[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] Lewis: I'm Lewis.
[00:19] Rachel: And I'm Rachel.
[00:21] Lewis: And today we are going to be sharing a little behind the scenes of our personal experiences doing NaNowrimo.
[00:28] Rachel: Yay. I love it. So thank you again, Lewis, for joining me co hosting story Magic while Emily is out on maternity leave. This is so much fun, and I am really excited to talk about this. It is November. It is national Novel Writing Month. You and I have both done it. And as we were talking a few weeks ago, we had vastly different experiences.
[00:52] Lewis: Vastly different experiences.
[00:55] Rachel: And I think a lot of people do. So we thought it would be fun to just discuss what it was like for us to do it, what we see in our clients as they do it, what we see in our communities as the writers around us do Nano and kind of share different perspectives, talk about what's the dialogue going on?
[01:15] Lewis: Yeah, I think it's interesting. When we get close to Nanorimo season, there seems to be two very different camps of what that experience is like. Yeah, there's the light your hair on fire, get meal delivery every day, pre sharpen your pencils, because if you so much as move, you'll never get it done. People who are just super stressed and have a really rough time with Nano, whether they technically win, which is kind of a win, and hit 50K or not, it seems to be a very dramatic, stressful experience. Yes. And then you always have the people who sort of swing into the conversation who are like, I wrote 100,000 words for Nano last year, and it was super easy, and I finished before Thanksgiving, and you're like, I'm happy for you, but how?
[02:05] Rachel: Yeah.
[02:07] Lewis: And I think that can make it hard for someone who is not even necessarily new to Nanorimo. Like, maybe you've tried it in the past, or maybe this is your first year, but for someone who's sort of looking ahead to Nano or sort of slowly going through Nano to try to reconcile their own experience with the very different voices talking about what Nanorimo is, quote unquote, supposed to be.
[02:30] Rachel: Yeah, absolutely. For those who are catching up or new to the writing world, November is national novel Writing Month stands for Nanorimo. And the goal, the challenge, I should say, is to write 50,000 words during this one month. And that equates to about 1667 words a day, which is a lot for a lot of people. It's a challenge if we just jump in. Doing Nano was, like one of the first few writing community events that I had ever heard of or been part of. And I think as a whole, we're going to get some hot takes in this episode. Okay. I think the challenge as a whole is admirable, is good. I really enjoy the organization that is behind a lot of the Nanorimo events. Like, there's a whole Nanorimo.org website. And I think generally, it's meant to be a very encouraging community, get involved in your writing life kind of event. So I think baseline, it's meant to be something that's very positive. I don't know that I have ever seen a singular event that causes more difficulty and harm in a writer's life than Nanorimo. And I'm saying that as someone who has air quotes won, which I also have a problem without words. So we're going to talk about that, too, winning this challenge. So please hear me when I say, like, I love this challenge, but I also think it could be really harmful. It can be, and I have experienced that, and so have you. You have had a difficult relationship with Nano.
[04:27] Lewis: Yeah, I was going to jump in and say, you said win and air quotes. Yeah. When I said win Nanorimo earlier, I was, like, doing huge.
[04:35] Rachel: Exactly.
[04:36] Lewis: Because win is a complicated term for that. I will jump in and give Nano a little bit of credit before I share my sort of experience with it. I think Nano has one very specific purpose that I think it excels at more than anything else, and that is getting people who have wanted to write a novel, and they've been turning it over in their head for ages, and they've just never managed to make the time. It just feels like too much to say, well, I can do anything for a month.
[05:06] Rachel: Yeah.
[05:07] Lewis: And to finally sort of make that leap, whether they hit 50K or not. I've talked to so many people where Nano was what finally got them to take their writing seriously and actually sit down and be like, this is something I can do. There are other people doing this, kind of like you said, it has a really interesting community around it, and I think that's a lot of writers first exposure to that. And so, full credit to Nano. I also have a somewhat complicated opinion of Nanorimo. I think for that purpose, Nano makes so much sense. But in terms of sort of the long term of building a sustainable writing practice, something that you can do throughout the year versus just one month out of the year, so that you can make that steady, lasting progress, that is often sort of the difference between authors who are able to sort of be in this game long term, and authors who sort of flame out Nano is not necessarily that Nano pushes you sort of to the extreme end of the spectrum. And in that instance, Nano has a kind of complicated relationship. I have, quote unquote, won Nanorimo, I think, three times now. None of those drafts will probably ever.
[06:33] Rachel: Exactly.
[06:38] Lewis: Both of us are editors. We do this for a living. We have a unique perspective on storytelling. We also probably have slightly higher expectations of ourselves than a lot of people would. As I was writing it, I was like, man, this midpoint, it's happening like, a solid 20 pages too late. And I just can't turn off that part of my inner editor brain. But that's true regardless of whether I'm doing nano or not Nano in particular. It was such a hard push to just get the words out that it wasn't necessary, because, yeah, there's truth to your first draft is just you telling yourself the story. You just have to get it on the page for a lot of people so that then you can go in and polish and edit and see it a little bit more clearly. But there's also something to be said for if your experience of writing your first draft is so stressful and so negative that it almost poisons it, even if the Story is fine and is a perfectly good first draft, it can make it really hard for your brain to go back to it. And I think for me, at least, those three nano novels, looking back, there's nothing that immediately jumps about the stories where I'm like, oh, this is unsalvageable. Like, any story can work, but, man, it's like gentle PTSD. I'm like, I don't want to touch those right now. That was a lot.
