This is The Write Now Podcast with Sarah Werner, Episode 61: Self-Talk And Self-Writing.

Welcome to Write Now, the podcast that helps aspiring writers and all writers to find the time, energy, and courage you need to pursue your passion and to write every day. I’m your host, Sarah Werner, and I am very pleased to tell you that this episode of the Write Now Podcast is brought to you by the Liberty Podcast, serialized sci-fi action adventures in audio drama form. Special thanks also go out to Elise Jane Tabor for her generous support of the show.

So, hey, it’s Sarah. I’m back, and I think this is going to be a really, really interesting episode. I have some writing adventures and misadventures to share with you that I think will help enlighten you in your own writing journey. So let’s go ahead and dive in. But first, I have two new iTunes reviews that I want to share with you because they’re so lovely. Both are five-star reviews, and one of them is by Lady Pseudonym and it says, “Worth the time.” She says, “I have a busy schedule and I’m selfish with my free time. This podcast is worth listening to. You’ll learn a lot of everything related to the craft. I listen in the car and come home ready to write.” Thank you, Lady Pseudonym, and happy writing.

The second new review I’d like to share with you is from someone named Ange Garve, and she says, “You are a godsend. I mean that subject line. Your podcast is like solace in the middle of this crazy process I’m in. I’ve gained confidence in what I’m doing and I feel so encouraged just by listening. Every episode has something that I need to hear or learn. I appreciate it so much. Angela M.” Angela, thank you so much. I love getting reviews on iTunes. If you can go out to iTunes, give me a five-star review if you think this podcast is worth it. Write me a review. It’s a great way to help the Write Now Podcasts get found by new listeners. So thank you so much for taking the time to write reviews.

Okay, now I’m jumping into the show for real. So, as many of you know, if you’ve been listening to my show for awhile, I do two different types of podcasts. I have this one, which is a monologue podcast, where I talk about what you need to have the time, energy and courage to write every day, but I also have Coffee Break, which is sort of an interview series that I do with different writers who I meet on the internet, and it’s really delightful. So every once in a while, I’ll come across the opportunity to interview somebody of whom I am a huge fan girl. Don’t get me wrong. I love every single person who I interview for the show, but every once in a while I see a name come through and I’m like, “OMG.” And then I freak out and do a Snoopy dance and then fall down.

So this is happened recently. I got the chance to speak with Dr. Mark Rubinstein. You can find his episode, it’s Coffee Break number 43, and it came out recently and we had this interview on a schedule for a while and I was like, “Oh, my gosh, the day is coming when I’m going to interview Mark Rubinstein.” For those of you who don’t know, he writes psychological thrillers. He’s a psychologist by trade. He’s been on Good Morning America, all sorts of different things. Mostly I know him from his Twitter presence. I think he has a great presence on Twitter. I love following him, retweeting what he tweets. He’s just a smart dude and I really respect him. Needless to say, I was excited about interviewing him on my show.

Also in the week that I interviewed him, I had a cold. I’m one of those people who I get stressed out a lot and then my body crashes, and so I must have been stressed out because I was in the middle of a crash and I had a cold and I didn’t sound my best, but I was like, “You know what? I can’t reschedule. He’s a very busy man. I’m just going to go ahead and do the interview anyway.” So I did it, but between my nervousness and fan girling and my being somewhat out of it under cold medicine, I don’t think I did the best interview. I’m just going to be honest with you. I listened to it later and it wasn’t my favorite thing I’d ever recorded and I was kind of disappointed in myself. Later on when it came to debut the episode, I was writing the show notes for it, which every episode I record has show notes out @sarahwarner.com. You can find them there. They sort of highlight what’s going on in each episode.

So if you want to go back and get a link that I mentioned, or if you have a friend or companion who’s hard of hearing and they can’t listen to the podcast, they can check out all the information in the show notes. So I was typing the show notes for Mark Rubinstein’s interview, and in the beginning I wrote something like, “Hey, friends, this is not my best episode, but I’m still really excited to share it with you anyway. My apologies for sucking, et cetera, et cetera.” So I hit publish and I didn’t think about it at all until my husband said something to me. I write full-time now and so I write offsite. I get out of my house to write every day and I was out at a coffee shop and my phone starts ringing, which is kind of unusual, because I’m kind of a hermit.

