Regaining Your Magic with Tomi Adeyemi – WN 141

[Sound of plastic crinkling.]

Sarah Rhea Werner:
Midori is playing in a plastic bag. That’s fine. She’ll stop by the time that we actually get to talking here. So, we are recording. I’ll do a quick intro and then we’ll be off.

Tomi Adeyemi:
Okay.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
Cool. Thank you.

Tomi Adeyemi:
Awesome.

[More crinkling of plastic.]

Sarah Rhea Werner:
Oh, Midori.

Midori:
[Yowls, loudly.]

[Intro music begins.]

Sarah Rhea Werner:
Welcome back again this week, friends. I am so excited to be here. I am so excited that you are here and I’m even more excited that we have a fantastic and beautiful and luminous guest for you today. I have with me the fantastic Tomi Adeyemi who is an author and just brilliant mind on all sorts of good and wonderful things. So, welcome to the show, Tomi. I’m so glad to have you here.

Tomi Adeyemi:
Thank you. I’m so happy to be here.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
For those of you who don’t know a lot about our guest: She is a Nigerian American author who hopefully you’re familiar with her Children of Blood and Bone series. She is a graduate of Harvard. She was honored for Forbes 30 under 30 and Times 100 most influential people. So, no big deal. But yeah, we just want to welcome you to the show.

Tomi Adeyemi:
Thank you. I feel very welcomed.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
Good.

Tomi Adeyemi:
Between you and Midori I’m very comfortable here.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
Good. I’m so glad. Oh, I’m so glad. So I just want to ask you some questions about the writing life. And I would love just start, because I’ve been creeping on you with some other interviews and stuff, I know you’ve been writing from a very young age. I would love to know how you write. What does your writing process look like?

Tomi Adeyemi:
I love this question. I always feel so self conscious on writing platforms and I’m like, “Oh God, I can’t find any words.” I love this question because it’s really changed for me this year. And it was the first time I feel, obviously we’re in like a crazy time period again and we can’t really tell what this pandemic is going to dish out and when.

Tomi Adeyemi:
I feel like in 2020 I was like, “Oh, I’ve been an introvert. I’ve been alone in my room for years. I’m ready.” I was like, “I can do this. I got this.” But 2021, basically everything, I think the pandemic, I think the amazing but also very tiring journey of the past couple years of publishing these books in the series, it all caught up with me. And I found myself not able to write. Not even writer’s … Maybe it is called writer’s [block], but it was like I could not disappear into that place in my mind that I had really lived in my entire life. And I felt like I was stuck on earth.

Tomi Adeyemi:
And I was like, “This is insane.” To live without all these characters and stories and going in different worlds. So, it was really … Profound? It was a crazy internal character journey and I had to put myself through my own Rocky montage over the course of six months to get it back. And I’m like, “Oh my God, this is so much less fun without it being like three minutes of music and drinking eggs.”

Tomi Adeyemi:
But it was really like, okay, you’ve changed. Your writing process has changed. How do we get it back? And so now it’s when it gets dark. So, I used to be like, “Oh, I need to start at 10:00 or this or this.” But with daylight savings time and everything. So now I’m in California and it gets dark around five. So when it’s dark, my mind is like, “It’s go time.”

Tomi Adeyemi:
So, I have Korean rain. Someone’s like, “What’s the difference between Korean rain and Panamanian?” I’m like, “I’m not that cultured.” It’s just one eight hour Korean rain, it plays on my big computer. I have candles. I have my little amethyst crystals. I really like them. If I’m feeling extra sassy, I’ll light that incense. And then I’ll put something on my iPad. It started with You, the Netflix television show, where it’s just I would play it at a low volume because I could write to like three episodes, four episodes, okay, let I do the whole first season.

Tomi Adeyemi:
Also the first season is about a writer. And she has two moments where you really see her writing and I’m like, “It’s so beautiful.” I just really like the show. I like the way it makes me a little bit feel. So, now my writing process is kind of set. Okay, you have the rain, you have the flame, you have You or Succession or Netflix drama Sex/Life, which I think is very interesting for a lot of book three to be written to. And it’s there to like keep me pushing forward.

Tomi Adeyemi:
And now I’m getting to the point of pretty consistently hitting five to six hours a day. I’m trying to hit 16 pages a day. And that’s from like, I couldn’t get like 200 words in the summer. I’d sit there for three hours banging my head.

