Welcome to the Write It Scared Podcast. I'm your host, Stacey Fraser, a formerly repressed creative soul, turned fiction writer, story editor, and author accelerator certified fiction book coach. At Write It's Scared, we tell the truth about why writing a novel is so hard by acknowledging that most writers grapple with two stories. The one they want to put on the page to the best of their ability, and the often subconscious internal story that prevents them from doing it. This show is designed to help you identify and rewrite the internal narrative holding you back while you discover and write the story you want to tell and learn all the tools to help you do that successfully. Join me biweekly for a new episode where we'll talk about writing to deepen our understanding of the craft and of ourselves as writers. Writing a novel is an inside job we do not do alone. Welcome to Write It's Scared. I'm glad you're here. Let's dive in. Well, hello, writer. Welcome back to the Write It's Scared Podcast. I'm your host, Stacy, and welcome to season four. It's been a hot minute since I've been at the desk recording an episode for you, and I'm so glad to be back. Because I love podcasting, I love getting to speak with our guests and then bring information to you that's useful. Today we're gonna do a little catch up. I'm gonna give you an update on my writing life since we wrapped in season three. I'll share some changes coming to the podcast this season and why I'm making them. And then we will officially open the Courage Files with a featured writer who also happens to be the winner of the Summer Courage Files drawing. So we got a lot of celebrating to do. But first, I want to take us back to where we left off in season three. At the end of season three, I left you and myself with a question that I couldn't answer. How do you write when you feel numb? And at the time, my dad was really struggling with his health. And my world had kind of been rocked. And for the first time in a very long time, I couldn't access the part of myself that wanted to create. I couldn't even journal. And I honestly didn't know what was next for me as a writer. And if you remember in that episode, I didn't give any framework for fixing any of it because I didn't have one. I had no pep talks to give. I had no strategies for how to write through grief or easy steps to reconnect with creativity. Instead, the best I could come up with was maybe you don't write until you do. And then I sort of signed off for the summer, hoping that eventually I would find my way back to the page. And here we are, September. It's a few months later, and I have. And I want to tell you what happened. Not because I figured out the secret to writing through grief or difficult seasons. I certainly haven't. I just want to share my experience because perhaps you're in the place that I was in June. Maybe life has gotten harder, more complicated, and your capacity has gotten smaller. Or maybe you just haven't written in a while, and you're looking at your manuscript and you're wondering how to get back in it. So this is what happened for me. But by the end of July, the first part of August, I'd started to write again. At the time, my dad was in the midst of, well, he still is. He's in the midst of a chemo marathon. And over the summer, I spent as much time with him as I could. And for context, my dad is a rancher. He's done this his whole life. And he's known what he's wanted to do with his life since he was 10 years old. And there was this one day that when I look back on it, I wonder if that was part of the shift. Because there was this one day I was home helping work cows, and I watched my dad, who's 78 years old, he is not a spring chicken. I watched this 78-year-old man with cancer sporting a colostomy bag get a horseback and work cows. And it almost made me cry. I mean, obviously, my dad is just an incredibly tough human being. But I think what it was, now that I have had a little time to reflect, is that I was witnessing someone continue to do the thing they love to do despite the difficulty, despite the pain, despite the discomfort, and yeah. So maybe it was seeing him on that horse that did something to me. Or maybe it was just getting out of my normal routine and spending time at the ranch in the fresh air. Maybe it was sitting on a tractor early in the morning watching the sun come up. Or maybe just simply enough time had passed. I I don't really know. And I actually think that's the important part. Because there's nothing to reverse engineer here. There's no way to make it into a lesson. There's no productivity hack. There sure wasn't a shiny new writing routine, and I definitely just didn't decide to buckle down and push through and get serious. By the end of July, something in me was ready. And so I wrote and finished up the Y Suspense novel. The revision is done. I say done in air quotes because you and I both know how that goes. But it's with beta readers now, which means I'm not touching it. So this version of the book is as done and dusted as I can make it. And oh my gosh, there were countless drafts, uh, almost 80,000 words, three years of my life, and more SOS calls to my writing people than I could possibly count are in those pages because I didn't figure this book out alone. And at one point, I thought I'd never figure it out. And that was before this summer. The book had changed genres, it had changed structure, it became dual POV. There were plenty of moments when I genuinely didn't know if I could pull this thing off. But eventually the book became what it needed to be, or at least what it needs to be for right now. So I'm reminded again and again that books take what they take. But I think this summer taught me something else too, that creative lives take what they take. Sometimes the rhythm that worked for us before doesn't work anymore. Sometimes we have to stop for a while before we start again. And trying to force ourselves to maintain a rhythm that no longer fits our lives isn't discipline. That's ignoring the reality of our current capacity. So when life changes, our rhythms need to change with it. So because of that, I'm taking my own advice. And season four of the podcast is gonna look a little different. Starting this season, the Right It's Scared Podcast is moving to a bi-weekly schedule. So every other week instead of every week. But the heart of the show is not changing. We're still gonna talk about how to create books we love and how to identify and rewrite those pesky internal narratives that don't serve us. And we're still gonna dig into Storycraft and Creative Process, been publishing uh with other authors. And I have a fantastic guest list lined up for this fall. We'll be talking about finding and working with beta readers, writing psychological thrillers, how to avoid marketing scams, building a professional writing community, leveraging social media without losing your damn mind, and a whole lot more. There'll still be some solo episodes with me, just fewer of them. And of course, I'll share quarterly updates to let you in on my messy writing life. So the point of the show is