[00:13] Rachel: Hey, writers. Welcome back to Story Magic, the podcast that will help you write a book you're damn proud of.
[00:18] Emily: I'm Emily.
[00:19] Rachel: And I'm Rachel.
[00:20] Emily: And today we're going to talk about creating in sequence with guest Kristen Keeper.
[00:26] Kristen Kieffer: Hi, Kristen. Hi, Rachel. Hi, Emily. We're so excited you're here. I am so excited to be here. I love everything you guys do, and I love talking with you, so I'm very excited to talk with you in general and then also talk about this topic of creating in sequence, which I know people might be like, what in the world is that? We're going to dig into it.
[00:50] Emily: Before we do that, can you tell folks a little bit about who you are and how you got here and how you're the person who's bringing this topic to us?
[00:59] Kristen Kieffer: Yeah, sure. So, my name is Kristen Keefer. I am a fantasy writer and a creative coach. Some of you may know me. For many years. I ran a website called Well Story that was all about writing craft. And about a year and a half ago, or a year ago, I started to make this transition into creative coaching because I realized that that was what really lit me up and made me so excited to show up for my work each and every day with fellow creatives. And so that's what I do now. I'm a creative coach. I sometimes say that I specialize in unshaming our relationships with creative work because many of the things that hold us back keep us from moving forward, achieving our goals and our dreams, or even just showing up in some of the most simplest ways that we want to inside of our creative practices all stem from shame. Or what I would define as a sense of not enoughness in some way. So that's what I do. That's what I specialize in. I'm also the host of the Wild Making podcast. Rachel and Emily will be joining me there shortly for an episode. We're doing a little swap here. Very fun. Yeah. And I think that about covers everything. Anything else I should share?
[02:16] Rachel: No. I mean, I just have to say I have so enjoyed seeing your transformation from well storied and previous she's novel all the way to oh, yeah.
[02:28] Kristen Kieffer: It has been a journey, and I've.
[02:31] Rachel: Been so excited to be in the audience watching that. And I just have to give you huge congratulations because I think this feel as an audience member, as a person in your audience, it feels very aligned to you, and I can just see how much you've transformed over the last year and a half, and I think that's amazing. So huge congratulations. I love everything that you're doing. You're doing wonderful and amazing work.
[02:55] Kristen Kieffer: Yeah. Thank you so much. Oh, I'm sorry. That's okay.
[02:59] Emily: I just want to say your unshaming work is such a gift to creatives, so folks are struggling with mindset issues. Kristen is the place you should go. And Wild Making is a really good place to start. I've really enjoyed every episode. Make me think.
[03:15] Kristen Kieffer: Thank you so much. Yeah, I'm so excited too, and I totally agree. If you have no idea what I'm talking about when it comes to shame and how that plays a role, what even is shame, definitely. Wild Making, I think, is a great place to start with my work. I tried to build the episodes on top of each other a little bit, especially with those early episodes, to be like, here's an introduction to what I'm even talking about, so that when we get into the deeper stuff, you understand what's going on. But thank you all so much, both of you, for your kind words. Of course, I've been a part of your world as you guys have gotten Golden May up and running these past few years as well. And I feel like everything you said is just something I could turn around and reciprocate. Right back at you. Thank you. Brilliant to follow along.
[04:03] Rachel: I love it. So today we're talking about creative and sequence. So what does that mean?
[04:09] Kristen Kieffer: Yeah. Okay. So creating in sequence is something that I've been thinking about quite a lot recently. I think it is so important that we, for lack of a better phrase here, create in sequence. So what I mean by that is taking the time to build a creative life where we feel joy and fulfillment because we are focusing on the foundation and building up from there. Always asking ourselves if there's something new that we want to do or if there's some way that we want to grow. Asking ourselves, is this the next best thing? The next small step, even, is a better way to phrase it that I could take to get to where I want to be? Because in my experience, both in my personal creative practice and with the hundreds of creatives I've talked with over the years, most of us have this tendency to feel some sort of shame inside of our creative practices. Some sort of not enoughness, not talented enough, not consistent enough, not creative enough, not something enough. And to try to I don't know why this is the word that came to mind just now, but like asswage that try to resolve that feeling of not enoughness, we often set our sights on these big external goals. If I finally get published, then I will feel like a real writer. If I can land a literary agent, then I'll know that I'm talented enough. Something of that nature. And because of that link that we make inside of our heads, that narrative that we build up, that if I can achieve X, then I will finally be good enough. We often feel a sense of urgency. We feel like, I need to be writing as much as I can, as fast as I can. I need to be as consistent as possible. I need to basically hustle culture your way into achievement so that you can finally resolve that internal pain and discomfort of not feeling enough. And what happens when we do that is often that we wind up overwhelmed, burnt out, frustrated, and in many cases, unfortunately, finding ourselves stagnant inside of our creative processes and feeling like we should just give up and quit because what's the point? We're clearly not going to get anywhere. Yeah.
