06. Creative Archetypes & Getting What You Need to Stay Creative with Lewis Jorstad

 

Hey, y'all welcome back to the dream season. I'm really excited for another episode, this'll be episode number six, and it's going to be a good one. And earlier I did an interview with a friend of mine, Louis chore, stat. He is also a writer, editor, author of nonfiction books mostly. And he has some really great insights. And one of the things that we talked about during our chat was this concept of creative archetypes. And you think about archetypes there's archetypes for everything.

You know, we have like Myers-Briggs archetypes. We have the, for all young. Archetypes we have, I mean, this podcast is about architect's seasonal archetypes of winter, spring, summer, and fall. And something that really struck out to me as I was talking to Lewis was how we can. Use. Archetypes to find. Something in ourselves that we just can't see without them. It's almost as if labeling it. Gives it a weight that it didn't have before. And I've I've thought that was really interesting. And I think that's especially true for seasonality. For example, here, it's September early September as a record this and. This is maybe the first week all year that it hasn't felt like we were melting Madmax style. From the summer heat. And we're really into these last couple of weeks of summer here. And. I'm feeling so exhausted by the summer and so ready for this change. And it's funny because. Fall is fall being the flow season. Fall is the season that we have this burst of energy and creativity. And. The season when we want to make a lot of progress on our creative projects. When we want to write our books, we want to grow our business. When we want to paint a wall with rainbows or something like that. And , to come into this season with this exhaustion from late summer. It's kind of an interesting concept, isn't it? Because. You would think, oh, I'm going to need more time. I'm going to need more time to like recover. And I'm going to need more space to just reconnect with myself and I'm going to need more self care, whatever that means to me or to you. And I think that we'll find. That that's not going to be the case. We're going to go into this fall season and that burst of energy is going to come. That being said, here we are in the last two ish weeks of fall. I want you to remember that. We are still in summer and summer is for relaxing and for catching up on that self care that you need and catching up on the sleep that you need, make sure you're getting good sleep. Make sure you're taking care of your body, making sure that you are taking care of your mind and your spirit and your emotions and do that.

You are readying yourself for what fall's going to mean to you because it's going to be something different for you than it is for me. , so yeah, that's something that has really stuck out to me as we were chatting and going back to the concept of archetypes, which you'll hear more about in our interview.

It's really kind of important to think about who you are and also who you want to be. Who is the person you are today and who was the person that is maybe the real you that you're trying to become. And, you know, it's probably this ASAM tonic curve that, you know, we will get closer and closer to zero, but we'll never quite reach it. That is normal. That's life. That's perfect. It's the striving, it's this journey. That is meaningful. The journey is the destination, right? And so as you listen to the conversation with Lewis, think about who you are and what archetype you are and what that means for you. And actually in my coaching work, And the coaching program that I was certified in, we work with another type of archetypes and. They're just everywhere and they are all so valid and so important. And also. Meaningful. They can add so much meaning to your life. They can give you. I mean, I don't want to say let's all label ourselves and be labels, but having something you could hold on to can help you figure out who you are. It can help you understand why you feel creative sometimes and why you feel like you are productive sometimes. And other times you aren't and even, even the Zodiac.

My sun sign is Capricorn and my rising sign as a tourist and my moon sign is a Venus. Not Venus. , it is Virgo. And so I'm just, I feel like I've really resonate with that. You know, I feel like I'm always overworking myself like a Capricorn just to be super productive here. And I feel like I just always want to be chill like a tourist, but I'm always kept it neurotic, like a Virgo. That's my Burgos speaking. Not that Virgos are neurotic. It's just me. ,

So embrace these parts of you and kind of lean into them. And what, and my question for you is what can you do? Too.

Bring in some of this archetypal energy. In a healthy, balanced, sustainable way. What can you do? How can you look at yourself and say, okay. My. Work archetype is XYZ. And that archetype. Needs. Self care or that archetype, we all need self care. Or that archetype likes to have deadlines or the archetype hates deadlines. Who are you and how does it affect your work style and what you're able to accomplish in your life? And some things are going to work for you at different points in your day and your week and your month life here. I mean, Our lives are cyclical. They're seasonal things. Um, and flow and that's normal. And to not push against those boundaries that are energy gives us. Is a really great skill to learn.

One of the things that Lewis said was to make sure you're getting what you need to stay balanced and stay creative. And that is so important, especially as we're winding down with summer here and. Ramping up. That fall energy. Make sure that you take time to recharge because.

