00:02.83
jeffekennedy
Good morning, everyone. This is Jeffe Kennedy, author of Epic Fantasy Romance. I'm here with my first cup of coffee.
00:13.94
jeffekennedy
Ah, delicious. Today is Monday, July 8th. End of the long holiday weekend here in the US. and back at it today for most people. It was a great weekend for me. I had a good time. ah It's relaxing. And I've got several projects going, which I find interesting, and I will talk about a little bit. And I have a variety of things to mention to you today. Actually, I have a list. As you all know, I don't always. I want to talk to you a little bit about required word counts for submission to traditional publishing. I did put that in air quotes.
01:02.00
jeffekennedy
ah I also want to talk about talent versus discipline and um my knife-throwing analogy for those of you who may not have heard it
01:16.01
jeffekennedy
And a little bit about my garden, because that is, after all, the brand here at First Cup of Coffee, that it's not the podcast if you don't get to hear about cats and New Mexico weather, which I feel like is the broader umbrella of under which gardening falls. And for those of you new to the podcast, I know there's quite a few of you listening now who are newer, and so I feel like I should explain the reason that Cats in New Mexico weather is a tag on the podcast, and why I reference it ironically sometimes. And it's really not fair to my friend, who I don't know if she ever listens. We've been out of contact for a very long time, but I had a writer friend a long, long time ago
02:02.51
jeffekennedy
who um did listen to the podcast for a while, or did she just read my blog? I don't recall. but um She at one point told me because I started blogging like a long time ago when it was a thing and she had said that she thought my blog was really good and that I could actually be a very successful blogger if I focused on writing topics or publishing topics as opposed to cats and New Mexico weather.
02:36.75
jeffekennedy
which I perversely, maybe this is why we fell out of contact, um took that as a challenge because I am just not going to be that person who focuses on a single topic, just like I'm not going to polish this podcast and so forth. um And that you all will get to hear about cats and New Mexico weather because Hey, that's, that's who I am. Um, so speaking of New Mexico weather, it's stormy today. Um, we have, it feels like big rain coming in. I don't know if this is like residual from barrel. I guess there's a hurricane Beryl down at Houston. It must not be very big or very powerful because I only heard about it as like being in climate weather. But yeah, really had like a storm come in overnight, windy, cool, breezy.
03:34.95
jeffekennedy
I guess that's the same thing. um No rain yet, but we may get rain. And so the garden thing, it's interesting to me, I do feel like it's relevant. Stick with me. ah You know, like the times in our lives when we have energy to think about certain things and when we don't. And many of you are familiar with my garden out behind the house called The Secret Garden. It's behind a high wall. And there are a couple of bare patches in this garden that have been driving me nuts. um And I don't know why. I don't know why they they're not doing well. But I'm also a desultory gardener in that I have never really gotten into the whole soil amendments thing. It's always felt like too much trouble. And I'm finally facing that I have to do the soil amendments thing.
04:31.18
jeffekennedy
um
04:33.76
jeffekennedy
Yeah, I think this is a little bit of an ongoing project because last winter I tried to be a good gardener kitty because every winter I lose plants and last winter I really made an effort people. i people you know Because I'm always hearing here in Santa Fe, they say, oh, well, you have to um water over the winter. This is key, that you've got to water over the winter. And so I was like, OK, fine. So I actually made myself a little ticker on my to-do list that's in the left column there. <unk> a And I love conditional formatting. But I had it set up. So that you know they said, over winter, I should be
05:19.19
jeffekennedy
um watering every 14 days so i made a little ticker to show me you know like last you know what's today's date and last time it snowed or rained and you know or last time i watered and I watered over the winter and I mulched. See now you know what a desultory gardener I am because like I've never been a big mulcher before but this year I mulched and I still lost tons of plants. Just like several of my roses died. It could be the fault of the demonic and yet absurdly cute baby ground squirrels, rock squirrels sorry,
06:01.91
jeffekennedy
um who, if you're a faithful listener, you may have recalled from earlier this summer. I haven't seen them for a while. Anyway, I'm going to go in. I made plans. ah Yesterday I sat in the grape arbor and I got out a couple of my old gardening books from when I was learning the garden and and facing the fact that I need to relearn the garden and stop being so off the cuff about it if I want this to do better. I went and bought um a bunch of roses and a rose of Sharon. And I am going to dig up a big part of the garden. Now that I am confident that the ah baby rock squirrels have moved on, their nest is going to get dug up. And I am going to work in a bunch of horse manure. I'm going to go over to our local stables. They have a big dumpster. I bought a bin.