[06:46] Emily: I wonder how much of that comes from I'm thinking of myself when I first started writing, right? I mean, when I first started writing again as an adult.
[06:58] Kristen Kieffer: There aren't that.
[06:59] Emily: Many resources out there on how to build that, how to build your creative skills in that way. And so you're left with just a couple of external milestones, right? Like, okay, well, you write a book, then you get an agent, and then they sell your book and then you're an author, right? There are so many other phases, and I'm sure we're going to talk about that. Actually, I really want to talk about kind of how you see what the sequence should look like. But I think it's important to note that when people come into this, we're given so few mile markers, and so it can feel like, well, the goal is to finish. And then it's like, well, actually, you also have to revise and feedback and.
[07:42] Kristen Kieffer: All these other things.
[07:43] Emily: And you have to learn how to do it in the first place and all these other things. So yeah, that's really interesting.
[07:51] Rachel: Yeah. As you brought this topic to us and as you were talking, I can just see this intense cycle that just spirals you further and further into a shame hole because you're setting these goals and expectations for yourself from a place of not enoughness, and then you don't reach them because of so many different reasons. But ultimately, how difficult is it to do the writing process when you are burdened by shame? So you don't reach the goals, and then it just spirals you even further into the shame cycle. So then you double down on like, okay, well, I need to write even harder, or I need to try even. I need to be better. I need to be more and more to get closer to those goals, which you can't reach because you have gone about this out of sequence and it just exacerbates everything. It makes everything more difficult, and you feel just increasingly guilty because you haven't reached the goals that you set out for yourself. Like, I set a goal to be published by 21 every year. Your birthday rolls around and you're like.
[09:04] Kristen Kieffer: I am nodding my head so vigorously on this zoom call right now because everything you just said has been my personal experience. And one of the reasons that I'm so passionate about the creative coaching work that I do is because I had the same thing. I remember being like 19 or 20. And I was like, I think it was 22 for me. I'm going to be published by 22, and I just turned 28, and I am currently preparing to publish my first novel later this year. I was a good big old chunk of years off there in my timeline, in my head, but it's been for the best because I think the person that I was at 22 was in no way ready to publish at that age, even if she was struggling to even sit down and write because she wanted to. That shame hole that you described is like this awful vortex that I think takes so many of us, so many writers out before we really even get started. And it's such a shame to see. Yeah.
[10:13] Rachel: I so agree with Emily that I want to go back to what does the sequence look like or what should it look like, but I feel like the sequence that was told to me was very much simple. It's linear and you do it along one line or you completely fail. And so I wrote a draft in college, I finished it, I did another draft to revise it, and I instantly started querying. Like, I went right to querying. And how disappointing was it when I got dozens of rejection letters and felt like a complete failure? But looking back, I even knew in that moment I was not ready to query. But I thought that was the next step. I thought that was the next part of the sequence. I thought that was what writers do. You query your story if you want to be published. And so that turned me off. Just, I don't think I wrote for a really long time and I ended up tabling that story altogether because it just felt so wrong. It felt so wrong to rush that process, even though I thought that was the way that it happened. That's the only option.
[11:16] Kristen Kieffer: Yeah. I think it's so incredibly common as creatives that when we think of sequence or we think of, how am I going to build my writing life here? We think of it all through an external lens. What is the next external goal? What is the next external step that's going to get me to where I want to be? And we do tend to think of it quite linearly. We think of it like, finish the draft, maybe revise the book query, if that's what you want to do, get published, then get another one. Maybe we hit the bestseller list after that. We think of it as this external thing. And so I've been really exploring for myself more than anything, but also hope to turn it around and offer it to other creatives as well. But really exploring recently, what does a healthier, more sustainable, more loving form of sequence look like? And from my perspective, it starts and kind of almost stays internal, right? Like, what is the next thing that I need to believe in order to be in better relationship with myself and my art? Perhaps I kind of view like habits, even though it's a tiny bit external, I kind of view it as an internal thing because it's more habits enable relationship in a way like relationship with our art. So I kind of think of it as being an internal sort of thing. So like, what's the next habit I need to build? Or how do I want to expand my habit a tiny bit to be in better relationship with my art again, to get to perhaps that next external step I want to get to, but in a way that is coming from a place of self belief, self trust, genuine desire that honors our personal energy, right? That's not asking too much of us or demanding that we achieve in order to feel good enough. And I love that you spoke to the fact that it's not always linear as well because it's not so many times when we think, like you said from your example, it's time to query. Querying is the next step and it doesn't work out. It's not because we're doing anything wrong or it's not because we're doing things necessarily quote unquote, out of sequence, but it's because there's some sort of gap in belief there or perhaps gap in skill, but often gap in belief. That means that that next step is a future step. It's probably just not the very next step that we need to take to get to where we want to be.