If you don't, then you're going to miss this. Season. You'll get the energy flow, but you won't have the mental refreshment that you need to really embrace it. So. Here's the interview. And before we jump in, let me just apologize for my own audio. I put the settings wrong on my microphone during the, during the interview. So it wasn't as great as it could have been, but I think it's still. Totally listable and, um, it'll be fine. So enjoy.

 Okay, today we have Lewis Jorstad with us. Lewis and I have known each other for a few years and I'm really excited to have him on. So Lewis is an author and a developmental editor who helps indie authors and soon to be authors master their craft and find their readers over at the NovelSmithy. When he isn't busy coaching students or writing books of his own, you can find him playing old Game Boy games and baking far too many homemade bagels.

I really love bagels, but I'm gluten free, so can you

do gluten free bagels? You know, I really need to learn, because I have some family who's also gluten free, and I, I owe them at least a couple dozen bagels at this point.

It's good to stretch you, but it's also just a, it's a tragedy to be gluten free, so I understand it.

It's not your focus because , regular gluten bagels are way better.

Anyway, well, if you ever find any, any gluten free flour that you're just like, Oh, this stuff's magic. Hit me up. Cause I will certainly experiment with it. I would love to hear it. I would love. I'll, I'll get back to you and be like, look at these bagels I made.

I'm really excited. , cause I love, I love bread of all sorts. I just can't have it. , but yeah, I'm really glad you're here today and that we were able to connect on this. And, , I think it's pretty good timing too, because I know you've got a book coming out soon. One that I think is going to be really helpful for a lot of people.

And it's called beyond book one. So you want to tell

us a little bit about that? I would love to, , Yeah, this is, uh, you catch me at an interesting time. We just finished moving, so that was sort of a big, uh, a big energy, uh, drain for a little while. And then right as we finished sort of finally settling in, uh, I sort of looked at the calendar and was like, oh, I forgot I have a book deadline coming up.

I gotta get that sorted, uh, pronto. So, and so. At the time of recording this, um, I am right at the sort of finish line for Beyond Book One. It is a, uh, guide for authors, um, all about how to plan, write, and publish successful fictional series. Um, it's very nerdy. I'm really excited about it. nerdiness.

years, right in the summer of: 2020

Oh, I'm

sure it will be. I'm sure it will be. Um, and you know, that's a long time to work on a book. Cause sometimes books are, they come out quick and sometimes they just take that time. So what has been your experience? writing

this book. It's, to be honest, it took that long mostly just because other things kept taking priority.

Um, uh, this is the third book in this series. So it's part of my Writer's Craft series, which is, you know, a group of books that are all dedicated to specific aspects of, um, storytelling. You know, the first two were both very character focused. This one is moving into, um, series structure. And Ironically, this was the first book I planned for the series, but various circumstances, I sort of pushed it to the back burner and wrote the other two first, uh, and then life just kept getting in the way.

You know, we were, we've moved a couple times in the last, you know, year and a half. We've, uh, we've just had a lot that we were juggling. And so I kept saying like, okay, well, I'll get to that book eventually. I'll get to it eventually. And then. What actually sparked it coming out imminently is that I had a good friend of mine, uh, who has another podcast in the writing space who said, you know, Hey, I've got a space available in the fall.

Um, and if you, if the book is ready, I would love to talk about it. You know, I I'd love to have you on and we could chat about it on the podcast. And I, I took that as a sign that I finally needed to make time for this book. I had been just like waiting on and waiting on. And, um, sat down and have spent the last two weeks writing it and I'm just at the tail end.

So it was ironically for a book that took so long to write, it was very quick to actually put the words down. They often are. Yeah, because it's just been swirling in my head now for, for such a long time. Um, but yeah, so thanks to that friend for finally giving me the kick in the pants I needed. Um, cause I've been dragging my feet for so long.

.

Is it. Do I have the right law? Is it Parkinson's Law that you take the time that you're given and that's how long it takes? So, you needed somebody to set a deadline

for you. I did. I am a, I'm a very deadline oriented writer. I'm... I, if I don't have a deadline, it won't happen. Uh, self imposed deadlines usually aren't enough too.

So I have to like tell other people that, Oh, I'll have this to you by X date. And then I get to like a week out and I'm like, shoot, I got to have that to them by X date. Um, otherwise I would never get anything done.

Yeah, I'm the same way. And I know also that you, , you work with archetypes too. Does being a person who's driven by deadlines have anything to do with an archetype?

