At RWA in Denver this past summer, author Scarlett Cole gave a workshop about self belief and productivity. She believes that one can’t proceed without the other – and in her former life, she was a senior executive for a multi-billion dollar company, so she knows a little about this topic.
Since it’s the end of the year when Many Resolutions are being made, I wanted to talk to her about her workshop, and the real foundation of honesty required in order to create productivity and time management skills for yourself.
We discuss:
- The similarities between women in executive leadership positions, and women running author careers (there are lots)
- The benefits and realities of goal setting
- The difference between a hobby and a passion – and why the latter is much more self-supportive!
- The value of a mentor and the power of asking for information about your own goals
- The importance of being happy and content with what you are able to do each day, and the benefit of audacious goals and beliefs
- The idea that self belief is different from motivation
- And that selfish is NOT a bad word.
We also talk about believing in yourself, and about giving yourself permission to be successful. Productivity is itself a form of affirmation. I hope this is as interesting and inspiring for you as it was for me.
Thanks to my dogs for interrupting our conversation with a ferocious alert that the UPS truck arrived.
So, tell me! What goals are you setting for the new year? What do you want to accomplish? I want to know! I’m really nosy – or nebby, if like me, you’re from Pittsburgh. Email me at sbjpodcast@gmail.com or leave a message a +1.201.371.3272 and tell me about it. If telling another person your goal helps you get it done, I’m more than happy to be that person.
❤ Read the transcript ❤
↓ Press Play
This podcast player may not work on Chrome and a different browser is suggested. More ways to listen →
Here are the books we discuss in this podcast:
You can find Scarlett Cole at her website, ScarlettCole.com, and on Facebook at facebook.com/ItsScarlettCole.
During this episode, we also mentioned:
- Rescue Time (nb: affiliate link)
- Focus Time
- Google Calendar
And if you’re curious about organizing yourself digitally and using Google Calendar to manage all your schedule(s), you can sign up for my monthly newsletter all about decluttering your calendar and organizing your time at OrganizationAcademy.com.
If you like the podcast, you can subscribe to our feed, or find us at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows!
❤ Thanks to our sponsors:
❤ More ways to sponsor:
Sponsor us through Patreon! (What is Patreon?)
What did you think of today's episode? Got ideas? Suggestions? You can talk to us on the blog entries for the podcast or talk to us on Facebook if that's where you hang out online. You can email us at [email protected] or you can call and leave us a message at our Google voice number: 201-371-3272. Please don't forget to give us a name and where you're calling from so we can work your message into an upcoming podcast.
Thanks for listening!
This Episode's Music
Our music is provided by Sassy Outwater. Thanks, Sassy!
This is my favorite holiday album from Deviations Project, Adeste Fiddles.
This track is The Holly and the Ivy. You can find this album at Amazon.
Podcast Sponsor
This week’s podcast and transcript are brought to you by Catherine Bybee’s Chasing Shadows, available now from Montlake Romance.
New York Times bestselling romance writer Catherine Bybee has reached nearly six million readers with her smart and seductive contemporary romances. Now she’s back again with Chasing Shadows, the third entry in her wildly popular First Wives series.
Avery Grant doesn’t date. Her first marriage was a mutually beneficial contract that gave her the financial freedom she needed to step away from her controlling parents. Wealthy and single, the last thing she’s looking for is love sneaking in to mess up her life plans. And after a brutal attack in New York City that nearly kills her, she’s determined to never be vulnerable again, even if the new man in her life helps her feel safe. She throws herself into learning self-defense…both physically, and emotionally.
Mesmerized from the moment he sets his eyes on Avery, Liam is driven to learn everything about this tough, sexy, challenging woman. Breaking down her defenses won’t be easy, but Liam refuses to be pushed away. All he needs is a tiny crack in Avery’s armor to wiggle his way into her heart.
But when a terrifying lie about her attacker’s fate comes to light, Avery’s past returns to haunt her. Now she’s willing to put herself in danger to get the answers she needs. That means jeopardizing the best thing that’s ever happened to her: Liam.
Harlequin Junkie calls Chasing Shadows, “Catherine Bybee at her best.”
Readers who want their romance peppered with a mix of thrilling suspense, a bad boy hero, and a whole lot of female empowerment will love Chasing Shadows by Catherine Bybee, available now from Montlake Romance.
Transcript
❤ Click to view the transcript ❤
[music]
Sarah Wendell: Hello there! Happy post-Thanksgiving-I-Hope-the-Leftovers-Are-Gone Week, and welcome to episode number 327 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. Today I am talking with Scarlett Cole. At RWA in Denver this past summer, Scarlett Cole gave a workshop about self-belief and productivity. She believes that one can’t proceed without the other, and in her former life she was a senior executive for a multi-billion-dollar company, so she knows a little bit about this topic. Since it is near the end of the year when many resolutions are being made, I wanted to talk to her about her workshop and the real foundation of honesty that is required in order to create productivity and time management skills for yourself. Among the things we discuss, we talk about the similarities between women in executive leadership positions and women running author careers. You are probably not surprised to know there are many. We talk about the benefits and realities of goal-setting, the difference between a hobby and a passion and why the latter is much more self-supportive, the value of a mentor, and the power of asking for information about your own goals, the importance of being happy and content with what you are able to do each day, and the benefit of audacious goals and beliefs. Most importantly, we talk about the idea that self-belief is different from motivation and that selfish is not a bad word. We also discuss believing in yourself, giving yourself permission to be successful. That became the title of this episode. Productivity is itself a form of affirmation, and I hope that this discussion is as interesting and inspiring for you as it is for me.
I also want to give a very special thanks to my dogs for interrupting our conversation with a ferocious alert when the UPS truck arrives. I apologize in advance.
Now, I do want to know – more barking, right now? Great. I do want to know – Zeb apparently does too – what goals are you setting for the new year? What do you want to accomplish? I really want to know; I’m nosy, or if, like me, you’re from Pittsburgh, I’m really nebby. So if you’d like to tell me about it, I would love to hear. You can email me at [email protected], or you can call and leave a message at 201-371-3272. You can just tell me your goal, and then you can also tell me not to talk about it if I do a future episode about goal-setting? This is one of my favorite topics, but if you’d like to tell me what your goal, what your idea for the accomplishments you want to make for 2019 are, I would love to hear them. So, you know, think about getting in touch – [email protected].
This week’s podcast and transcript are brought to you by Catherine Bybee’s Chasing Shadows, available now from Montlake Romance. New York Times bestselling romance writer and last week’s podcast guest Catherine Bybee has reached nearly six million readers with her smart and seductive contemporary romances. Now she’s back again with Chasing Shadows, the third entry in her wildly popular First Wives series. Avery Grant doesn’t date. Her first marriage was a mutually beneficial contract that gave her the financial freedom she needed to step away from her controlling parents. Wealthy and single, the last thing she’s looking for is love sneaking in to mess up her life plans. After a brutal attack in New York City that nearly kills her, she’s determined to never be vulnerable again, even if the new man in her life helps her feel safe. She throws herself into learning self-defense, both physically and emotionally. Mesmerized from the moment he sets his eyes on Avery, Liam is driven to learn everything about this tough, sexy, challenging woman. Breaking down her defenses won’t be easy, but Liam refuses to be pushed away. All he needs is a tiny crack in Avery’s armor to wiggle his way into her heart. But when a terrifying lie about her attacker’s fate comes to light, Avery’s past returns to haunt her. Now she’s willing to put herself in danger to get the answers she needs. But that means jeopardizing the best thing that’s ever happened to her: Liam. Harlequin Junkie calls Chasing Shadows, “Catherine Bybee at her best.” Readers who want their romance peppered with a mix of thrilling suspense, a bad-boy hero, and a whole lot of female empowerment will love Chasing Shadows by Catherine Bybee, available now from Montlake Romance.
We have a podcast Patreon. I’m sure you’ve heard me talk about it, but I’m going to do it again right now! If you have supported the show with a monthly pledge, thank you, thank you, thank you. You are helping me keep the show going, you help me transcribe every episode, and you’re making sure that each episode is accessible to everyone, which is very important to me and many people on the internet and off. Thank you! If you would like to join the Patreon community, have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches. For one dollar a month, you can make a monthly pledge and be part of the group that helps develop questions for upcoming interviews and suggests guests for the show as well.
I also want to thank some of the Patreon folks personally, so to Sarah, Alice, and Jennie, thank you so much for being part of the podcast community.
Are there other ways you can support this show? Yes there are, and I bet you know what they are! Leave a review however you listen or wherever you listen. Tell a friend, subscribe, whatever works for you, but if you are hanging out with me in your eardrums right now, thank you very, very much. I know how many podcasts there are to choose from. I am trying to choose ones to listen to every week – [laughs] – and I am deeply, deeply honored that you are hanging out with me, so thank you.
Our music is provided by Sassy Outwater. I will have information at the end of the show as to who this is and where you can find this for your very own. I bet you know what this is; it’s my favorite album for this time of year!
And at the end of the episode, I will have a preview of what is coming up next week at Smart Bitches. I will have a terrible joke, which I know many of you look forward to the terrible jokes, because you are good and noble people, and I appreciate you! And of course I will have links to all of the things that we talk about and many books that we mention in this episode.