not changing. Write It Scared has never been about becoming fearless. What it's about is no longer allowing fear to drive our actions. That is the foundation of Write It Scared. But there is something else I want to do this season. I want to bring more of your writing lives into the show. So that's where the courage files come in. If you've been listening for a while, you've heard me introduce the courage files at the end of season three and then talk about them during our summer vault episodes. The courage files are real moments of writing courage submitted by writers in this community, submitted by you. And when I say writing courage, I don't just mean the the you've finished an entire draft or a revision or you've landed an agent or you published your book. I mean, those things absolutely count, so don't hold them back. But so do the moments where you go back to a manuscript you've been avoiding for six months. You send your pages to a beta reader when every cell in your body is screaming, don't let anybody see it. So is cutting a scene you love because you finally admitted it didn't move the story forward. So is writing two sentences on a day when quitting would have been easier. And as I talked about at the end of season three, sometimes the courage might even be admitting that you can't write right now. All those things count too. Actually, I think those moments are what writing careers are truly built on. The small moments, the ones that nobody sees but you. And I want to acknowledge those moments of effort because it's the effort that we take that gets us to the outcome. And when we hear that others are going through similar struggles and persevered, that allows something inside of us to shift and we don't feel so alone. And because of that, we become a little more willing to try. So this season and for the foreseeable future, the courage files are becoming a regular part of the podcast. Each episode, I'm going to share one of your writing wins. Only with your permission, of course. And if you'd rather remain anonymous, you absolutely can. And today, we get to start with a big celebration because our first featured courage file of season four comes from the winner of the Summer Courage File drawing. So everyone who submitted to the Courage Files through August 31st was entered to win a free editorial assessment of up to 10 pages of their novel, plus a 30-minute book coaching session with me. Let's do a drum roll. Or not, let's don't say we did. But our winner is Caleb. Congratulations, Caleb. And now I want you to hear their courage file. Caleb writes, I have severe dyslexia. So bad a teacher had to read me the questions to my end of course exams in school, otherwise, it would have taken me too long to finish. Grammar and spelling are foreign concepts to my brain. Despite this, I've always had a love for stories and have always been filled with them. But my attempts to write them have always been met with frustration and self-doubt that made it feel impossible. Only recently, after discovering certain resources like this podcast and Brandon Sanderson's lecture series, which is awesome, by the way, has it made me feel like I could one day publish stories anyway, that with enough work and time, I too could become a peer to so many I look up to. And with that, I have now completed my outline for my fantasy novel and am drafting act one. I realized we can fix it all in post, meaning we can fix it all in revision. And the important part is doing the work. Damn straight. This is brilliant. And Caleb, you're a wonderful example for all of us. Uh, it gives me goosebumps. So congratulations again, Caleb. I can't wait to see your pages and talk story with you. So thank you to every single writer who submitted to the Courage Files this summer. And I mean that because every submission was evidence of something I think we forget when we're tapping away at our computers, trying to do this incredibly hard thing. We're doing it. Maybe slowly, maybe imperfectly, maybe we're scared, but we're doing it. And that's we're celebrating. Because again, it's that effort that eventually gets us to the outcome. So if you're sitting there thinking, well, I haven't really done anything impressive enough to submit, that's exactly why I want you to submit one. Tell me about a little thing, tell me about a little messy thing, tell me about a thing that nobody else knows that took some courage, took a little digging in. So as of today, we're officially opening the fall courage files. If you have a moment of writing courage and want to celebrate your efforts, I want to hear about it. Submissions from September through December will go into our next drawing, and I will announce that writer in December. And once again, the prize is going to be a free editorial assessment of up to 10 pages plus a 30-minute book coaching session with me. So you'll find the link to submit in the show notes, or you can go to writeitscared.co forward slash courage hyphen files. So please send me yours. I really want to hear it. So before I sign off today, I want to return one more time to where we started. If you are where I was at the beginning of summer, if writing feels inaccessible right now, or you're just starting to find your way back after some time away, my hope for you is that you will be honest about your capacity. You don't have to force this. And if you don't have the capacity right now, please don't pile guilt on top of whatever else you're already carrying. I meant what I said at the end of season three. Sometimes it's okay to put the pin down. The creative life has seasons. Some seasons we write a lot, some seasons we write less, and sometimes we need to stop for a while. I didn't know in June when or even how or if I would find my way back. But I think what this summer taught me is that maybe I can have a little more faith in my creative life. Maybe I don't have to hold on quite so tight. And it's safe to believe that when it's time, I'll begin again. So that's what we're doing for season four. We're beginning again, just with a different rhythm, one that honors our capacity and applies the lens of reality. So maybe there's something in your writing life that you're ready to begin again too. Not perfectly, not fearlessly, just by taking one small brave step forward and then another. And I'm really glad you're here to take them with me. So wherever you are in your process right now, I hope you'll remember books take what they take, you don't have to finish on anybody else's timeline, and you don't have to do this alone. I'll see you back here in a couple of weeks when we return with our first guest, thriller author KA Wilde, to talk all about working with beta readers. Until then, take care. Thank you for listening to the Write It Scared podcast. If you enjoyed today's show, please make sure to hit the follow button so you never miss an episode. And please leave a review. Reviews help other writers like you find the voices and messages they need to hear to continue to write their stories. Let's lift each other up. Remember, you can be scared and still be unstoppable. I'll see you soon.