[00:13] Rachel: Hey, writers.
[00:14] Emily: Welcome back to Story Magic, the podcast that will help you write a book you're damn proud of.
[00:18] Rachel: I'm Rachel.
[00:19] Emily: And I'm Emily.
[00:21] Rachel: And today we are joined by our very good friend and fellow book coach, Jocelyn Lindsay. Welcome. Hi, Jocelyn.
[00:29] Jocelyn Lindsay: Yay having me.
[00:31] Rachel: Of course.
[00:32] Emily: We're so excited.
[00:33] Rachel: We are. This is going to be such a fun discussion. We're going to be talking about writer's block with perfectionism looped in there and really trying to get at the heart of what causes it and how it shows up in our writing lives. But before we dive into that, Jocelyn, would you introduce yourself for our listeners? Tell them a little bit about who you are, what you do, and how they can find you.
[00:57] Emily: Sure.
[00:57] Jocelyn Lindsay: Yeah, absolutely. So I'm Jocelyn Lindsay and I'm a book coach. I've been working with writers for professionally, formally the last five ish years and a few more years tacked onto that, not formally. You can find me over at instagram, where I'm having a really good time making ridiculous reels right now.
[01:25] Rachel: Love it.
[01:26] Jocelyn Lindsay: And then my website, which is jocelynlindsey.com, and I have a newsletter that sometimes is ridiculous as well. I like to approach writing from a perspective of, it should be fun. We're gods of our worlds and we should be having fun being deities.
[01:50] Rachel: And.
[01:50] Jocelyn Lindsay: We should knock off the bullshit and get our worlds built.
[01:53] Rachel: Yes. I love that. I feel like I have to say, fun is such an integral part of my vision of your what? As I consume your brand. Like, that's what I see. And I'll tell you the first. So when Emily and I were doing our author accelerator training years and years ago, you were just finishing it, or you had just recently finished it. And I remember, I can almost picture the image you had posted, an image of your business card or something about in the vein, and it had your red glasses, which you're wearing right now. And I just remember that was an integral part of who you were. Just instantly, it was like, oh, she's so fun.
[02:38] Jocelyn Lindsay: Oh, well, thank you.
[02:39] Rachel: Look at her personality. Yeah, it was like, wow. I remember being like, wow. She found her author platform, her book coach platform. She's like nailing it. She knows who she is. I feel like that was that sentiment. You know who you are.
[02:54] Jocelyn Lindsay: Yeah, I try. I think it's really easy for writers and coaches and humans in general to get caught up in a whole lot of things that just, at the end of the day, don't matter. And we're going to talk about some of that when we talk about mindset, but I think it's really important to try and keep moving forward with who we are and the direction we're going.
[03:17] Rachel: Yeah, actually, you know what? That's such a good tie into. I could keep going forever, but I was just going to say we're going to talk about perfectionism and TLDR. Perfectionism is such a fear of an internal lacking. And I just heard from you so much right now that we need to find that place. I feel like when I see your brand, I get that feeling of, let's be confident in who we are, and we can tackle a lot of writing from that place of confidence. And that carries over into our discussion about perfectionism and that fear.
[03:57] Jocelyn Lindsay: Yeah.
[03:58] Emily: I'm so excited to have you here, Jocelyn, because Jocelyn works with a lot of one on one clients. A lot of them she's worked with a lot over the last five years or however many years you've been officially doing this. And I think one of the big questions we brought to Jocelyn is we would love to hear. We wanted to hear her perspective on what do people usually bring to her.
[04:22] Rachel: Right.
[04:23] Emily: Because when people are searching for a coach, it's because they want something that they feel that they're not having in their writing life. Like some kind of level up or they have a block they want to break through or there's something that they're seeking help with. That's where we kind of got to this whole mindset thing is because you basically were like, this is one of the biggest things that people bring to us. So can you tell us a little bit more about that? What do you see when people come to you and they're like, help?
