Colleen Story: Background and Publishing Journey

Are you truly procrastinating, or are you protecting yourself from uncomfortable emotions? What if the real reason you're not finishing your book has nothing to do with laziness or lack of motivation? Colleen Story explores the types of procrastination that keep writers stuck and how you can move past them into success.

In the intro, lessons learned from 14 years as an author entrepreneur; Surprised by Pilgrimage on The Leader's Way Podcast; Blood Vintage, out now.

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Colleen Story is the award-winning author of historical fantasy, supernatural thrillers and motivational books for writers. Her latest book is Escape the Writer's Web: Untangle Your Procrastination Type, Discover Personalized Solutions, and Transform Your Writing Life.

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

• Why procrastination is an emotional coping technique that protects your current identity
• How “overthinker” writers use learning and courses to avoid actually writing their own work
• The “guilty type” who feels bad whether they're writing or not writing
• Why perfectionist writers fear failure so much they endlessly revise the same manuscript for years
• How successful writers still procrastinate on uncomfortable tasks like submissions and marketing
• The power of five-minute timed sessions and small wins to ease into a new writing identity

You can find Colleen at ColleenMStory.com and MasterWriterMindset.com.

Transcript of interview with Colleen M. Story

Joanna: Colleen Story is the award-winning author of historical fantasy, supernatural thrillers and motivational books for writers. Her latest book is Escape the Writer's Web: Untangle Your Procrastination Type, Discover Personalized Solutions, and Transform Your Writing Life. So welcome to the show, Colleen.

Colleen: Thanks, Joanna. It's great to be here. I'm really excited to have this chat today.

Joanna: It's such an interesting topic. But first up—

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

Colleen: Well, you know, I wasn't one of those people who knew from the time I was in the cradle that I wanted to be a writer. I hear about that a lot, that people seem to know early on. I did not.

I always enjoyed reading. I don't know if anybody will remember the bookmobile that used to come down the street in our neighborhood. That was a highlight of my week, going out and seeing the books in the bookmobile.

So I was always a big reader, and I enjoyed whenever there was an essay test in school. I was thrilled because I felt like I could do well at those.

I didn't think about writing until I had actually graduated with my music degree. Music came first for me. I graduated with a music degree and had moved to a different state, which gave me a little time to think.

When you go to a different state, I would have had to have gone back to more classes to have gotten my teaching certificate in that state. So I just kind of took some time to think.

It was during that time that I got bit by the writing bug. It's just kind of weird how it happened, but it was like out of the blue. I wanted to all of a sudden write stories.

I grabbed a word processor—shows you how long ago this was—and started writing short stories. Within three years I had gotten my first short story published and I got a $10 check for it, which felt so awesome. I had to frame that and put it up. It's still on my writing desk.

So that kind of changed the whole trajectory of my career because I continued to teach music privately, and I still play in the local symphonies and pit orchestras, but as far as my job went, writing just was the thing.

After I got that publication, it was soon after that a copywriting job opened in my town and I got it. That kind of sent me on this new career. I started out as a corporate copywriter and was promoted to managing editor before I left there. I was there for about three years.

My dream at that point was to write a novel and have it traditionally published. I knew that as long as I worked for the corporation, I wouldn't have the time to devote to that—that I needed to really learn the craft of writing a novel.

So I went ahead and went freelance so that I could control my schedule a bit more. I worked on the side for about six months and then turned in my notice. I've been a freelance writer full-time ever since then.

So that got me into the business side of writing. Then on the side I was working on novels for many, many years and got my first novel published in 2015. As of this year, I've now published 10 books, both fiction and nonfiction. That's kind of how it happened for me. I almost fell into it accidentally, but I'm really glad I did.

Joanna: That's interesting.

So are they all traditionally published or are you hybrid now?

Colleen: I am hybrid. Yes, my novels were all traditionally published until my very latest series, the historical fantasy series. So my first three were traditionally published.

Then when I started writing for writers, that kind of happened accidentally too. I had never intended to be a nonfiction writer. But when my second novel came out, the publisher—this was back in 2017 when it was released—was wanting you to build more of an online author platform.

The one that I had started, the blog I had started, was not doing very well. So I wanted to try something else. I ended up combining my day job expertise, which was really as a health and wellness writer, with my passion for creativity and I created what was then called Writing and Wellness.

I've since morphed that into Master Writer Mindset, but Writing and Wellness kind of took off and was doing very well. I started getting invitations to go speak at conferences and workshops and things. During that time I was really discussing issues with writers and realizing that they needed some help in different areas of productivity.