, probably to some extent, on some psychological level that I'm not qualified to speak on. But, , but yeah, so sort of what sparks this conversation for us is I think we were just catching up, like we just, you know, hopped on a call to catch up on life cause it had been a long time, and we were chatting, um, about, about your podcast.

And I had been working on, , finding a way to sort of articulate to some of my writing students the idea that, You can be productive as a writer without actually writing that if all you're, if all you're doing to measure your progress as a writer is just putting new words on the page, eventually you're going to burn out because there's more to that creative act than just production.

. And so I'd been spending a lot of time, you know, recently sort of working with a certain group of students of mine to try to help, help them through that process. A couple of them had been really struggling with burnout. One of them, , did NaNoWriMo last year, last November, and burnt out so hard that she hasn't written another word since.

And it's been, you know, seven or eight months. Yeah. Yeah. And she was really down about it. And so we were kind of talking through it. , and interestingly, her experience was sort of similar to mine. I have been very overwhelmed by life lately. , you know, moving and work have been absorbing the majority of my time.

And she's in a similar position. She's preparing for a big move. Her job has gotten really hectic lately. And so we were sort of commiserating and I asked her, well, uninspired?

What do you do to sort of get, get ideas going again? And she sort of paused and looked and said, I'm not entirely sure what I do when I'm not feeling inspired. Like I, she's like, I, I just kind of keep trying to write until something happens and then nothing happens. And that was. sort of a light bulb moment for me to step back because I was in the midst of some pretty serious burnout working on this book, uh, and working on a bunch of other projects that I had going on.

And I sort of had a thought of, you know, when I'm feeling uninspired, I also don't sit down and do much about it. I kind of just wait for it to go away. And does that really make sense? And so that triggered a whole, uh, bit of soul searching to sort of circle back to your original question, a very long winded answer.

I apologize, but it's around the idea of. Um, How do we fill the well as writers? And it's different for everybody. So after talking with a ton of my students and sort of workshopping with them and admittedly annoying them on like, well, what do you do when you have writer's block? They're like, Louis, enough, let me do, you know, stop bothering me.

Um, but I've sort of started to hone it down to the idea that There are four main creative archetypes that sort of determine what kind of inputs you need to be able to have you know, ideas and inspiration, um, not to reduce people down to the idea that it's like input output, but to some extent, like if you're not feeding your creativity, there's not much that's going to come out the other end.

so the idea is that there are these four creative archetypes, the librarian, the organizer, the alchemist, and the songbird, and each of them get their creativity from different places. And so for the librarian, it is very much an archetype that thrives on information. And so, uh, actually back to that writer that sort of originally sparked this idea, she is very much this archetype.

And from talking with her, we finally started to get to the point where she feels most inspired after she's just read another novel, or watched a movie she really enjoyed, or read an article about craft that just really, you know, lit her up, that just, she She is very much the librarian who's sort of gathering all these bits and pieces and different ideas from all, you know, all different points of inspiration.

And that's how she recharges her creative batteries so that she has something to give to her story. Whereas the organizer is more of a planner at heart. They, when they get stuck in a story, want to sit down and say, Okay, let me step back. Let me, let me... be strategic. Let me sit down and like draft up a plan.

How am I going to get through this? What am I going to do to get over this? And they might not write for a couple weeks while they just sort of ideate on the story and strategize of like, okay, well, but if this character was here, maybe this should happen and I could do this and just sort of puzzling it all through.

And then they'll hit a point where the plan kind of clicks into place. And that's when their inspiration comes back and they're ready to keep moving forward. But that planning process is vital. , And again, thinking to one of my students who I sort of named it for, , she gets really demoralized sometimes thinking that I'm not making any progress on my story because I'm not, I'm not writing my draft.

I'm just sitting here and thinking about what the story should be. And I'm also very much the organizer archetype. So I, I was sort of like, well, if I sit back and I'm just thinking about the next, you know, this book that I got to write. Am I not working? She's like, well, yeah, but it's different when you do it.

I'm like, it's not different when I do it, you're, you're being productive too. You know, you're, you're nurturing your, your muse. I think

one of my

clients may be an organizer. It's so the the caveat to all of this is that they're not quite as rigid as they might sound but I'll run through the other two and then we can get into that.

Yeah. Yeah, Tommy. Fun twist. But um, the alchemist is, uh, very much the like classic pantser. , they're very much a discovery writer. They are energized by experimenting. , and they'll just, you know, dive in and like, okay, well, I don't really know what to do for my main story. So I'm just going to write a short story for the next hour and just.

mess around, see what happens, get ideas, and in the process start to re energize themselves. And then the songbird is very much a collaborative archetype. These writers need to talk through something with someone else. They need to bounce ideas back and forth. They need to have someone ask them questions and like, you know, poke at the story in ways that they might have never thought to.