[08:07] Rachel: Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, I think I've done it maybe four times, and last year was my most recent time, and I did not do it this year because I'm in revisions for my current project. So it didn't really line up with timing, but those three drafts. So last year that I had done it with my fourth time going to use that project, but I was like, in a good space, and we'll talk about that. But the three previously, I might use their baseline ideas, but none of those words will ever exist to the greater world, ever. I still love the idea, but all of a sudden, I just was like, hey, what would happen if we added vampires in here? And all of a sudden, my book had vampires in it, and I guess there's nothing to do with the idea, but it's Nano and I'm just trying to write words. So there was, part of me was like, let's just make shit up. And then the other part of me was like, this isn't good. None of this makes sense. What am I doing? It was an interesting experience for that year. But anyway, I want to hear what were your three times doing it like? Because you were telling me earlier, I think they sounded very resonant with a lot of people who have done this challenge before.
[09:28] Lewis: So my first Nano was about ten years ago now, I think, and it was the middle of exam season. I was in college at the time.
[09:42] Rachel: Yeah.
[09:43] Lewis: That was also just like, really not for success. Yeah. Well, and I know this is such an oversaid, but November is truly the worst possible month for this.
[09:54] Rachel: Oh, my gosh, it is. What? And then there's thanksgiving and there's holidays.
[09:59] Lewis: Thanksgiving, there's holidays. It's exam season for students. It's like crunch time for anyone working retail.
[10:04] Rachel: God.
[10:05] Lewis: Oh, gosh, it's a lot. It's a bad time.
[10:08] Rachel: Let's throw it.
[10:10] Lewis: Yeah. Anyway, Camp Nano makes a lot more sense.
[10:14] Rachel: Yeah. Over the summer. Or what? Is it July or is it April? I can't ever remember when camp.
[10:19] Lewis: I feel like it's in April, but maybe it is in July.
[10:21] Rachel: No, it probably is in April. Anyway, there's a smaller version of Nano called Camp Nano that is held at a separate time of the year that.
[10:30] Lewis: I feel like has a very different culture around it. I feel like Camp Nano is much more like, set your own goals, whatever is realistic for you. And it's all about just writing a little every day. And I'm way more on board with Camp Nano these days than Nano. But, yeah, my first Nano, I don't think I quite hit fifty K. I think I was just shy. I got to like, 43,000 and some change. And of all my nano projects, that's the one that I most want to come back to. And I think speaking to that, what I talked about earlier of Nano has the potential to be a really important sort of kick in the pants for people who've been wanting to write a novel. It's never felt like the right time because that first year doing Nano was like that Magnum opus story that I think everyone has, that they're like, I'm just not ready to write yet. Where I was like, I've been mulling over it for probably another prior half a decade, and I was like, this is the year I'm finally going to sit down and write it. And I truthfully am just not ready to write it. Even today, ten years later, it covers like, a 20 year time span, and there's like, four point of view characters. It's just a lot. One day, maybe, but I feel like I technically won that year, even though I didn't hit the full 50K. I'm like, I got within spitting distance. I'm happy with that. But there was definitely that feeling of Thanksgiving evening, instead of hanging out with the people I was around, I was like, I have to go write 4000 words because I'm behind. And it was, I think, invigorating as my first time doing it, but it was also so deeply exhausting. And I didn't write anything for probably the next four or five months. And then my next two times doing Nano were even a little bit worse, to the point where I didn't write for, like, six to eight months afterwards, which I think is a somewhat common experience. I have one student who I've been working with for a number of years now, and she did Nanorimo last year, and her sort of daily life is already very hectic. She's a very demanding job. There's just a lot going on in her life. But she was going to do Nano, and it was all going to work out, and she has not touched her story since. It's been a full year. She wrote, like, 30,000 words, which is fantastic, but she's not happy with any of them. And kind of like what I said, it almost taints the story in a way. It's like the story itself can work, but you force yourself to push through it that long, and you start to forget that it can work, just maybe in a different setting. And so this year, she's skipping Nanorimo. She's like, I'm going to take a break. And our goal for her is that by January, we're going to start just taking a little piece at a time and slowly revive the story from the carnage of last year's Nanorimo. So, yeah, I've had, to be honest, mostly negative experiences personally doing Nano. And most of my students that I've worked with have really complicated feelings around Nanorimo, because it's just a lot. It's a lot to get through, especially if you're a slower writer or if you struggle with any kind of perfectionism, which I think is an important point to make, that I think your experience sort of proves is that Nano can work, but there's a lot of work you have to do beforehand to make that work.