Tomi Adeyemi:
It’s actually something I was talking to the writers in my class about like. Find your process, find what allows you to just go. Because writing is so much in our head, but it has to be out of our head too. And we can just go in tornadoes and just build all these obstacles for ourselves. So now it feels more mechanic. It feels a bit more Pavlovian because it’s I’ve set these things. So, it’s like this flame, let’s go, it’s dark, we’re ready.

Tomi Adeyemi:
And it’s funny because when I was trying to get published, I was working in Los Angeles. I had a desk job from 9:00 to 6:00 and then I would write from 6:00 to midnight. And my dream was to be able to write from 9:00 to 6:00 and now I still write from 6:00 to midnight. So, it didn’t change when it became my job. It’s my process. And because I had to literally battle for it, I’m like, “Oh, we’re not letting this go.” It doesn’t matter. It was such a process.

Tomi Adeyemi:
I know Shonda Rhimes said something like that in her master class. She’s like, “I don’t believe in writers black because the few times I’ve gotten it has been so horrible that now I just write every day so it doesn’t happen again.” And now I’m like, “Oh my God, no. I never want to do the writing push-up chest clap, never again.” So, I’m just going to try and keep it going. Ideally till I’m done being alive, that would be my goal. Because that’s how much I hated being writers’ block. So, I would love to just keep writing and then peace out. But yeah, that is my writing process now.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
I love it. Thank you for sharing that with us. I’ve never really talked another writer before who’s put so much emphasis on the aesthetic, on the rain and the candle. And it’s just a great reminder that we’re tied to the world and that we’re creating a world, but we’re also in this world. Boy, I want to pick that apart for a while. But I also don’t want to because I have so many questions to ask you.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
When it was so difficult over the summer and I know I’ve spoken to a lot of writers, it sounds like you’ve spoken to a lot of writers who are struggling right now, pandemic or otherwise just because life is hard a lot of the time. When you were struggling to write those 200 words a day, did you consider that a kind of writer’s block or was that something else? It

Tomi Adeyemi:
It was like a biblical journey. I was literally like, “I’ve been swallowed by the whale.” Something I else I see with writers is we … You mentioned earlier living as a writer and I smiled because that’s also been the journey of this year. I think, despite what I had achieved and despite where I was, there still was this something on my vision board. It’s like a little text. It’s like, “I am a writer. I am a writer. I am a writer.”

Tomi Adeyemi:
I literally have been having to chant that to myself, despite everything. Because there’s still this weird shame and this weird … Like I love it, and it was a dream to get to do it. And then I got that dream and then I fought so hard so I could keep doing it. And it’s like I got that dream. And still there was something inside me that wouldn’t let myself be like, “Hey. Babe, you did it.”

Tomi Adeyemi:
So, this year’s been … Even that journey of really having to claw back for this gift. And it was also very spiritual for me. It involved so much prayer. And I’m like, “Yo, God, give it back. Because I don’t like this. I don’t like.” I’m just at this stoplight on this street. Are you kidding? I’m like, “No, there’s a battle going here. There’s a make out scene going here. I’m reliving.”

Tomi Adeyemi:
I guess my mind has always been, it could be loud or if I’m in control of it, it can be colorful. And it was just empty.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
I want to hear more about this.

Tomi Adeyemi:
Loud, I would say is when your thoughts are out of control and they’re working against you and so you’re spinning tornadoes in your head and you’re spinning yourself deep into these trenches and I have definitely been there. But when I’m calm and it’s like I feel calm in myself. I feel calm in the story I’m telling, I feel calm in the path I’m making for myself, I feel calm in what I’m going for.

Tomi Adeyemi:
This year was such an upheaval and losing the ability to write was such a huge part of that upheaval, that getting it all back, there’s a new sense of calm. And it’s funny because Zélie, I just didn’t even realize that Zélie in the story, she loses her magic and she gets it back and there is something about when you fight to get it back and it’s there … Yeah, it’s just something new and it’s a new pillar inside of me.

Tomi Adeyemi:
So, now the mind, there lots going on, but again it’s colorful and it’s dreaming and it’s also focused. I will say this year focused me because I’m almost positive I just would be diagnosed with severe ADD because I’m like, “You do so many things.” But I like it. But making those things connect, making sure it’s not just, “Oh, you want to do this. You want to do this.” It’s like, “Okay, these are the stories you want to write this year. These are the kind of events and things you want to do this year, COVID permitting. These are the people you want to talk to. These are the things you want to talk about.”It all got so laser focused for me this year. So yeah, that’s a very winding answer.