I love talking about productivity and how to improve the way you do the things you want to do, so I hope you enjoy this episode as well. And again, if you want to tell me about your goals for 2019, I would love to hear about them, ‘cause I’m sitting here figuring out my own!
But now, let’s do this interview. On with the podcast.
[music]
Scarlett Cole: Hi, my name is Scarlett Cole. I currently live in Manchester, England, and I am an author of contemporary romance and romantic suspense!
Sarah: Fabulous! And you also gave a very cool workshop at RWA this year, about a subject that you and I talk a lot about, which is maximizing your productivity with a lot of self-honesty.
Scarlett: Yeah. I think the two things go hand-in-hand, productivity and self-belief, and really I believe that you can’t have one without the other.
Sarah: So what was the sort of basis of your, of your workshop? Is this a workshop you’ve given before?
Scarlett: In my previous life, I was a senior executive at a forty-five-billion-dollar company in Canada, and I used to give a lot of presentations, especially to women in leadership positions, and so this was the presentation; it’s the first time I’ve given it to an author community, but it is based on a presentation I used to give a lot to working professionals.
Sarah: Have you noticed that there’s any similarities between the women leaders that you would speak to in your old profession and then speaking to authors?
Scarlett: There’s a lot of similarities, to be honest. I think there are different types of author and different types of business professional. You know, you have the very assertive and determined individuals who absolutely fully intend to progress up the organization, and if you parlay that into writing terms, you know, there are a lot of very career-committed authors who really do want to, you know, they have different goals: maybe they want to hit a bestseller list, maybe they want to put out a certain number of books a year, maybe they want to get a certain pin at RWA. And then I think you have, you know, journey professionals, people who are quite happy in the role that they’re in at work. They just want to be really good managers or really good data analysts. They don’t really have aspirations to progress aggressively up any kind of structure, but they want to do really good, solid work, and I think there are some authors who fall into that category too. They’re quite happy to put out a book every one to two years. They’re passion projects for them, and, and that’s the way they want to manage their careers, so I think there’s a lot of similarities in the way working professionals and authors view the different ways they can progress their careers.
Sarah: That’s really interesting. I like that you call it a passion project, because I think a lot of the time women, especially in embarking on a creative project, are often sort of dismissed as, like, a hobby or, you know, something fun and silly that women do, whereas as a passion project it is just as valid if you do it once or twice a year or work on it for quite a long time, and it’s just as valid if you also focus on that as being your primary career and your primary goal.
Scarlett: Absolutely, and I think we’re, as a society, we’re very quick to pass judgment on creative pursuit as something that is hobbyist rather than something that can be a career, either full-time or part-time.
Sarah: Yeah.
Scarlett: And I think there’s a lot of, you know, you see posts occasionally of, you know, well, I’m a professional, and I write five thousand words today. I don’t think it makes you any less of a professional if you only write a hundred and fifty between the hours of 5:00 and 6:00 a.m. ‘cause that’s the only time you’ve got available in your day. So I think, you know, we should move away from hobbyist type language, make sure we’re –
Sarah: Yes.
Scarlett: – focused on them being our passions and our passion for creativity and our outlet for that, and then, you know, go at your own pace.
Sarah: I, I really like that. I think that it can be very demeaning and, and self-defeatist to compare yourself to somebody who can write thousands and thousands of words at a clip, and, and it can really mess up your belief in your-, in yourself.
Scarlett: Well, it can if you rely on it too heavily, but I think there’s also value if, if increasing the number of words you want to do, you know, if that is something that is important to you, reaching out to those people who achieve it for mentorship. So I think, again, you know, at the two ends of the spectrum, you know, whether you’re doing a hundred and fifty or you’re doing five thousand, you’re still doing great work. I’m, I’m very fortunate; one of my mentors is Kathryn Le Veque, and Kathryn Le Veque is a historical romance writer who, I’ve known her to write fifteen thousand words in a day, and I was stuck at about two thousand words a day, and I, I reached out to her and I said, hey, what’s the special sauce? What’s the secret? How do you –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Scarlett: – you know, how do you do this? And, you know, she was able to give me some, you know, really tactical, tangible things that I could do differently to increase the number of words that I get to do in a day, so if increasing your word count is something you are passionate about and something you want to do, it’s, it’s perfectly cool to go after information and insight as to how to achieve it. It’s also perfectly okay to be happy and comfortable writing a hundred and fifty words a day.
Sarah: It sounds like self-belief and accepting your own ambition are also related. Do you agree?
Scarlett: Oh, absolutely. The, the presentation you referred to that I spoke at RWA this year, I, one of my beliefs is that you have to give yourself permission to be successful. I think as individuals and especially as women, we can almost be afraid of success. You know, what happens if we do make it big? What happens if this book really is successful? You know, how does my life as I currently know it change if I get that? And I think, you know, we talk about this productivity and self-belief, I think productivity suffers when we hold ourselves back from that edge of greatness.
Sarah: I love the idea of giving yourself permission to be successful? It’s also very culturally interesting just looking at the way and the, and the, the language that writers use about their own success. It’s very rare to hear writers, especially in romance, talk openly about their specific ambitions in front of a large group of people that they don’t know, that talking about your ambition is something that happens almost in a very intimate setting, and it is okay to be ambitious. It is okay to have goals to be successful and to give yourself permission to try to reach a goal that’s, you know, really big. That’s totally normal!
Scarlett: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we, we have this almost false modesty when it comes to talking about these things. And –
Sarah: [Laughs] Yeah.
Scarlett: – I’m a great believer that we are our thoughts, and so if you’re constantly telling yourself, you know, well, I, I’m never going to be as good as at person X? Then the chances are you’re not, because if you are your thoughts, you’re, you know, the universe wants to co-create with us –
Sarah: Mm-hmm?
Scarlett: – you know, we’re, you’re never going to be as great as that person, and, you know, those, we’re almost embarrassed when we say, you know, I would love to be the next Vi Keeland. That would be, that would be my thing. If I could, you know, I would like to be the next Vi Keeland. You know, there’d be a whole bunch of people who’d look at me and go, well, you’re never going to be Vi Keeland. Maybe not. I want to be my version of being that successful, but it’s okay to aspire to be like a successful individual. It’s, it’s okay to set goals that sound audacious. It, you know, you need to give yourself permission to say, within the next two years, I will be a USA Today bestselling author, because then you’re putting that out to the universe so the universe can work with you to make that happen.
Sarah: And if you do, that’s awesome! And if you don’t, you haven’t lost anything; you have still built an effort.
Scarlett: Yeah, well, there’s a saying isn’t there? I’m going to completely butcher it, ‘cause I can’t think of it off the top of my head, but it’s something like, if you shoot for the moon, you might miss and only hit the stars, right? Something like that.
Sarah: Oh well!
Scarlett: But it –
Sarah: Still a good place to be!
Scarlett: [Laughs] Yeah, it’s still a great place to be, and so if you can set these goals and then consistently work towards them, you know, even if you don’t hit them by the end of whatever timeframe you give yourself, you’re a whole lot further on than you would have been if you’d not set those goals at all.
Sarah: Very true. So when you say that productivity and self-belief are two sides of the same coin, how do you enter your, your workshop with that premise?
Scarlett: Well, I think that the first thing it’s important to understand is self-belief is different from motivation. I think a lot of people –
Sarah: Ooh!
Scarlett: – you know, mix the two together, but, you know, self-belief or self-confidence is a judgment in your own capabilities for achieving a goal, and so, you know, the self-belief comes from do I believe I am actually capable of achieving this thing I want to do? Motivation is something different; that’s either an internal or external factor that causes you to want to do something. So, you know, I want to walk ten thousand steps a day because it’s good for my mental health. I also believe I am capable of achieving good mental health as long as I have a plan and I stick to it. So those two things are different, and so I always start there, that, you know, I think a lot of people talk about productivity and motivation? I try to talk about productivity and, and self-belief. And so I, for me the big turning point was many, many, many years ago, I read a book called Take Time for Your Life by Cheryl Richardson. I was actually set, sat in Kalamazoo Airport. I was stuck in a snowstorm, and I’ve got to be honest, being English, I thought Kalamazoo was going to be way more interesting than it turned out to be –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Scarlett: – because, you know, I’d, I’d heard the song, and I was like, okay, Kalamazoo, this is really exciting, and then it –
Sarah: Nope.
Scarlett: – you know, it wasn’t quite as exciting as I thought it was going to be, especially in a snowstorm. And so Cheryl Richardson, in this book, and she talks about, you know, make three pie charts. This is one of the first exercises she does in the book. The first one is, you know, very quickly, without too much thought, draw a pie chart of how you think you spend your time. And you can, you know, put the big buckets of time in there: work, time with family, sleep, and it’s over the course of two weeks I think she recommended. Then the second one was spend two weeks tracking your time and see where you actually spend it. And then the third one was draw a pie chart of how you’d like to spend your time. And the exercise at the end was to look at how you currently spend your time and how you want to spend your time, and what are the things that hold you back from doing that?