[14:21] Rachel: Yeah, I think my initial experience doing this years and years ago was way different than the experience I had last year. And my initial experience that I had years and years ago, I think I was in college, so that was ten years ago. And then I did it a few years after that. But my writing life was so sporadic that I approached Nano as the fix of, like, this will get me back into it, I would go through these really short, intense bursts of writing a bunch of words, and then being almost in creative burnout, and then Nana would come along and I would be like, oh, this is going to fix me. This is going to get me back into the writing habit. This is going to get me in a writing routine. I think a lot of people approach it as if doing Nano won't give them the routine because they're like, 30 days of doing it. Like, well, it only takes 21 days to build a habit. You're like, well, you're pushing yourself to the very extreme. There's no way this is sustainable. But that's what my initial thoughts were on it of, like, if I do this, I can keep it up. But then at the end of the month, I don't think I've ever lost. I think I've always hit the words. Last year, I was at, like 48 five, and I got sick, and so I withdrew my name. Like, I stopped on purpose because I got sick, but, like, 48 five, I mean, I was there. That's less.
[15:59] Lewis: Again, you're in spitting distance again. The idea of winning is a little complicated there.
[16:05] Rachel: Yes, but every other year that I had done it before, I had definitely won, and I had won early. I was the one who was trying to win before Thanksgiving. And I think all the times that I had done it, I had won five days early, because I would write 2000 words a day, just in case I needed to take a day off. But then I wouldn't write for eight months, nine months, almost a whole year, until the next nano. And it was just like I had no inspiration. I used to think of myself as a writer who needed the inspiration. Like, I would open up my computer, and if I had no inspiration, I just wouldn't do it. It's clear to me now, looking back on it, I just had a very unhealthy relationship with writing in general. I had, like, a very unhealthy relationship with my own self beliefs, with writing, with habits, all of those things. And so it was a challenge that got me super hyped, and I love doing it. I still love doing it, but it left me in extreme burnout every single time and with no other, my momentum was just totally gone. Then in my own personal journey, meanwhile, I started this business with Emily. I started to think about, like, well, it's not just about how many words you can write. There are other factors here that play into your writing life. I had a baby, and that fucks everything up in the best way. What kind of writing routine can you have when you have a newborn? So all of those other factors were kind of a punch in my face of like, I have to think about my writing life differently. And so for two years, I didn't do it. I kind of had no mental energy to do it. But meanwhile, I was working on my mindset. I was trying to figure out, as a mother, how does writing fit into my life in general, let alone with, like, Nano. So my baby was born in August. So the year she was born in November, I still was not sleeping more than 4 hours a night. It was impossible. My baby. For all you parents out there, my baby never slept. So that was really difficult. And I really had to figure out what does it look like to have a writing life with the child? And that's when I got into all the mindset work. And we talked about this on an episode that will be out by the time. This one is about consistency and sustainability. And those became my focuses of how do I develop consistency and sustainability first. Then I looked at November last year, 2022, and was like, should I do Nano? And I feel like the best way I could explain it is like, if you take someone who has not trained at all, and you're like, run a marathon right now, you have 30 days to run a marathon or whatever, go run a marathon. They might be able to do it. It would take them a long time. But you could pull off 26.326.2 miles.
[19:18] Lewis: But they're definitely going to be hospitalized afterwards.
[19:21] Rachel: They don't have the training. You don't have the stamina, you don't have the mental, the energy, you don't have the mentality. You have to train in order to do a marathon. And I feel like Nano is a marathon. And if you don't train in order to do it, and I'm not talking like you have to physically train, but I'm equating the mindset of, you can't just take on this huge physical challenge and undertaking without preparing yourself for it. Nowadays, I think the same way about Nano is if you don't try to prepare yourself for Nano, if you don't try to build the sustainability and consistency into your routine before you take on a challenge like Nano, it will leave you burned out. Like, it's just not going to work out great. You probably will be able to achieve it. Tooth. I'm so proud of everyone who does it, by the way. I have no judgment if anybody takes it on. I want to talk so much in this episode about, like, if you quit, who gives a fuck? Quit. If you have to stop doing it, you're fine. You're still a lovely human being even if you stop doing it. But if you try to do it without training your mind and your body, that needs the physical stamina in order to succeed at this challenge and keep going, of course you're going to burn out. So I think people miss that part and they jump into a challenge like this without the stamina, without the mindset, without the whatever. And I'm not talking about you training yourself to become a fast writer. I'm just talking about, have you developed your beliefs? What is your attitude towards hustle culture? Are you equating your self value and your self worth to whether or not you can achieve this challenge? How looped in are you to a community that can support you no matter what? Are you going to feel ashamed? Are you going to feel guilty if you don't do it? Are you going to feel validated if you do do it? All of those types of questions, I think, are the preparation that I did last year ahead of Nano, and then I did it, and it was so much fun. It was so much fun. It was hard. I still had a life. I still had a job and a child and a husband.
[21:37] Lewis: Doesn't mean it's necessarily hurting you. I think that's the balance to strike of. Like, it is supposed to be hard, it's a challenge. There's supposed to be a certain level of difficulty to it, because that can be exciting and invigorating. Like, you're pushing yourself and you can feel it, but it should be hard, but it should not hurt you. You know what I mean?
[21:59] Rachel: Exactly.