Time management at that time was what I was looking into, and I decided I wanted to go ahead and write a book on that. But I didn't want to submit it to a publisher because I knew I would have to create a marketing plan and everything for it, and then I would have to allow them to change it however they felt that they should.

I kind of knew what writers were looking for at that point. I wanted more control over that book so I could really deliver what my writers and my subscribers were telling me they needed. So that's when I dove into self-publishing, was with my writing books, and I've done those that way ever since.

Joanna: That's interesting. So then this book, which is about procrastination specifically, I mean, to me it's like, wow, a whole book on procrastination. You were not procrastinating when you decided on this one.

I said to you before we started recording, I personally don't understand procrastination because I just don't suffer from it myself, but I know that lots of other writers do. So when you sent this to me, I was like, oh yes, this is something that writers really do need. It was interesting, but—

You don't sound much like a procrastinator. So why did you decide to pick this topic?

Colleen: It was interesting, and right, I never would have thought of myself as a procrastinator. I typically do surveys of my subscribers and it seems like over the years… I mean, I started the Writing and Wellness, I think it was around 2015. So it's been about 10 years and I will regularly do these surveys.

Repeatedly the subject of productivity, time management, and procrastination would come back as one of the main things that writers were struggling with every year that I would survey.

So I had done some articles, some blog posts on procrastination. I did a couple of YouTube videos on it, but I kept hearing this come back to me. I also would talk to writers at conferences and things, or even at signings.

I would have people come up and say, “I started this book and I never finished it,” or “I really wanted to write this book, but I just never did.” I would talk to writers over and over again and just see this haunted look in their faces about this dream that was untapped. They just had not been able to find a way to finish it.

Then even those writers who had dove in with lots of enthusiasm and maybe were halfway through and then they got stuck, or maybe they got almost finished, but then they weren't sure what to do next. So the story would end up sitting there and they would never actually complete that cycle.

That made me feel really badly because I know what a joy it is to actually go through, finish the project, put it out there, get feedback, and then be on that road of actually being a writer.

There are so many benefits to that that it just felt so badly for these people who were struggling with the different steps along the way that would lead to procrastination.

It's interesting though, as I started doing research for this book, which I did quite a bit, that I did learn that I had procrastinated in the past in certain ways. Because procrastination doesn't always look like completely avoiding the project or scrolling your TikTok feed while you're supposed to be writing.

These are the ways we normally think of what procrastination looks like, and I don't usually do those things. I learned as I was doing the research that I had done some other forms of procrastination that I didn't realize at the time were procrastination.

Joanna: So what were they? Now I'm writing down a list too. What else?

What are the other ways we can recognize procrastination?

Colleen: Well, it's kind of like anytime that we avoid doing what we know is the next step, and it's usually very subtle and devious how procrastination works, this type of procrastination, because even very productive writers can end up procrastinating on things that bring up uncomfortable emotions.

At its core, procrastination is always an emotional coping technique. It is a way to protect us from any sort of uncomfortable emotions we may be feeling around doing a certain task.

So I'll give you an example. Where I realized it had happened for me was in submitting my work to editors and publishers. So there came a point in my career as I was writing that I had a novel that I felt was potentially good enough to get a traditional publishing contract, but I wasn't being serious about taking that next step.

I might offhandedly find one publisher, work really hard on the query letter and the synopsis, send it off, get the expected rejection, and then I wouldn't touch it again for another six months to a year.

I was looking back now—I didn't know it at the time—but looking back now, I realize I was totally procrastinating on getting serious about submitting my novel because when I'm honest about it, it was because I was afraid of getting rejected, which makes total sense. All of us are afraid of that.

So I was afraid after all this blood, sweat, and tears I put into this novel to put it out there, nobody was going to want it. So my procrastination was protecting me from the reality of potentially being rejected or having this story never be picked up by a traditional publisher.

It wasn't until I finally got ticked off at myself for not getting serious about this, that I started really making it part of my schedule. So I would make it part of my weekly writing schedule to research publishers, to find their submission guidelines, to create query letters that would go with what they were looking for, to really dig deeper into finding publishers that would fit for my project.

When I finally did that and got serious about it and stopped dancing around it, that's when I got my first publishing contract. So looking back, I could see, okay, I was procrastinating on the part of the job, so to speak, that I needed to tackle, but that brought up uncomfortable emotions.