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Scarlett: And as I worked through that exercise, I started to see that, you know, I placed a huge amount of value on work. You know, it’s, you know, my ego came from work, ‘cause that’s where I got, you know, reinforcement that I was good at my job and all those kinds of things. I wanted to be a successful professional, so I was very driven, but other areas in my life were lacking, and you know, I had these belief, beliefs that were holding me back, so, you know, if I had time available I should actually spend it on work, because work is important, work is what pays the bills, et cetera, et cetera. And I hadn’t really thought about, and this is the first premise of Cheryl’s talk is, your time is yours to give away. And I remember reading this line, my time is mine to give away, and I had it all backwards! I felt like, you know, the company that I worked for was taking my time away, and I really hadn’t sat down and thought, whoa, hang on a second, I own my time. I own my time at work; I own my time at home; I, it, it’s mine to give away; and, and so, you know, that was a, a big belief shift for me, that this was my time and I owned it, and I had to be accountable for how I spent it. And so, you know, that was kind of how I teed up the presentation, which is, you know, that self-belief is not the same as motivation. Looking at how you actually spend your time versus how you think you spend your time and then determining how you want to spend your time will lead you to address the self-beliefs that have been holding you back from doing what you want to do all along.
Sarah: I definitely, right now in my life, am very, very attentive to not only my own time but my own energy. I think there’s not only an expectation –
Scarlett: Right?
Sarah: – that women give all of our time away but that we are an inexhaustible source of energy, that we will always be able to keep going, that our job is to keep giving and giving and giving. This is why I hate The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein, by the way.
Scarlett: [Laughs]
Sarah: Hate that book, and I hate that book about the fish that has that special scales and has to give herself away. Oh, I hate that one too, but anyway – my rant on children’s books will be another time.
[Laughter]
Sarah: There are many. But the idea that I am this inexhaustible source of energy? No, my energy has a finite amount, and even though I am not working with a, within a chronic illness or chronic exhaustion, the idea of visualizing your energy as a tangible thing that you are giving away, whether it is a spoon or a token or, as Sarah Knight calls it, a fuck in your fuck budget, you, you, you have a finite amount of it, and you have to be aware of how you’re spending it and how you’re giving it away, because the message for so many women is to never stop giving it away and never stop spending it and putting yourself last.
Scarlett: Absolutely. In Cheryl Richardson’s book, she talked about this notion of fuel tanks. We have all these –
Sarah: Yes!
Scarlett: – different types of fuel tanks in our body. You know, we have an emotional fuel tank; we have a love fuel tank; we have a nutrition fuel tank. We have all of these different fuel tanks in our body, and we have things that feed them, and we have things that drain them, and it’s really important in our lives to figure out, you know, of all the things we do, which feeds and which drains. And that could be draining friendships; it could be –
Sarah: Right.
Scarlett: – draining work environments; it could be, you know, personal habits that are draining. You know, when we get into loops and habits in our, our own lives and our own behaviors which could be harmful to us. So for me, I know that if I stop working out I become a real crankypants, and so that’s harmful to me; it’s draining to me when I don’t make time to do that.
Sarah: Yes.
Scarlett: I think the other thing that Cheryl Richardson also said – and it’s funny how a lot of this is coming back to Cheryl’s book – is extreme self-care is the equivalent of putting your own emergency mask on first on an airplane.
Sarah: Yes.
Scarlett: And so, you know, it is time to be selfish. You want to put your own, your own mask on first, because you will be more help to other people when you have your own, you know, oxygen mask on. You can help all of your children and your family and passengers nearby with theirs, but –
Sarah: Yes.
Scarlett: – you know, the time it takes you to put one mask on your child, you then are no use to anybody. And so I think that’s the same when it comes to, you know, productivity, right? Your dreams are important, and if, if you allow other people to drain your energy away from you so you have nothing left to put into your dreams and the things that are important to you –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Scarlett: – that fuel tank is going to run on empty, and you’ll start to notice that in other parts of your lives.
Sarah: Absolutely true.
Scarlett: Not least because you start to resent the things that are sucking your fuel tanks dry.
Sarah: Oh yes, absolutely. So how do you advocate for better productivity and time management when you examine that your time is yours to give away? How does that move into productivity?
Scarlett: So I think when you start with your time is yours to give away, you enable yourself to look at the things you do over the course of, you know, a day, a week, a month, a year –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Scarlett: – and identify which things align with what you believe to be important. Now, there’s a certain pragmatism to this, right? You know –
Sarah: Yep.
Scarlett: – we all – well, some of us are lucky and don’t have to, but most of us have to earn a living. So there’s going to have to be a certain element of pragmatism that if your dreams are really to go travel and your time is yours to give away, we’d all love to be, you know, an around-the-world ticket, but the reality is we’ve probably got to have a day job, which means that, you know, eight hours of the day we’re, we’re going to be at work. So I think, you know, you’ve, you start with a list of the things that are important to you, the goals that you want to achieve; you look at the time you have available and you look at what you’re currently doing with it; and then you look at those things that you’re currently doing, and you identify which of those things are working for you, i.e., which of those things currently do align with the dreams that you have –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Scarlett: – which of those are just pragmatic realities. So yes, you might want to be a full-time writer, but for now you’ve got to be, you know, you don’t have the kind of income levels to be a full-time writer, so you’re going to have to do your day job or whatever else it is you’ve got to do, and then you look at all the other stuff. And you look at that stuff, and you start to identify stuff that no longer works for you that you can get rid of –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Scarlett: – changes that you can make – maybe you can go from, you know, full-time role to a part-time role – responsibilities that you have. That emotional labor that you talk about, McKinsey & Company did a study a number of years ago, and it talked about how, amongst working professional women, women were still on average doing a couple more hours’ household labor than, than their partners, and so, you know, you may need to have conversations with people in your family about their participation in the things that, you know, take you away from that. Some of it is careful planning. I have a friend, and during the holidays, you know, she’ll take my kids for a day and I’ll take her kids for a day, so we both actually get a full day of childfree work done rather than having two days of, you know, well, the kids, you can just watch a movie for a little bit and then go play outside, and then I’ll try and think of something to do in the afternoon. You know, you have to engage the people around you in your life to figure out how to make that work.
And then I have, once you’ve gone through all of those things on a day-to-day basis, I have a, a belief that it’s okay to drop things. I think productivity suffers when we struggle to try and keep all of the balls in the air. And, you know, it’s a known fact that context-switching, so going from task to task to task, is a productivity killer. Like, if you’ve read the book Deep Work, they talk about the benefits of getting immersed in something for a longer period of time. So what I do is on a – and, and these change. They’re, they’re, each week I’ll look, I’ll identify which balls I’m juggling are glass and which balls I’m juggling are plastic.
Sarah: I love this analogy.
Scarlett: Yeah.
Sarah: It’s such a good, it’s such a good visual for what’s glass and what’s, what’s droppable. I actually have a glass, I have a glass crystal ball on my desk that makes, it reminds me every time I look at it, like, what’s glass and what’s plastic. Please keep going; this is brilliant. [Laughs]
Scarlett: Yeah, so if you think about your priorities as glass and plastic on a week – and I’m going to say something that’s, you know, I’m going to say some things that I’m sure some people will gasp in horror when I say this, but, you know, glass balls are, they’re breakable, they’re hard to replace, they’re fragile, they’re precious, and plastic balls, they’ll bounce, they’re easy to replace, they’re resilient. They can be important, but you know, the world isn’t going to stop spinning on its axis if you drop one of them. And, and some weeks, you know, my children are glass balls. My children are, you know, they have an important show that they’ve been practicing for months and they expect me to be there, and so they are a glass ball. There are some weeks, like the week where I have a book due on Friday, where I have a deadline, where my children become plastic balls because I know my husband’s got it.
Sarah: Yeah.
Scarlett: He knows, because my dream is important, I’ve told him; it, my time is mine to give away; that week I have to give my work the, the focus –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Scarlett: – and I’ve asked for support. I’ve got my husband as backup, you know, for any responsibilities I usually have like, you know, I take the kids to karate. Well, guess what; this week hubby’s taking the kids to karate, because that’s the only way it’s going to work. So you go through your priorities at the start of the week, and you decide ahead of time what you’re going to drop if you have to –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Scarlett: – because they’re plastic and they’ll bounce. And some weeks your career could be glass, and some weeks your career could be plastic. You know, if you’re working on a –
Sarah: Yep.
Scarlett: – a project that’s going to take a month and, you know, you’ve got a, a middle week where you’re waiting for some data to come in and nothing’s quite ready yet, that might be the week where that, that ball’s a bit plastic, and you’re going to give your time to something else. So honestly, I think looking each week and, and being flexible, not, not assigning something because tradition tells you it’s so. You know, people will say, well, your children should always be glass balls. Well, as long as you’ve got a good support network around you and everybody knows the plan and you’re organized, sometimes you can allow them to be plastic because you know they’re in good hands.
Sarah: All too often I think spouses are put in a support role of the other spouse’s career. You know, you’re working late; I understand; I adjust. It is okay to advocate for your own time and your career goals, even if this is like a second career, it’s not your primary career.
Scarlett: Absolutely.
Sarah: It’s okay to ask for time.