[13:54] Rachel: Yeah, for me in that instance it was both a gap in both of those things, but because I felt so drawn to the external validation and the external goal, I had no awareness of those gaps. I had the subconscious awareness that something wasn't right in the story and it wasn't the right time to move forward in my creative sequence or in this process. But that was all. I couldn't see past that. I couldn't look past those subconscious warnings because I was so concerned about the external validation.
[14:29] Kristen Kieffer: Yeah, absolutely.
[14:31] Emily: I love this idea of the internal part of the journey because really what we're talking about is not necessarily like the process of writing a book, but more like the sequence of what your writing journey looks like as a whole. And people misconstrue mistake one for the other. Right? They mistake the process of writing a book as the process of their writing journey. But I like what you're saying, Kristen, that there's the external journey as well as the internal journey, which means when we first decide, like, hey, I'm going to try to do this writing thing. It's a journey not only of output and creating something, but also growing into being a writer and into being a version of a writer that you want to be. People just skip or don't recognize that they are supposed to be that they would benefit from consciously cultivating that. So I just really like that distinction between internal and external. But I want to pause us because I really want to get I would love to ask you, what does a healthy sequence look like? Because I don't think I have a picture in my head. I know you had a pyramid that you were yes. Can you talk to us about illustrate for us? What would it mean to be following that healthy sequence?
[15:57] Kristen Kieffer: Yeah. Okay. So I've been playing around with you mentioned this pyramid. Right. You guys listening in today are getting my kind of rough draft of this pyramid. It's still a work in progress. I've been getting some feedback, making some tweaks, but I've been working on this idea that I'm calling the Hierarchy of Creative Fulfillment. Like, how do we actually build a writing life in which we feel fulfilled, in which we feel like there is purpose to what we're doing. We're finding joy in what we're doing, and we're not feeling stressed out, overwhelmed, burnt out, not enough. So this is just a tool. And if it doesn't work for you or if you want to tweak anything about it, I feel like it's very important to say that if you hear me breaking this pyramid down and you're like, but that doesn't make sense to me, that's okay. Just a tool that I think has been helpful for me as I think about this and the feedback I've gotten so far has been positive as well. So here goes. On the bottom level of the pyramid, we have purpose. Why are you even writing in the first place, and why does your writing matter? I think it is so important to establish this for yourself first and foremost, really get to that why. Even if the why is just it's fun, and I want to yeah, but I think having that purpose is so important because if you have ever struggled with, let's say you're finding it difficult to finish a draft, and you think to yourself, like, maybe I should just quit. What does this even matter? Do you have an answer to that? Because your answer is going to be found in that purpose that you establish for yourself. Why does this matter? Because I find this freaking fun and I want fun in my life. Or because I know that my story about healing from postpartum depression matters because so many women go through it, and I need to share this story with them so that they know that they are not alone. So that's kind of the first level in my little pyramid. Hierarchy is purpose. Why are you doing this? Once you kind of have a pretty good understanding, and it can change over time, of course, but once you know why you're doing this, then I feel like the next step is commitment, committing to bringing your purpose about through writing. So often I see commitment as consistency. But consistency gets to look like whatever you want it to look like, and it gets to be as flexible as you need it to be. It could look like daily writing, if that is something you want to do. It could look like three times a week. It could look like twice a month. It could look like whenever you get the chance, like, it gets to look like whatever you want it to look like so long as you are committed to bringing your purpose about through writing. So those are the first two steps. I hesitate to blow through them all just in case there's anything we need to discuss at any point. Should I continue or do we have any thoughts there? I have thoughts, but I was going to say give me your thoughts. But I know we're working on kind of a bit of a time limit here.