[21:59] Lewis: I think to your point about, you wouldn't push someone out and be like, run a marathon and you'll be fine with training. When you say training, it's kind of like what you said. It's about your mindset and your beliefs. But I think a lot of people also discount just the pure mental stamina it takes to write that much. Because your brain is a muscle, it gets tired even if you think like, oh, well, I'm sitting at desk, I'm typing, I'm not doing anything. But you're thinking so hard, and there's so much that's happening in your brain, and if your brain's not used to that kind of intense creative output, that, one, is going to exhaust you, and two, it's going to make writing your novel seem insanely difficult, because you're like, I have no ideas. I have no inspiration, clearly. And that's when you start getting sucked into some of the belief issues of like, well, clearly this story doesn't work, or I'm not a good enough writer, or I can never do this. And that's probably none of that's true. Your brain is exhausted. You've pushed it to a point where it doesn't have the energy left. And so, of course, you're not going to be brimming with ideas. I think the fill the well, sort of adage that a lot of people say comes from a good place and makes a tremendous amount of sense. But I think people mistake that for just like, oh, well, I just need to read. I just need to read a bunch and get ideas from elsewhere, and then I can write. But filling the well is also like a deeper. Are you well rested? Are you caring for your body? Are you getting outside? Are you not pushing yourself too hard? Are you caring for your brain as a muscle so that it can have the space it needs to come up with ideas? And so, yeah, just like anything else, if you haven't trained that muscle and sort of developed that sort of mental energy over time, combine that with any sort of harmful Self beliefs or sort of bad patterns or a lack of support network, and Nano can become incredibly challenging. Just writing a novel can be incredibly challenging. Nano aside, Nano just throws so much.
[24:30] Rachel: Extra into think there. I think you're so right. And I am of the firm belief that most people that live in our Western society in the United States are operating on some level of burnout, just like that is now our baseline, 100%. I think most people are like, toe in the line of burnout, or they're fully in it, and they don't even realize how mentally, physically, and creatively exhausted they are. And then they see a challenge like this, and they're like, oh, that'll get me out of this funk. You're like, no, it will make your funk worse, because you have taken somebody who already is at their limit and not giving themselves the appropriate amount of rest, self care, whatever that looks like for you, refilling the well. And then they try to take on a challenge like this, which at its heart, I really have to say, I love doing Nano, but at its heart is a very difficult thing to do. And by the end of it, you're just like skin and bones. You're just so drained of, oh, my gosh. And then you wonder, is it me after you do Nano? And you're like, I'll take a little bit of a break, but then you just can't get back into it. And then I think the question circles back around is like, oh, am I a writer if I just can't write? And you're like, no. You have just continued to push yourself further and further down a burnout hole. And so I love seeing the writers in our community do Nano. But if you are in burnout or close to it, or you're not resting, or you have all these beliefs about productivity, you're firmly in hustle culture, which I always have unlimited amount of things to say about. If you are not resting and you are in burnout, I will never tell you, you should do this challenge. I'm like, don't do it. Don't. It's just going to be hard for such little payoff. Yes, you might get words down, but at what cost? Because then you can't write for, like, four months. I'd rather see people take the time, because it does take time to learn how to rest, especially when you're so embedded in hustle culture, where rest feels shameful and lazy. If you can take the time to learn how to rest, you can take the time, how to build sustainability into your process, and then you, on your own, are able to be consistent, whatever that looks like for you. Then you approach this challenge and it's just like ramping it up for a little bit, and then you can ramp it back down. And it doesn't just upend and destroy your entire creative health by doing something like this. I was going to say, I am a naturally fast writer. I write really fast. So I think for some people, if you write slow, you don't have to do this. If this doesn't sound, like, super fun and exciting, you don't have to. I have a client who also writes really fast and doing Nano, she looks forward to doing Nano every single year because it works with her brain to just pump the words out. It makes her feel really good. It makes her get really in depth to her story. It helps her brain stay on track. She doesn't forget things the longer she works on it. For some writers, it just works. But I also think for some writers, it doesn't. And it not working for you doesn't mean that you're not meant to be a writer or you're not meant to. This is the whole problem with hustle culture that tells us you have to write as fast as possible all the time, and the more you produce, the more successful you'll be. You're like, well, not exactly, because then you can take a look at a challenge like this, where the whole goal is to produce as fast as you possibly can. But I don't know the exact number. But my anecdotal response is going to be, the majority of people leave this challenge and don't write for a really long time because they're tired. You're like, well, I don't know that you're really achieving the goal here. Again, please. I just have to say I really enjoy Nano, but I think you need to be in the right space to choose to take it on, and I don't know that most people are.
[28:52] Lewis: Yeah. Again, respect for Nano, one for the people who run it, but also like Nano as a challenge. But again, it's like you can respect the organizers organizing the marathon, but you can be very scared for the 60 year old office worker who's about to run a marathon, having never trained. You're like, never done anything. I love you, and I want you to be happy, but maybe we shouldn't do this. Maybe we should build our way up to it. Yeah, I think that's a really good point. So for you not to put words in your mouth, but it sounds like you are at a place where you would consider doing Nano again in the future just because this year isn't your year. You enjoyed it. You would want to do it in the future.
[29:36] Rachel: I was going to. I was. So the book that I'm in revisions for, it's just taken me a couple extra, like an extra week to do the revisions. I wanted to write book two in this series during Nano timing just didn't work out. So, yeah, I was like, maybe I'll do Nano in December. Then I'm like, oh, shoot, there's Christmas and there's New Year's. New Year's. Terrible idea.
[30:00] Lewis: You think November is a bad month?
