Dear Bitches, Smart Author Podcast, January 22, 2016

[music]

Sarah Wendell:  Hello, and welcome to episode number 177 of the DBSA podcast.  I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and with me today is author, actress, singer, songwriter, and organization professional Fay Wolf.  Fay has a new book called New Order: Decluttering Handbook for Creative Folks and Everyone Else, and her publicist sent me a pitch about it, and I thought, you know, this could be really fun.  I had a great time during this interview, and while it’s a bit outside what we usually talk about, I thought you might find it cool too.  I hope you do!

This podcast is brought to you by Renee Ahdieh, author of The Wrath & the Dawn, published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers, available in print and eBook.  Each dawn brings death, but can love change the story?  This intoxicating retelling of A Thousand and One Nights will leave you begging for book two, The Rose & the Dagger, coming Summer 2016.

The podcast transcript this month is sponsored by Kensington, publishers of Mercury Striking by New York Times bestselling author Rebecca Zanetti.  The first in a thrilling new apocalyptic series, Rebecca Zanetti brings her trademark high-octane action and sizzling sensuality to the mean streets of a chillingly believable L.A. devastated by a deadly bacterium.  Part romantic suspense, part medical thriller, and part apocalypse drama, don’t miss this thrill ride through post-pandemic society where the survival of mankind hangs in the balance and where love blooms even under the most dire of circumstances.  On sale January 29th, 2016.

The music you’re listening to was provided by Sassy Outwater.  I will have information at the end of the podcast as to who this is.

If you would like to sponsor the podcast, you should email me at [email protected], because I would love to hear from you.

And if you listen all the way to the end and then listen to the outro, which (a) is totally a word and (b) is the thing where I talk after the episode, I have some information about a giveaway of Fay’s book, so tune in.

But now, on with the podcast!

[music]

Fay Wolf:  My name is Fay Wolf.  I am based in beautiful Los Angeles, California, and I am a decluttering professional, as well as an artist.  I’m a singer, songwriter, and an actress, and for the past, you know, ten, ten-plus years I’ve been, I’ve been doing all these things and, and starting to figure out over the past few years how they’re all kind of connected, both for me and for a lot of my clients.  So I took steps to put it all into a book, which is just about out, and it’s a book about decluttering all aspects of life – you know, physical clutter, digital clutter, inner clutter, you know, the mental clutter that, that, that weighs us down – and then has a bent toward creativity and, you know, not just artistic pursuits but all the creative things you might want to be doing, like taking a class you always say you want to take or traveling or planting a garden.  You know, the things that, that we never quite get around to.

Sarah:  Now I know your, your publicist told you that I actually run a romance blog, but many of the people who read the site and participate in our discussions are romance readers and romance authors, and generally they’re creative people, and so I always thought that being creative came out of, of chaos.  I think a lot of people presume that creativity flourishes in a chaotic situation –

Fay:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – that, that chaos just goes along with the environment of creativity, and your book and your job as a professional organizer indicates that you really think otherwise, that you don’t think creativity requires chaos.

Fay:  I do, you know.  I, I find that so, so many of clients are, are drowning in it and are not feeling inspired by chaos at all, you know.  Especially now, when we’ve got so much more, you know, sources of chaos with social media and, and, and all the amazing things that, you know, that we can do now.  It’s, it doesn’t seem to be where people, where, where people are drawing, you know, drawing energy from anymore.  I really am finding a lot of people being able to draw energy from empty space and being able to be on top of their, their, their stuff.  You know, their, their emails and their communications and, and having a handle on that instead of feeling out of control, so I think it’s super connected.

Sarah:  Now I know I told your publicist this when we set up this interview, but books about organization and decluttering are entirely my catnip, so even outside the world of romance, this is all of, all of my catnip.  So one of the things I wanted to ask you about was the idea of downsizing digital clutter and social media and how you minimize the amount of digital clutter.  What is, what is digital clutter?  And how do you downsize it?