[19:13] Rachel: I want to call out just very briefly. I very much appreciate in purpose how it can be anything that you want it to be. And it doesn't have to be like when I say quotes, it doesn't have to be like this grand vision for the world. I have had a client that I've worked with for years, and whenever I ask her, why are you writing this book? It's always such a big struggle for her because she just wants to have fun. And she always feels like the desire to have fun or the desire to have a reader just have fun is somehow less valid than the desire to change the world in the sense of you're going to somehow fix somebody else's trauma. You can't compare someone else's purpose to your purpose. Like, if you just want to have fun with your writing, great. That's a wonderful and fantastic purpose. And we all need a little bit more fun in the world because the world is really hard. So I love how you've called out for us that purpose matters more to you. And don't try to compare your purpose.
[20:11] Kristen Kieffer: To somebody else's purpose.
[20:12] Rachel: And whatever you think your purpose is, that's valid and important and special.
[20:19] Kristen Kieffer: So important. Yeah.
[20:22] Emily: I also have thoughts. I love the purpose piece and I love how you broke it into. We talk a lot about story message, like the story point, the message of your story, like the reason you're writing it, whether that's to entertain your readers or something else. But I think there's also the purpose for you as to like, okay, cool, your story has meaning, but why do you show up for X number of minutes or hours every day or week? Why are you giving yourself that time? And it could be because you're reaching those readers. It could just be because you're having fun. But I think I like this focus on what is your purpose that's just for you. Because I just recently struggled with this because I have a story. So for my previous work, in progress, had a really strong story point, had a really strong message. But what happened was even though that was the driving force behind the story, the primary driving force behind me showing up had sneakily become external validation. And that just completely ruined the joy in my process. And so with my current work in progress, I'm going back to, well, why do I show up? Why am I continuing to give my time to this kind of work? And right now, I've intentionally decided I'm just going to have fun with it. Like I'm going to work on a story that I have no idea where it's going to go. But I think that's important because if your purpose is to publish or get an agent or, you know, something outside of yourself, then it's not being fueled by your heart. And I think it's going to be really difficult to find, impossible to find fulfillment if that's what's driving you.
[22:12] Kristen Kieffer: Absolutely. Because you've placed your fulfillment in somebody else's hands. This can't feel good to me until an agent likes my work enough to sign me. This can't feel good to me until I've hit a New York Times bestseller list. You've taken that fulfillment and just given it to somebody else to do it as they will. And that's essentially an act of disempowerment. That's what I love about all of this unshaming work, is it's all about taking back your agency, taking back your power to make meaning in your own life and to find joy and fulfillment in your own life. It's no longer somebody else's. It's yours to create and yours to claim. Absolutely helps out. Yeah, let's give it to number three hierarchy. Let's do it. The next level. And this is where this pyramid is still a little bit of a rough draft because I view the next level as being community, but I'm almost tempted to put commitment and community on the same level of the pyramid because they are so, so important. I've been learning this with community, specifically how vital and important it is for myself over this past year. I've talked about this a lot. I'll keep it short, but I have a long history with social anxiety. It kept me from connecting face to face with fellow creatives for so very long. And I've just been beginning to tap into that for myself finally over this past year. And it's been like absolutely mind blowing, life changing. And I feel like I was missing a limb all this time and nobody like, I didn't know it because it's added so much to my creative practice and to my own sense of empowerment with my creative work. Having community, building community with other creatives is so, so important to and really foundational to growing and growing in whatever way you want to grow and achieving whatever you want to achieve, right? So when I talk about community, I'm specifically talking about, well, it's a couple of groups of people here, fellow creatives, so people that you can commiserate with, get encouragement from, provide feedback for, and vice versa, that sort of thing. That's a huge part of tenacious writing and a huge reason why I am in it, because I love, love the community that you guys have there. And then I also view community as people who maybe are not writers or not creatives themselves, but love what you are doing, love you and want to support you. So this could be like your mom who doesn't read Fantasy at all, but loves you so much and is cheering you on. Sometimes you need that support, right? On the flip side, it could also be mentors, editors, coaches, people who are cheering you on, encouraging you in your creative journey, helping you get to where you want to be. So any of those forms of community I think are so essential to build into your life. And I say build very specifically because I think a lot of people are often like, how do I source community? Or like, how do I find a critique partner? How do I find and you have to build it, right? It's not going to drop into your lap most of the time. It is a bit of something you have to develop for yourself and seek out for yourself. But that is the next this is why I hesitate to say it's like the third level of creative fulfillment because it feels so foundational, having community there to support you, encourage you, commiserate with you, mentor you. And essentially they're doing all of that to help you fulfill your purpose through your commitment, where that kind of ties all back in.