Scarlett: When I, I’d gone through this exercise and I, I looked at what time I had, and I knew that I wanted to write a romance book, and obviously I was an executive at this company, I had two young children, I had two children under four, and I knew I wanted to find time to write, and part of this exercise, I found, I was a CSI addict! [Laughs] I would watch CSI –
Sarah: Wha-at?
Scarlett: Oh my goodness, I, literally, a true story, I was ten centimeters dilated and ready to push, according to the doctor, and it was, like, three minutes from the end of a CSI episode, and I’m like, can I just catch the last three minutes?
[Laughter]
Sarah: So was this CSI: Original Recipe –
Scarlett: Oh –
Sarah: – CSI: Sunglasses –
Scarlett: Oh –
Sarah: – or CSI: New York?
Scarlett: CSI: Sunglasses bugs the pants off me a little bit, but I still watch it.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Scarlett: And you can, you can find an episode of CSI on anywhere. Like, it’s –
Sarah: Oh yeah, it’s like Law & Order. Yeah. [Laughs]
Scarlett: Yeah! It’s, it’s like, it’s on, it’s on a channel somewhere, and I found that I would literally, I’d, you know, I’d get the kids to bed, I’d sit down on the sofa, I’d take a deep breath, and then I’d find an episode of CSI. And so one of, one of the things I did, because my time is mine to give away, my dreams are important, I decided that from nine o’clock until half past ten every night, Monday through Friday, I was going to spend an hour and a half on something that was important to me. And what I would do on a Sunday is figure out what I was going to do that week, because I, I also do decade goals, so from forty to fifty was I was going to learn to play the piano, and so I’d be, you know, I wanted to practice my piano, and I wanted to write this book, and so I just made 9:00 till 10:30 my immovable time. That time became glass to me; I wouldn’t allow anything to interrupt it, short – I mean, obviously if it was somebody’s birthday – [laughs] – you know, I –
Sarah: Yeah.
Scarlett: – I, I might do that instead, but for the most part it was an absolutely immovable thing for me to have that window of time every night so that I knew I could put aside everything else. I wouldn’t context-switch; I’d put my work Blackberry to one side; you know, I would go into a separate room to my husband; I wouldn’t allow myself to be distracted; and I would give myself that hour and a half at night; and that’s how I started to put together the framework for The Strongest Steel, which was my first book. You know, I used the time to do some English language courses, which I know I speak English, but I learned English in the north of England, and we’re not known for our exact pronunciation, and we certainly don’t favor commas, so, you know, I did some English language courses, I practiced my piano, and I made that time for me.
Sarah: So you broke up with CSI.
Dogs: ATTACK! ALERT! INVADERS!
Scarlett: I broke, I broke up with CSI.
Sarah: Listen, my dogs do not like your decision there.
Scarlett: I know; they’re offended.
Sarah: They’re very upset about this decision. I think it’s more likely that the UPS person has arrived, and –
Scarlett: [Laughs]
Sarah: – they don’t like that either. [Sighs] God. We are not under attack at this time, though the patrol will continue. I apologize for the interruption.
[Laughter]
Scarlett: That’s okay. They’re, they’re very distressed on behalf of David Caruso.
Sarah: They really are. David Caruso has a good team behind him now. So you broke up with CSI to make room for the things that you wanted to do.
Scarlett: Yeah! Yeah, that was, it was as simple as that, and it took some, you know – I, I’m very lucky. My husband was leaning in long before Sheryl Sandberg made it a popular phrase, and so I’ve never felt like I’ve ever, you know, had to ask my husband to step in to do thing – like, he’s always done his fair share. Like, we’ve never, we’ve never had a, a problem with that in any way.
Sarah: Yeah, you’re partners in a lot of things.
Scarlett: Yeah, we’re partners in a lot of things, and so, you know, he’s never been shy. In fact, he actually took paternity leave because I was the breadwinner at the time, so he actually took the time off work to spend time with our son. But, you know, to make that work when I came, you know, when I finished putting the children to bed, I, I wasn’t getting involved with cleaning up the kitchen. Like, that was no longer my responsibility, that was his, and instead I took something that he did at the weekend, and it all just kind of worked out in the wash kind of thing.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Scarlett: But, you know, certain things had to happen to make sure I could have that time, and I just want to say something: it can seem incredibly selfish to do this. I think the, especially when you’re in a relationship, the important thing is, if you can do this together, where you’re both honest with what your dreams are and the time you need and how to make this work, that makes it a lot easier to work through. So, you know, my husband’s got his own goals, and he’s got his own non-negotiable times that he needs to keep clear to do things, and –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Scarlett: – and so, you know, it’s not just kind of me going, well, hang on a second everybody. Work around my schedule, ‘cause this –
Sarah: Yeah.
Scarlett: – is what I need. You know there is a conversation about, okay, this is what I need, and this is what you need, and how do we work this together to make it so that we can, you know, all get the things that we need? So, you know, you may need to compromise. If you want to get, you know, eight hours’ writing time a week done, maybe you can’t do an hour and a half every day; maybe you have to do Saturday morning and Sunday morning, or maybe you need to, you know, have Saturday out of the house, and you go to the library or, you know, to mean that you, you may have to be creative in the way you find a way for that to work in your family, but it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t take the time.
Sarah: Yes, and it also requires that you be honest about the work that you are doing that, that other people may not necessarily understand as work.
Scarlett: Yes. And this is where it just comes down to a clear articulation of your dream. You don’t need anybody’s permission or approval to say, I am going to go and write a steamy romance book. You don’t, you don’t need anybody’s approval; you don’t need anybody’s permission to do that. I always say I am a proud romance writer; I tell anybody who listens. I don’t try and dress it up that I, you know, sort of write women’s fiction. I don’t; I write straight-up romance, and I’m unapologetic about that.
Sarah: Yep. And you have to be able to advocate for yourself in saying, okay, these are the things that I do in the evening. Would you please take these two days’ worth of stuff, and then in exchange I will do this stuff. You have to be honest about the work that you’re doing –
Scarlett: Yes.
Sarah: – mutually.
Scarlett: Yes.
Sarah: Not assign it based on gender or habit or expectation or, or role. You, you have to be honest about all of the things that you do that are, in fact, work, that a lot of people don’t consider work.
Scarlett: Yeah. It – and you can use your pie chart for this, right? Because they look like –
Sarah: Yes.
Scarlett: – I looked over this two-week period of time, and this is the, these are the things I spend my time doing, and it’s amazing how many – because I worked with a lot of senior-level working professionals, one of the things that I, you know, because those people were in a financial situation to be able to afford it, I would often advocate –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Scarlett: – outsourcing cleaning, because still, unfortunately, in many households that is still very much viewed as a gender-assigned role –
Sarah: Yep.
Scarlett: – and we end up doing a disproportionate amount of it. And so as a, you know, I remember working with a young vice president and, you know, I said to her, I’m like, why, you, you can afford this now. Reclaim the however many hours a week you spend doing laundry and doing these chores for you so that you can either – I mean, you can do what you want with the time; you can pursue something creative, or you can just lie in your bed ‘cause it’s been an exhausting week, but you know, claim back some of this time for yourself, because you’re in this position to be able to afford that.
Sarah: Mm-hmm. I also advocate for outsourcing some things because you’re also supporting another person’s business.
Scarlett: Oh yes. Yes, yes.
Sarah: Like, all the cleaning services that I have used, with the exception of one, have been run by women –
Scarlett: Yes!
Sarah: – and you are supporting another person’s business, especially if you find a local company that is, you know, helping other people find local, specific jobs. I mean, it’s, it is as much someone else’s labor that you are paying for as it is enabling someone else to do their work –
Scarlett: Yes.
Sarah: – that they want to get paid for in a – and, and there’s a lot of flexibility in, in housekeeping services for the people who do it, you know what I mean?
Scarlett: Well, and there’s also, for you as, when you make these decisions, there’s a, there’s a cost value trade-off that we don’t make, which is it feels like –
Sarah: Yes.
Scarlett: – it’s, it’s a short, in the short term outsourcing anything, and it, it could be, you know, as an author, it could be, you know, organizing your Facebook party, setting up your social media. It could be promotions for release week. There’s, there’s all kinds of things that you can outsource.
Sarah: Yeah.
Scarlett: The question is, is your time better spent doing something else, and is the person you’re outsourcing it to more qualified, better qualified, better connected to do the work than you are? And so if the answer to those things are, are true, then, then you should absolutely go ahead and, and outsource whatever it is that you spend your time doing. I hate, I hate making teasers. I, I hate, hate, hate making teasers. I am useless at it.
Sarah: What, you mean like teasing an upcoming title?
Scarlett: Yeah, teasing an upcoming title, yeah.
Sarah: I think I thought you were about to say you hate making tea, and I was like, listen, that is a very dangerous statement –
Scarlett: No, no.
Sarah: – for you to make while currently in England? You, you might want to lock the door. [Laughs]
Scarlett: I actually have my hand on a teacup with tea in it, tea in it as we speak.
[Laughter]
Sarah: I actually hate making tea, and like, half of your county goes – [gasps]!
Scarlett: Yeah, everybody in England just turned off your podcast.
Sarah: Yes!