And that starts to reveal different options and pathways for them. This is also

really interesting. So when you first started talking about them, and you started talking about the librarian, I thought, Oh, this is definitely me, I definitely get inspired reading, you know, other books and seeing shows that I really like, or movies that are really good.

And they give me ideas. And then I thought, I'm an , organized type person, and I definitely plot, but I don't sit around and just wait just for that reason. I wait until maybe I see something inspiring. But then I thought, oh, alchemist sounds really cool and with my books and alchemy brand, I was really hoping that would be me, but I'm not a panther, but I think I might be a little songbird too.

So tell me how, how you said they're not quite so cut and dry. So tell me how that works.

So, yeah, obviously human psychology is complicated. the interesting thing about the archetypes is. I've sort of started to think of them more as a tool to make sure that you are nurturing your creativity.

, because again, there, there's a lot of pressure to produce, to put something on paper that is quote unquote good, or that is, , complete, or that moves you towards a goal. And You know, eventually you have to do that. Like there is, to finish a novel, to finish really any project, there is a truth to the butt in chair mindset.

You know, it's a little reductive, but there is something there. But that also can discount all the work that comes before that. I have started to really enjoy using archetypes as a check for myself. If I'm finding I'm getting really burnt out and I'm getting really exhausted, um, chapter 12 of Beyond Book One that we were talking about earlier, I was writing that chapter and I was just like, I would rather beat my head against a wall literally than keep writing this.

Like I was just, I was so done. And I kind of stepped back and I said, okay, press pause on this for a minute. What, what is my archetype? I'm very much a librarian. I very much need to read and absorb. When was the last time I did that? And I sort of thought about it and I looked at the calendars, like I haven't sat down and just read a book for fun in probably four or five weeks.

Like I have, I've been starving my creativity. So let me say, all right, chapter 12 is not happening today. It's probably not happening tomorrow, but for the next two days, the time I was going to spend writing this book, I'm going to step back and just. Flipped through my two be red list, the things that I haven't been making time for.

Mm-hmm. , because that will help me build back up. But at the same time, I also get a little bit of energy from talking through things with people. I'm very much a talker, me . Um, and so I called up, uh, one of my be readers and I was like, Hey, can we just like gab about this story for an hour? She's like, yeah, or about this book for an hour.

She's like, yeah, absolutely. Let's do it. And I got so many ideas just from talking with her. And so the archetypes are not rigid by any means. Um, I like to think about them as. There's something to learn from every archetype, and what archetype you fall under most will ebb and flow over time. So, at this stage of my life, I'm very much a librarian, I'm a little bit of a songbird, , and some days I really need to be an organizer.

I'm very much never an alchemist, I'm very much a plotter at heart, um, but that was not always the case. Uh, early in my writing career, I was 100% an organizer. I couldn't do anything without taking the time to plan it out first. And as I've gotten more comfortable with my process, that's become less important.

Five years from now, maybe I'll go back to that. Or maybe I'll find that I do become more of an alchemist as my, as what my need creatively sort of ebbs and flows. And so I have been pushing some of my students as we talk about this to say, okay, well, say, say your creative archetype is the alchemist, but you've been trying that for a couple days now and not getting many results.

Maybe mix it up a little, maybe test something else out and see where it goes for you. Because there is. benefits to be found from all four. Knowing your archetype just gives you a starting place. Like when you're feeling burnt out and stuck in writer's block, it gives you a way to say, okay, press pause.

What do I need? What do I normally thrive on? And am I getting enough of that? And then you can kind of build a recovery plan almost from there. Sometimes

you just need to be reminded and have just something trigger it and say, because it's very easy to get just lost in your thoughts or whatever you're experiencing, right?

At this particular moment and then just forget what you need. That's just so true. So just knowing your archetype is a really good reminder to remember. Remember

what you need. Absolutely. And I mean, I love the way you say it. Like you just get lost in your thoughts in the moment. Um, when you're like neck deep in a story or neck deep in a draft and all you can see is that draft and like the next couple of pages you have to write.

And the couple of pages you just wrote, um, it can feel really suffocating at times, like if, if it's a very difficult passage of the story or you're having a hard time with it, um, it's easy to forget that there's more out there. , and that. you might need something like you might need something creatively that you're not getting.