[04:50] Jocelyn Lindsay: Yeah. Well, I think it takes a certain amount of courage for somebody to first off find me and then send me an email, because I make it very clear on my website that while I'm fun, I'm also very much no nonsense. I have no problem telling writers, this is the bullshit that's slowing you down. Get over it or you're going to have a problem writing a book. So that adherence to my personality and my no nonsense, I think writers that come to me are at a point where they know they have been writing the same book for 20 years. They have been going through the churn of, how do I get a book finished? How do I get a book published? They're stuck somewhere. And we've talked about this before, and they look at me as, like, the dynamite that's going to help break whatever barriers they're having. And they're not wrong, because I do it lovingly, but it's like, okay, this is where you're stuck. This is where you're getting caught up. And you hired me to be a book coach, and if you're not writing a book, I can't help you.
[06:11] Rachel: Right.
[06:14] Jocelyn Lindsay: I really think that most of my clients, a lot of them come in where they haven't gotten a first book written. They can't get to the end of a first book. Others will come in where they can't get out of the editing process, where they have reedited and reedited and rewritten this poor book. It's like taking a shirt or something that's supposed to be dry cleaned, and it goes through the wash and the dryer 47 times, and by the time it comes out the other side, you don't even know what you're looking at. So I think a lot of my clients just come in at a point of I don't know what to do, and I need extreme help to figure out how do I move forward.
[07:02] Rachel: Right. Yeah. I think we have a similar experience where whether they know it or not, or whether they're aware of what block they're experiencing and why they still feel like it show up as I can't finish, or I don't know what to do, or I feel paralyzed. I think a lot of times it manifests in paralysis or, like, spinning your wheels, where you're just. I love metaphors, and I love the one you just threadbear shirt. Throw my own in there. You're like a car stuck in the mud in Alabama where the back wheel spins and the other one does.
[07:48] Jocelyn Lindsay: I think what I do find is clients come back to me once we've gotten through that book, ready to start a new book. And I get clients that come back in different places because they've broken through that barrier, and they're like, oh, I can do this. I want to do it again and not wait till I'm stuck in the Alabama mud to make it right.
[08:13] Emily: Yeah. Yeah.
[08:15] Rachel: It's so interesting.
[08:16] Emily: I feel like what we're dancing around is the ideas of both perfectionism and procrastination, which are just two sides of the same coin. And I feel like, from my experience, a majority, if not all of the time, those two things are driven by some kind of fear that people have about their writing. So do you find that with your clients, and are there different kinds of fears? I feel like that would be an interesting thing to break down, is what are we bringing to the page when we are stopping ourselves with these kinds of procrastination, perfectionism tendencies.
[08:54] Jocelyn Lindsay: Yeah. There's so many different wardrobes for fear. It can show up in so many things. And I think you're talking about the ladder of perfection. Writer's block, this block to perfectionism, to fear and that awareness as you move up the ladder. And perfectionism. A lot of what I see in perfectionism is the belief that I'm not good enough, or it's just not good enough. And the I'm not good enough is doubt. And then the other one I see sometimes with perfectionism, not as often as I'm not, or it's not good enough is ego. I'm a special snowflake. And that also comes from, I think, a place of fear. Writers, we are brilliant at making ourselves and each other feel really crappy about what we're doing, and it just exacerbates whatever we have brewing around in our brains, what we bring to the writing. And I don't think we do. We don't do that intentionally. But if we're caught in a cycle of I'm not good enough, and somebody says, oh, this description is too short, then it's like, oh, no, I'm not good enough, and they've made me feel bad.
[10:25] Emily: Yeah, they've just proven it.
[10:28] Jocelyn Lindsay: They've just totally proven why I'm not good enough. And I think that this writer mind that we have shows up disguised as a craft issue. We want to bring everything back to craft, because craft is simple.
[10:52] Rachel: Craft has a fair boundary. Nothing to do with you. Exactly.