Fay:  Oh, my goodness.  Oh, my goodness.  Well, you know, one of the first steps – so there’s, there’s, there’re so many categories.  There are emails, social media, social media posts, social media notifications, you know, notifications on your phone that come up from all kinds of different apps, and that’s such a pain, and I think that there’s an, an unconsciousness there with what we’ve allowed to come through.  You know, you, you download a new app, and a thing pops up that says, like, allow notifications, and I think we just, like, we push OK – yeah, all right, whatever you say, you know.  You’re allowed, here, you’re allowed access to my photos and my contacts, and you can do whatever you want with my life.  [Laughs] And so I think one of the first sort of sweeps we can do is to get rid of all that extraneous stuff, the stuff that we actually don’t need to be seeing –

Sarah:  Right.

Fay:  – like notifications, emails from companies that we don’t read or even from, you know, blogs we might have signed up for the email list for and, and, and love, but just don’t ever get around to reading it, so basically it’s just sitting in our email inbox taunting us with this information, and it’s hard to let that stuff go sometimes, but once you do a mass unsubscribe of all those email lists, you can feel the difference pretty, pretty immediately.  So that’s sort of the first wave, and then, you know, the book also gets into specific ways you can declutter email inboxes beyond that and, and also general sort of day-to-day protocols in terms of the way you can send email back and forth to people that doesn’t necessarily generate a lot more of it.

Sarah:  Oh, that was a huge thing for me when I realized how to cut down on the email conversation.  Like, here is when I’m available.  How ‘bout this time?  And now we’re done, and I can move on!

Fay:  Exactly.  Exactly.  Just cut off –

Sarah:  Right, exactly!

Fay:  Totally.  And then it’s like, thank you.  Thank you for your thank you!

Sarah:  Yes!

Fay:  Thank – [laughs] – you know, and then it’s like –

Sarah:  Yes!

Fay:  Yes!

Sarah:  The reply-all you’re welcome is the worst thing ever.

Fay:  [Laughs] Right, right.

Sarah:  [Laughs] It just never ends!

Fay:  Seriously, seriously.

Sarah:  Now, one of the things the book talks about is your interactions with your clients and the people who have hired you to help them declutter their, their lives and then their spaces, and a lot of the promotional quotes and the people who gave you positive recommendations mention that the way in which you approached decluttering really changed their lives.  How do you approach working with a new, new client?  What are the first steps that you take when you begin working with someone?

Fay:  Well, we usually, you know, we talk, and I listen and hear what’s, what’s going on with them and what’s sort of bugging them the most and where they sort of are on the inner clutter realm of the situation, how it’s making them feel, and then we decide where to start, and you know, some people have ideas of where the best place to start is.  It can be different for everyone, as far as the, you know, the actual space we’re going into.  For some people, that’s their bedroom, for some people, that’s their bathroom, you know, or their workspace, of course.  And then, but the, the, the literal, physical steps of starting are usually the same with everyone.  You know, when we’re talking about physical clutter, I bring out my sorting bins.  I, you know, I put on a, a little dorky apron and bring out my sorting bins, and people feel like, oh, my gosh, you know something is happening.  And, and something is happening.  I, I’m a real big fan of having a place to throw things during the sorting process.  Not all organizers do it.  Many do, but basically having specific bins for DONATE, RECYCLE, TRASH, and a category called OTHER ROOMS as well, because I think one of the things that happens when we don’t quite know the most efficient way to be decluttering and we’re doing it on our own is, what happens is, you know, you’re decluttering the bathroom cabinet, and then you’re like, oh, that’s where this is!  That belongs –

Sarah:  Right, yeah.

Fay:  – in the attic, you know, or whatever.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Fay:  And then we’re in the attic, and then we’re up there for four hours, and we feel like nothing got done.  So I like people to kind of stay put in the, in the area they’re in, so that’s what the OTHER ROOMS bin is for, so we can keep things moving along, and, and, and as far as the, you know, the sorting bins, I say in New Order, you don’t have to have fancy sorting bins.  You don’t have to go out and buy any kind of organizational product, really, for the, for the physical decluttering.  You usually have stuff around the house, and even if you don’t, trash bags or grocery bags are fine.  It’s really about having a labeled place to throw things.  And then also, if you have to quit in the middle of, you know, what you thought was going to be a longer session, it’s easy to return to and be like, oh, right, that was the category for that, that was the category for that.  You know.