[26:11] Rachel: I love this so much. If I were to paint a picture in my life of what community versus not community looked like when I queried, I had the fans. Sometimes I think about the support system that you have that are not writers, that love you and that want you to succeed. Those are like your fans don't love that word because there's like a fawn reaction.
[26:36] Kristen Kieffer: You're cheerleader.
[26:37] Rachel: You're cheerleaders, right? So I had plenty of those that knew I was a writer. But when I would get rejections from my query or when I had no idea what to do next in my book to improve it and I was so scared of starting another story, I had every piece of my other community asking, when are you going to be published? I can't wait for this to be out in the world. And I just felt like I collapsed in on myself in a pile of shame because I wasn't living up to their expectations or my own. And I stopped writing for years. I just had no idea what to do. But then now okay, fast forward to now. I have an amazing community of people. You're one of them. Emily is one of them. I still have all those other people in my life, like my mom and my dad and my husband and everything. But now I just went through, like a really big hiccup in my story, and it feels like a hiccup. It doesn't feel like a collapse because I have everyone around me to where I was like, hey, I'm having a really hard time with this. Does anybody get it? They're like, yeah, I get it. I guess it's not like the end of the world for me to not know what to do next. I guess I don't have to just completely sit on my story and let it rot for two years because I'm so afraid. These other people give me courage. They give me courage and belief in myself and love, and I am energized by their energy and it's just a completely different experience. It's even hard to compare them. But that's basically the only difference is I have a group of people that are around me to lift me up. And back then I didn't. I mean, of course I've learned a lot along the way, and I've gone through a lot of personal growth, but so much of that growth came from being surrounded by these other people. I think human beings at our core, most of us crave empathy and connection. Absolutely huge fan of Brene Brown and all of her work in that area. And I am like, drinking Brene Brown's Koolaid every day.
[28:47] Kristen Kieffer: Love it.
[28:48] Rachel: We need connection and empathy to be the best versions of ourselves possible. I could go on about community forever. It is very foundational. I understand why you put it on, like, level three, but I don't think that that invalidates it at all or makes it seem any less important. It's so important.
[29:06] Kristen Kieffer: Yeah, it's so funny. That's why I'm still playing around this, of course, and why I'm kind of tempted to put commitment and community on the same level because they are both so incredibly foundational. But the funny thing is, even if we put community on that third level, I feel like levels one, two and three are so incredibly foundational in and of themselves. And it's funny because we're going to talk about it more in a second, but level four, I lump worlds and worlds and worlds of stuff into all of it is level four, because that's how foundational I feel like I'm getting ahead of myself because I want to start talking about level four. Tell us what level four is. Going back and forth. Level four of this hierarchy is what I've been calling advancement, and it covers like, pretty much any external goal you can think of. Advancement is finishing a draft. Advancement is leveling up any or all skills you want to level up through intentional study. Advancement is finishing a project. Advancement is publishing. Advancement is publishing your second book or beginning to market, building an online author platform. It's finding querying. Advancement is literally all of those external goals. I've lumped them all into one because there is so much fulfillment to be found there in all of those things. But those things are not the steps to fulfillment.
[30:39] Rachel: Yeah.
[30:40] Kristen Kieffer: They are part of a greater journey to deepen fulfillment that you've already built foundationally through purpose and commitment and community. And so I just shove them all into one level. Love it. No, I love it because there's something.
[30:56] Emily: Magical about like I love having purpose on the bottom that feels really important. Because if you don't know why you're showing up and then you go to try to commit or build a community, you're much more likely to be sort of influenced by other people's goals and purposes or commitment levels or all those other things.
[31:18] Kristen Kieffer: Right.
[31:18] Emily: You haven't decided for yourself, why am I here and what do I want from this? I love that being first. I totally see what you mean about community and commitment being side by side, because I also think that community can help you show up for commitment. There's nothing better than community for making you show up. But then for that advancement level, which is where people kind of often jump to, you're going to get so much further with your skills, with your projects, with your growth. If you have people who are growing and creating with you, and if you have commitment, like if you already have a commitment practice in place that ensures.
[32:03] Rachel: That you show up.
[32:04] Emily: If you just jump to learning, you're going to be learning forever.
[32:08] Kristen Kieffer: Right. You're going to be reading every craft.
[32:10] Emily: Book and never putting a word down.
[32:14] Kristen Kieffer: You can't even learn forever. You can't even read all of those craft books if you aren't committed in any sort of way. Yeah, because that is, reading craft or consuming courses or whatever to intentionally level up your skills is part of your writing journey. It is part of showing up and being committed to fulfilling your purpose is I think of each level of this pyramid as enabling the next. And I think that's why I've kind of stuck with putting community on that third level, because what's the point in being part of a community if you aren't showing up for your purpose in the first place?