I've since realized that even very productive writers, I hear this from other writers, perhaps in their marketing side of the work that they do that brings up uncomfortable emotions. So they may avoid that or decide they're too busy for that, or just, “Well, I'm just going to focus on writing and not worry about that.”

We're actually procrastinating on this other part of our craft or business that we know we should be doing because it's uncomfortable for us.

Joanna: Yes. Well, it's good we're talking about this because I now think back to when I started writing. So when you are at the beginning of your writing journey—and I did all the course. I love learning. I spent really years doing courses, going to conferences, taking a lot of notes.

So I did a lot of writing, but it was all writing notes on other people's talks and things like that.

Colleen: That sounds familiar.

Joanna: Yes, exactly. I know this is common. There are people listening who are like, yes, I'm still doing that too. So perhaps I was procrastinating about actually writing my own work by thinking I was doing all the right stuff, you know?

I was going to all the conferences and actually I was going on courses, but I was never writing my own work as such. Or if I did, it was just a tiny piece.

Then I remember going to one course and this guy said, “Okay, before we get started, we're going to do some writing.” He said, “The time is starting now. Write for five minutes on the moment where you knew something had happened, like the moment you knew this thing had happened.”

I was like, “What? We have to do some writing. This isn't what I signed up for. You're meant to tell me more stuff so I can avoid writing.”

So I guess that's an example from my earlier days. Then after I did that timed writing exercise, that kind of just tipped me over and I've never struggled with that since. It literally is, if there's an issue, do some timed writing exercises.

So if people are listening and they're like, yes, I recognize myself, how do you get over it? Like, what are some of the things we can do? Timed writing worked for me.

What are some of the things people can do?

Colleen: Well, I think the first thing we have to do is be aware. I mean, because most of us at the time, I certainly wasn't aware that that's what I was doing until I finally got ticked off enough that I was like, I need to move forward or I need to forget this.

So I think we have to be aware that what we're doing is actually procrastinating on the next step we need to take. That can be, I think, the most difficult part because it's like you said, you didn't feel like you were avoiding anything. I didn't feel like I was.

So I think we have to kind of take a step back and say, am I doing what I need to do to progress to the next level I want to get to?

If I'm really serious about whatever your next goal is, whether that be selling your self-published book, or that be trying to get a traditional publishing contract, or that be actually finishing this novel, whatever it might be for you.

Am I really taking the steps I need to take to get to that next place?

What you were speaking of reminded me of one of the types in my book, which is the overthinker. We think that thinking is going to help us progress. I have been guilty of that myself in the past, thinking if I think through things that that's going to help me move forward.

I've since learned that doing is a far better teacher. It's like you said, once you start doing the writing, that is going to take you a lot farther.

There's an example in my history that I was leaving a lot of novels half finished because I would get halfway through, I would get stuck, and then I would start thinking about it.

So I would say, “Okay, well this must not be a very good idea, or the idea must not be good enough to carry through a novel, so I need to actually think about a new one and start a new one.” I would do that over and over.

It wasn't until I had a mentor talk about how important it was to actually finish the story. “You can't learn how to write a story until you finish this story,” that I realized I was procrastinating, that I was not doing what I needed to do to get to the next level, which for me was learning how to tell the complete story.

The only way that I could learn to do that was to do it. I had to stick with the story I had and go back and study story structure, go get some help from an editor or book coach, or do something to help me take it to the next level, which was to actually finish the book.

So I think the first thing we have to do is be aware of what we're dancing around or what we're avoiding because it makes us feel nervous or afraid, or we won't be up to this next step. That's often what happens is we don't feel ready for the next step.

We have to bring that into our awareness and then say, okay, I think the best way to always approach it is in the smallest step possible.

I talk a lot about giving yourself small wins.

So what you said about some timed writing, he asked you to write for five minutes. That's one of my favorites, is the five minute rule, to sit down and do something for five minutes. That can apply to most anything.

For a lot of writers that are struggling with, “How can I start building my platform?” or “How can I start marketing this book?” Say, “Today I'm going to sit down for five minutes and I'm going to create some graphics for my social media posts,” or “Today I am going to sit down for five minutes and I'm going to start researching places where I might be able to promote my book,” whatever it might be.

Taking little, tiny, small wins is a way to ease yourself into what this is really about, which is building a new identity. Because if we take a look at this seriously, procrastination is a comforting, emotional coping tool that keeps us in the identity we are at right now.