Sarah:  Right, so you can pick up where you left off, and –

Fay:  Exactly.

Sarah:  – you’re not lost –

Fay:  Exactly.

Sarah:  – when you come back to it.

Fay:  Yeah.  So that’s sort of step one.  You know, I, and just to, to, to say, like, you don’t have to worry about the end result.  You don’t have to worry about what it’s going to look like after, and I think that’s what keeps a lot of people from starting the process at all, because they want it to look like this magazine shoot.  And really, it’s just about starting and just starting that sorting process and seeing where you get.  The process itself will, you know, be enlightening in some way to you and, and, and allow you to learn things, and you will always get rid of stuff.  So, small steps, you know, small wins – it, it all helps, you know.

Sarah:  It is, it is a huge help to see the progress and the progress of visible space that happens –

Fay:  Yes!

Sarah:  – when, when you start getting rid of things.  We just moved, so I went through a whole process of here are things I don’t want to pay anybody to move, and now I have to make decisions as to where things go, and I realized that the, the process of making a decision and deciding where to put something or deciding to let, to let go of something, it’s almost like a little, like a little rush, like a little –

Fay:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – bit of dopamine or a little endorphin that is really almost, it’s almost encouraging when you do it because it feels good to keep doing so.

Fay:  Yes.  It is an exhilarating, adrenaline-fueled process to start to make choices in our lives.  I mean, that’s basically it.  I think, you know, I know in my own life as a regular human being I forget that I’m allowed to do anything that I want to do, and I basically have to remind myself of that every day, and that manifests in all these little ways, and it’s, so it’s not always, I don’t know what to do with it.  It’s that I don’t know that I’m allowed to make a decision, and so that is a huge reason why clutter piles up.  You know, I tell people they can store things anywhere they want.  I used to store my, my, my party supplies in the freezer, just ‘cause I didn’t have much frozen food –

[Laughter]

Fay:  – so I just, like, stuck it in there.

Sarah:  Whatever works!

Fay:  You’re not going to lose ‘em, you know, and they’re not going to, you know, they’re not going to melt or, you know, whatever the freezer does – not melt.  But, so it’s sort of that freedom and exhilaration of being, like, oh, cool, yeah!  I can put these shoes in a drawer if I want to.  That’s what seems like it’s going to be cool.  That’s where I’m, that’s where I’m going to remember they are.  That feels good.

Sarah:  Whatever –

Fay:  So –

Sarah:  Whatever works for you, right?

Fay:  Exactly.  Exactly.  And not the ideal that sometimes we think it needs to be.

Sarah:  Yes, yes, ‘cause I’ve noticed that I have a, a rather odd Pinterest problem in that I reach Pinterest overload.  Like, I go onto look at different ways of organizing and how has this person arranged this room, and how has this person handled this particular problem of where you put your shoes when you come in –

Fay:  Right.

Sarah:  – or whatever, and then I reach a point where I’m just like, this is too much, and I can’t do this, and none of these people have things –

Fay:  Right.

Sarah:  – that are hairy or sticky or small children or animals, and all of these people’s homes are perfect, and I can’t possibly do this.  And I realize one of the areas in which that’s really a challenge is the gift-giving season, ‘cause, you know, ‘round about, I don’t know, November 1st at this point, you’re told it’s okay to buy stuff.  It’s okay to go buy things.  It’s okay to buy lots and lots of stuff for other people, and it’s okay to buy stuff for you, but also other people, and you should be giving other people stuff.  And this year I said to my mother-in-law, please, we’re moving, I don’t want anything –

Fay:  Hmm.