[10:57] Jocelyn Lindsay: It's a skill set. Right. It's like riding our bike or whatever. And mind, sometimes I think I'm like a book therapist because really so much of it, and, and it comes in waves, but that, that idea of how do, how do writers get out of their own way? And sometimes they can't because of what they're bringing, what fears they're bringing to the page.
[11:30] Rachel: Right. Yeah, I like that you've described this as, like a journey to self awareness. And I think every client that comes to a book coach, to us, to you, is somewhere on that journey. Whether they start being like, no, it's a craft thing to being like, oh, I'm such a perfectionist, I have no idea how to get past it. And then maybe they circle back around to, if only I knew more craft, it would fix me. But there's different levels of this self awareness. And if a listener is listening right now being like, I don't know exactly where it is or where I fall. How do you explore with your clients? Or how do you might maybe approach someone who says, no, I just need to learn more craft. And it would fix all my problems to trying to circle back around to actually, I think you're really struggling with this idea of not being enough, not being good enough. Yeah.
[12:26] Jocelyn Lindsay: Sometimes it's like getting a little kid to eat vegetables. Got to sneak the mind conversations in. Beneath the delicious, crunchy sugar coating of craft, I try and start all of my calls with all of my clients with a very simple, how did the writing feel this week?
[12:52] Rachel: Right.
[12:53] Jocelyn Lindsay: How's it going? Just sort of like a check in and it's a vegetable. It's that disguised of the writing. And really what I want to know is the feeling. And so the writer can talk about the writing, but when they start talking about feelings, I can start gauging where it is that they're getting stuck, or asking like, so how did you sell it? Things sound like they went really well. How did you celebrate? Well, I didn't. Oh, okay. So now let's talk about why it's important to celebrate. Why is it important? So I try and find just these little adjacent ways to come at mindset. And if I have a writer, and I've had writers who have been very caught in this trap of perfectionism, where it's like they can't move beyond a page because it's not perfect. And sometimes that, quite honestly, sometimes that's beyond me because it will start delving into something that's coming up out of their life. It will start becoming something that might be, you need to talk to somebody else. I can help you with a book, but I can't help you with these feelings that are coming up about your mother or your father or where perfectionism maybe came from as a child for them. But it's like I mentioned that I'm playing on instagram with reels. This is a tactic I use to get myself out of that headspace of, it's got to be perfect. And I've tried to shift that is, it's not perfection, it's progress. How do I keep moving forward? How do I keep progressing? How do I keep getting something out there? And I will play with that, with writers. Just put something on the page. I don't care what's on the page. Let's get something on the page. Just try and start breaking some of that up. Some writers, perfectionism is like, it gets in there. It's like a tick. It gets in there, and it will just sit in there. And if a writer is not, I think this is true of all writing and all of the coaching we do. If a writer is not willing to at least make the attempt, it's really hard. You can't force a writer to. I mean, none of us are going to, like, show up.
[15:40] Rachel: Yeah.
[15:40] Jocelyn Lindsay: We're not going to show up at the writer's doorstep with a baseball bat and say, finish your book or else they have to write it. Right. So it's how do you find, and how do I find the little tricks and the little games and that strategy to start playing and plucking at some of those uncomfortable places to try and get them to be more comfortable with trying something different or that they wouldn't otherwise do.
[16:10] Emily: Yeah, I love that you say you can't do it for that. People have to be willing, and I think that's one of the tricky things, is as a coach, if you're going to coach someone through mindset issues, they have to be, to a certain extent, right. Willing to get uncomfortable a little bit, because that's the only way to work through mindset blocks like perfectionism, procrastination is you've got to be willing to be uncomfortable. But when you find someone who is willing to be uncomfortable, it's so fun to work through those mindset issues with them because you just start to see these. When people just put their trust, they're like, okay, I trust you. I'm going to do the things that you tell me to do, even though I know they're going to make me uncomfortable and I don't really believe in them yet. Just being willing to sit in that discomfort is such a fun place to play. I'm curious, you say you have tips and tricks for helping people get out of their, let's just say, perfectionism for now. I know Rachel and I have some of those tips and tricks as well. I'm curious, what do you tell people to do? What are some of your little sideways.