So if I look back at the example I gave, I was the writer who was not yet published. I was the aspiring writer. I was the writer who wanted to be published, and that was my identity at the time. So there was a lot wrapped up into that. You know, I was comfortable being that person.

I was trying to get better at writing. I was trying to finish a good novel. I was trying to create a novel that was good enough to be published, and that was my identity at the time.

What I needed to do was step into a new identity of being a traditionally published author. That is a big step in our brains because we are very used to being who we are. Anything that takes us beyond that feels scary to us. So we have to then take a very small step.

So the small step, anything that has to do with, “I want to get here. So what's the smallest step I can take to start down that path?” If we take one little tiny step at a time, we can gradually ease our brains and our identities into this new identity we want to create, if that makes sense.

Joanna: Yes, I like that. It's interesting. I think the five minute thing is also good the other way.

So you mentioned before, are we avoiding things by, for example, scrolling TikTok. Or, for me, I'll sometimes check X or go and look at my Feedly list of blog posts and things that I've got on there. So I give myself five minutes in that direction sometimes.

So it's like, this isn't procrastination, this is a break. This is a break. I think these types of behaviors can turn into a way of procrastinating if they go on for an unlimited amount of time. Like people look up and suddenly they've actually spent two hours on social media or something instead.

So can we stop that as well?

Colleen: Well, what you said sounds like something that I recommend to people who have a type of brain that seeks out that novelty, that seeks out that occasional distraction. That's another type of brain I talk about in the book.

There is actually a distracted type of procrastination, and I've actually discussed this with several different writers who do struggle with this. They have found success doing that very thing, giving themselves a limited amount of time.

“Okay, so I'm going to do whatever distracted behavior I enjoy,” whatever those various things you mentioned, whatever it might be, “but I'm going to do it for a set amount of time.”

Some people will also trade time, so they'll say 10 minutes of distraction for 20 minutes of writing. So you might have a half an hour blocked out for writing, and 20 minutes of that time will be writing and 10 minutes will be your chosen form of distraction, whatever that may be.

One of the things I talk about in the book a lot and in my videos too, is this importance of self understanding, being able to understand the kind of creative brains that we have. I've learned over the research of this book and just over my experience working with different writers, that we are all so very different.

We all often talk about what we have in common as far as being writers go, but we're all very different in how our brains work and how our creative selves operate. Knowing how they operate and what they need to operate at their best can really help us improve our productivity and take that next step into the next identity that we want to reach.

So finding out that this is something that you need or that you enjoy or that helps you stay on task, can be a good piece of knowledge that you can then turn around and say, “Okay, how can I use this to help myself be more productive?”

Joanna: Yes, I think that's so important, this self understanding. I spoke to someone recently and she was almost having guilt over not writing. Guilt seems to be a massive thing in the writing community. “Oh, I didn't write, therefore I feel guilty,” which is crazy because there are a lot better things to feel guilty about, I think, than not writing.

It's so interesting that it's very real though. I think the self understanding is like not beating yourself up over this. It's trying to figure out who you are and what works for you, and then figuring out a way that will make it work for you if you like.

If you really do want to write a book, for example, then you have to figure out your type as such.

So maybe you could give us a couple more of the common types that you found.

Colleen: Well, let's talk about the great one that you just brought up there. I do actually have a guilty type in my book because this is so pervasive in the writing community.

I saw this many, many years ago. I did a blog post on writing guilt and just punched it in at Google at the time—”Writer's Guilt”—and I was shocked about how many posts came back. I was like, “Wow, this is huge in the writing community.” It's this thing that so many of us writers seem to carry around with us.

It's like we're guilty when we're writing and we're guilty when we're not writing. Many people end up in this place so they feel guilty if they don't get the writing done. But then if they actually set the time aside for themselves to write, then they feel guilty about what they're not doing when they're writing.

So it's this really mean double-edged sword that can just tear a person's whole motivation for going after this dream down into shreds. So in the book, I talk about guilt as it relates to that, but also as it relates to procrastination.

You procrastinate on your writing for whatever the reason is. There are many different reasons. Then you feel guilty that you procrastinated.

So you come back and try to restart your writing process, but that guilt gets in the way and you're feeling bad about everything you haven't done that you should be at this certain point in your book or whatever it might be. That kind of tends to destroy the joy you might have brought to writing for that day.

So there's all kinds of coping techniques for that. One of them is just that you have to always allow yourself to start fresh. Always allow yourself to start fresh.