Sarah:  – that is three-dimensional.  I don’t want anything that has actual matter or, you know, dimensions of size.  I want nothing with mass.  Like, air is fine.  Give me a fine air gift, because the idea of having to –

Fay:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – pack and ship something was too stressful, and I remember my sister-in-law saying, you know, she’s really struggling with this.  [Laughs] She’s having a hard time, because, you know, you buy things; it’s the holidays.  So I, I ended up with gift cards –

Fay:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – and gift cards are the best!  But how do you help your clients with that particular season of go acquire stuff, go buy stuff, now is the time of stuff?

Fay:  Well, holidays is certainly a whole other beast, and I, you know, I – [frustrated noise] – that’s, that’s, that’s a whole other conversation for sure, and you know, even when I try to, try to be like, you know, I’m going to just, it’s the thought that counts and all that stuff, and then, you know, it’s December 3rd, and I’m like, oh, oh, wait, oh, right, no, I have to get gifts for, like, forty people.  [Laughs] You know, and, and then there’s the money issue, too.  I mean, I even got small gifts for people, and, you know, we’re going almost to, like, the four digits in, in money, and, and I don’t even have, like, a family to, you know, I don’t have kids, and I’m like, oh, my gosh, how, people are spending thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars during the holidays; it’s crazy.  But in a general way, you know, gosh, marketing campaigns are real, real good, and you know, we shouldn’t be – ugh! – we shouldn’t be, you know, blamed for succumbing to them, really great, smart ad agencies out there.

Sarah:  Yep!

Fay:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  They’re powerful!

Fay:  You know, I’ve got all my Apple products –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Fay:  – and, and such.

Sarah:  Yeah, me too.

Fay:  But, you know, I, I had written a, a blog post a little while ago, actually, that I put up on Medium that I called “How Not to Prove You’re Cool,” which was a thing that happened to me recently where I went into this sort of unconscious black hole, which I’ve done many times before, and it was about how I had bought a vintage T-shirt for three bucks on my birthday, thought it was really cool – still think it’s cool – but didn’t know what the graphic meant, and so I had looked it up online and found out it was a book that came out in the ‘80s, and it’s called Loon Magic, and it was this, like, beautiful book that had a couple of printings all about loons – [laughs] – and so I go into this crazy black hole of Amazon and Barnes and Noble and, you know, trying to see how I can get this book, because obviously I need to read the book and be really familiar with it if I’m going to walk outside in public in the T-shirt, because people are going to ask me about the shirt, and then I need to be the really cool, intelligent person who knows everything about this, like, vintage T-shirt.

Sarah:  And you’ll be the most knowledgeable person –

Fay:  On loons.

Sarah:  – on loons, exactly.

Fay:  And, like, so someone at a party is like, oh, tell me about, you know, and then I turn into, like, this hotshot – I mean, it was a crazy, crazy, it was about a twenty-minute thing, and then it was like trying to figure out how to get the, like, best price on shipping, even though the book was only, like, a dollar.  It was a crazy experience.  And then I finally snapped out of it, and I was like, oh, there’s only one reason I’m buying this, and that’s because I don’t feel worthy enough to just wear a T-shirt on its own and be like, hey, it’s just a T-shirt.  Like, everyone can just back off – [laughs] – you know?  Which is all a story in my head anyway.  Yeah, so that was sort of one example of, I think, many where we sort of un-, unconsciously are just spending more to collect and feel like we’re blank, you know, feel like we’re either good enough or in the, in the game and up with what’s cool and all those kinds of things.  So, you know, inner clutter comes into play there as well, where we’re able to step back and say, why am I actually buying this, you know?  Is this something I really, really want in my life?  And then, you know, saying no.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Right, because with the coming of the saying no means more space and less clutter.  Now the thing that I’m fascinated by, the description of your book, which I don’t want to make you give away the whole thing, because, you know, the book has a purpose and your awesome publicist is going to give me a copy to give away – yay! – but one of the things you mention is the power of a productive to-do list, and I wanted to ask you about that, because I have kept reforming and revising the way I keep a to-do list, and I think I’ve found a thing that works for me, but I wanted to ask you what your advice is for people with regard to to-do lists.