And yeah, you know, I think putting a name to it can be helpful. Um, even if, you know, again, like I'm sort of a little bit of, of two or even three archetypes. You said that you're a little bit of, you know, the librarian and the songbird, even if you're sort of in an in between space, give having a name for it can just be a, yeah, such a helpful reminder to like shake you out of that.

, that stasis, like where you just feel stuck, if that makes sense. It does

and and I know that, you know, that I am also very heavily anti burnout. And so this is really important to me that we all take the time that we need to, you know. recharge. And like you said, I think there's a computer term for this, um, trash in, trash out.

Yep. Yeah. We can't, we can't expect to get great stuff out if we're putting trash and we need to take care of ourselves. And, , yeah, I love this. And also I think aligns pretty well with the seasons too, because You know, as you know, I do think that over the year and even throughout the week in our day we go through seasons where we have more energy for planning more energy for writing or any sort of , creative endeavor and more energy for.

Recharging and things like that. And I have found, especially this summer, I think it's hit me harder this summer than it normally does. And I, I've noticed that it's hitting other people harder too. But summer is just not a creative time. It's not the time when we should all be working so hard. , , and I think that, you know, if you were kind of struggling to get this book done too, maybe that was true for

you as well.

I'm so glad you say that because it's been so interesting talking to people. Everyone seems like they've been having a difficult time this summer. All of my students have expressed how just Absolutely bizarre life has been, you know, they've been sick or work has been crazy or their kids have been sick or their car broke down or the book that they were doing great on in the spring just completely hit a wall, like, and, and talking, you know, you express something similar.

A bunch of other editors that I, I know and I'm friends with have expressed something similar. It's, yeah, it's been a very strange. Summer, , especially because I feel like it, it can be easy to think of summer as a creative time because you're thinking of like the sunshine, you know, everything's beautiful and green and like, you know, it's, it's a time for vacations and relaxation, but I think in that way, it's a time for relaxation, not necessarily for producing things.

And so it is a great time to step back and say, okay, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take time to recharge. I'm going to read, you know, read books, or I'm going to take time to organize, or I'm just going to experiment with a story. That is not quote unquote productive or not what I quote unquote should be doing, but it's just something I'm interested in and excited about and I'm just going to write it because I'm going to give myself permission to do that.

Um, and then when the fall comes, maybe that will be more of a productive time, you know, maybe that is a time for a little bit more focus, but you need you need a balance of that that recharge. so that you have the energy when, you know, September comes to start shifting back into that more, more writing centric mindset, if that makes sense.

Yeah, I,

I totally agree. And, , in my, in the way I think of the seasons, summer is the grow season. And it made me think of the way you said it. And, , you said you were experimenting with other things.

And I think that's perfect because if it comes to you and whatever your, your current project is, you know, if you've got the flow right then, then use it. But if you don't, and you have inspiration for something else in the summer, I think it's a perfect time to kind of grow in other directions and kind of see, because the more you experiment in other ways and the more you grow.

Yourself personally, and that includes like, you know, letting yourself recharge the more experience and information that you bring back that you can incorporate into what you're working on it. And I think that, , fall slash autumn is a flow season. I think it is, pretty much everybody's best, most creative season

for sure.

Especially because summer, there's so many things to distract you, like weirdly enough, like people are going on vacation and there's, you know, barbecues and events and concerts and swimming. And it's like, I don't necessarily want to be inside writing. I would much rather be outside, like kayaking or swimming or hiking or whatever there is to do.

Um, And that way when fall comes and it gets a little bit chillier and things kind of slow down, I don't resent it as much. I'm not like, I, you know, I missed all of this stuff I wanted to do all summer because I was too busy working. And obviously that is, you know, that is a privilege of mine as someone who is self employed where I can, my schedule can ebb and flow a little bit more.

, but even for people in sort of a more traditional structured job, like giving yourself permission, uh, something I, I, Even before I started to like coalesce an idea around the archetypes, something I always, , tried to remind myself was, you need time to be bored to be a creative person. Absolutely.

Fill every second of your day with something. your brain has no room to breathe. , and I don't, I don't know about other people. I'm sure people who are like, you know, like to trail run or do like whitewater rafting are like, no, I need all my brain power to make sure I don't hurt myself. But I like to take like lazy kayaks, like if I'm near a body of water and just like sit in a boat and like look at the world for an hour.

There's very little happening in my brain for that. Oh yeah. Yeah.

I don't want to do anything in the summer at all. I want to just sit around. And in fact, , I've been calling this my summer of chaotic angst. And I think that, you know, going forward, I think I'm considering summer the chaos season because there is just so much going on.