[32:50] Rachel: Yeah.
[32:52] Kristen Kieffer: And then community in turn, enables and empowers you to achieve so much of that advancement that you want. It's hard to level up your skills without community, without feedback, without a mentor, a coach, or an editor. It's hard to query and not get discouraged, without people encouraging you and cheering you on. So each of the levels kind of enables the next in that sense.
[33:15] Rachel: Yeah. I want to go back for a second about how you said that in community specifically, but I think this still applies here, is that it is a choice to build on each of these levels. They don't just fall in your lap. And I want people to know that that make the choice to build on each of these, and that is how you get higher up in the hierarchy or how you continue to grow and learn. And I also want to add that you choose to do it to reach okay, this is where my words are going to get a little funky. I'm going for like I've seen so many writers who jump towards the advancement level as a procrastination tool because they are afraid of growing. Like, there's a fear that's blocking them. They're trying to go up the pyramid, but they're being blocked. And so they, like, jump around the pyramid because of some sort of fear. And when you take that fear away or when you recognize, like, I'm over consuming craft because I'm afraid of being rejected, if I write something down and it's bad, then you can be like, okay, where do I need to go on this pyramid to revisit, to strengthen the skill? Do I need to revisit my purpose? Do I need to go back to my community and share? I'm really struggling with procrastination, and I have this fear that if I or I have this belief that if I just learn enough, then I'll be good enough. Where is my disconnect here? And all of these pieces can play into each other, and you need to continue to build on them anyway. I'm going to just keep like.
[35:08] Kristen Kieffer: 100% I think you perfectly illustrated what I was saying, I think pretty much right at the top of the episode, which is how we often do things out of sequence. Maybe because we don't know any better. Maybe because we're afraid and we think that something external, some form of advancement, is going to assuage resolve our fear. Right? No, I think you illustrated that beautifully just now about how we often try to grow out of sequence and how it hurts us, how it undermines us, how it holds us back. Definitely love it.
[35:41] Emily: I also love how it's like a pyramid, not a path, right? So when we come back to what I was talking about before, where I had a strong purpose and that I lost it because my purpose became external, right. It makes the other parts of the pyramid start to kind of fall apart a little bit. And so you need to I think it's important to recognize that we can always revisit these. It's not like, oh, you've mastered purpose.
[36:09] Kristen Kieffer: Mastered step one, then step two.
[36:12] Emily: You have a community. It's like you have to keep building these things. But to reinforce my community, I really need to know my purpose first and those types of things.
[36:22] Kristen Kieffer: It's almost like the pyramid is like a little house that you live in, and sometimes the foundation starts to weaken a little bit. There's a crack you need to fill in, that sort of thing. Sometimes you just realize that the foundation has been eaten by termites, and you need to build a new one. And just move the rest of the house onto it, right? Definitely. I love that you've brought this up. This tool that I'm creating, this pyramid is not supposed to be some sort of like this is the one and only way, the one and only path. And if at some point you've disconnected from your purpose, that means you haven't used the tool correctly or that something's wrong with your journey, like no, sometimes you get to evolve with the tool. Right. You've disconnected from your purpose or your purpose is starting to shift. Awesome. Roll with it. Sometimes disconnecting from your purpose might mean, let's say you're switching genres. You don't plan to write in fantasy anymore. You want to start writing romance exclusively. Then your community tier might shift a little bit. Maybe there's a fantasy group you've been involved in that you love, but it's just not right for you anymore. You aren't getting what you need out of it. Every level of this can evolve in time. You can become a little bit disconnected from it in time and need to revisit shore it up. It's totally meant to be used flexibly. And it's not like some measure of perfection that you need to hold yourself up to in order to achieve perfect creative fulfillment or something. Right?
[38:01] Rachel: I just picture like you sitting at the top of this pyramid, like with your legs crossed.
[38:10] Kristen Kieffer: Kristen levels. Oh my goodness. Kristen is not even at the top of this. Don't worry. The top of this pyramid? No. Have we gotten to the top of it? Two more levels.
[38:22] Rachel: Okay.