Fay:  Mm-hmm.  Well, I think the first piece of advice is that it’s a to-do list, singular, and not to-do lists, plural.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Yes!  This is so true.  This has been my problem.  I realized I had my inbox as a to-do list and then a separate one, and it just, it doesn’t, it doesn’t work!

Fay:  Yeah, I think that’s, I think that’s the key, you know.  I’ve been guilty of it.  I mean even throughout years of my organizing business it took me a while to, to really hook into, to one, to one solid master to-do list, and once you do, it’s just like, it’s like the heavens open up.  You’re just like, oh, my gosh, how could I not have – you know, well, I won’t give it all away, but I, I, you know, relate it to your email inbox and your calendar.  Like, you wouldn’t have four different calendars hanging up where you write different things on each one.  I mean, obviously in this day and age you might have different types of calendars within, where you color code, and you might have a work calendar and a home calendar, but you wouldn’t have three home calendars that all have different things that people are looking at, you know?  So taking that sort of, you know, thought process to the to-do list and, you know, finally once and for all – and you can be imperfect about it, of course; it may take a couple of tries –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Fay:  – but having that goal of having everything on one to-do list is a big principle.

Sarah:  And, and knowing what kind of to-do list, paper or digital, works best –

Fay:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – works best for you.

Fay:  Absolutely.  Absolutely.  And then that depends – you know, if, if you are using paper for that to-do list, you can, you can plot that out in, in, in several different ways, and if you’re using an app, which is, is what I do recommend people try, you know, most of them have built-in functions for separating out projects if you want.  I mean, I’ve been so crazy with this book launch that I have not been separating out, you know, different aspects of it anymore.  I’m just, like, writing it down and making sure it’s on the list and I see it.  So you don’t, you know, you don’t have to get into all the intricate features if that’s a barrier of just using it, you know.  

Sarah:  So what are some of the apps that you recommend for managing your to-do list and managing your time and space?

Fay:  So I have a couple that I interact with on a daily, daily basis.  I’m just opening up my iPhone here to –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Fay:  – remind myself.

Sarah:  Of course.

Fay:  Well, I was, you know, for email, I was using an, using an app called Mailbox, which sadly just got shut down.  That’s the world we live in.

Sarah:  Eh.  So frustrating.

Fay:  But of course it’s in the book.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Of course it’s in the book, right.

Fay:  But that’s totally fine.  I’ve now –

Sarah:  Can’t change it!

Fay:  Exactly, right?  I mean, so, it’s already outdated.  It’s all, it’s all great.  It’s hilarious.  So I’ve switched over for email to Inbox by Gmail, which they launched pretty recently, and I am liking it so far.  I’m still also playing around with a couple others for email, but what I have found one of the biggest, biggest helpful features is, for an email app, is the, the ability to snooze an email –

Sarah:  Yes.

Fay:  – and choose when it comes back –

Sarah:  Yes!

Fay:  OH.

Sarah:  So useful.

Fay:  It’s like –

Sarah:  It’s life-changing.

Fay:  And I don’t know how I can live without it now.

[Laughter]

Fay:  It’s so good!

Sarah:  It really is.

Fay:  It’s so good.  I, I, I’m just, whoever, whoever worked on that, that coding, like, God bless.

Sarah:  Yes.

Fay:  It’s so good.

Sarah:  It’s amazing.

Fay:  I mean, I would have, because, you know –

Sarah:  Yep.

Fay:  Well, as you, as you know, it sounds like, it’s just so great.  All the things that I, you know, I don’t want to deal with looking at that credit card bill ‘til the weekend or that, you know, photos from my friend’s trip to Italy, which I’m like, that’s so cool!  Can’t do it during the week, nope, not going to do it right now.  You know.  And even last night, I had forty emails in my inbox, and I know I’m, like, a productivity nerd, so that’s not that much, but I’ve gotten so used to, like, that was overwhelming to me, and I couldn’t go to be until there were, like, seventeen emails in my inbox, and the only reason I could do that was because I snoozed a bunch of them.  You know, I still have to deal with a lot of that.  So that’s what I’m using for that, and then I’m always interacting with Evernote on a daily basis as well.  That’s basically a digital filing cabinet.