Then if you're someone who tends to feel guilty one way or the other, whether you're writing or not, I think that often is a case of not allowing yourself to follow your dreams.

There's a whole thing about people pleasing that I'm going to talk about on YouTube because I was definitely a people pleaser for a long time that we have to reckon ourselves with.

We have to say, “Okay, my dreams matter too.”

This is one of the things I'm really passionate about helping writers with because as you and I know having lived the writing life, we realize all the benefits that come from devoting your life to a craft like writing.

It's not just about finishing the books or having something to leave behind you. It's all the ways that it shapes you. There are studies proving that regularly writing helps to shape your brain. It helps you to become smarter in a lot of ways. It increases the connections in your brain.

It makes you more empathetic. Studies have shown that as well, that you tend to overcome difficulties and challenges along the way because we all know how difficult the writing life can be. You become a more resilient and stronger person.

Also, you're always expressing yourself through writing, which can really be, even if you're not writing about your own life experiences, it can be really therapeutic.

So people that are robbing themselves of that by not allowing themselves to take their dreams seriously, aren't just robbing themselves of the book they may write, they're robbing themselves of the people they could be becoming by going through the process of writing and completing a book and perhaps publishing it.

So I try to emphasize to people that if you have a dream to write, there's usually a deeper reason for it besides just that you want to write a book. There's usually, I like a calling to your soul that is asking you to step up and be even more than perhaps you are right now.

If you deny that, if you say, “Well, it's not that important,” or “What other people want me to do is more important,” or you feel guilty because you're making room in your life for that.

Imagine if you had a friend who was doing that, and you could see this in this friend wanting to come out, you can see that this is where this friend needs to go in their own personal development and they're denying themselves that. It's really a crime because it's kind of like you're robbing this person of their ability to self-actualize at an even higher level.

So I try to impress upon people to give your dream the position it needs in your life so that you understand that making it a priority is not about being selfish or self-indulgent. It's about your own development, about becoming the best person you possibly can be.

If that dream is there and has been there, especially for the person you are talking about for 30 years, that dream has not left, and there's a reason for that. I believe there's kind of a soul calling reason for that, whether people believe that or not. It doesn't matter.

Giving yourself that importance in your dreams and allowing yourself that time is going to make you a happier person. So I would just suggest, again, a small win. Set aside 15, 20 minutes, however many days of the week that you can make it, and start making that a priority. Don't allow anyone to take that time away from you.

You will start to see how beneficial it is for yourself. How much better you feel, how much more whole as a person you feel because we've all experienced it as writers. When we actually make the time and we honor that part of ourselves, how much better people we are.

Once a person starts doing that, they'll realize that they're a better person, not only for themselves, but for everyone around them. So that's a little bit about the guilty type.

Joanna: Yes, I think it's interesting. I mean, you said there about, think about it as another friend or something, you wouldn't knock down their dream.

I kind of think that our creative selves are like children.

Like you, there's the child inside you who wants to write and as you say, this kind of calling, creative calling that we have had for a long time whenever it came up in our lives. You had it for music at the beginning and then it came for writing.

For me it probably was always writing. Like you would never say to like a 6-year-old or an 8-year-old, “No. Go and do some accounting or something.”

Like you encourage—you know, nothing wrong with accounting—but I mean, you wouldn't say to a little 6-year-old, “No, you can't go write a story or you can't go play with words or play music or whatever.” We encourage that behavior in children.

So I think when we squash down that creative self in our own lives, it can almost feel like that growth is stunted somehow, or there's this kind of sad child inside that just really wants to play with words or play with music. So we want to help that and facilitate that. As you say, find the joy.

Colleen: Exactly. And I think when you become an adult, I would almost say it's even more important than I think that it is in children because of the many benefits I see that in people and that the studies have found in people when you write and you write regularly.

It's hard to describe when you've gone through a lifetime of writing as you and I have, but it's kind of like imagining myself not having devoted my life to the craft of writing and everything that entails.

I mean, you go through the process of just writing a story is a huge thing that happens in your brain when you learn how to do that, and that happens with your empathy. Studies have found that we become more empathetic as we write about different characters, and we have to be in their skin as we write about them.

We go through the process of actually completing this story, and then we publish it, and then we get feedback, and then we go back and do it again. This is all very much a personal development thing that happens.

