Stay Connected As A Remote Creative With Pilar Orti first appeared on The Creative Penn.