Sarah:  Yeah.

Fay:  And –

Sarah:  I love Evernote.

Fay:  Yeah.

Sarah:  It’s so helpful!

Fay:  It’s, it’s, it’s really just simple and very easy to use.  Sometimes, when it first came out and I was first using it, I thought that I was missing something because it was so simple, and I’m like, okay, but then what?  And I was like, oh, no, I just put the notes in and then they’re there.  [Laughs] And they’re everywhere.  So Evernote’s another one that I, that I love, yeah.

Sarah:  I have used Evernote for years now, and I love that if I make a note on my phone, it’s cross-platform.  It’ll be on the Chromebook, it’ll be on the Mac, it’ll be on the phone!  Like, it’s everywhere –

Fay:  Right.

Sarah:  – and it’s been really useful for me professionally, but in my personal life we’ve been using Google Keep, which is slightly different, but when you share a to-do list with someone, you can check an item off, and then they’ll see that it’s done, and they can add things, and you’ll see it, so we’ve been using it for sort of –

Fay:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – opposite ends of the house to-do lists.  We need to do this, we need to do that.  Oh, you did that.  Good on you!  Well done!  Google Keep has been extremely useful for us, as well as Evernote.

Fay:  Huge.  Yep!  I love that you’re using Google Keep, yes.  I know, an organizer friend of mine uses Google Keep as well, so I’m glad to hear it’s, works for you.  So, you know, that’s the other, one of the many positive things about digital stuff as well.  We have to declutter it, but then, like, what we’re left with is so many cool features.

Sarah:  Yes, and that also sort of echoes what you have written about in your book with the before and after experience of some of your clients.  What have been the results of their own efforts to declutter their worlds and their lives?

Fay:  Well, one of my favorite stories is a client of mine who called me to declutter her office/guest room closet – office closet, actually, now, realizing she has another guest room – and her goal, although she wasn’t sure it would happen at the time, was to build a voiceover booth in that closet.

Sarah:  Whoa, that’s cool!

Fay:  She – yeah – she was –

Sarah:  Wow.

Fay:  – starting, she had done so much work to start building her voiceover career, and you know, she was still kind of at the beginning of it but was, was auditioning a fair amount and was like, you know what, this is, this is a step I feel like I need to take.  And that closet was just filled with, you know, you name it.  You know, whatever goes in that sort of spare room closet, the clothes you’re never wearing, old clothes from high school, old photographs, all, you know, all that kind of stuff, and we spent a couple of sessions in there – let’s just say the end of the story is that she is now one of the go-to voiceover artists in town, and her career is flourishing, and she is so happy, and that’s, that’s what decluttering can do, you know, decluttering and choices can do.  And, you know, again, it’s not specifically, you know, artistic pursuits for everyone, but you know, that closet can turn into, you know, a knitting station or where you store, you know, any other hobby or things like that, or you store your surfboards, because you’re finally going to take ‘em out of the attic, hidden behind all the, you know, all the other stuff, and actually go do it every week.  So it’s a good example of that.

Sarah:  And because you’ve made a space for this thing, you have space in your life –

Fay:  Exactly.

Sarah:  – and time to do it.

Fay:  Exactly.  And then going back to the to-do list thing, it’s all connected to that as well, because you’re clearing out the space, and then you’re actually writing down on your to-do list the action that that space now allows you to do, if that makes sense, you know.

Sarah:  Totally makes sense.

Fay:  Yeah.

Sarah:  And you have the ability to do it because you have created a visual –

Fay:  Exactly.

Sarah:  – priority to getting this thing –

Fay:  Right.

Sarah:  – done, whatever it is –

Fay:  Right.

Sarah:  – that you, that you want to do.  You have a visual space –

Fay:  Sure.

Sarah:  – and you’ve created a priority space for it as well.  I’m always fascinated by how decluttering also frees up time.