So we are becoming better versions of ourselves through this whole process. Like you say, if we squash it down, then we're denying ourselves that ability to become that person. It's almost like we kind of sit there and we stay at the same level rather than growing, which we would hope to do throughout our lives.

Joanna: Absolutely. Okay. So one more type.

Do we have one more type that you're like, yes, that one I definitely want to talk about?

Colleen: Yes, and that would be the perfectionist, I think. When I was asking writers to complete the questionnaire that I have in the story and making sure that it was all coming out accurate and everything, a great number of them were coming back as the perfectionist types.

In my book, just so people know, there usually isn't just one type. There usually is maybe one or two primary types. But when I was doing this, checking with writers and having them take this quiz, I often found that many of them were a blend of perhaps two or three more types.

I talk about the blend and how that operates in your writing life, but many of them had the perfectionist in there. It was either their primary type or perhaps their secondary type. The whole thing about perfecting our work. I've always known that I was a perfectionist as well, and so many writers came back with that.

So it's kind of like the guilty type that seems very pervasive among writers as creators. So I looked into that research a little bit more carefully, and what I discovered surprised me and has helped me with my perfectionism as well.

Perfectionism, at its core, is a huge fear of failure.

So we often think when we're perfectionists we're like, “Well, I just want this project to be as good as it can be,” and there is a lot of that in there.

I mean, often perfectionists do put out very high quality work, but there's also something else behind that if we are so perfectionist that we are endlessly tweaking and “here's draft number 75” and we're not taking that next step to share our work. What's really at the core of that is this huge fear of failure.

So in perfectionist writers, I feel like one of the big things they have to help themselves with is to gather the courage to take the risk that they need to take. Because one thing that I've learned over my writing career, the more that I risk failure, the less of a big deal it seems to be.

So I'm more willing now to go out and try things that I may fail at or some new marketing technique or some new author platform building thing, or some different type of book or story, because now I realize that failure is not as big a deal. In fact, failure is great. It's a good way for us to learn.

When you're in the early stages of being a perfectionist, that can really hold you back because you're just constantly thinking about it. One example that I hear often from writers is they're on the same book. They've been working on this first book that they wrote for 10 years because they got to make this book just perfect.

They have this belief that this one book is going to kind of be their writing career. I understand that because I did that too. I really focused on that book number one. Book number one was going to be what launched me into my novel writing career, which looking back now to me seems really silly.

Book number one is basically just practice.

After I had written seven half-finished manuscripts and I finally managed to complete one that I felt was good enough for publication, and it did get published. But still looking back at it now, it's like, “Okay, well that was just practice.”

We start to realize the more we do, and this is going back to that thing, that doing is so much better than thinking. Doing the book and going to the next book and going to the next book.

Perfectionists tend to really get caught up, especially young writers in that first book and not taking the long view of, “Okay, do you want to be a writer for life? Then you want to be thinking about book five, book 10, book 15 down the road. When we think that way, we are less likely to be so nitpicky about that first one.

Yes, make it as high quality as you can, but have a time limit. You know, “I have this book, and I'm going to give myself one year or two years, or whatever it is to finish it, and then I'm going to move on and I'm going to risk failure.”

I'm going to risk perhaps this not being perfect or perhaps it not selling millions of copies or whatever our dreams might be for it, because I know that this is about my experience and getting better and developing my skills as a writer. I do that by writing the next book.

Joanna: Yes, I actually get really annoyed at this kind of “my book is my baby” metaphor. I mean, obviously babies are very precious and special when they're with you for a long, long time and all of that, and so you attach the kind of emotional language around a book.

People just get obsessed with this one book for years and years and years. I have a lot of books now too, and it's sort of that they're employees actually. Once they're finished and they go out in the world, they're employees.

Colleen: That's a great way to think of it. I haven't thought of it that way.

Joanna: Yes, they're assets.

They're intellectual property assets, and they earn me money. So, therefore, they're employees.

Now, of course, I didn't think about that at the beginning of my career, but it feels like a much, yes, I do the best job I can on every single book, but I'm not so emotionally attached, you know, to them, I think in the same way.

So as you say, it's changing the attitude, and I agree with you. There's so many people who just fixate on one book for a really long time, and also I think you, you don't think you have any more ideas.

I remember that from the beginning of my career. It was like, “Well, I'll never have any ideas.” But the truth is, once you clear that pipe—that's how I call it, it's like a pipe—you just need to clear that first blockage out the way, and then that pipe just keeps flowing. The ideas keep flowing, but you need to kind of unblock it with that first book.