[Laughter]
Sarah: So you hate making teasers for books.
Scarlett: I hate making book teasers. I’m useless at it. I don’t have a great eye for it. It takes me way too long. I have a phenomenal teaser maker, and she makes me my teasers, and, and they are amazing! So, you know, why would I not outsource that to somebody else –
Sarah: [Laughs] Of course!
Scarlett: – when I hate it, it takes me forever, and my, you know, the way I make money is by writing books?
Sarah: Yes.
Scarlett: And you know, if I spend two hours faffing around on Canva to make a single teaser, you know, whatever, when somebody else could have – I’m, I’m like, you know, I’d rather be writing words.
Sarah: I recently wrote an article for the Romance Writers Report, which is the publication from Romance Writers of America, and it was, it was created in part because there was an article published in a prior issue about hiring a virtual assistant, and it talked about not paying the virtual assistant –
Scarlett: Hmm.
Sarah: – and there were people in the article advocating paying their virtual assistants with gift cards or free signed books, and I was, I was incandescent with rage about that, because I am a former executive assistant, and you pay people for their work. And the point of hiring an assistant is exactly what you said. You don’t have to hire somebody full-time. You can hire somebody for five or six hours a month to do things that takes them fifteen minutes that would take you two hours, and what you’ve done is you’ve gotten yourself five hours of clear work time that you’re not going to spend on these business and administrative-related tasks. What are you going to do with that time?
Scarlett: Yeah.
Sarah: One of the things that has been incredibly beneficial to me is to be audacious enough to assign myself a billable hour. How much is my hour worth? I assigned a billable hour rate to my time. Now, I’m married to an attorney, so for a very long time I understood –
Scarlett: [Laughs]
Sarah: – thinking in billable hours, ‘cause that’s, you know, that’s how attorneys bill. Now, I am not an attorney, but hey, hold up, if I assign a financial value to my time, then it helps me figure out, is it actually worth it for me to try to do this on my own, or would it be less expensive for me to hire someone to do this who can do it faster and better, with greater professionalism and ease, than for me to spend X number of hours learning how to do it, figuring out how to do it, and then screwing up a couple of times ‘cause I don’t know how to do it? Assigning a monetary value to your time allows you to better budget that time.
Scarlett: Absolutely, and I think there’s, there’s two pieces to this. There’s the first piece around the, the pure economics of it: would my time be better spent doing this other thing? I think the thing we sometimes miss in this conversation, though, is – and you touched on it – is the quality. You know, if somebody’s going to do a better job than me, where –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Scarlett: – the results that I would get from this piece of work that has been done are even more beneficial to me, then it’s a, it’s a double-whammy, and sometimes I might make that decision even if it’s more, it would work out more expensive for somebody else to do it, because, you know, if they do a better job than I could – so, for example, making a book cover – if they do a so much better job than I do because they bring a creativity to it, an eye to it, trends, they understand all of these things –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Scarlett: – then why would I not pay more? Because I’m paying for expertise, and so, you know, that would be the only, that would, that would be the time that I would make a different decision that wasn’t purely based on economics. Are they just going to do a better job than I am? And the truth is, yeah, they are sometimes.
Sarah: Yeah! So how, what are some of the things that you advocate in terms of conceiving of your time as having a value and conceiving of your, of your time as something to give away? What advice do you have for people who want to be more productive and have decided to make this shift in their thinking?
Scarlett: I think the first thing is, you have to set up a mechanism by which you rigorously track the way in which you spend your time. And there are lots of different ways you can do this. You, you could, you know, if you’re creative, you may prefer something like one of the, the, the planners that you can put all the stickers and colors and you can have fun with that; it could be a great creative outlet. It can be a way to relax and something you do at the weekends, and you can plan your time. You can manage your time in Google Calendar or any online calendar app.
Sarah: The devil you say.
Scarlett: [Laughs] You could also use a, you know, just a straight-up Moleskine planner, but understanding where you are currently spending your time and then making sure that in what-, whatever that is, whatever form you take to manage your time, you have your, your goals, your, the things that are important to you, the dreams you have, the things you want to spend your time on, so that every week, as you are planning your time, as you are looking at how you are going to give your time away this week –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Scarlett: – you make sure you’re doing that with an eye on the things that you want to spend your time on.
Sarah: Very true. I used to sit down on Sunday afternoons and look at what I had on my schedule work-wise for the week and then ask myself at the top of a list, where do I want to be by the end of the week? What do I want to have done? What do I want to have accomplished? What are the things that I want to be done with or moved forward on by Friday? Where do I want to be in five days? And then I would adjust my list accordingly. I was always a little bit, you know, ambitious with my lists, sometimes a little unrealistic, so I’d put too many things down?
Scarlett: Yeah.
Sarah: But another thing that helped me was not only looking forward, but also looking back. I have a program called RescueTime on my computer and my phone and my laptop –
Scarlett: Yep.
Sarah: – and it sends me a weekly report of actually how I spent my time, because I don’t even know what year it is, so me calculating these things is a very bad idea.
Scarlett: I, I have that app, and I can honestly say that I –
Sarah: Isn’t it amazing?
Scarlett: It’s, it’s amazing. And it’s slightly scary –
Sarah: Oh my gosh.
Scarlett: – when you see your productivity pulse for the first time. [Laughs]
Sarah: Yes! It gives you a number of your, like, percentage of your, you know, it gives you a number to rate your productivity, and then it tells you how many hours you worked and how much of that was productive time? Now, I had to teach it some things. Like, if I am on Chrome and I am inside smartbitchestrashybooks.com, I’m actually working and not fucking around, ‘cause I’m the back end? [Laughs]
Scarlett: Yes.
Sarah: It was my job! But it also was like, oh, okay, so that website is, is, that website is work. That’s fine, but what about this other website that you spent twenty-five minutes on? Oh yes, you’re right, that was not work. I’ve gotten read of apps on my phone because they were too tempting and sucking up too much of my time.
Scarlett: Yeah, it, it, and I think that’s a, a great piece of advice in and of itself, is just remove everything. My husband is, like, one of these techy super security guys, and so we have this system, 1Password, and so I get out of everything, because it’s a pain in the butt to go to the app to find the password to go back to the thing to open it, so honestly, it’s, like, too many steps, you know, if I’m, if it’s too many steps I’m like, you know what, I’m, I’m not doing it – [laughs] – so I just, I just make it hard to do the wrong thing.
Sarah: So you put obstacles in your way to prevent you from easily doing the things that you shouldn’t be doing –
Scarlett: Yeah.
Sarah: – and you remove obstacles from, that get in the way of accomplishing the things that you want to accomplish.
Scarlett: Yeah. I have Focus Time on my desktop, and you can turn that on for an hour, two hours, three hours, and then it turns off all of the social media apps and all that kind of stuff, and it puts up a screen with some, like, motivation quote about, you know, like, not wasting your time and not procrastinating?
[Laughter]
Scarlett: And there is a pause button on it, but you can only pause it for, like, I think it’s ten minutes, and then you can’t use the pause button again for another two hours.
Sarah: Yep.
Scarlett: And so, again, it’s just one of those things that, once I’ve turned that on, to get to Facebook I would actually have to turn it off, wait for all the apps to come back up again, and then –
Sarah: Yeah.
Scarlett: – go in, and it just feels like, oh! Yeah, I remember; I’m not supposed to be doing that right now. It’s just that –
Sarah: Yep.
Scarlett: – you know, reminder, we’re not doing this right now.
Sarah: Changing your mentality towards the things that are sort of autopilot wastes of time, I, like, I think of them as the, the, the treats for the Jack Russell Terrier part of my brain?
Scarlett: Yes?
Sarah: What’s going on here? What’s going on over here? What’s going on here? What – we going over here? Let’s, oh, what’s going on over there? What about here? Like, that’s a part of my brain that’s like, how ‘bout Twitter? How ‘bout Twitter? And I’m like, you know what? No. And then another, not only am I better now at recognizing the, the Jack Russell Terrier part of my brain, but in the last few months, doing more deep reading into social media as a business, I am less and less willing to be someone else’s product –
Scarlett: [Laughs] Yeah.
Sarah: – and I don’t, I don’t want to participate in being someone else’s product if they are managing that product, that service, so poorly that it’s actually harmful to me? So it’s, it’s, it’s easier and easier when I look at the time that I spend; look at what part of my brain that I’m satisfying, which is the distracted, bored part; and examining what it is that I’m actually doing when I participate in some forms of social media. The other thing that helps a lot is using a timer, like the Pomodoro technique –
Scarlett: Yeah.
Sarah: – where you do twenty to twenty-five minutes with a five-minute break. I’ve been teaching this to my younger son, because he’s now in middle school, and he has a monster-load of homework. The timer works really well in two ways, for me and for him. One: you are only going to be doing this for the next twenty minutes, and then you get a five-minute break to do whatever you want. Like, you can watch whatever you want, you can do whatever you want for five minutes; then we’re going to come back to it, so you’re not going to be doing this forever.
Scarlett: Yeah.
Sarah: But if you, if you focus, if you really buckle down, I bet you could totally get it done before the timer gets o-, goes off, so I’m racing myself and giving myself a break at the same time!