[17:16] Rachel: Yeah. Exercises to get them to break out activities?
[17:22] Jocelyn Lindsay: Sometimes I'll ask them to rewrite just a paragraph. Just take that paragraph and rewrite it. Take something that you're working on and rewrite it. Rewrite it again. Rewrite it again. And then rewrite it from a different character's perspective. Rewrite it from a different genre. Take like, if you're writing a romance, write it from a horror perspective. Play. A lot of it just comes down to just start playing with it. And I think part of the fear of perfectionism is that it's going to be wrong. It's not going to be good enough. And it's, how do you get not so precious about something? How do you start breaking down that calcification that the mind is going through? By making everything so precious, you can't let go of anything. I worked with a client in person at one point, and we worked, and I had them write a page. Write a page from your character's perspective of what's their morning routine look like? Or just something. And we did these little exercises, and then at the end of the time, we lit it on fire and burned it. They didn't know that was coming. They did not know that was coming. And they totally freaked out. And then I'm like, okay, now write something else. How do you start letting these things go so it's not so terrifying? And I think that's part of that fear, is that holding on because it's scary. And what I find, really, that a lot of my writers, and I'm sure this is true of a lot of writers, they're less afraid about it going wrong than they are about it going right. And that's really interesting to see, when writers start talking about, well, everything that will go wrong. Okay, so what about if it goes right? Let's talk about that. And that can sometimes be a much scarier place because they already know they can't write right. I can't write. I'm not good enough. I can't do any of this. Okay, let's spend some time and talk. Let's do an exercise of, what does it look like if it's good? What does it look like if it's successful?
[19:58] Emily: Our business coach has us do that whenever we get into the. Like, all the things I could go wrong. She's like, but what about what could go right?
[20:05] Rachel: Yeah.
[20:06] Emily: It's such an important reframe.
[20:09] Rachel: Yeah. I think what you've pointed out so well is perfectionism is a fear of being unsafe. It's a fear of the danger, like the hurt, the rejection, the shame. All of that compiles into a deep sense of feeling unsafe. And there's a lot of different ways where you can try to build that safety. I think there's, like, as coaches, we look for those ways where we're building safety with the material. Where you write the material, we write the material. We practice the skill of writing it so that it becomes more safe to do the action. And then I also think, on the flip side, there's, like, the safety of one's relationship to oneself, where you have this fear of being unsafe, that is writing related, where you're afraid of being rejected. But that rejection is not just a rejection of your words, it's a rejection of self. And then you have to build the safety of that. Let's learn to love ourselves, that vein to really simplify it. But building in those areas, too, of, okay, perfectionism isn't. Perfectionism is also about learning how to feel enough, and that shows up in the way you write, but also in the critic, the voices that are in your head and the narratives that you tell yourself and reframing that at the same time that you're practicing the skill and getting more comfortable, trying new things and playing and having fun. All of it is. It's all pieces of the puzzle to grow one's relationship with oneself. And I think that's really, like, the need for external validation turns into validating oneself, and then perfectionism kind of dissipates. It doesn't go away. I don't think it doesn't go away ever.
[22:06] Jocelyn Lindsay: No.
[22:06] Rachel: But it feels less like a goblin that you have to fight. Like, less like a monster and more like, oh, there's this thing over here, and its name is Susie, and Susie and I just hang out sometimes just a little bit. Babadook. Have you guys seen the Babadook, that movie?
[22:24] Jocelyn Lindsay: Yes.
