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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Show Notes

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

You can find Tiffany Yates Martin at FoxPrintEditorial.com.

Transcript of Interview with Tiffany Yates Martin

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

Tiffany: Thanks for having me again, Joanna.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Competition is higher than ever.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How do we deal with overwhelm in particular?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So that's one way to start.

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

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

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

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

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

“Measure your life by what you create.”

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

Tiffany: Like what? Do you mean social media?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Intuition does come from some kind of emotional feeling.

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

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

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

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

Tiffany: Congratulations.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Same as you, right?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Joanna: Well —

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

[You can find a list of editors here.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You mentioned you wanted to talk about rejection.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tiffany: Thank you so much, Joanna.

Takeaways

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

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