And so I see it’s my husband calling. And I’m like, “Oh, my gosh, he got into a terrible car accident or something.” But thankfully he didn’t. He was calling and he said, “Sarah, why did you do this? I’m kind of mad at you right now. Why did you write about yourself in a self-deprecating way?” And I was like, “What are you talking about?” And he’s like, “I just read your show notes for Mark Rubinstein’s interview. What the heck? It’s a great interview. Why would you apologize to your listeners for your interview?” And I told my husband, “Well, you know, I was sick when I recorded it and I don’t think it’s my best work, and I was kind of flustered and fan girling while I was recording. and it was not the perfect storm of awesomeness that I like my interviews to be.”

And he said, “Sarah, I don’t want you to talk about yourself like that. You’re better than that.” And part of me wanted to say, “Well, that’s how I always talk about myself. That’s sort of how my inner monologue goes.” It’s like, “Well, I’m walking down the street and I sure am a dork.” Or, “I’m writing this project and it sure is terrible.” Or, “I made this spaghetti sauce and it didn’t turn out perfectly, but I guess it’s still edible.” I mean, do you talk to yourself like that? Maybe not out loud or maybe you do out loud. Maybe it’s your inner monologue or your inner dialogue, I don’t judge, but how do you talk about yourself? I know that I don’t usually swear out loud. I usually keep my language pretty clean and I will do so for this podcast episode since it has a clean rating, but I know when I swear, most of the time it’s to myself under my breath.

There is a remarkable difference between the way I talk about myself and to myself and the way I talk to other people. It reminds me of this quote that was either said by, or is attributed to be said by, Brené Brown, who is one of my favorite non-fiction writers. And that is, “Talk to yourself like you would talk to someone you love.” I’m going to come back to this in just a moment, but for now I have one more quick story to illustrate what I’m talking about. For this story I’m going to reference another Coffee Break episode that I recorded, gosh, I think it was over a year ago. It’s episode number 29, in which I talk with audio drama producer, Paul Sating.

Paul and I struck up a very good friendship after he appeared on my show and he inspired me, through no fault of his own, to start my own audio drama podcast. I put two and two together one day and said, “Hey, I’m a writer.” And, “Hey, I have all of this podcasting equipment. Why am I not reading fictional podcasts?” And so I decided to start one. Now it’s still in the works. It’s coming out in September, 2017, or at least it’s slated to come out in September, 2017. It’s called Girl In Space, and it’s going to be a sci-fi audio adventure, much like The Liberty Podcast. But what I didn’t realize going into it was precisely, well, A) how much work it was going to be, B) how much time it would take, and C) how much enthusiasm cannot make up for a lack of knowledge.

So I’m the type of person who, when I want to try something new, I just dive in and start doing it. That’s what I did with this podcast. I mean, go back to the first episode and it sounds terrible because I’m talking into a borrowed microphone with no equipments and pretty much no idea of how to edit audio. And it was even the same way with me with writing. You know, when you’re little, you’re like, “I like books,” or, “I like reading. I’m going to create a book that I can read or the other people can read.” And you sit down and you draw a picture book or you write a manuscript and you say, “Okay, this isn’t great, but I’m going to keep going,” right? Well, I was working on my audio drama yesterday and in this perfect storm of self-doubt, self-deprecation, frustration and perfectionism, I hit a wall, and I hit it hard.

Basically, I got overwhelmed by this immense task in front of me, a task that I placed in front of myself, mind you. Nobody assigned this to me. So something I “wanted to do,” and I still want to do. But I was sitting at the dining room table with my outline in front of me, with my index cards in front of me, with my computer in front of me, and my notebook and my journal and all of the things. And I looked around the table in despair. And I sat back against the back of my chair with my shoulders slumped, and I said, “Who am I to think I can do this? Sarah, who do you think you are? You don’t have 20 years of audio drama production. Heck, you’re not even maybe that great of a writer. In fact, maybe right now, you suck. Who do you think you are? Why don’t you just give up and walk away and leave audio dramas to the people who actually know what they’re doing?”

So you can call it a bad attitude, you can call it depression, you can call it whatever you want. I was not in a good place. The way I was talking to myself was extremely negative. So since it was evening, I sort of slumped off to bed, hit under the covers and read for a few hours until I fell asleep. If you’ve ever written anything, I can bet that you’ve had a day or two or 10 or 100 like this. You’ve maybe said some things to yourself that were not very kind, like, “I am a huge failure. I have no idea what I’m doing. I really suck. I’m terrible at this. I should just give up. Who do you think you are?”

Now, I want to say that I have no psychological training. I am not a psychologist. I am not a life coach, but I think it’s still important to talk about self-talk and self-writing, and we’ll get to that in just a minute. If and when you talk to yourself or about yourself, do you speak like you would to someone you love? Do you talk about yourself like someone you love? Here’s what I mean by that. I love my sister, Rebecca, and I think that she is an incredible writer. So how do I talk to her? Well, I talk to her like I talk to someone I love. I don’t say, “Boy, Rebecca, you really suck.” Or, “Boy, Rebecca, I hate you.” If your name is Rebecca I hope that this is not hurting your feelings, it’s not intended to. I don’t say, “Wow, Rebecca, you are the hugest loser who has ever lived.”