[22:25] Rachel: Okay, so then you know the whole point of spoilers for anyone who's not seen. I think this movie is, like, ten years old. I don't know. It's a horror movie, but the Babadook almost, like, represents fear. It's like a monster movie. So the Babadook lives in the basement and is terrorizing this family, and it's called the Babadook. Anyway, it kind of represents fear because at the end of the movie, they don't get rid of it. They just chain it up and learn to live with it. And it just lives in their basement, and it's, like part of their life. And it was like, the first time I watched it, I was like, what? They don't kill it. They don't exercise it from their home. And then I was like, oh, actually, yeah, you don't get rid of fear. You just learn how to manage it. You learn how to choose action around the fear. So I didn't know that I would be comparing perfectionism to the Babadook of this call.
[23:23] Jocelyn Lindsay: It's really.
[23:26] Emily: Brilliant.
[23:27] Jocelyn Lindsay: Yeah, it's great. Yeah. Because it's exactly what you say. It doesn't go away. And I like that you named it Susie Babadook. Right?
[23:38] Rachel: I mean, call it the.
[23:45] Jocelyn Lindsay: That perfectionism, that fear, they just change. You can go from I'm afraid of that nobody's going to like this. So I can't write to. I'm afraid that somebody's going to realize I can't write after you've published the Babadook. Doesn't change, Susie. Doesn't change. They're just being. I think a lot of it is like you said, it's like, how do you become aware that they're hanging out and then that it's not so terrifying.
[24:20] Emily: Yeah. With my clients, I like to do just like what Rachel was alluding to, this idea of separating it from self, because I think oftentimes it's like having two voices in your head, and it's really hard to distinguish what's true and what's. And so one of my clients calls hers dark Kermit.
[24:41] Rachel: Dark kermit. Yeah. I've seen the meme.
[24:46] Emily: And so she'll come to me and it's like, okay, well, this week, dark Kermit said, right. It's like this part of me that is afraid said these things. And instead of those just being truth, right. Because your brain said it, it must be true.
[25:00] Rachel: Right?
[25:00] Emily: You separated a little bit, and it's like, okay, this other piece of me is saying these things. Is it true? Is it not true? If it's not true, where is it coming from?
[25:10] Rachel: Right.
[25:10] Emily: And we get to kind of have a conversation about, well, it's afraid of these things happening. Are those things reasonable? Probably not.
[25:18] Rachel: Right.
[25:18] Emily: And if you treat it like a child, like, darker. Susie's a child.
[25:23] Rachel: Right.
[25:23] Emily: But if you treat it like a child has come to you and it's like, oh, I'm afraid of the dark because there might be things in the dark, or you don't shame that child. Like, how dare you think there are things in your closet, right?
[25:36] Jocelyn Lindsay: You sit with a horror movie.
[25:39] Rachel: Exactly. There you go. Yeah. The mom's all telling him he's crazy. It doesn't exist.
[25:50] Emily: So you don't do that because it.
[25:51] Rachel: Could be a Baba duke.
[25:54] Emily: But I think it's so powerful when you start to see that voice and you're like, okay, this is what that voice is saying, and this is why it's saying it. And I can comfort it and I can love it through that. And it's a little easier to do that if you think of it as separate from yourself.
[26:09] Rachel: Right.
[26:09] Emily: It's just a voice that lives in your brain, and then you get to just treat that part of yourself with kindness. That's what we're talking about when we're talking about managing.
[26:18] Rachel: Right.
[26:18] Emily: I'm doing air quotes, like managing your perfectionism or your fear is really just listening to it and then saying, okay, I hear you. I'm going to move forward anyway because what you're saying isn't true, but I'm holding you through it. Still not true. So I'm going to act anyway. And that's how we start to break out of those patterns. Our metaphors today are on.
[26:41] Rachel: Yes, they are. Excellent.