Tomi Adeyemi:
But now that process is a part of it. I was reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic when I was trying to get out of this rut, I think she talked about dress up for writing. She’s like, “For heaven’s sakes, Elizabeth, take a shower, put on some lipstick.” I don’t know. That’s not her voice, but that’s how I read it to myself.

Tomi Adeyemi:
And yeah. So now I’m like, “Yes, spray that perfume, get fresh.” I know Aaron Sorkin says he takes eight showers a day when he is writing. So, it really is accepting the process. I think we spend so much time in shame and I know for me, it’s also societal, it’s also cultural. It’s like, “This is not what I thought I was going to be doing.” It’s what I dreamed of doing, but it’s not what I thought I was going to be doing. So, there’s a lot of things we just do to fight ourselves as writers as opposed to just proudly embracing it.

Tomi Adeyemi:
Even if it’s in the quiet of your room at night. It’s like, “Okay, yeah. Make that environment play. Those sounds.” Even play those sounds just so your mind gets tricked and trained to be like, “Oh, is that the gentle patter of South Korean rain? It’s like I can write.” So I’m like, “Use it all.” But it’s nice to make it a more sensory experience and something peaceful for you to get into that cave and just really imagine.

Tomi Adeyemi:
Because it’s not just our passion and our job, if we’re lucky enough to call it our job, it’s something [inaudible 00:12:24] said to me this year, she’s like, “It’s breathing. If you can’t create nothing’s okay.” And realizing that such a deep part of me that I had never acknowledged how deep of a part of me it was, it’s really changed it. So, I feel like I have a lot of writing pride and I want to spread it and I want all writers to feel not like, “I’m this creep in my closet.” It’s like, “No, I’m a writer in my world. I’m slaying dragons right now. I’ll pay taxes tomorrow. But right now I’m fighting dragons.”

Sarah Rhea Werner:
You know, the important stuff.

Tomi Adeyemi:
Yes.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
I love it. Oh my gosh. And it sounds like it’s such an intentional thing to regain that focus and it’s such a sensory bound thing. I love that we go from talking about the aesthetic of the writing realm to having that actually create a Pavlovian response. I love your phrase on that earlier, that Pavlovian response.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
Those of you who aren’t familiar with it, when Pavlov rings a bell, the dog salivates because it knows it’s going to get food. And so when you sit down in your chair, when you light that candle, when you start playing the rain sounds, maybe your brain starts salivating words. I love that. What a great way to talk about building habits and to talk about living into the writer’s life. I love it. I love it so much.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
So, I want to ask just a couple more questions. I love talking with you about your writing process. I want to ask what your favorite thing about writing is, but I think maybe we’ve already talked about that a little bit. But I still want to ask it. So, I’m going to ask it anyway.

Tomi Adeyemi:
The lives you live in your head. I have a new appreciation for it a movie a friend recommended to me. I think it’s called The Hours.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
Yeah!

Tomi Adeyemi:
It’s three different timelines and one of them is Virginia Woolf and I remember I’m watching her. I was like, “Oh, you’re crazy, crazy, Tomi.” It was like, seeing another I’m like, “Okay, you’re not even passively …” Someone asked me yesterday, they’re like, “Defend yourself. You’re a middle child. You guys have a reputation.”

Tomi Adeyemi:
I’m like, “No, I can’t defend. I’m like Joker dancing in the streets jovially.” So I’m like, “No, I fully claim it.”

Tomi Adeyemi:
Something the woman playing Virginia Woolf’s sister said about her, because they were sitting in a room with two kids and Virginia was just in her chair with crazy eyes and she’s like, “Virginia’s a writer, children. That means she lives two lives. The one here with us and the one in her head with her characters.”

Tomi Adeyemi:
And I was just like, “Oh wow, wow. I can’t imagine.” Well, I can imagine it because I had to experience it. Just living this life. It wasn’t enough for me. So, now it’s like, I think as writers, we get so hyper focused … We have to. We do have to be focused on the result. Whether it’s a dream, a passion, an aspiration to be a job. It’s like, “I got to get this book. I got to get this query letter. I got to get this agent. I got to get this book deal. I got to get on the best seller’s list. I got to sell these rights. I got to hit the list.”

Tomi Adeyemi:
It does not stop. And so being in touch with that romantic side of it and that’s something I’ve been talking, because my writer experience is so personal that when I’m talking to the writers in my class, we have these monthly Zooms, I’m always talking to them about where I am in my journey. And a lot of times people are like, “What can I do to prepare for X, Y, and Z?”