No, of course not. I say, “Rebecca, you’re awesome.” And, “Rebecca, I think you’re a really fantastic writer.” And, hey, if she’s written something that she’s not super proud of, or that maybe could use some work or maybe it’s not her best piece, I could say, “You’re a good writer, but this is not your strongest piece.” Or, “I don’t know. There’s just something missing from this story.” Or, “You know I love you, but I think that you should scrap this and start over.” So you can see there’s room here for honesty and criticism. And that’s important, too. When you talk to yourself like someone you love, it should also be honest. And I know that that’s a difficult balance, but it comes back to not what you’re saying, but how you’re saying it.

There’s a quote from Maya Angelou that I love and it says, “I’ve learned that people forget what you said, and people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” I think this is true not only when we speak with other people, but when we speak with ourselves. If you make yourself feel like garbage, it’s just going to be a self-perpetuating cycle. You may speak poorly of yourself because you dislike yourself, but speaking poorly of yourself will only make you dislike yourself even more. And that’s not a spiral I want you to get trapped on. Do you talk to yourself like someone you love? I like to think of it as a spectrum. On one end of the spectrum, you can say something like, “I am absolute slime.” On the other side of the spectrum, you could say something like, “I am the greatest writer who has ever lived.”

Now, with very few exceptions, most of us are going to end up in the middle of that spectrum. We all have things that we like and dislike about ourselves, and I want to be careful to encourage you to be honest with yourself without interpreting honest as deprecating or cruel or mean or further perpetuating your low self-esteem. I also want to perhaps encourage you to avoid the other side of the spectrum though, as well. This is the delusions of grandeur side of the spectrum, where maybe an author who hasn’t published anything looks in the mirror and says, “Yep, I am the greatest living writer of our time.” It sort of reminds me, if you ever watched American Idol, I don’t know if it’s still on. There would be singers who would try out who thought they were incredible much to the confusion of the judges and the audience, because they sounded like dying goats when they sang, but they had this delusion that they were God’s gift to the musical industry.

I don’t want that for you. And so, when I see articles about self-talk and self-writing for writers, I sometimes get a little uncomfortable because a lot of the times they will encourage you to look in the mirror and say stuff like, “I am amazing. I am the world’s gift to writing. I am the best writer that has ever lived. I am…” insert grandiose term here. You are not a worm, but you are also not a god. And I think it’s healthy to preserve that distinction. It’s healthy to remember that you’re human, and that yes, you make mistakes sometimes. And yes, not everything you create is perfect, but that as a human you are genetically wired to make mistakes and it is expected that you won’t be perfect. No one is. So I hope this comes across okay. And I hope you didn’t tune into this episode to hear me tell you that you are the greatest writer who has ever lived, but I am going to say, you are a writer and heck, maybe you’re a good writer. Maybe you’re a decent writer. Maybe you’re a fantastic writer.

My question to you is, how do you define yourself? Who is the creative, messy, amazing, trying so hard, confused, loving and loved person who you are? How do you talk about yourself, and how do you write about yourself? Now, those of you who keep a journal might have an easier time understanding how you write about yourself than someone who has never written about themselves. If you have a journal, open it up, flip through the pages. How are you talking about yourself? Are you saying things like, “Well, another day, that’s typical for me. I’m such a loser. I can’t lose weight. Nobody loves me. My writing sucks. I hate everything and I hate myself.” Or do you say, “Hey, my story didn’t get published, but that’s okay. I’m going to keep trying, I’m going to keep collecting these rejection letters. I know that one day I’m going to be published.” Or, “Hey, I got a story published today. I’m really proud of myself and excited for my future as a writer.”

If you don’t keep a journal, or even if you do, you can try a simple writing exercise. My background is in fiction and so that’s where I go to when I’m trying to figure out problems, but try writing about yourself as a fictional character. Your high points, your low points, what you like about yourself, what you don’t like about yourself. What you’re willing to be honest about, what you don’t yet know about yourself, your flaws, your awesomenesses, which is a word I just made up. Everything that makes you you. Sketch it out, write it out and then ask, “Who is this character? What could I say to encourage this character? What would the people who love this character say about them? What are their expectations of this character? What are my expectations of this character? What are my expectations of myself?”