Colleen: Oh, so very true. I was going to say, even if you do remain emotionally connected, which I think many of us do, I'm emotionally connected to my stories.

The whole thing of finding the courage and risking getting that book out there is such a good skill to develop because once you put it out there and you realize, like you say that the pipe is now open and you're off working on book number two, suddenly book number one is not as important to you.

You're now attached to book number two, and it happens that way with every single one that you go on and do next. Your next book is the one that you're really emotionally invested in.

So I think that's the other thing we don't see when we're just starting out, is that this same sort of investment could apply to a different child, so to speak, if that's how we look at our work. We could apply to the next story that we're doing.

We think this is the only one in our lives, which is just a shortsighted way of looking at it. So I try to encourage young writers to try to take that longer view and like you say, to realize that they have a lot more in them than just the one book.

I think the other big problem with that approach is that then when you finally do get it out there, if it doesn't fulfill all of your dreams, it is so hugely crushing and is so discouraging.

Esepcially for young writers to have put all this stuff in there, maybe 10 years, 15 years, 20 years on one single book, and then you finally get it to where you think it's amazing and you put it out there and it doesn't do everything you wanted it to do.

Then you, instead of realizing this was book number one and I have a lot more in me and I need to keep going and get better and go on and have this writing life, you think, “Oh. Well, this wasn't what I thought it was going to be, so I guess I better just quit” because it becomes such a crushing defeat, if that makes sense.

So I think trying to reprogram kind of your thinking into “there will be another one that I can be invested in. There will be the next project, and the important thing is to get this out and give myself the time to do these other books that are going to come along afterwards” is going to help you retain much more of your courage and your motivation as you move forward than if you put all your eggs in one basket, so to speak.

Joanna: You've used the phrase “young writers” a couple of times. Just to be clear for people, you mean people who have a low writing age, as in people who are still on one book or only started writing last year, whatever their actual age, they might be 65.

Colleen: Right, exactly. Exactly. Still a young writer. I think that's really important.

Joanna: And then you just said something like, and if that book doesn't fulfill all the dreams you had for it, then you might be disappointed. I'm thinking—

How likely is it that any book fulfills all the dreams?

Colleen: Right. But I mean, I remember thinking that when I was first starting out that this book was, and I hear that from so many writers. They're, “Here's draft number 20 of the first book that they're working on.”

What really kills me is when it's book one in a series, and they've still got book two and three to write and they're putting all their eggs in this basket and I can just see this huge fall coming in the future. I don't want that to happen.

Joanna: Well, I guess we've talked about that writing craft side, but I'm also interested around the business side because you said earlier that you did procrastinate around sending out the book and pitching and that kind of thing. I feel like writers also procrastinate on marketing.

So you write fiction and nonfiction, you're also a freelance writer.

So how do you tackle marketing and the business side? What might people procrastinate in around that?

Colleen: Yes. I feel like that is a huge side of it that I wouldn't have really thought about procrastinating applying to before I did the research for this book. I am definitely a good candidate for this because I'm more on the creative side. I was not looking at this as a business early on.

This has been something that I've tried to then develop later in my career, because I've always had my freelance writing job to cover the bills, so to speak. So the writing was my creative outlet on the side.

Then as I've grown as a writer and have several books now, and I've gotten older and kind of in looking at the future, I'm like, “Boy, I really would like this to be more on the business side of what I do.”

Also, I'm experiencing changes now because as AI comes on, the whole freelance writing industry is going through a lot of big upheavals and changes. So as I look at that, I think, “Okay, well I need to tackle the business side of this as well.”

I've always had that along there as far as I have built author platforms that have grown and I've got a subscriber list and I'm doing all those things. I find that the marketing things that work change so often that it becomes like this whole other part of what we do as creatives that we need to learn about and get better at as we go.

So for me, it's become very much a self-education thing, and I'm learning and then I'm doing, and I'm learning and I'm trying something else, and I'm learning and trying something else. I think the whole thing of being willing to risk failure really comes in huge on the marketing side.

So again, it's like what's going to work for you personally?

Maybe you are really good at creating a blog and that becomes your platform. Maybe you are better at doing YouTube videos and that becomes your platform. Maybe you do a podcast like you do, and that becomes how you reach people.

At the end of the day, marketing is just about trying to introduce our work to more people. So it's like, “How do I do that, and what are my natural strengths, and how can I apply those to the marketing side of things?”