Scarlett: Yeah.
Sarah: It’s like magic!
[Laughter]
Scarlett: It’s true; I’m a big believer. I actually, when I’m writing, I set, I do an hour, and then I get up and walk around. Actually –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Scarlett: – at the, at the advice of my optician – [laughs] – I was having, I was having headaches, and it was nothing more than just sitting looking at a screen forever and ever, and he’s like, you need to change the distance with which you are looking at things. So he’s like, every hour you need to get up and go look out your window and look at something a lot further away from you –
Sarah: Yeah.
Scarlett: – and, and so I found that totally helped, and the headaches went away almost immediately, and, and so I do an hour, and I have my phone. The buzzer goes off. I get up; I go and look out the window; I have a walk around and make a cup of tea, ‘cause I do like tea; and –
[Laughter]
Scarlett: – and then I sit back down.
Sarah: It’s only a mild diplomatic incident that we’ve got here.
[Laughter]
Sarah: So when people, after you gave this workshop at RWA, what were some of the questions and reactions that you got?
Scarlett: Well, it, it’s interesting. Some of the questions I got were around very personal circumstances. Well, you know, I have this, and this is, you know, this is my life, and how do I, you know, rearrange my – and those were very personal circumstances. The interesting thing was, the number of questions I got in the room, we, we used up the time, but the number of questions I got afterwards was significantly higher than the questions I got in the room, and I think it comes back to this, wherein we’re, we’re embarrassed by our goals, so we’ve got to give ourselves –
Sarah: Yes.
Scarlett: – permission. Like, nobody in the room wanted to stand up and go, okay, I want to be the next Nora Roberts, so how do I do, you know, what, you know, what, how do I organize my time? How do I org-? You know, those kinds of things. So I think the first one was, there still is modesty about goals. I would get a lot of questions like, does this seem like a reasonable goal? Like, is it, you know, do you think I could be a USA Today bestseller with, with my first book? You know, and the answer to all these questions is, why the heck not? Some people have; some people haven’t. Some people are journeyman authors, and they’ll be midlist for their entire careers. Some people hit it big on their first book. You know, why, why not? Why would it not be a great goal to aim for, and then if you’re going to set that as a goal, you know, what are the things you would have to do to make sure, you know, you stand a fighting chance? You maybe have to organize your publisher; maybe it needs to get on NetGalley a month before; maybe you need to, you know, organize a blog tour; maybe you need to do, you know, what other things? Facebook advertizing. What are the things you need to do to make that goal come true? So there was a lot of, is this goal feasible? Is it realistic? Which I understand, right, because, you know, I set some really ballsy goals when I first started doing it. I said I was going to write, I was going to release fifteen books in my first three years, and I, you know, I say this: I only released twelve. [Laughs]
Sarah: You only released twelve in three years.
Scarlett: Yeah. [Laughs]
Sarah: Yeah, okay.
Scarlett: I was going to release fifteen: failure. But the – so yeah, I think –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Scarlett: – I think set some, set some big goals, right? Like, that’s –
Sarah: Yeah, I released three in nine, and I’m fine with that. [Laughs]
Scarlett: Yeah. Well, you know, set, set the big goal; it’s great. You’re going to have to figure out what you need to do to achieve it, but that’s okay. Big goals are fine.
The second one was a lot of relationship type questions, right? You know, my spouse doesn’t like doing the, the housework. You know, my significant other, you know, doesn’t think my projects are important. You know, there was, you know, questions about that kind of thing, which, those are about, you know, honest communication, open dialogue, you know, if you’re not going to help, then we need to outsource, right? Because I can’t do all of this and do my hobbies and activities. And, and my passion projects. So I think tho-, that was a second type of question: how do I manage this within my home to make this work for me?
And then there was the, you know, the kind of – I’m a great believer that if you, if you don’t believe you can do it, you probably won’t, and so anybody who kind of caveat-ed their question with, you know, I’m pretty certain I’m never going to be a USA Today bestseller, so I’m just going to be happy, you know, as a, you know, a, a journey author. I’d, I’d challenge them on that and say, why, why do you believe you’re not going to be a USA Today bestselling author? There’s a lot of obsession; authors do tend to gravitate around, you now, a bestseller list as a, as a marker of success. I’m not, I’m not a hundred percent – it certainly says a lot about volume, but I don’t know that it’s the only marker of success as an author, but, you know, if you don’t believe that you can hit it, you probably won’t, and that’s my advice to anybody who tried to caveat or, you know, set up a question. You know, I’m probably never going to be as good as; I’m probably never going to hit four thousand words a day; I’m never going to get a traditional book deal; I’m never going to – if you’re, if you’re talking in conversation like that, the chances are you probably won’t hit those goals, because that’s, that’s a core self-belief. If you think you can’t, you won’t. You have to think you will to be successful.
Sarah: If you set yourself the goal to be published, there are – one of the things I like about the current publishing marketplace is that if your goal is to write and publish a book in the romance genre, there are many different paths to do that, and there’s many different ways to measure success that can be inherently personal.
Scarlett: Yes.
Sarah: One of the things that was very hard for me was that I didn’t have a lot models to follow in creating my business. Like, I, there aren’t that many businesses that are exactly the same to mine, and so a lot of it I’m making up as I go, and I’m making up my own markers of success, and I’m making up my own goals. What are the things that I want to achieve? What are the things that I want to do? And sometimes that is I want to stay open for business; that’s what I want to do.
Scarlett: Yeah.
Sarah: ‘Cause it’s hard. That’s a very hard goal when you’re a, a website that’s fueled in a lot of ways by advertisement and, advertiser commissions and purchase commissions. Like, these are, these are hard markets. But I also think that it’s important to examine the source of external goals. Like, you mentioned you want to hit a bestseller list. I find bestseller lists to be so frustrating, because they are measuring the sales of a thing during a very limited time, and they don’t measure cumulative sales, so I know some of the cumulative sales figures for my books, and I am over the flipping moon that I sold that many copies, that my book is on a syllabus, that my book is in academic libraries.
Scarlett: Yes.
Sarah: Like, I am incredibly, deeply proud of that! Am I a bestseller? Nope. But I also think that publishing’s way of measuring itself is so inherently flawed that it is okay to opt out of participating in that as a, as a signal for yourself, as, as a goal. Measuring the amount of books that you sell in a one-week period and then stopping and doing something else is, I mean, that’s banana-crackers! That’s the, I don’t know of any other business that does that! There’s always, almost always a cumulative measure, except in books, so I think it’s okay to say, you know, I’m going to opt out of that, and I’m going to set another goal for myself and that goal is just as valid.
Scarlett: Yeah. Well, and I think it’s also, you always enter into tricky water when you make your measures comparative on something that is subjective.
Sarah: Yes, thank you!
Scarlett: And so if you –
Sarah: You should be a writer.
Scarlett: – if – [laughs]
Sarah: You say good words. You word well.
Scarlett: Oh, thank you!
[Laughter]
Scarlett: It would be, it’s, it’s one thing to, you know, can I probably fairly safely say that, you know, my, you know, if I could be like anybody I could be like Vi Keeland? You know, I’m pretty certain Vi Keeland has sold more books than me, and I think – but, you know, we never have that information. All you can go off is rankings and how high did it get up, and how many books came out, and the chances are there’s more. But, you know, when you get into conversations where you compare yourself to somebody’s quality, when you compare yourself to somebody’s productivity, when you compare yourself to things that are qualitative and subjective, then you’re setting yourself up for a whole heap of heartache, ‘cause who’s to determine, you know, which is the better book, book A or book B? And –
Sarah: Oh, absolutely.
Scarlett: – and, and there are competitions, but you know, as many authors of color know, those competitions often have biases. So it doesn’t mean your book is not actually better or worse; it just, you know, it didn’t get a fair, you know, shot at the, at the goal, right? And so, you know, I think, yeah, if you’re, if you’re looking at comparative, you’re looking at subjective, you’re looking at qualitative measures to determine your own success, it, it’s a bit of a fool’s errand.
Sarah: I am intimately acquainted with this because I am often, sometimes one of the, I am sometimes one of the goals that people have. I want my book to be reviewed on Smart Bitches! I want my book to get an A on Smart Bitches! Okay, that’s really rare, the, the A part. That’s real rare.
Scarlett: Yeah.
Sarah: We do not give those out a lot, because they have a great deal of meaning, and I challenge reviewers who submit As to me, actually. Okay, why is this an A? Why is this the best book you have ever read, bar none, it is going to be something you recommend eternally? Like, this has a meaning; if it didn’t have meaning, then what is the point? That may not happen, but that doesn’t mean your book isn’t good.
Scarlett: Yeah.
Sarah: It means that, like, you know, I am – no one decides some, someone’s future at a, at a publishing house based on what a website says.
Scarlett: Yeah.
Sarah: Like, that doesn’t happen. Like, no one is like, oh, well, we can’t renew their contract; this website said that their book, you know, was a B. Like, no! That doesn’t happen! [Laughs]
Scarlett: No.
Sarah: You need a bigger rubric; you need a bigger measurement than, than that! I mean, it’s a great goal, and I am super flattered to be someone’s goal –
Scarlett: Yeah.