[26:44] Jocelyn Lindsay: Something else that I'm thinking about as we're talking is that we read so much, and our writers read, and we look at the books we love, the books that we admire, and we study them, and we think, oh, I want to write like this writer. I want to be Nora Roberts. I want to be Brandon Sanderson. I want to be whoever. And what we forget to think about is these are authors who are at the top of their career, oftentimes decades into writing. And we look at the work that just came out by our favorite author, and we're like, why can't I write like that? And then we're trying to compare ourselves to somebody who has been doing this 8 hours a day, five days a week for it's their career. And so we're admiring and seeing them as perfect. And one of the things that I love to do. And sometimes this doesn't always work, but find a writer that an author loves, and then go back and find some of their early work. Go back and find some of that rough, raw, not so polished work if you can do it, or even if it just ends up being another writer and really talking about, this isn't the Pulitzer they won with last year. Right. They came from where you are. They started somewhere. They had a starting line, too. And they're just further around the track than you are.
[28:25] Rachel: Yeah.
[28:26] Emily: And I love that. And that doesn't just apply to career.
[28:29] Rachel: Or.
[28:31] Emily: To a career. It also applies to an individual book. Right. Every book starts super like. That's just the nature of it. And I know that not enough authors do this, but I know that Sanderson, at least with the way of, like, shared his first iteration with people. And I feel like that is just such a powerful thing. And I wish more authors would show. This is a chapter of what my first draft looked like, because it's just the process of creating something. It means iteration. It means revision. It means starting with something that is raw and nothing's perfect, but, like, raw and messy and not what you envisioned.
[29:10] Jocelyn Lindsay: That's just how it starts to that point. My husband, for Christmas two years ago, there's a company that gets early drafts of famous manuscripts and scans them and then turns books. And he gave me a copy of the first draft that this company had scanned of Frankenstein. So you get all of her cross outs, all of her notes. It's handwritten, of course, but it shows how she went through and moved everything. And that story did just not come out as the monster.
[29:49] Emily: That is so cool.
[29:50] Jocelyn Lindsay: Messy. It was very messy. And that's really fun to look at and look at and see, like, oh, okay, here. Even this classic, amazing story that everybody knows was an ugly first draft.
[30:06] Rachel: Yeah. And there's also teams of people that work on these books takes.
[30:15] Emily: Especially with someone like Sanderson.
[30:17] Rachel: Exactly. That's exactly what I was thinking. It's a team of people that helps to get these books to their final version. And when my writers are like, I should be writing like that, I'm honestly, honestly, why? And that's the conversation that we have, is, why do you feel like you should be writing like that? You've got me, which is amazing. Thank you so much. But you are in your first draft, and there's a team of people ahead of you that you haven't worked with yet that you will that gets that book to that final version. So why do you feel like you have to be writing like that now? Because nobody does. Nobody writes like that by themselves alone. Their first time. Yeah.
[31:00] Jocelyn Lindsay: Their first book. That's always hard is the writers who want the first book to be the published masterpiece. And we're talking even just about the first books for authors that are published. We're not talking about the 300 half manuscripts that are, like, stuck in hard drives and in boxes and that never will see the light of day. I mean, writers write, and so there's always stuff that will never get out.
[31:31] Rachel: Yeah, I was thinking about that this morning when I was driving home from daycare, because my first book is coming out in April, and Emily is coming out later this year, so props. But my first book is coming out. And I was thinking, like, when I stopped thinking about that book as my debut book and started thinking about it as just a book, it was so much easier to make the decision that it was ready because there was so much pressure and, like, well, it's my first book. It could be my only book. It has to be the best book that I can do right now. And I am so overwhelmingly proud of this book. I think I'm going to write better books in the future. Isn't that the goal? You want every book to be better moving forward? Exactly. Why do I feel like this? I think for us as book coaches, there's a lot we carry about, like, well, our books need to be the best. But at the same time, when I worked through last year, those feelings of it doesn't have to be perfect because it's just a book. Like debut means just first, don't call it debut, call it anything you want to call it. Just put it out there. Because none of the other commentary, the peanut gallery, doesn't matter. I'd rather have a book out that I got out through all of the hard work that I put into it than never put a book out because I was so afraid of it never being my most perfect thing that ever could have happened because I'm going to write better books in the future.