Fay:  Ooh.

Sarah:  Because when you have space that is clear of things that were cluttered, and I don’t remember who said this online, but it’s definitely true for me, that clutter represents decisions that you haven’t made.  Either you haven’t decided where to put something, or you haven’t decided where something should live or what kind of a visual priority it should have.  Once you clear that item and you clear those spaces, you’re creating time for yourself as well.  

Now I always ask my guests this question, ‘cause I am, after all, running what is mostly a, a book blog.  What have you been reading lately, and what of the things that you’ve read would you recommend to other people?  And it can be anything:  fiction, nonfiction, magazine articles, anything.

Fay:  Great question.

Sarah:  I always ask this one.

Fay:  Okay.  I’m going to, I’m, I’m, I was just recommending something on a, on a, on a previous podcast, and I, I want to give you something, I want to give you something different.

Sarah:  Oh, you don’t have to.  I mean, it’s not like every single podcast audience overlaps.  Feel free!

Fay:  Okay.  Well, I did – I’ll, I’ll give you two things:  one is, one was the other one, which is David Lynch’s Catching the Big Fish, which I, in my spare time I’m a big hippie, and I love – [laughs] – reading, you know, he wrote a great, so, you know, so easy to read book about meditation practice, creativity, you know, art, life in general, and it’s just really beautiful, and also reminded me about, you know, the small steps mantra, which is such a part of my work, which, you know, with meditation, and the kind he practices, and, and the kind that I’ve been taught as well, you know, it’s ideally twenty minutes a day, two times a day, and I came away from the book being like, yes, of course I would like to return to that practice, but it’s also okay if I do it ten minutes a day once, instead of none at all.  So that was a great reminder.

And, and what I’ve been reading every night before bed recently is just a Mary Oliver collection of poems, A Thousand Mornings, and as you probably know, she, she’s really got the hold on this whole human and nature – [laughs] – you know, our place in this world and, and all the other creatures that, that live on it with us.  So that’s been, you know, during this crazy time, such a better way to drift into sleep than checking my Instagram likes.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Thank you for the, for the recommendations.  It’s not often that we get a poetry recommendation, so that’s super cool.  I, I just realized that I have been sitting here while I’ve been recording, looking at something that I use every day that I think you would really like.  It’s called the Momentum Dash.  It’s a plug-in extension for your browser – I use it on Chrome – but when you open a new tab, it does four things:  (1) It fills the screen with a beautiful picture from somewhere in the world, and it tells you not only where it is but who took the picture and where the picture came from, which I think is really important ‘cause I like to know the sources of my photographs.  So I get this beautiful image, and then it gives me the time, and it greets me by name, and then it asks me, what is your main focus for today?  And because, you know, I boot up my machine and that’s the first thing I see, I think, okay, what is the thing that I want to accomplish today that getting it done is going to make me feel like I did something?  And at the bottom, there are quotes from different people in different parts of the world that are partially about sort of efficiency and getting things done, but they’re also about being human, which I like because, you know, I spend my day interacting with humans through a computer, and so the visual and textual reminder are great.  So that’s the Momentum Dash, and if you want I can send you a link, but it seems like something you’d like a lot.

Fay:  Oh, I, I’m, I’m 100%, I know that I will.  That’s awesome.  Thank you!  Thank you for sharing that!  That’s great.

Sarah:  So I know book promotion is hard, and I want to thank you so much for taking the time to, to talk to me since we’re just a bit outside, probably, your target audience.  Is there anything else you wanted to talk about?

Fay:  That’s also a great question.  Thank you so much.  I, I always – [laughs] – you know, I always feel like, I call, I want to talk about you too!  I know that’s, like, not what we’re here for, but I, I, I looked at your website and saw so many brilliant things, and, and, and I would – yes, I, you’re a very accomplished woman, and, and, and I actually know zero about romance novels, and after looking at your site, I’m very intrigued, so –

Sarah:  Well, if you need recommendations, we are so here to help with your discretionary book budget.