[30:01] Rachel: Wait, December travel. My daughter's sick, and I'm like, oh, God, I'm going to get sick anyway. Yeah, but yes, to answer your question, I would love to do it again. I think it works for me now that I have all the other. Not that my writing life is perfect in any way, but now that I have done all that other mindset work, and I do feel like in general, my writing life is very sustainable and consistent. Doing a challenge like this doesn't scare me, and it does feel like hell. Yeah, I could do 50,000 words. I could do 50,000 words in, like, three weeks.
[30:43] Lewis: My point to that is kind of to your point of, like, Nano doesn't work for everybody. Nano sounds like it really works for you. I probably will never do Nano again, both because I've had really negative experiences with it in the past, and I just know myself of, like, I'm not going to want to go back to it, but also because I am a much slower writer. I'm a much slower, methodical writer. I can write really fast. I wrote 100,000 words in two weeks. At one point. That was a lot.
[31:15] Rachel: Did not feel good after that.
[31:16] Lewis: Did not feel good after it. And it's funny. So you actually made this joke, I think, a couple of weeks ago, I sort of got my start in the editing space because I wrote a series called the Ten Day Novelist. And it's like all these, the writing process and how to break them down in ten days. And for anyone looking at this, like, oh, he was lying in those books. Like, no, I tested all of those processes and did them in ten days, in fact, for how to write your first draft in ten days. I did it twice.
[31:49] Rachel: I wasn't going to bring it up, but I'm glad that you did.
[31:52] Lewis: Listen, I own up to it. At one point earlier this year, actually, I was considering unpublishing those books because I'm at a point in my writing sort of journey where I don't necessarily agree, not with the content of them. I think what they're teaching is good in terms of craft and process and all those things, but the mindset of them didn't feel right anymore to like, oh, you should be able to do this in ten days. It's like, oh, not really. You should give yourself more space. You should give yourself the space you need. I've been told in no uncertain terms by a couple of my students not to do that, because they're like, I like those books. Shut up. Go away. And I'm like, okay, fine, I will leave them be. But I sort of, to your point was like, felt a tremendous amount of pressure early in my writing journey and even early in my time as an editor to be productive and produce more and go faster. And if you can find a way to go faster, you should take it. Because my thing is, like, I have 20 different novels I want to write, all in various stages of planning or being written. How am I ever going to get that done if I can't write faster? But I've since then done some of that work within myself and learned and worked with a wider variety of writers who don't all think the way I do, and started to realize that, yeah, I have 20 novels I want to write, and when am I getting it done? But pushing myself to that level means that the novels I write aren't as good as they could be, and it also means I probably won't get them done anyways because I'm going to burn myself out. And so I think there's that balance there of, like, if you thrive on that challenge, and if you have that good foundation to work from, and if you are a somewhat fast writer, if the circumstances of your life align, yeah, rock on. I mean, make it harder if you want. I've heard people, I'm going to do 80,000 words. Great. Have a blast. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. But if you're sort of, by the time this episode comes out, we'll be, I think, a week or two into Nanorimo. If you're getting, like, halfway into Nano and thinking, I'd rather lay in the road, yeah, don't do that. But give yourself permission to stop entirely if you need to, or even just to slow down. Like, if the idea of quote unquote, giving up is just, you can't reconcile that, I understand, but say, okay, well, set your own goals. Hey, if I can write 300 words every day, that is progress for me, that is consistency. And if that works for you, the thing I tell my students constantly, like, I need to get it tattooed on my forehead so they can just read it whenever they see me. All progress is good progress, even if it's small.
[34:42] Rachel: Yeah.
[34:44] Lewis: Something we talk about for first draft especially, which I think a lot of people do, first drafts for Nano, for first draft, especially the idea that you want to touch your draft in some way every day, because that keeps your brain on it, so you can just kind of chew on it for a while, and it can exist in your subconscious, and your brain can do some of that work, so that when you sit down to write, you have that inspiration there. Like, your brain has already kind of thought through what it wants to do, even if only subconsciously. But touching your draft every day does not mean writing 1667 words touching your draft might be like you're going to set a timer for 5 minutes and just brainstorm. It could be I wrote ten words today, and that's all I got in the tank, so I'm done. It could be you're having a great day and you wrote 2000 words, and it's amazing. It can be so many different things. That's what I would love to push people to think of Nano as is less of, like, I have to hit this word count and more of, can I get in the habit of just touching my writing every day?
[35:52] Rachel: Yeah.
[35:53] Lewis: And even that is a soft goal. If it's Friday and you're like, listen, it's been a long week. I don't have it in me. You can take the day off, but getting in that habit of just doing a little bit and just seeing what you have in you and what you can do and what you're inspired to do, I think on the one hand, I think that's healthier, and on the other hand, I think people would be surprised. And I know progress is a complicated word, but the real progress that they would make doing that. Ten words adds up, 300 words adds up. Next thing you know, you're two months in, you've almost finished a draft versus pushing yourself so hard and then either falling short and hating yourself for it, which I've done once or twice, or hitting that target and just falling apart. I have to hibernate for three months.
[36:51] Rachel: Absolutely. Everything that you're saying right now, I just completely agree with. And part of it reminds me of gallery. Yardy is a creative who works on, who focuses on coaching people through burnout and out of burnout. And we've had her on the podcast before. Our episode with her was, I want to find 27 episode, 27 Burnout with Gabriardi. So go back and listen to that if you're currently in burnout. And then there's links to all of her work in that episode. So ten out of Ten recommend her. She also has an Instagram page, and at the beginning of Nano, she posted, because, you know, like, girl Math is such a big thing on the Internet right now. She posted, like, a little joke about girl math, and basically, what are you going to say?