[33:10] Jocelyn Lindsay: I've worked with some absolutely brilliant writers who are amazing. They can't finish because they get caught in the perfectionist. Like, if you could just get to the end, just finish the story and get to the end, you could put this up on Amazon and self publish it, do whatever you're going to do with it, and then move on to the next one. You could be producing a book a year because they are fabulous, fast drafting first draft writers, and this perfection, this idea, they're so caught in their head of what's not working, they have ceased to see what an amazing writer they are. And that, I think, is one of my biggest heartbreaks as a coach is when a writer just can't get out of their own way and see how good they are. And most of the writers, I would say 99.9% of the writers I work with, they're good writers. These are not like they're already so far along the way of being a writer that it's just getting, it's almost like this last perfectionism, this last fear, the last 20% of fear is what keeps them from ever getting a book out.
[34:39] Emily: Yeah, I feel like a lot of that has to do. There's like that finishing paralysis, right? Where as soon as you're about to finish something, then it's done and you have to say it's done. And then all of a sudden people can say, oh, well, you should have done this and you should have done that, but it's done. And so as soon as you say, right, you open yourself up to that vulnerability that it's imperfect. And I think the thing that I was just thinking when you were talking about your debut, Rachel, is like, the thing that. About perfectionism, that drives me crazy is that there's this idea that there is a version of a book that is perfect that's out there that you have to. And I know I've talked about this before, but I fell into this trap. I'm working on my sequel for my debut that's coming out in September. And it's really. Sequels are hard. Everybody says sequels are hard, but I got stuck in that, and I talk about this all the time. So it was funny for me when I realized that this is what was happening, because I was like, you know better. But it's so easy to fall into these traps, right? No matter how much mindset work you do, it's constant. You're never just fixed. That's not a thing. But this idea that I was like, oh, there's a perfect. Now that I've written book one, book two, there is an answer out there. I have to find about what the perfect next version of it is. And I was treating it like I was searching for answers instead of coming up with things, if that makes sense. So I was seeking advice from critique partners and my editor of, should I go this route? Which path is right? And it was like I had to come to the realization that I'm making this shit up. I just have to choose.
[36:20] Jocelyn Lindsay: That's it.
[36:22] Emily: I think sometimes perfectionism can just trick us into thinking that we're searching for a right answer when that's just not a thing. It's just not real. You just have to choose a path to follow and follow your gut instinct and create something from nothing. That's all that you're doing.
[36:40] Rachel: Yeah, easy peasy.
[36:42] Jocelyn Lindsay: Yeah, exactly. And that reminds me, I've asked clients, okay, so if you're seeking perfectionism, let's define it. What's perfect is that no grammatical errors. And a lot of times they can't even define it. They can't give it any tangible identity. It's just that I will know when it's perfect. How would you know perfect if you don't know what perfect is? And it just becomes this loop of. I don't know what it is, but I know I'm chasing it. If you can't see it when you're chasing it. Yeah. And it just becomes this whole ridiculous thing of you don't even really understand what you're chasing. You're really chasing. I don't want to be afraid. I don't want to be hurt. And perfectionism is just sort of that shirt. Yeah, it's the shirt. It happens to be wearing. And I think it's like, how do we find both the good and the negative and close the gap? Because we spend so much time focusing on what's not working. How do we start focusing on what is working and bring those two together and close off that gap so that even though they're still going to keep existing, there's not this chasm of roiling. Terrible. It's all terrible. Nobody's going to love it. And then over here, well, I really had fun doing that. How do we make them more equal to each other? And not just, it all sucks, it's terrible. They're all going to hate me. I might as well quit and go work at Jack in the box.