Sarah: – but that, that can’t be the only goal; that’s not a good idea.
Scarlett: No. And it’s not, I think –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Scarlett: – I think having a wide range of goals that determine success for you too. So when I was a business professional, you know, obviously I had title goals. You know, I want to be at this level; I want to be senior vice president of strategy for a company that – you know, my goals would get progressively bigger. You know, a ten-billion company, a thirty-billion company, forty-billion company. I had salary expectations; you know, I want to be earning this much, and I want to be earning this much, and I want to be earning this much.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Scarlett: But I also had goals around the number of people I was going to mentor. You know, how many people am I going to mentor this year? And –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Scarlett: – how many women am I going to create an opportunity for this year?
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Scarlett: So I also had goals that were not connected to my own success but to somebody else’s, because, you know, there’s, there’s an element of, of giving back to the community in that, whatever form it is, right? And whether you’re, you, you, you know, give critiques in a pitching competition or you give, you know, services to a, a writing auction or you do other things. There’s, there’s, there are goals you can have that also give back, and you can also have goals about – I was a very tenacious type of leader. I was a great believer in leading from the front and being, you know, finding and surrounding myself with incredibly smart people that I could create great opportunities for so they could just run and do great work and be successful. But that, it was a, it was a very high-energy style of leadership, and there was a, a CTO at the company I worked for, and I swear to goodness, this woman just went through the building like a swan. Nothing ever ruffled her feathers; it didn’t matter how heated a meeting got or, you know – I, I never saw her super happy; I never saw her super sad. She would just, she would just go through the business on a very even keel. And one year I had a goal to work with her on a project because I wanted to learn how she did that. It was just a, a personal aspiration that I had that I, I wanted to learn from somebody else how to do it, and so I just straight up went to her, and I said, I love your leadership style; I’d love to learn more. I hear you’re doing this project this year. I’d like to volunteer to be on the committee to do it just so that I can work with you. And, you know, I was able to do that. So I think having goals sort of –
Sarah: Did you learn how to swan?
Scarlett: I’m, I’m still a bit of a duck, got to be honest.
[Laughter]
Scarlett: But –
Sarah: I don’t know, ‘cause I’ve, I’ve met some swans that are total assholes, so I’m assuming she’s not one of those. [Laughs]
Scarlett: No, no, I, you know, but I’m a bit quicker at realizing when I’m, like, head down, bums up now. Like, I get, I get, I get righted a bit quicker –
[Laughter]
Scarlett: – than I used to? But, yeah. I think, you know, we talk about goals; we talk about comparative, subjective; we talk about, you know, lists and – there, there’s a piece around, you know, just your personal self, interpersonal skills or –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Scarlett: – you know, ways you want to give back that are also equally important to have goals around.
Sarah: I really like the idea that the root, the base of productivity is actually the idea that you believe in your own success and abilities.
Scarlett: Yes.
Sarah: Because productivity is a form of affirmation that you can do the things that you want to do with the skills that you have in place.
Scarlett: Yes. And also, self-belief you can take a step further. Maybe you want to do something that you don’t know how to. Self-belief can also be that you have the capacity to learn. So for example, you know, I was, I, I have an engineering background. I went to work for Toyota in the UK and in Japan. I went to work for a consulting firm, and then I ended up in a retail environment, and then I was like, do you know what? I’m going to become a romance writer. There was nothing in my past record that said I had the skills to be a writer, but my past history did say that I had the tenacity to figure out how to navigate a new career and skills that would allow me to drop in and learn quickly how to do it. And so –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Scarlett: – my self-belief wasn’t necessarily, I’m going to write a great book. My self-belief was, I have the skills to learn how to write a great book. And so self-belief can be about a forward-facing thing that you can’t do right now, but your self-belief that you have it within yourself to learn how to do it.
Sarah: And that you can, you can differentiate between the things that you actually want and the things that you think you should want, but you don’t actually care about.
Scarlett: Yes. Yes. That’s a whole other conversation. [Laughs]
Sarah: That’s a whole other thing. The should thing is a whole other thing. I often find that there are things that I have learned to do that when I look back, I realize, oh, that really resonated with me for some reason. Like, I saw someone snowboarding, just totally cruising down the easiest part of the mountain, just completely relaxed, and I was like, I want to learn how to do that; that looks amazingly fun. And it is hard! It is so hard.
Scarlett: Yeah.
Sarah: It is one of the hardest things I have ever learned to do, but I adore it, and I was – and I remember I got this really great piece of advice on Twitter from someone who I tangentially connected with, who I still follow from, for, like, nine years, who I’ve never met in person, who also learned how to snowboard, and he said, his name’s Kai McMahon, and he said, the important part is to not get dispirited when you fall down. Just get back up. You are going to fall. Don’t get dispirited when you do; just get back up. And I kept telling myself that, ‘cause you fall a lot when you learn to snowboard? And I also put on pads on my wrists. I have metal guards in my mittens so I don’t hurt my wrists –
Scarlett: Yeah.
Sarah: – and I ride with contractor knee pads on so that I wasn’t afraid to fall –
Scarlett: Yeah.
Sarah: – because I had padded myself. And I look back on that, and I’m like, I really wanted to. It was so hard, it was so difficult, and now it is one of my favorite things to do, and I look at that experience, and I’m like, what, dude, you learned to snowboard when you were, like, thirty-nine! You can totally do this! Go do it! You’re going to be fine; you’ve got this. Get your mittens, go do it. The –
Scarlett: Well, and there’s, there’s a really important point in your story there. The really important point in your story is the falling down didn’t hurt as much because learning to snowboard was your passion.
Sarah: Yeah, yeah, it really resonated.
Scarlett: If you, if you do not care for skiing or snowboarding at all and somebody told you that you have to go and learn how to snowboard, you, the, the falling down is going to be incrementally more painful and more tiring –
Sarah: Yep.
Scarlett: – and exhausting to get up, because it is not what you are passionate about. And that happens when we are in jobs that we don’t really want to be doing, when we’re in careers that we don’t really want to be stuck in, when we’re at university and we’re in year two of a degree that maybe your parents have contributed to, and you realize that you don’t want to be an architect after all. [Laughs] Right? It is –
Sarah: Yep!
Scarlett: – it is incrementally more painful to do those things, and our, our willingness to overlook the pain and the difficulty when we are working on something we are truly passionate about is incredible.
Sarah: Yeah. Yes, and you’re willing to break up with CSI –
Scarlett: I was willing to break up with CSI.
[Laughter]
Sarah: Set aside your love for Gil Grissom and David Caruso and –
Scarlett: That’s it! That’s it!
Sarah: [Laughs]
Scarlett: I can still talk about some of those shows, like, to, you know, I could give you a play-by-play on the episode. [Laughs]
Sarah: Oh yeah. Well, I mean, in, in a lot of ways, that is still a beneficial element, because it’s going to teach you storytelling in a specific beat structure. I mean there are benefits to that. It’s just also being able to say, okay, I have, I have, I have learned all I can.
Scarlett: Yeah. Well, one of the things I talked about in the presentation I gave at RWA is, you know, if you’ve ever read Malcolm Gladwell, he believes it takes ten thousand hours to become an expert, and do you know, I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but I did it for the presentation. You know, if these long-running series that have been on forever, Grey’s Anatomy, CSI, you know, those kinds of –
Sarah: Law & Order.
Scarlett: – yeah, that have been on forever, like, if –
Sarah: Doon-doon.
Scarlett: – if you did the math and added up, if you’d watched those series, how many hours you spent committed to watching those shows, right? I am not going to judge anybody who, at the end of a hard day, just wants to come home, throw off their shoes, take off their bra, and watch TV. That is, this is not about judgment.
Sarah: Oh yeah.
Scarlett: If you add up those hours and you take into account Malcolm Gladwell’s theory that you need to have done something for ten thousand hours to become an expert at it, you could be well on your way to being an expert at something. And that was my, that was my rationale for giving up CSI, because I knew that I did not want to be ten thou-, ten thousand hours into being able to do a pub quiz on CSI. [Laughs] I wanted to be ten thousand hours –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Scarlett: – on my way to doing something else, and, and that was, for me, was more important.
Sarah: Yes, I completely agree. Now, I always ask – and I didn’t prepare you for this question, so I apologize in advance – I always ask if there’s any books that you’re reading that you want to talk about, and if there are not and you’d like to tell us about your next book, that is also completely okay. Or you can do both.
Scarlett: Ooh, that’s a really good question! I am currently reading Llewellyn’s Sabbats Almanac for 2019, which is, it is a, I guess you’d say a pagan book of spells for the year of 2019. I get it every year, and I really enjoy using it, and you know, I’ll pick candles and herbs and ribbons and various things at home, so I –
Sarah: Are there any spells in there to get rid of fascism?
Scarlett: [Laughs] No.
Sarah: ‘Cause if there are, can you send them to me please?
[Laughter]
Scarlett: No, unfortunately there are not. If there, if there were, I would –
Sarah: Okay, Llewellyn, if you’re listening.
Scarlett: – I would have, I would have shared on Twitter by now if there was.