Fay:  Awesome.  Thank you.  And as far as what I can say, yes, you know, New Order is out next week, and I’m on Instagram and Twitter @faywolf, and I’m excited for this journey, and I hope it helps people be imperfectly decluttered and, and, and making more happy choices in their life.  Thank you so much for having me.

[music]

Sarah:  So I want to thank Fay Wolf and also Fay Wolf’s publicist for answering my email when they sent out the pitch to have her as a guest.  I thought, oh ho!  Ohhh, organization is my catnip, and maybe this would be fun.  I really enjoyed this interview, and I hope that you did too, and I hope that you found it useful.  Fay’s book, New Order:  Decluttering Handbook for Creative Folks and Everyone Else, is out on the 12th, or was out on the 12th, and I have a copy to give away, so if you go to smartbitchestrashybooks.com and you click podcast at the top of the screen, you will see the podcast entry for this particular episode, and you can enter the giveaway using the widget on that screen.  I will keep the giveaway open for a couple of weeks so that you have a chance to enter, and I will close the giveaway at the end of January 2016, so if it’s, like, March 2019 and I still have a podcast and you’re listening to this, that episode, okay, (a) that’s cool, and (b) I’m sorry, the giveaway’s over.  So I will end the giveaway at the end of the month and announce the winner then, and yes, I totally ship internationally because we’re all pretty close on the internet, and we’re not that far away physically.  It’s, you know, my pleasure.  I ship internationally.  Maybe one day it’ll be just as easy for me to travel internationally.

But in the meantime, I do have a question for you:  what is your biggest organizational tip?  Or what thing do you recommend people do to help organize their creative lives?  If you have an idea or suggestion, I want to hear it, because, well, like I said, this is my catnip.  You can comment on the post on Smart Bitches for this particular episode, and this would be episode number 177, so it should be near the top if you’re listening to this soon after it posts, or you can email me at [email protected], but I would really like to know, what do you do to help yourself better organize your time or your space?  Is there something that you find supremely useful that you would love to share?  I would love to hear about it!  So thank you in advance.

This podcast was brought to you by Renee Ahdieh, the author of The Wrath & the Dawn, published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers, available in print and eBook.  Each dawn brings death, but can love change the story?  This intoxicating retelling for A Thousand and One Nights will leave you begging for book two, The Rose & the Dagger, coming Summer 2016.

And the podcast transcript this month – and many thanks to all of you who have told me how much you enjoy the podcast transcript and to garlicknitter who actually compiles the podcast transcript – the podcast transcript this month is sponsored by Kensington, publishers of Mercury Striking by New York Times bestselling author Rebecca Zanetti.  The first in a thrilling new apocalyptic series, Rebecca Zanetti brings her trademark high-octane action and sizzling sensuality to the mean streets of a chillingly believable L.A. devastated by a deadly bacterium.  Part romantic suspense, part medical thriller, and part apocalypse drama, don’t miss this thrill ride through post-pandemic society, where the survival of mankind hangs in the balance and where love blooms even under the most dire of circumstances.  On sale January 29th, 2016.

The music that you are probably nodding your head to right now is produced and provided by Sassy Outwater.  You can find her on Twitter @SassyOutwater.  This track is called “Pro Terezku.”  It’s by Dun an Doras.  You can find them on MySpace or on iTunes or wherever you like to buy your fine music.

Future podcasts will include me talking about romance, ‘cause that’s how we roll.  Next week I have an interview with Susanna Kearsley, which I am certain you will like, ‘cause we talk about creepy cool things like reincarnation and the science investigations therein.  But if you have ideas or suggestions or questions, you can email us:  [email protected], or you can leave us a message at 1-201-371-DBSA.  Don’t forget to tell us who you are and where you’re calling from.  I want to do a voicemail episode very soon, and it helps if I know who you are, because then I can call you by name, as is appropriate and also polite.

But in the meantime, on behalf of Fay Wolf and everyone here, we wish you the very best of reading.  Have a great weekend.

[swirling music]