[37:41] Lewis: I was going to say not to age myself. I promise I'm not that old, but when it comes to the Internet, I'm like an 80 year old man. Get off my lawn. I have no idea what you're talking about. So please, for those in the audience like me, who are not online as much as I guess they should be, what is girl math? And why are people stoked about it?
[38:03] Rachel: Okay. Oh, my gosh. This is such a fun topic that we could do a whole episode on Grama. Let me give you, like, an example, okay? It's basically like you brought cash with you, so you have, like, $50 cash. Maybe you got part of your paycheck in cash, or you got cash from somebody. So you have $50 in cash. Then you can go buy something with that cash, and it's basically free because it wasn't in your bank, it's just cash that you had, so you just pay for it, and it was basically free. And that's growmath. So then if you go on vacation, and you brought, like, $200 in cash on vacation, well, you've already taken that money out of your account. So anything that you spend with that cash is basically free. So, girl math is like this kind of silly joke of how girls rationalize their spending.
[39:07] Lewis: What's really funny is a friend owed me for something that I'd covered him on and paid me in cash. And it's totally, like, sitting on the mantle by our front door, and I'm like, listen, it never hit my account. As far as I know, that money is free money. Exactly. That's so true.
[39:25] Rachel: That's growmap. So there's all sorts of little jokes about it, and know, not specifically just about cash, but about the way, know, people spend their money, and then they make up justifications for it. And you're like, oh, it's just girl math. Super funny. But Gary did a joke about girl math with Nano, and it basically is just regular math. But if you wrote, like, 300 words a day for six months, you could finish a draft. But if you do Nano and then you don't write for, like, eight months afterwards, you're behind on the amount of words that you could have had. So she's basically saying, the simple math of it is, if you stress and push yourself to the brink for Nano, and then you burn yourself out and you don't do anything, you're making far less progress than if you just had, like, 300 words a day for, like, three or four months. And it was a very clear Way of her laying it out that you don't need to work yourself into burnout to feel like you're making do. Just make small, sustainable StepS every single Day, and you're going to see more progress than if you take on a huge challenge like this, Expecting it to be productive. And then you end up burning yourself out, and you can't be productive afterwards. So I guess, Lewis, you just need to go learn about girl.
[40:53] Lewis: I. Clearly, I'm missing out because. Yeah, no, totally. All I can think now is next time I see that friend, I'm just going to be like hashtag Girl Math. And then, what the hell are you talking about? Mind you, this friend is like a six foot four Professional Welder. He has no idea what Girl Math is. He's going to be so confused. I'm just like Hashtag Girl Math.
[41:15] Rachel: Oh, my God, do you know what dinner is?
[41:19] Lewis: No. I've been missing out.
[41:25] Rachel: Girl Dinner, it's all over real.
[41:31] Lewis: Listen, I watch two YouTube channels and I Am on my Local city Reddit. And that's the extent of my social.
[41:37] Rachel: Media Usage I respect to. I'm not going to give you a hard time about that. I probably spent way too much time.
[41:44] Lewis: You can shame me. It's fine.
[41:45] Rachel: I know it's probably a healthier attitude than me who's like, ooh, Memes all the time.
[41:52] Lewis: Don't worry, I still doom scroll art Politics on occasion. I'm like, oh, this makes me impressed.
[41:57] Rachel: It's the same thing.
[41:59] Lewis: We're not all perfect.
[42:01] Rachel: Girl Dinner is like throwing together whatever you have. That's the least amount of effort that you can eat. So if you have Girl dinner, you could just do like a can of Diet Coke and cheese and Crackers and that's girl dinner.
[42:18] Lewis: Anyway, honestly, the can of Diet Coke is the only part of that that I'm concerned about.
[42:23] Rachel: Right.
[42:23] Lewis: Like Cheese and Crackers. That's a charcuterie board.
[42:26] Rachel: Exactly.
[42:28] Lewis: Put it on a fancy Plate, cut some pickles. Like, you have a charcuterie bOard.
[42:33] Rachel: Yeah, that's it. That's girl dinner.
[42:35] Lewis: Not to take us totally left turn, but it is funny when you think about, like, as children, we were like, oh, yes, our cheese and crackers and the adults are eating their charcuterie board. And now that we're adults, we're just like, you all were just eating cheese and crackers, you liars.
[42:49] Rachel: I know. And now when I'm an adult, I still just eat cheese and crackers because I'm like, I'm not going to let anybody. I'm like, oh, for my neurodivergent brain, for how busy my life is. If I want to eat cheese and crackers, I'll eat some cheese and crackers. Like, dang, it fills my stomach and I feel happy about it. I'll make a little lunchable.
[43:11] Lewis: Listen, lunchables. The lunchables you buy in the store are so much sodium, it makes me want to cry. However, lunchables. The concept. Ten out of 1010 out of ten crackers, a little bit of cheese a little bit of lunch meat. That, my friend, is lunch.
[43:25] Rachel: Yes. Okay, again, sorry, listeners, just one more tangent.