[Laughter]
Sarah: Wait, oh my gosh, imagine the spell if you, if you, if you did a spell on Twitter to get rid of fascism, how many accounts would be deleted?
Scarlett: I, I can’t even predict the math on that.
Sarah: [Sings] Llewellyn, can you hear us? [Laughs]
Scarlett: I’m also reading Chaos Monkeys, which is about the kind of real boom time in internet startup in San Francisco, which is fascinating. It’s all like big boom or bust, Wolf of Wall Street personalities type books, which is incredibly interesting. So those are the two books I am currently reading.
Sarah: Ooh!
Scarlett: And I just did a massive binge reread of Tillie Cole’s Hades Hangmen. I read them all back to back while I was away last week. [Laughs]
Sarah: Nice!
Scarlett: Yeah.
[music]
Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this interview. I want to thank Scarlett Cole for hanging out with me and talking all about her presentation. If you would like to find her, you can find her on her website at scarlettcole.com and on Facebook at itsscarlettcole. The major points that I want to make sure that you don’t miss, and here’s the inspirational part of the outro: it is important to believe, as Scarlett said, that your time is yours to give away. Your dreams are important. You get to decide what your balls are made of, and then you get to give yourself permission to be successful.
I hope that you will give yourself permission to be successful right now and in the next year, and if you want to tell me what your goals are for the next year, I’m super nebby, and I kind of want to know. You can email me at [email protected], or you can call and leave a message at 201-371-3272. If you want to tell us a name – any name you want – and where you’re calling from, that would be cool too, but you don’t have to.
Meanwhile, behind me, Wilbur is in a box, and Orville also wants to be in the box, and these goals seem to be in conflict, so if you hear weird noises, that’s what’s happening here in the office at the moment.
This week’s podcast and transcript are brought to you by Catherine Bybee’s Chasing Shadows, available now from Montlake Romance. New York Times bestselling romance writer Catherine Bybee has reached nearly six million readers with her smart and seductive contemporary romances. Now she’s back again with Chasing Shadows, the third entry in her wildly popular First Wives series. Avery Grant doesn’t date. Her first marriage was a mutually beneficial contract that gave her the financial freedom she needed to step away from her controlling parents. Wealthy and single, the last thing she’s looking for is love sneaking in to mess up her life plans. And after a brutal attack in New York City that nearly kills her, she is determined to never be vulnerable again, even if the new man in her life helps her feel safe. She throws herself into learning self-defense, both physically and emotionally. Mesmerized from the moment he sets eyes on Avery, Liam is driven to learn everything about this tough, sexy, challenging woman. Breaking down her defenses won’t be easy, but Liam refuses to be pushed away. All he needs is a tiny crack in Avery’s armor to wiggle his way into her heart. But when a terrifying lie about her attacker’s fate comes to light, Avery’s past returns to haunt her. Now she’s willing to put herself in danger to get the answers she needs. But that means jeopardizing the best thing that’s ever happened to her: Liam.
This box is the best thing that’s ever happened to my cats, I swear.
Harlequin Junkie calls Chasing Shadows, “Catherine Bybee at her best.” Readers who want their romance peppered with a mix of thrilling suspense, a bad-boy hero, and a whole lot of female empowerment will love Chasing Shadows by Catherine Bybee, available now from Montlake Romance.
We have a podcast Patreon, and if you have supported the podcast Patreon with a monthly pledge, thank you. You are helping make sure that every episode is transcribed by garlicknitter. Thank you, garlicknitter! [You’re welcome! – gk] And you’re helping me make sure that every episode is accessible to everyone. If you’d like to have a look, you can join at patreon.com/SmartBitches. Monthly pledges at one dollar a month make you part of the group that helps me develop questions for upcoming interviews and suggests guests for the new year.
You can also, if you like to support this show or any other podcast that you love, leave a review wherever or how are, however – excuse me – you listen, tell a friend, subscribe, whatever works, but as always, thank you for hanging out with me each week.
Our music every week is provided by Sassy Outwater. You can find her on Twitter @SassyOutwater. This is Deviations Project with my favorite holiday album and my favorite holiday album title, still better than Shatner Clause, I’m pretty sure. This is Adeste Fiddles. This track is “The Holly and the Ivy.” You can find this album at Amazon or wherever you get your funky music. It is, as I say, my favorite for the holiday season.
Coming up on Smart Bitches next week, we have a mammoth undertaking: it is Hanukkah time! Hanukkah starts Sunday night, and that means eight straight nights of giveaways at Smart Bitches. We plan this giveaway all year, and we’ve got wonderful things to share with you. Please come by and enter. We love celebrating with you, and each day we have a special item or package of items to give away, specifically to celebrate how great the Smart Bitches community is. Happy Hanukkah to all of you, and may your holidays be warm and filled with light and chocolate and also, if you’re very lucky, delicious fried food. Or if you’re my cats, a giant, mammoth box to fight over while I’m recording.
What else is going on? [Laughs] Elyse is giving you a tutorial on how to create your own Bookmas tree. In the pictures for this entry, there are many cats. Not my cats, her cats, but they are as active as mine are right now. If you’ve got books and maybe also cats, she’s got pictures and step-by-step instructions, and if you make your own Bookmas tree, we totally want to see it. We also have reviews, our weekly Gift Guide, a post on holiday crafting ideas, and, of course, Books on Sale and Help a Bitch Out. I hope you will come and hang out with us and come back each day to enter our eight straight days of Hanukkah giveaways. Yay! Happy Hanukkah!
[Scrape!]
Guys! Serious-, seriously. Like – all right, now Orville’s in the box. Maybe it’ll be quiet. He’ll weigh it down. He’s a very large animal. [Laughs]
As usual, I will have all of the books that we talk about in this episode, as well as some of Scarlett Cole’s books, in the podcast show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast, and I will have links to some of the programs and options that we discuss as well, including RescueTime, Focus Time, all of that sorts of things, if you are curious about all of this productivity as well. I love productivity; it’s really fascinating as a topic.
And now it’s time for the terrible joke. It’s terrible; it’s terrible; it’s so bad; I love it. And after the music, stay tuned for a great outtake. [Laughs] It’s a really good outtake. Thanks, cats! I had to do this outro, like, three times because they keep dive bombing each other. I could just put the box outside, but it’s much more fun to just let them have a good time. I’m a pretty lackadaisical podcasting pet owner, I know. And now it is time for the terrible joke. Are you ready for this terrible joke? Okay.
How come it’s okay if your phone autocorrects fuck to duck?
Give up? How come it’s okay if your phone autocorrects fuck to duck?
Well, you’re still using fowl language!
[Laughs] Fowl language! This is from Reddit user GeezusManforReal, and I like that one. [Laughs more] Fowl language.
On behalf of all of the cats and this box that delights them to no end and Scarlett Cole and myself, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a great weekend, and don’t forget to stay to the end for a most excellent cat-induced outtake. [Laughs] I’m still laughing about that one. See you here next week.
[cheerful music]
Sarah: It’s important to decide what your balls are made of, and it is important to give yourself permission to be sex-ful. Sex-ful! [Laughs] Yes! Let the cats distract you and give yourself permission to be sex-ful. Wow! Thanks, guys.
This podcast transcript was handcrafted with meticulous skill by Garlic Knitter. Many thanks.
Transcript Sponsor
This week’s podcast and transcript are brought to you by Catherine Bybee’s Chasing Shadows, available now from Montlake Romance.
New York Times bestselling romance writer Catherine Bybee has reached nearly six million readers with her smart and seductive contemporary romances. Now she’s back again with Chasing Shadows, the third entry in her wildly popular First Wives series.
Avery Grant doesn’t date. Her first marriage was a mutually beneficial contract that gave her the financial freedom she needed to step away from her controlling parents. Wealthy and single, the last thing she’s looking for is love sneaking in to mess up her life plans. And after a brutal attack in New York City that nearly kills her, she’s determined to never be vulnerable again, even if the new man in her life helps her feel safe. She throws herself into learning self-defense…both physically, and emotionally.
Mesmerized from the moment he sets his eyes on Avery, Liam is driven to learn everything about this tough, sexy, challenging woman. Breaking down her defenses won’t be easy, but Liam refuses to be pushed away. All he needs is a tiny crack in Avery’s armor to wiggle his way into her heart.
But when a terrifying lie about her attacker’s fate comes to light, Avery’s past returns to haunt her. Now she’s willing to put herself in danger to get the answers she needs. That means jeopardizing the best thing that’s ever happened to her: Liam.
Harlequin Junkie calls Chasing Shadows, “Catherine Bybee at her best.”
Readers who want their romance peppered with a mix of thrilling suspense, a bad boy hero, and a whole lot of female empowerment will love Chasing Shadows by Catherine Bybee, available now from Montlake Romance.
Just wanted to say, thanks for this interview it’s exactly what I needed to hear for my own goal which is to enter Pitch Wars (a mentoring program/publishing opportunity ) in August. Great podcast!
I’m in the midst of transitioning roles and am thinking about how do I set goals for myself. This is exactly what I needed to hear right now. Thanks!
This was such a great conversation. I even made a couple of notes, which I don’t generally do when listening to podcasts. Thanks!
Very interesting: I shared to my email list, and posted the link on FB.