Tomi Adeyemi:
And I used to say like, “Read, read, read. Write, write, write. Analyze.” And now I’m like, “Find that special writing place, that place where you feel the buzz of creation and you are consistently having an output, be that 500 words, be that two pages, like just find your consistency and find that safe place of creation.”

Tomi Adeyemi:
Because I’m like, “If you can master that, then you’re going to be fine when it comes to the books and the things.” That’s at least what I lost in my journey and what I’ve had to bring back. So now I’m like, “That’s actually what I think is the most useful skill.” Because if you protect that, you can keep it going.

Tomi Adeyemi:
So consistency and then like just creating that safe haven around creation. Yeah. I love it. I am Quentin Tarantino said that in a recent interview, I don’t know how recent it was. It’s the internet, so it was recent for me.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
Everything is recent.

Tomi Adeyemi:
Maybe he said it like four years ago, who knows? But he was like, “Find the writing process that brings you joy.” And that is something I have … First I was like, “I don’t have time for joy, Quentin. I need to get hundreds of pages out.” But I find myself enjoying really enjoying it and it took me so long to get here because I was just putting so much pressure on everything. So, love it. Never want to lose it again.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
I love that you talk about writing as a safe haven. That speaks to me so much. I know everybody has a different reason why they come to writing, why they come to the page. And for me, it was always to create a safe space for myself where I could exist in safety. And I feel like that is true for so many writers. Thank you for giving that perspective.

Tomi Adeyemi:
I think that’s all of us. I literally think that’s all of us. Because there’s two ways to go about it. You can either play Sims and be the God of your world, which I have also done, and you’re like, “I am chaos incarnate in this neighborhood.” I think that’s why we gravitate to stories. I’ve always been like such a driven person, but writing has become such a softer thing to me the past few years. Especially with those first four months of the pandemic. Stories were the place I hid inside and it’s like, “I can’t do this.” So it’s like, we’re going back to these eight movies. Oh my God, we got eight seasons of Desperate Housewives. Thank the good Lord. Yes, we have Good Place. These things, they were stability when there was no stability.

Tomi Adeyemi:
So, one, having used those stories just to stay afloat in my own way and then having these … It’s like knowing you’re creating spaces, but also creating that space for yourself because that’s what I think is the magic. If you are creating a special place for yourself in the words you’re writing, you are building this little cave for your reader to come in. And then that gets to be their little eggshell that they can crawl into and just feel safe for a couple hours. And that is so beautiful to create a safe place for someone’s mind. But it should be safe for your mind first.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
Thank you. All I want to say is just, thank you. Thank you, thank you for saying that. It’s so important. And it’s so interesting too how we write for ourselves and then we show it to the public and suddenly it becomes a little scary. And I’m curious, I want to ask about success. Because I know that you’ve seen some very significant success, but what does it feel like? Does it feel like you thought it would feel like? What has your experience been with success and what does that look like for you moving forward?

Tomi Adeyemi:
It’s so interesting. Whenever I get a big piece of news, there’s that initial electrifying jolt and you feel the dopamine floodgates open. I just got some really good news and I was howling in the street two weeks ago and I was full Joker, full madman, I accept. There is that rush. It does feel like those scenes in a movie where you score the big goal and you’re being lifted and you have the Hogwarts house cup and you’re like, “Yay, I’ve done it. I’ve done it.”

Tomi Adeyemi:
So, there is that moment and then for me, there’s almost nothing. Which sounds like bleak and psychopathic. But what I mean by that is you get that rush. I think for me, my dream isn’t done. And so everything to me is building to the dream. And I feel like part of me being able to settle into this softer place with my writing is being like, “Okay, the ramp to the writing opportunities you wanted to have have been built through the intense hardship, the intense sacrifice, all the highs, all the lows.”

Tomi Adeyemi:
And so going into this next phase, now I am really retreating into that. “Okay. Just be an artist. You’re not trying to hustle. You’re not trying to build. You want to find your Dark Knight and your Inception. You want to be just one of the people who gets to create stories where people are like, ‘What the [bleep] is she going to do now?'”

Tomi Adeyemi:
Because that’s how I feel with Christopher Nolan. I’m like, “What are you going to do now?” And I’m like, “Look at him spending hundreds of millions of dollars to crash this plane into this building for my entertainment because he cares about me.”