[43:30] Lewis: We really took this girl. Math really messed us up.
[43:33] Rachel: When we called this behind the scenes, we really meant, like, just listen to me and Lewis talk for a little bit.
[43:38] Lewis: This is how our brains work all the time.
[43:41] Rachel: So I have an inner ear disorder called Meniere's Disease, which messes with my balance and everything. Anyway, it means that I have to eat a low sodium diet. So I don't always. Let me be clear. I should. I can't eat lunchables anymore. They make my head just a giant. It's called oral ear. Not oral mouth, but oral as in your ear fullness. So it feels like half of my brain is just, like, swelling, and it makes my whole face feel like it's huge. It's because I get liquid. You have these little mucous membranes in your ears that control your balance. Okay, everybody learn about men's disease.
[44:23] Lewis: We're a science podcast now.
[44:27] Rachel: And they're in your inner ear, and they control your balance, and they can pop, and they hold fluid. And if you get too much fluid build up, they can pop, and that's what happens to me. So I have to be careful about how much sodium I eat because sodium retains water. So if I eat too much sodium, it will retain fluid in my membranes, in my ears, and it will pop, and then I have, like, insane vertigo. It makes my whole face feel giant. It's not like, harm. Well, I guess eventually I might lose my hearing, but anyway, eventually, one day. One day maybe not. So far, so good. I don't know where I was going with this. But anyway, sodium is not great for you. So I could just eat as low amount of sodium as you can, take.
[45:20] Lewis: The weirdest segue possible, and wrap this back to Nano. Like, just tear it back. If you're going to do Nano, eat a low sodium diet, because you're going to be sitting a lot. Exercise, care for your body, make a little charcuterie tray, but just, like, go easy on the salt.
[45:36] Rachel: Exactly.
[45:36] Lewis: What's funny?
[45:38] Rachel: Very high in sodium. Did you know that? They're delicious. Okay. Just take care of your body all around. In any riding life, you got to take care of your body.
[45:48] Lewis: Yeah.
[45:53] Rachel: Oh, so much fun. Where were you going to?
[45:56] Lewis: I'm going to be really sad if in the caption for this episode, you don't just casually have, like, hashtag girl math done.
[46:04] Rachel: I absolutely will.
[46:06] Lewis: Okay, well, I think moral of the story with that all said, yes, is, I guess if. If I'm thinking of a couple of my students in particular right now who are, who are doing Nano, and we're not to sort of reveal that much behind the scenes, but we are recording this a little bit before when it's going to come out, because that's scheduling. Yeah, that's how it works. We're sort of early in Nano as we talk, and those students are in that honeymoon phase at the beginning. I can do this. It's hard, but I'm excited and I can do this. And listen, I am so thrilled for them, and I'm going to give them all the love and support as long as they're feeling good. But thinking for them and thinking for anyone listening to this, now that this is out and sort of like mid November, we're like barreling down on Thanksgiving. We're just like, oh, yeah, all my well laid plans are not going the way I expected. It's not just you.
[47:09] Rachel: Yeah.
[47:10] Lewis: It's not something wrong with you as a writer. It's not something wrong with your story. Don't start thinking like, oh, this story will never work. Every story can work. And it's okay to say, I'm going to take the progress I've made and I'm going to call that good. Yes, again, all progress is good progress, even if it's small. Say you wrote ten, say you wrote 20,000 words in the last two weeks, and you're just like, this is amazing. And, oh, my God, but I am so exhausted and the thought of sitting down at this page makes me want to cry. Give yourself permission to step back. And for you, that might look like, I'm going to call it good. I'm going to be done with Nano. I'm going to take a break and recover, and I'm going to try to get into a slightly healthier, more consistent routine in the future. Or that can look like, if you don't want to give up on Nano entirely, that can look like saying, like scaling back a little bit, what would feel realistic for you, what would not push you to the point of exhaustion, but would still be that little bit of progress every day. Because to your point and to what you mentioned, that sort of brought up our tangent of, like, if you can maintain that little bit of progress consistently, that will add up to not only a finished novel, but a novel that you're a lot happier with and into something that you can carry forward into revisions into your next novel, into other projects, into whatever you have going on. And so if this year's nano is when you're going to start that, give yourself permission not to try to push yourself to hit that full 1600 plus every day.
[48:49] Rachel: Yeah, absolutely. I think this is why I don't love the word winning for completing the challenge is because on the other side of that is losing. And I agree with you that all progress is good progress. And I don't want anybody who begins this challenge to feel like they have lost if they don't hit whatever their goal was. I feel like that's not a healthy way to look at any type of writing challenge or any type of writing day, singular day, like, I have lost if I have not met this goal of productivity. It's like, well, that's hustle culture. And that's why I don't like calling it winning and losing. It's more just like, hey, you're doing this. You're making progress every single day. That's amazing. You should celebrate that. You should take the day off when you need to take the day off when you're feeling better the next day, go at it. See how much you can get down and celebrate every single word that you write on any day, not just during the month of November. But remember, too, that your worth is not tied to your ability to complete this challenge. Your worth is not tied to how many words you can write in any given day. You're already a loved and valued human being. You don't have anything to prove. Doing Nano will not give you the validation that you're seeking. You have to find that within yourself baseline. And then once you can validate yourself, these challenges don't feel like such a monumental failure if you aren't able to complete them or if you decide to change your mind or if you like. There's so much pressure that we carry around this idea that doesn't really exist of failure, that gets wrapped up in the completion of this challenge. And if we can separate out some of those core beliefs about failure and success and timeline and productivity and what your definition of success is, this challenge becomes a lot easier. It becomes a lot less daunting, and it feels like it's way less. The stakes aren't as high. It can feel like the stakes are so high for doing something like this. When you see all your friends do it, and if you can't do it, you're the OD person out. And then what? You've failed, and everybody knows, and you can't post that little picture that they give you at the end of the month if you win and like, oh, no, I can't be a winner. I'm going to lose her. Like, no, you're not a loser.