I think most writers are uncomfortable with this because we never learned how to do this. Many of us are not natural business people or marketing people. That's not something we've done in our past. We were drawn to the creative side, but the business side seems very foreign to us.

So many writers will come to me at workshops and say, “I'm bad at marketing.” And I don't think that that's it necessarily. I think we just didn't learn how to do this and perhaps we're not naturally gifted at it, but that doesn't mean that we can't educate ourselves and put ourselves out there.

So I think for me, the key has been just trying this and trying that. The more I do that, the more marketing becomes fun because it's like experimentation and trying different things to get word about my book out there, and then just seeing what works and going back and analyzing the results and then doing more of what does and less of what didn't.

So for me, I'm definitely not a master marketer by any means, and I'm always listening to The Creative Penn podcast so that I could learn more about all of that. The Novel Marketing podcast and some of those others that I'm always tuning into.

I've kind of made it part of my writing life now. I think that's another key for writers is just to bring that marketing side in more often in what you're exposing yourself to and working into your weekly timeline of what you're tackling so that you have writing time, but you also have marketing time.

That's how I'm tackling it at this point. I don't know if that really answered your question, but that's where I'm at.

Joanna: Well, I mean, even that you said you listen to podcasts and here you are on the podcast. I feel like people feel—and I have had this feeling—like I should be doing something like TikTok. TikTok is the obvious one we should be doing, you know, short form video.

I'm like, I did try and literally my friend Sacha Black got on the phone with me, tried to help me do it, and I had a TikTok account for about six hours, and I just hated it. I hate it.

The main thing is, like you said, I don't consume short form video. Not on Instagram. Not on YouTube, not on TikTok, not anywhere. I don't really watch video, but I listen to a lot of podcasts.

So whether this has all become one because I've been podcasting so long, but the fact is, of course I can do podcasting and I listen to podcasts so I know the medium and it suits me and it's what I enjoy—the longer form discussions.

Whereas somebody who loves being on TikTok as a consumer would also be better at it as a creator. So we have to think about it that way, don't we?

You can't do everything. You just have to find what works for you.

Colleen: You're exactly right. This comes back to that self-knowledge. What are we? What do we naturally gravitate toward? What are we good at? And what do we enjoy?

Personally, I enjoy doing YouTube videos. I didn't think I would, but I saw that YouTube was a place where you could connect with people. I started picking that up. I'd had the channel for a while, but I hadn't done much with it.

Last August, actually, I decided to get serious and start posting once a week, and I found that I really enjoy that format. It seems a little similar to blogging to me, which I did well with my blog on my platform.

Now it seems like video's kind of becoming even more of an immediate way to reach people, especially in an age of AI. So the long form video, kind of the educational type videos I've taken to, and I think people have to decide what is going to work best.

I think often the only way you can figure that out is to try it. You just have to give it a try. The good thing is, I think the biggest thing that's helped me is most people don't care. They're not watching you.

You know, when I was first thinking about getting on video, I'm like, “Oh my gosh, people are going to see me and this is going to be scary and all that.” But you realize after you do it that it's really hard to build an audience and you have to get serious about it.

You have to have a regular plan for how you're doing it. It has to be in your writing life regularly. So one video, two videos, three videos is pretty much probably going to be ignored. We can assume that. So that kind of takes some of the fear out of it. It's like, “Oh, go ahead and try it. See what happens.”

If you have an inclination to do short form video, give it a try, see how it goes. You're not going to get 50 zillion views on your first or second or third video most likely, but you can determine if you enjoy it.

Do you enjoy this type of creative outlet? Do you enjoy blogging? Do you enjoy creating graphics and things on social media?

Now, one of my writing friends just loves Instagram. Is always creating reels and things for Instagram, not really my cup of tea. I found out that that's not really where my interests lie, but again, it's just trying these different things and seeing what works for you and what helps you to connect with new readers.

Joanna: Right.

So where can people find you and your books online?

Colleen: My writing motivational site is MasterWriterMindset.com, and then my author site is just my name, ColleenMStory.com. People always ask me, that is my real name. My dad gifted me with a pen name. It's cool how often that happens actually.

Those are my two main websites. I am on YouTube at ColleenMStoryteller, and there is actually a free quiz that people can take that's related to the procrastination book that's on my website right now. That's called MasterWriterMindset.com/findyours.

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

Colleen: Thank you, Joanna. It was great to be here.

The post Overcoming Procrastination With Colleen M. Story first appeared on The Creative Penn.