There's just, as you said, barbecues, concerts, and kayaking. And, and in my

case, kids, I get one, one kid.

She just started back school today. And so , , my chaos hopefully is, is coming to an end. But, um, it sounds like you have been working a lot and, you said you got a little bit of burnout writing this book.

So what do you do when you experience burnout? What do you do to kind of push back

against that?

I am not necessarily the best person to ask that question. We're all growing here. Well, I was going to say, I'm not the best person, but I also might be a good person, uh, to ask because I, I have a habit of pushing myself to the point of like chronic burnout, like ready to be hospitalized, like physical burnout, , which I am slowly trying to not do that to myself because it's not productive or helpful, but it's hard sometimes.

, and, It's been interesting for this book because I am under a slightly tight deadline and so I feel pressure, like I gotta keep making progress. But in the past, what I would do is say, well, I have to keep making progress and so I will take no time for anything else. I will just cut everything else out of my life.

I won't make dinner. I won't talk to friends. I won't do anything until this book is done. And that way I can meet my deadline. be like pulling teeth, just fighting myself to get the book done. Even though I loved the book and even though I was so excited about what I was writing about, I just, there was no energy left in the tank.

And I can't say that this one has been perfect, but I, I'm I'm doing a little bit better in that, for instance, chapter 12, when I was just staring at it, and I was like, I would rather do anything else than this. Um, I gave myself space to say, okay, well, forcing myself to beat against this wall is not productive, because it'll take me just as much time.

if I fight it as it would to just rest and come back. So I, I said, all right, well, I'm fortunate enough that I can take the rest of the day off. And I did. And I messed around. I read some articles that I had been planning to read for a while. I met with some friends, you know, I took a walk. Um, and then the next day I sort of, I opened it back up and said, still not quite feeling it, but I am feeling inspired for some other chapters.

Let me not write them, not put the pressure on myself to actually produce quote unquote, but to just sort of pick at them and like play with some ideas, you know, strategize out like how is chapter 12 going to link into these? And by the end of the day, I was like, I know where I'm going with that chapter again.

I can get back into it. Just taking that time to step away was very valuable, um, and I'm very grateful to the students I had been talking with because without the conversations we had been having about creative archetypes and filling the well and handling burnout, I might have fallen back into old habits and, and pushed myself too hard and not taking care of myself and ultimately ended up worse for it, , So, yeah, that, that's been my experience, , and I still would say I have a long ways to go, but it's been nice to feel like I'm making a little bit of progress there.

Yeah. Well,

they say this, the slowest way is often the fastest. You know, the more you push yourself off and the more you push back against yourself and then you come to a standstill. So I think that you took the right approach there.

I also like to skip around and work on other aspects of a project sometimes, because it puts your brain in a different space.

Sometimes you can just think of different stuff. Yeah, you know, when you're staring, like, when you're staring at a wall of a story and just feeling like you have to just punch through the wall, it can be easy to forget that you can step back and potentially just walk around the wall, that the wall ends at a point.

It's not infinite. Like, sometimes you just gotta step back and look at it from different angles. And find a new way around it, you know? And I, I would say, you know, obviously I'm currently working on a nonfiction story, but I would say that is equally, if not more true for fiction, because with fiction, you're juggling a lot of pieces and a lot of internal logic and world building and character development.

And sometimes you'll get to a point in the story and think like, none of my characters are doing what I want them to. This plot is not turning out the way I thought it would. Like nothing is moving forward. Even if you're a planner, you know, even if you're a plotter. You can get into your first draft and things can sort of fall apart, and it can be tempting to just force it forward, but sometimes you just gotta step back and...

And look at it from a different angle, and you'll start to see, like, oh, maybe the wall I thought was there, like, there actually is a way around it that's a little less, a little less difficult for you. Yeah, we

both write fiction and nonfiction, and I think I, I probably, I try to write linearly, but with fiction, sometimes when you're starting like a new series, for example, you don't know the characters, and sometimes the only way you can figure out where to go is to go to the end, or some further point and write a little bit and see, What their personalities are, and that gives you answers to go back to where you were and move towards it.

I, I always fuss at some of my writers, um, who are very big plotters and I'm a huge plotter. I mean, my outlines are truly horrifying. But, um, but I do have to push some of my, my plotting students. that there are some things you can only learn in a first draft and that's okay.

You know, there are some things that will only come to you by actually sitting down and writing that first draft. Even if you have the most detailed outline in the world, you will still learn something with every subsequent draft and you have to give yourself space to let that happen. Like even when it starts to feel a little frightening because you're like, but I had planned this and it's not working out.