I’ve noticed that sometimes when I descend into negative self-talk, when I say, “Gosh, Sarah, you suck,” or, “Sarah, you sure are in idiot,” or any number of choice phrases that I’ve used about myself, it comes from a place of having too high expectations of myself. Like with this audio drama thing. For whatever reason I thought I could very easily pick up audio drama writing with no practice and with no skill. And, obviously, my expectations did not match reality. And I have a separate episode where I’ve talked about expectations and reality before, if you want to go back and listen to it. Or when you sit down and start writing a new poem and you expect the poem to be prize-winning. You expect it to be amazing. You expect it to be insightful and beautiful and the amalgamation of every single wonderful, pure emotion you’ve ever felt.

But what comes out on the paper is, “See Jane run,” which doesn’t even rhyme. And you’re mad at yourself because you expected this perfect, amazing thing from yourself on the first try. And that’s not realistic. So you get frustrated with yourself and you say, “Gosh, I suck at this. Oh, I’m the worst. Why do I even bother sitting down to write poems when they suck like this?” I read a wonderful article recently on therightpractice.com. The article’s by Anne Peterson, and I’ll be sure to link to it in the show notes for today’s episode. But she talks about reframing the way we talk about ourselves when we’re frustrated, mad, upset with ourselves. She suggests, instead of saying, “What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I get this? Oh, I’m such an idiot.” She suggests saying instead, “Okay. I’m just going to try something else for now,” or, “Okay. This is not my thing. I’m going to move on,” or, “Okay. I took a good stab at this. I’m going to come back later after I read a book about audio drama production.”

Recognize you’re human. Recognize that you’re not going to create something perfect, at least not on the first try, or on the second try, or on the 10th try. It’s okay to be human. It’s okay to give yourself some grace. It’s okay to talk to yourself like you would talk to someone you love. Be encouraging. Say, “Okay, you know, maybe I didn’t get it this time. I’m going to keep going. I’m sure in the next iteration I’ll be able to improve this by 10%.” The next time you find yourself saying to yourself, “Wow, you suck,” or, “Wow, you’re an idiot,” think, “Is this something that I would say out loud to somebody I love?” And if it’s not, think about how you might say that.

Perhaps, “Hey, this was a really great try, but I would love to see some revisions.” Or, “Wow. This is a really good story. Good job.” Try saying these things to yourself in a positive way, or journaling them in a positive way and see what kind of effect it has on you. I think that it’ll change your life for the better. If you would like to check out any of the links that I mentioned in today’s episode, you can do so in the show notes, which you can find at sarahwerner.com, episode 61. And while you’re out at sarahwerner.com, you can sign up for my email newsletter. I don’t spam you, and I hopefully don’t send you things that are irrelevant or dumb. Mostly it is updates about the show, writing resources, all that good stuff.

So sign up for my email newsletter @sarahwerner.com. That’s S-A-R-A-H W-E-R-N-E-R.com. I love making this show, and I don’t do it alone. I mean, I kind of do it alone because I’m sitting here talking to you in a room by myself, creepily. I don’t know. But there are so many wonderful people who support the show with kind words and with their finances. And I would love to say thank you, especially to my Patreon supporters. Patreon is a secure third-party donation platform that lets you give however much you think an episode is worth. A dollar per episode, two dollars per episode, a million dollars per episode. You can support the Write Now Podcasts to whatever level you are comfortable doing.

Special thanks through this episode go out to official sponsor, The Liberty Podcast, serialized tales of sci-fi action adventures, which you can find out on iTunes, out at their website, Libertyendures.com, or out on their network at nerdyshow.com/liberty. You’ll especially want to check out Audio Dramas, Liberty: Critical Research, and Liberty: Tales from the Tower. I would also like to thank official word champion, Elise Jane Tabor, official cool cats, Sean Locke and Rebecca Werner, official bookworms, Matthew Paulson, Gary Medina and Lilith Black, official rad dude, the Sioux Empire Podcast, and official caffeine enablers, Barbara Miller, Harrison Werner, Coleen Cotolessa, and War Writer. Thank you all so, so, so much for helping me to inspire writers everywhere.

If you would like to become a supporter on Patreon and hear your name here in the credits of each Write Now Podcast episode, you can go out to sarahwerner.com/patreon. That’s P-A-T-R-E-O-N. Alternately you can go out to patreon.com and search for the Write Now Podcast. And with that, this has been episode 61 of the Write Now Podcast, the podcast that helps aspiring writers and all writers to find the time, energy and courage you need to pursue your passion and to write every day. I’m your host, Sarah Werner, and I encourage you today and every day to talk to yourself like someone you love.