06:57.07
jeffekennedy
that I can go and put the horse manure in, help myself, and I'm going to work it into the soil and we are going to see what happens. I feel like I want to go take a gardening class so that I can like get better at this. But I do think it's interesting, and this is where it's relevant, is like the times in our lives when we have time to do things, where we have the the bandwidth to think about something. And I'm feeling like I have the bandwidth to think about the garden. And this is a good time, actually, to be doing these things because it is monsoon season, and because it is cooler, the rain's coming in. We're sort of at a ah counterpoint to most other parts of the country.
07:45.76
jeffekennedy
So I'm going to try to get these things planted this afternoon. um So yeah, I think it's interesting that that says that about me, that I am in a place where I'm not no longer quite feeling like I'm catching up on all the things. I still have several things I need to do that I have not done, but my my to-do list is whittling down. So Hooray, hooray for that. Okay, um this is a semi-random piece of advice regarding word counts because I heard this conversation going on
08:30.76
jeffekennedy
And I had a conversation with a newbie writer about this, where they were saying they had been given the advice that if you want to submit a book to traditional publishing, that it needs to be 80,000 words. And if it's longer than 80,000 words, no one will buy it from you.
08:49.28
jeffekennedy
And the thing about pieces of advice like this is it's not wrong entirely, but it is also not right. and I feel like this happens a lot and I even asked the person I said which which person told you this and And I was spot-on on who gave this advice um Because and they and they were writers who are have not been selling to traditional publishing recently. like It was three people and they had all have sold in the past and they are back after many, many years hiatus, advising other people and submitting to traditional publishing themselves. And so this is a rule that is being handed around. And I just urge you people any time you hear a rule
09:45.54
jeffekennedy
ah being handed down, especially one with a specific number attached to it, please take it with a grain of salt. um The point, the entire point of that piece of advice is that it's much, much harder as an aspiring author, as a newbie author, to sell a long book. That's true. um And that's not terrible advice. because And I did explain this to my friend who was asking about it. See, that's the thing is that you have to pay attention to the nuance. Why? Why is a longer book more problematic? Because if you're a brand new author, it implies bloat. Newer authors tend to
10:29.24
jeffekennedy
bloat their stories. They don't know how to cut out the fact. They don't know how to cut out the unnecessary stuff that bogs it down. And, you know, how do you learn? You learn by doing. You learn by getting critique and hearing people tell you where the story has slowed for them. um And this is one of those things that you only learn through experience. But yeah, you you do have to learn how to cut what isn't working in the book and this gets translated in weird ways like all writing advice you know like there's the whole kill your darlings thing which isn't useful because like I had one friend who told me like what everything you love best about your book that's a thing you should cut but it's like that's most absurd piece of advice I've heard in my entire life and I've heard a lot of absurd pieces of advice
11:25.78
jeffekennedy
um Yeah, you can't have a book that's too long. It also doesn't have to be 80,000 words. How long is too long? I don't know. You know, longer than it needs to be. wow
11:44.88
jeffekennedy
you know it's a again you know it's an experience thing is it easier if you are querying with a book that's more like 80 to 85 000 words maybe but it's not a guarantee either so and i wish that all of you who are the people giving advice like this Would you do me a favor and stop telling people stuff like this? Don't hand over the rule. um I would prefer if you didn't say things like 80K.
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jeffekennedy
um
12:28.08
jeffekennedy
I realize that people want to know a number, but even if you add nuance, as soon as you say something like 80,000 words, that's what's going to stick in their brains. so I don't know, just try to talk about these things with nuance. All right, I'm not going to dwell on this any longer. What else did I want to talk about? um All right, this seems like a good segue for this one. Faithful listener and occasional messenger John Adjutabar sent me an interesting comment um about screenwriting that, and sent me this quote, talent is more common than discipline. um That's why discipline pays better. ah And I thought that that was interesting as he
13:19.74
jeffekennedy
thoughts and sending it to me because I am a pretty disciplined writer, um less so these days than in the past, but I am getting better working up to it. um You know, talent is great and I've definitely been told that I'm a talented writer and I've been told that I was talented in many ways over the years in in many, many things. I'm not talented musically, sadly. Very not. um But talent only gets you so far.
13:59.11
jeffekennedy
And I think we all know that person from high school or from our youth, maybe college, who was incredibly talented in some ways, very smart or artistically gifted or what have you, who then went on to do jack shit with their lives. And it's it's bordering on cliche. It's so common and that's because Yeah talent only gets you so far talent gives you Opens the door to go into the room um You know talent is the Okay, well, let's go with a surfing analogy. We don't use that one very often here ah being a
14:44.53
jeffekennedy
New Mexico person. Uh, but I do love snorkeling and swimming and body surfing. So talent is like the wave. Talent is the thing that lifts you up that you can catch that momentum and it will carry you. It will do a whole lot for you. And arguably if you don't have good waves, you're not going to be able to surf very much. You know, like there are probably some people who can like coach a good ride out of very meager swells, but for the most part you need some good waves, right? um That's a talent. Being able to surf, that's the skill and that comes from discipline. ah That's paddling out there every single day. You know, like the dedicated surfers go out at dawn every single day. My step-brother does this.