Let it happen, see where it goes because everything can be fixed in post, you know, when you get to revisions you can always go back and strategize and tweak and tinker with things again to like bring it back in line, but in the moment, you know, you got to give yourself permission to play a little bit.

That's a

hard lesson, or hard to accept for a lot of writers, especially newer writers. They feel. a lot of pressure to get it right because there's a lot of pressure to be good as a writer and it's already such a, a tough field to work in. And there's a lot of competition and, , a lot of comparisonitis.

And I find that allowing yourself to be imperfect that first draft is a vital skill for any writer to learn, any creative really to learn, I really don't believe that any book exists until it's been through its second draft. Every first draft is terrible. Yeah. Varying degrees of terrible, but none of them are publish worthy.

I don't, it's um, it's like boats. If you've ever been a boater, if you've ever sailed, the joke is that, , if you meet someone and ask them if they've ever run their boat aground, they're either going to tell you the truth that yes, they have, or they're a liar. And I think authors are, are the same. I have never met an author who could honestly tell me that.

Every first draft they put out is just a glowing gem ready to be published. , even if it was a very good first draft. It is still a first draft for a reason. And I go so far for my first drafts as to write them in bullet points. If I'm feeling really stuck, I will stop writing it in, like, my Scrivener file, and I will pull up my phone, and I will send myself an email.

Oh. Of what I wanted to write. Because it just, it breaks my brain out of that perfectionism. Because I'm literally typing on the tiniest keyboard imaginable. Just like, bullet points. Like, okay, I don't know what happens next, but like, so and so does this, and then this happens, and well maybe this will happen, and this is their reaction.

And then I, like, oh, well, the house looks like this, and then there was a dog, you know, like. And it's nonsensical to anyone but me. But I find that. As I start doing that, it starts to break me out of that perfectionism, and then the words start to come back, and my bullet points get longer and longer until they're basically paragraphs, and then I hit send, and I go back to writing in the draft.

Oh, I

love that. I love that. Sometimes the bullet points are necessary. I think we call it, uh, well, it's introduced to me as skeleton drafting, and, you know, writing a whole scene that way, and then that's draft one, and then you go back, and you just kind of maybe add a second sentence to each bullet point, and then go back again, and Maybe finish it out into a paragraph and then you've got five paragraphs and, um, and you just keep going kind of snowflake methody until you've got a scene.

And I think that really works sometimes when you're feeling that perfectionism and

stuckness. Yeah, I've always called it a bullet draft. I don't know why. Probably because I hadn't encountered the term skeleton draft when I first started doing it. But. Yeah. Skeleton drafts are such a great asset, like, especially for writers that struggle with perfectionism because if you can give yourself permission to just build the bones, you're just creating the, the vague skeleton of the story and then you can go back in and fill in all the connective tissue and like make it pretty and make it nice.

But it's so much easier to work with something when you have that skeleton versus you're trying to create a human from scratch and you have nothing to build from. You're just sort of like slapping things on. It's a lot easier when you have something to, to build off of. Yeah, you need a foundation.

So, , I would love to know what. one key takeaway from your book you think that writers and authors should

know about? That's a good question. Again, still sat kind of neck deep in this book, uh, getting it wrapped up, but so the book is all about series structure. And one of the central ideas behind it is that, similar to knowing your archetype, knowing, you know, how to fill the well, how to keep yourself inspired, , it's also important to know what type of series you're writing.

And that seems like a really easy question, because it's like, oh, well, I'm writing a trilogy, or I'm writing a duology, or I'm writing a six book series, or what have you, but I, I mean it on a slightly deeper level, in that, regardless of how many books are going to be in your series, What type of series are you writing?

Because The Lord of the Rings is a very different series than, say, the Bridgerton books, or than a lot of romance novels. And, it sort of, what originally sparked the idea for Beyond Book 1, where it all sort of originally came from, was actually looking at those two books, like, two series, and being like, This is a trilogy, and this is a six book series, and they have almost nothing in common.

Where is that coming from? And what I sort of ended up digging into is the idea that there are four types of series. There are sequential series, which are, , you know, the very, like, typical Harry Potter, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, The Hunger Games. Series where... all of the books are basically telling one giant story.

They're just being told in smaller installments. Um, episodic series are the second type that are similar to sequential in that it's one giant story, but they're told in much smaller bites. And there's a lot more room for like side quests and character studies. And the pacing of an episodic series is just very different because What might be a three book trilogy in a sequential series where each book is, you know, a hundred thousand words in an episodic series, you might have 20 books, but they're each only, you know, 10, 000 words and you have side quests.