[38:22] Kristen Kieffer: There are two more levels. And actually, literally while Emily, while you're talking earlier, I had to quickly pull up my little graphic of the pyramid because I was like I think I got ahead of myself a little. I tried to forgetting. So the next level of the pyramid is I was calling it influence at first, but I really didn't love that term. And a couple of people I got feedback from didn't love it either because influence kind of feels can have a connotation of being like manipulative, which none of us really loved. So I switched this term to impact is your creative work making the impact on yourself and on your people if you are choosing to share your art in the way that you want it to. So where I said I got a little bit ahead of myself is because with advancement and this is with advancement, I mentioned also like building your author platform or building your readership, that sort of thing, and honestly plunk that wherever you want to into this pyramid. I think now that I've looked at the graphic again, I would more identify that with being impact, doing something like marketing your work, building your online platform for the first time, or even perhaps like in person networking you need to do to make the sort of impact on the world that you want to. Are you sharing your art? I don't even want to say sharing because somebody I got feedback from was like, is it even important to share? Some artists don't want to share. Some people make art just for themselves. And that's another reason why I love the word impact. Here is your art having the impact on you, and if you want it to, the world in the way that you would like, is it helping you heal? The way that you would like, is it helping you have fun? The way that you would like, is it fun to continue making art? Is it fun to continue striving, to advance in ways that, again, feel purposeful, feel fun? Yeah, that's kind of what this level is all about. And then I'll go ahead and speak to the top level very quickly because it's kind of one that I'm still playing around with a lot. At first I was calling it mastery. I don't know if I love that word. Then I was calling it excellence. Don't know if I love that word. I do like the idea here, though, of a deepening, ever deepening devotion to your creative practice. This is the very long term stuff. This is you. Ten is you. That's great. Are you ten years from now, still committed? Maybe your purpose has changed a little bit, but do you still know your purpose? Are you still advancing from a place of desire? Are you still tapped into community that makes you feel upheld? How are your skills growing? It's just basically a continuation. And the point of the pyramid is not a destination you can reach. It's kind of just like a point that then is a path into infinity. There's no point in which you've mastered your writing skills and you never need to grow again. There's no more learning to do. There's no point where you've achieved excellence and you're just excellent now and you're done. Right? It is kind of just a point into infinity. Whatever infinity means to you, whatever a deepening devotion to your creative journey means to you, that is the top of my little pyramid.
[41:57] Emily: That's so cool.
[41:59] Rachel: Love that. Now I'm trying to think of all these words that you could call it.
[42:04] Kristen Kieffer: I still haven't settled on one that I like. It's tricky.
[42:10] Rachel: Out of what you said. I feel like I really resonate with the word devotion, but I also resonate with, like I've been thinking a lot about sustainability in my life and making sure that I'm putting practices in place that feel sustainable and long term to me that are going to get me to that fulfillment. Maybe you just call the top fulfillment.
[42:31] Kristen Kieffer: Yeah, but there's a lot I'm not.
[42:37] Rachel: Trying to solve this problem for you, but I love it. I love that this is going into infinity. It never ends. You're constantly revisiting and constantly questioning and not questioning in a bad way, but maybe checking in.
[42:55] Kristen Kieffer: Yeah, it's very much a deepening. Yeah, just a continual deepening. I need like a succinct word for that. But the reason I made a face when you were like, maybe you just call it fulfillment is because I don't want this pyramid to be seen as like, you have to reach this top level in order to be fulfilled.
[43:13] Rachel: I love that.
[43:14] Kristen Kieffer: Yeah. Fulfillment is like you're just defining your purpose. For the first time, awesome fulfillment is there. Just building consistency and commitment into your creative practice. For the first time, awesome fulfillment is there at every single level. Fulfillment is not something that happens down the road when you've published or built your career or whatever. It's always here and now. And it's really a matter of how we think about ourselves, our art, and our creative practice that determine whether we are feeling fulfilled or just frustrated in an ongoing way that burns us out and leaves us feeling ashamed. Yeah. This is so cool.
[43:59] Emily: Thank you so much for bringing this to us, Kristen. I think this is a really unique and important way to think about what a writing journey looks like that we don't talk about enough and don't talk about in these ways enough. So thank you so much for breaking it down for us and giving us an exclusive.
[44:18] Kristen Kieffer: Yeah, thanks for letting me share my rough draft of this with you, but no, I think this is such an important topic and the pyramid, like I said, is just kind of a tool that's come out of me thinking about this. And it gets to be whatever you want it to be, including, if it doesn't serve you at all, kick it to the curb. But the idea here is to really consider and get curious about where you might be feeling a sense of urgency, like a nasty, uncomfortable urgency inside of your creative practice. Because that's probably indicative of the fact that you might be feeling ashamed about something and essentially putting the cart before the horse, getting ahead of yourself and trying to resolve that discomfort through some sort of external achievement that's only not going to work out in the way that you might expect. Or it's not even if you achieve it, it's not going to feel all that good. Right? So what is that next foundational step that you can take? What can you focus on today to get to where you want to be tomorrow, a year from now, ten years from now, whatever? But what is that next foundational step? And if we can create in sequence in this way, create the practices and the journeys that we want to have in sequence in this way, everything gets to be easier, it gets to be lighter, it gets to be simpler. There gets to be way less mind drama about everything because you're not hoping that some external goal will make you feel fulfilled. There's so much more joy and fulfillment when you let yourself go in sequence rather than putting that cart before the horse. Yeah.