15:35.36
jeffekennedy
um It's being able to learn how to catch the swell at the right point to learn how to stand up on the surfboard. Some people can never figure out how to stand up and maybe you don't have the knees for it. And if you don't have the knees for it, you know, like you're always going to be a bodyboarder. You're not going to be as a surfer. So, you know, there's a lot of components to this. ah But unless you learn how to do this, unless you apply yourself, and do it diligently, you're not going to get very far. Those waves can be out there crashing against the shore all day long unless you're out there surfing them. It's not going to do you any good, right? oh And also you have to you have to be there. You've you've got to got paddle out every single day and you you know learn how to do it, but then also
16:28.83
jeffekennedy
Actually to it um I'm sure that there is I don't hang out in the surfing community much for obvious reasons But there are probably people who sit in the bar and talk about surfing instead of actually surfing and that's very common um you know, how many people have you heard saying I You know always wanted to write a novel but couldn't find the time or they started or they've got one in the drawer and all of this and I You know, it's like at this point in my career, and I do try to, you all know, I try to be very supportive, but sometimes my my eyes roll back in my head when somebody starts telling me about the novel they have in their drawer that they, you know, haven't touched and they think it's awfully good, but they haven't done anything with it. And it's like, well, you know, waves crashing on the shore, I don't see you out there surfing.
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jeffekennedy
oh
17:22.34
jeffekennedy
So, knife throwing. This came up in my Discord where ah one of my mentees was talking about ah being very hopeful about a new release and trying not to get her hopes up too much. And I said that you know one of the keys to this is to think about the knife throwing analogy. And I think she was confused. She just gave me a question mark. And I started to reply. And I thought, well, I'll talk about it here, just in case I haven't talked about it recently. One of the things about knife throwing that you learn when you practice it, and this is true of many ah internal arts, that you learn to enjoy
18:14.63
jeffekennedy
not sticking the knife as much as sticking it, which is really difficult um because when you get that knife to stick in the target, it feels great. You're like, damn, that's great. ah And we get very focused on getting this positive feedback, right? whereas the whole point is the process. right So you try to learn to enjoy missing the target or having the knife bounce off of the target as much as actually sticking the target.
18:48.47
jeffekennedy
Another good example of this is yoga. My favorite yoga teacher, Melissa, is back at Breathe Santa Fe in her Saturday morning flow class. I got to go Saturday and it was so great to have her back. I highly recommend her and the studio and the class if you are ever in Santa Fe. And, ah you know, i am I am not good at yoga. This is another thing at which I am not talented. I have not practiced it my whole life. I'm not particularly limber. I'm actually not tremendously coordinated. I am not one of these people, you know, like who looks like a goddess doing yoga. I look more like, um, I don't even know what metaphor, a tortured hippo. oh I'm awkward. I sometimes fall over. I don't have, um, yeah, I'm just not,
19:46.87
jeffekennedy
so the quintessential yoga practitioner. But it's very good for me. i And Melissa is a wonderful teacher in that. She never says, this is what it should look like. This is what you should be doing. This is what you should be aspiring to. She never uses like language like that. She's always like finding your body where you need to do this. What's good for you? What's working for you? You know, settle into it, explore. ah And she often says that she enjoys practicing with me because she says I am trying to think of the words that she has used. Well, i've I'm a motive. I make noises and I am very, very present. I am there and I am listening to her. She talks a lot about people like going into their heads or disappearing and I don't know exactly what she means by that except I think that I don't do it.
20:43.32
jeffekennedy
um i'm I'm really there in the moment and I love yoga for that. And so this is a thing of I'm enjoying the process. I'm enjoying doing the thing because it feels good and it's good for me and I'm not trying to um you know, be this this thing. I'm not trying to attain any particular thing. And I think that that's one reason that that's something like yoga is great for us, right? Because it's so easy in our culture to become very, very goal oriented, to be like it only counts if you stick the knife on the target um and otherwise you have failed. And that's a it's a terrible way to live. So especially if you're doing something creative like writing a book,
21:32.76
jeffekennedy
getting a book out there in the world, try to enjoy that process. Try to enjoy the discovering the feeling of throwing the knife, of doing the vinyasa, and don't worry about the external camera and how it looks and whether or not you're attaining the goal or doing the thing. So there you go. All right, on that note, I'm going to go get to work. I hope you all have a fantastic week. and I will talk to you all on Friday. You all take care, bye bye.