[51:24] Lewis: Make your own little picture. It's funny when you were describing hashtag girl math, and I think that's something I think to be serious about it, I think that needs to be said because I think a lot of what you're describing in terms of rejecting hustle culture and listening to your body and knowing when you're burnt out, I can hear you say that and understand what you're saying and lean into it and be like, yes, this makes sense. This is right. Because you and I have talked about this and you fussed at me enough time and I've started to do some of that mindset work. But I think back to myself even twelve months ago and I would be so closed off to that because I'd just be like, it's just excuses. Which now I'm like, that's very silly. Past me. Come on. But I think the argument of consistent progress is better than big sprints and then doing nothing. And that's what so many people experience. And so even if they've made it to this far in the episode, but if you're listening to this and you're like, I'm not sure about the huffle culture stuff, that's okay. You don't have to totally be like, yes, this all makes sense, but listen to the progress of it. Listen to the math of it. If you're feeling yourself, get to a point where the thought of writing makes you miserable, then that's not making you progress. Even if you're writing words, there's going to come a point where you can't keep doing that anymore. And for those who are listening to this, who are like, totally understand what you're saying in terms of hustle, culture and burnout, then great, you're grasping some of this. But even for those people who are like, this still feels very foreign to me. That's okay. Think of the math of it. Because the math don't lie, girl.
[53:22] Rachel: Never lies.
[53:23] Lewis: Never lie. Listen, that $70 sitting on my mantle. Free money.
[53:28] Rachel: Free money. You can do whatever you want with it and it doesn't mean anything. It's free. Yes. I love it. Okay, I'm going to plug our little thing we're doing together and then we'll start to wrap up. So Lewis and I and another wonderful creative named Tiffany Grimes from Virgin Design and editorial are hosting a workshop about creative consistency and bringing a lot of these beliefs into your writing life. Determining how do you rest? What does that look like when you're experiencing writer's block, what is it really getting to the root of you're. If you feel like, oh, I don't quite know what you're saying about hustle culture, but maybe I'm interested in learning more. We are hosting a workshop about all of this when this episode comes out on November 16. Our workshop will be on November 18, so two days later. So I want you to swipe up to the show notes and I will put the link for the workshop in there so you can join us. We're going to do three really amazing sessions to dive into how do you build this consistency into your writing life? How do you feel really good about your writing routine? How do you develop some of these beliefs and these habits that are going to set you up for long term success that feels really good to you versus working yourself out into a burnout hole? So the link for that will be in the show notes. Go check it out. We're so proud of this workshop and we can't wait to share it with you. So it's going to be hosted on November 18, 2023. Grab your ticket now and we'll see you there. Awesome. Anything else? Are we good?
[55:12] Lewis: I think we're good. I just have way more girl math jokes to make. But now is not the time.
[55:19] Rachel: We need to do, like, bonus episodes.
[55:21] Lewis: That are like, yeah, do an extra 15 minutes of us, just like you introducing me to internet memes that I don't know about. Honestly, that would be a great April Fool's episode because, listen, I really do watch, like, two YouTube channels and scroll up my local city subreddit. I got nothing.
[55:40] Rachel: There's a whole wide world of social media memes for me to. I'm just going to start emailing you links. It's like, here, go watch this. TikTok.
[55:49] Lewis: Yeah, TikTok. Man, I sound so much older than I am. Some days I'm like, I'm still a child, but the thought of TikTok, I'm so confused. Just, I don't understand.
[56:00] Rachel: I just do reels. I'm not even really on TikTok.
[56:05] Lewis: The only TikToks I've seen is a guy homesteading in West Virginia with his dog named Minion. The dog is really cute, and the dog wears a little vest, and he goes and fetches the eggs in the morning. He just goes and picks them up and sets them in a basket and then carried them home. And I'm like, if this is what TikTok is, I'm game, but I don't think that's what most TikTok is.
[56:25] Rachel: Not most of it. I will say not most of it. But they do have algorithms, and you can get into an algorithm, and if you're in a good one, it's great. But if you get in a not good one, in a bad one, it's not a good. Right. All right, so thank you so much, Lewis, for joining us for co hosting with me today. I really appreciate all the time you've spent hanging out with me. Thank you. Don't forget to go check out Lewis's website, thenovelsmithy.com. And he is an awesome person, so go work with him and we are all set. So if you want to build successful, fulfilling and sustainable writing life that works for you, you have got to get on our email list. Sign up now to get our free email course. The Magic of character works. After seven days of email Magic, you'll have the power to keep your readers flipping pages all through the night. Link in the show notes. We'll see you there. Bye.