[38:26] Rachel: Yeah, I think that reminds me. So I've done this exercise plenty with clients. Because you're so right, people. It's very easy to fall into the negative lens, but in the efforts to also heal the relationship with self, I have people literally write down every single week one good thing about themselves. We make a list of our strengths every week. We have to be figuring out, okay, I might have had this problem with writing this week, but I also feel really good about this other thing. And we write it down on this continuing list that we work through all six months of coaching. And we go back and we look and we're like, wow, look at all these things you did. Look at how much you trusted yourself. Look how many risks you took, and it was fine. Look how many decisions you made. Look how many for some people, not for everybody, but look how many words you wrote. Look how many exercises you did. Whatever it is to start to show them that tiny actions that take risks that turn out okay, build self confidence. And the more self confidence to have, the more likely we are to take risks. And the more we take risks in the face of perfectionism, the more we learn how to maneuver around it. So it's like this constant reminder of, like, I am a good person. I am good. I am capable.
[40:03] Emily: You're capable of doing so much more. I love what you said, rachel, about writing that down. I've started to do that myself for this second book because it's so easy to just lie to yourself and say, oh, I haven't gotten anything done. I haven't done anything this week. I haven't.
[40:16] Rachel: Right.
[40:16] Emily: But if you've actually written down all of the things that you worked on and the problems that you had and then solved, if you have a record of, like, I had this question and then I solved it. A book is really just like thousands of tiny decisions that you're making and little changes that you're making and questions that you're finding answers to. And so if you can have written proof of all of those that you've already done, it's a lot harder when you reach the next plot hole to be like, it's impossible. I'll never be able to fix this because you have a record, written record of all of the things that you have tackled and conquered in the past. So I love that. But to wrap us up, Jocelyn, I would love to hear, just like I know that there are people listening to this call, because I know some of the people who listen, who struggle with perfectionism, procrastination, right, this fear when they show up to the page, even though they've got that tenacious desire to figure it out and move forward anyway. Do you have any parting suggestions for folks on how to get started or what you would recommend to your clients when they show up with these questions and desires to move through these blocks?
[41:31] Jocelyn Lindsay: Be brave. Just be brave. It's a huge act of courage to write a book and to put yourself. I mean, by even wanting to do it, you're making yourself and your innermost dreams very vulnerable so that in and of itself, you're already doing the work of courage. Do it. There are people out there who want these books. There are readers who are waiting for these books that are being written. And I think as writers, we spend so much time thinking about the writing, we forget to think about the reader. We forget to think about the people who want to read our words. And I find that sometimes recentering this to the reader wants us to be brave because they don't want it to be perfect. They want to read what's messy. They want to read a good story. They want to care about something. They want to care about your characters. They're ready to care about your characters. They're going to come to it primed to care about your characters and your worlds because they're buying your book. I mean, they already are buying into the fact that they're going to love what you're doing. So it's be brave and courageous because there are people on the other end of the process waiting to catch that.
[43:00] Rachel: I love that. Yes. Awesome. That was so beautiful. Great wrap up. Thank you so much, Jocelyn, for joining us.
[43:08] Emily: This is awesome.
[43:10] Rachel: Of course. Awesome conversation one last time. Could you tell people where to find you if they wanted to figure out how to work with you?
[43:18] Jocelyn Lindsay: You can find [email protected]. You can find me on Instagram as also a friend. And I also have a YouTube channel called five minute indie insights where you can find me talking about quick hits on self publishing. And then you can always just email me at [email protected]. Because I love chatting with writers about anything. I have opinions about everything that I'm happy to share.
[43:51] Rachel: We're going to have to have you back for more opinions. So do we.
[43:58] Emily: Awesome. Thank you so much, Jocelyn.
[44:00] Jocelyn Lindsay: Thank you.
[44:01] Emily: 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.
[44:08] Rachel: Sign up now to get our free email course. The magic of character arcs. After seven days of email magic, you'll have the power to keep your readers flipping pages all through the night.
[44:16] Emily: Link in the show notes.
[44:17] Rachel: We'll see you there.
[44:18] Emily: Thanks, Jocelyn.
[44:20] Rachel: Bye. Thank you.