It's much more like a TV show in that way. , and then there are static series, which are sort of your classic like mysteries, um, thrillers, you know, Jack Reacher, Sherlock Holmes, where it's same characters, it's the same protagonist, and probably the same core group of mentors and enemies in every book.

It's, their books are not connected. Each book has its own setup, its own mystery, its own murder, its own whatever. And it's static in that the protagonist isn't changing that much. They're not going through this big grand character arc. They are sort of held in stasis. And each book is just the same kind of setup for each one.

And then anthology series, which are the far other end of the spectrum, where you don't even have the same protagonists in every book. It's purely that each book is connected by a similar concept or setup. So it's very common in romance because, you know, most romance novels are working towards some sort of happily ever after.

And it would be kind of weird if, you know, Jack and Jill got together at the end of book one, and then in book two, They weren't together and had to get back together again. And you just repeated that for six books. Readers might be a little, a little concerned about that. Um, and so to pick on the Bridgerton novels, it's the common setup of it's all a family and it's each sibling in the family finding love in whatever way that happens for them in this common world.

Um, whereas, you know, but you can also go in an even more esoteric direction where like, you know. each, each book in the anthology series is only connected by like a concept. I don't usually recommend that, um, just because that's hard to pull off, but it can totally be done and there are some great examples of doing that really well.

Um, but yeah, long story short, before I just sort of ramble on, um, I think if there was one takeaway I wanted people to have from that book when it comes out is that Before you spend years of your life potentially writing this series, know what type of series you're creating. Because what an anthology series needs to thrive, and for readers to really enjoy it, is going to be very different than what a sequential series, or an episodic series, or a static series needs to thrive.

And the better you know that from the outset, the easier it will be for you to also see what you're, what the story needs from you so that you can actually write it and be happy with it and finish it, , without quite as much heartache.

That's great advice. And I think helpful too, because it gives you more a guidepost of how to write the first book.

. Yeah. I kind of like with the archetypes, like putting a name to it sometimes is all you need. Like, obviously, you know, there are plenty of romance authors out there who, I have no idea what the hell I'm talking about, but are doing, you know, they're writing anthology series because they've read enough books in the genre to just, they know by osmosis what they're aiming for.

But I, as an editor, , and sort of as a teacher, find it helpful to put names to things because it just gives that little bit of structure, that little bit of reminder to help you know what you're working towards. Whether that's, you know, creative archetypes or types of series or character arcs or basically anything in between.

Yeah.

And I know that you're also coming out with a, , creative archetype quiz at some point in the future. We have that to look forward to. And when is your book

coming out? Um, Beyond Book One is coming out on September 12th. So, uh, we're, we're rapidly approaching, which is quite exciting.

Yeah, it's very exciting.

So where can everybody find you online,

, I, work primarily from thenovelsmithy. com. , Basically all my work lives there, so if you, uh, want to follow a little bit more about me, see a little bit more about what I'm doing, or check out any of my other books, you can find them all there.

And, In terms of staying in touch, I would probably recommend joining my newsletter. , that is where I share most of what's going on. I send emails with all kinds of advice and ideas that might never make it into a book or into an article. They're just small or might be the precursor to a book or. a larger, , course or anything that comes out.

, I've been nerding out about catharsis lately and my list is like, when are you going to start writing about this? And I'm like, this is all you're getting for a while. I got other stuff going on, but let's just, let's nerd out about catharsis together, uh, in our little bubble.

So. And you have a membership for novel writers too, don't you?

I do, yeah. , , The Forge is my, , membership program for indie authors, uh, and soon to be authors where I, through a lot of editorial support and sort of access to me as well as to, , our course and master classes and guest speakers and community events, uh, help support indie authors to master their craft and start to find their readers, , so that they can hopefully have a, , happy author career, whatever that looks like for them.

, I am, over the years have gotten very tired of the solitary author myth, uh, and I'm It's a painful existence. Yeah. Yeah. I'm hoping to show people that like, you, you owe it to yourself to get support, whatever that looks like. Um, whether that's a, a membership like this one or just having a critique partner you really adore.

, every writer needs a little bit of support on the journey.

I agree. And so if anybody is writing a novel, definitely reach out to, to Lewis because he definitely knows what he's talking about

there. Well, it is. I appreciate it. This is really fun.

Yeah. It's been so lovely to have you. Thank you so much

for joining.

I am always happy to be here. It's always good to chat.