[46:05] Rachel: Before we wrap up, I am having one last thought about, okay, here's Hustle culture. So much of this is pervasive and Hustler we're not going to dive into that. We can go another, like, four or 5 hours about Hustle culture, but I think that this you mentioned getting to the heart of this urgency and dismantling where that's coming from and letting go of these external validations. And that can be very difficult when you are, like, steeped in Hustle culture and capitalism and all of these beliefs about productivity and everything and shame. So the question that I have for you so that we don't jump into this, where should someone start looking at those beliefs? Or do you have any resources you can point them to think about? Like, okay, Hustle culture is a big part of letting go of these external validations. Go here to learn about Hustle culture, or go here to learn about how capitalism is killing your creativity, et cetera, et cetera.
[47:11] Kristen Kieffer: I think a great place to start, if it's okay to plug myself here, maybe that's what you're setting me up for. A great place to start here would be that my Wild Making Podcast, episode two is how shame kills our creative joy, which is pretty much the basis of all of my work. We talk about what shame is, the kind of three major components of shame, how they impact us inside of our creative practice, which Hustle culture is a huge shaming narrative. Right. So you're absolutely right, Rachel, that so much of what we've talked about today is influenced by Hustle culture, this need to excel and achieve those external things. So if you want to start unshaming that, I think starting at the beginning with The Wild Making Podcast, many of those early episodes build on one another. I go from talking about how shame impacts your creative joy to talking about the role that your nervous system plays. It's also important I find myself, like, wanting to word vomit all of it on you. Now, that's not we're wrapping up, but I think that's a great place to start. And also, if you want excellent place to start. Thank you. And if you want more word vomit, you can follow me on Instagram as well. I share there almost every day now that I'm back. Had a long hiatus there, but I'm back. Yes. So you can find me on Instagram at Kristenker. If you don't know how to spell, that totally understand. I'm sure Rachel and Emily will leave that link for you as well as for the Wild Making Podcast. Awesome.
[48:47] Rachel: Okay. And then before we wrap up, what if someone wants to work with you? What are your services? What do you help people with?
[48:54] Kristen Kieffer: Yeah, so I help creatives achieve whatever they want to achieve externally, oddly enough, through looking at the internal work, through looking at the unshaming through looking at the mindset, through looking at what internal blocks might be there that they don't even recognize for themselves. Because just in the same way that sometimes we can't see the flaws and weaknesses in our projects because we're too close to them and we need feedback. Same thing with our own minds. Sometimes we are too caught up in our own narratives to see how they might be flawed or to see something that we're just missing there. So that is what I help creatives with. And right now, my core coaching offers are a little bit under construction, but for the month of April, I am doing kind of a coaching blitz of sorts. I'm offering 45 minutes single sessions for $65, and you can reach out to me about those. Or if you're listening in from the future, you can find more about my more core coaching offers on my website. Awesome.
[49:59] Rachel: Perfect. Thank you so much for coming on today. This is such a fabulous discussion.
[50:03] Kristen Kieffer: Thank you.
[50:04] Rachel: We would love to have you back.
[50:06] Kristen Kieffer: To talk about it with any one of these. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. It's been so, so fun.
[50:13] Rachel: Awesome. We will link to all your stuff in the Show Notes. We're going to link to Wild Making and your website. So go check both of those out. I am a huge fan of Kristen's newsletter. Get on her newsletter. She gives brilliance in those emails. So get on it. You're going to love it.
[50:29] Kristen Kieffer: Yeah, you can find that on my website. And thank you so much for saying that as well. But you can find that sign up link on my website. Awesome.
[50:36] Rachel: All right. If you want to build a successful, fulfilling, and sustainable writing life that works for you, you've got to get on our email list.
[50:44] Emily: Sign up now to get our free email course, the Magic of Character Arcs. After seven days of email mag, you'll have the power to keep your readers flipping pages all through the night.
[50:53] Rachel: Link in the show notes. We'll see you there.
[50:55] Kristen Kieffer: Thanks, everyone. Bye.