Tomi Adeyemi:
So, I want to be like that. I want to be lost in my world, so lost in it that I can’t really see outside of it. And then it just feels more freeing to share that. I poured myself into this, I enjoyed the process of pouring myself into this, and now do with it what you will. So yeah, my relationship with success is very interesting.Especially because I’ve also struggled to acknowledge it.

Tomi Adeyemi:
Even now, again, a big thing just happened, but it’s like … I think also success has always come with there’s a lot of work to do. So it’s like, “Okay, I got this big book deal, but it’s time to work.” And there was 33 drafts between getting the book deal and publishing it and that happened in eight months.

Tomi Adeyemi:
And so it’s like, I will have this big thing, but I’m like, okay, I got a job to do and I need to bring my all. The success for me. Isn’t the big, well … Let me say, it’s not the big deal. I like my sushi. I like my Thai food. My dog is bougie. I’m like, “No, [inaudible 00:22:51]” so I’m like, “Get that money.” But if you are truly passionate about the job, the success is usually the opportunity to do the job. And that’s where I’m like, all of this success has given me the opportunity to do the job, to bring this story, to bring this adaptation into the world, which as a writer is one thing.

Tomi Adeyemi:
As a marginalized creator, it’s like this is my Olympics. I’ve got to perform. Then I’ll celebrate. When there’s 12 gold medals and I stuck the landing, then it’ll be like, this’ll mean she doesn’t do book events anymore. She’s just like drunk with her glasses on. It’s like, “You want to dance?” So then I’ll be dancing. But for now it’s like, “No, we got work to do.” So that’s maybe what’s always kept me, I don’t know if it’s focused, but just created this shield where the accolades don’t break through because I’m not done.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
That says so much about … A lot of what I like to talk about is the mindset of a writer and a creator. And it’s like, yes, the reward for hard work is more hard work, but you love the work. And I love that you were talking about shame earlier and shame and joy.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
There’s just so much to say about being a person whose job is a writer and balancing that mindset with, “I love what I do and I get to love what I do.”

Sarah Rhea Werner:
I have so many questions to ask you. I realize that we’re coming up on the end of our time together. And I want to talk about this beautiful opportunity you’ve created for writers. Can we hear a little bit about the Writer’s Roadmap, please?

Tomi Adeyemi:
Yes. I call it my happy baby. The books are my angry babies and they’re like, “Wah!” The Writer’s Roadmap, it’s like, “Oh, she’s gentle. She’s tucked away. She has her lullaby.” It is an online master class. It has about 10 video lessons that just take the viewers through my writing process. So I go from this is how I get a story idea, this is how I then elevate that story idea and find not only what’s unique about it, but how I can make it personal, how I can make it something of the heart. This is how I structure my stories, this is how I plot it out, this is how I do a first draft, this is how I revise.

Tomi Adeyemi:
So, basically how it started is my journey to publishing Children of Blood and Bone, I realized I had to create my own curriculum. As a Ravenclaw, I wanted one place. I wanted to go to one place, take one class, one conference and just get the knowledge. But I had to piece it together from writing books, from classes in college, from writers conferences, from 15 years of failing to finish a first draft, from the four and a half years of trying to get a book published before Children of Blood and Bone. And so by the time I got to Children of Blood and Bone’s success, I was like, okay, I have a process and it’s literally a curriculum cobbled together. And I just wish I had been able to go to one place when I knew my writing dream was serious. It was after the book I’d spent like four and a half years on that got rejected 63 times by literary agents.

Tomi Adeyemi:
When I realized, “Oh, I still really want this.” That’s when I was like, “I wish this course had existed because it would’ve been the one place I needed to go from writing that book to writing Children of Blood and Bone.” So this class is my writing process, but it’s also my writing and publishing curriculum. It’s 24/7 it’s lifetime access. It includes case studies from bestsellers. I show people how I put together Children of Blood and Bone.

Tomi Adeyemi:
We have two tiers. One of the tiers offers monthly Zooms, so we get on Zoom every month. We have an open Q and A. I think I mentioned that. I share where I am in my journey. So, when I was in June and I was like, “I am struggling to write 200 words a day.” Versus now we get six months later and I’m like, “I’m at 16 pages, baby.”

Tomi Adeyemi:
I let them see that as a writer, you’re always on the journey because you’re always fighting for something. You’re fighting for that agent. You’re fighting for your writing flow back. You’re fighting for that book deal. And so just showing it’s like, “No, you always keep fighting.” But when you have a community to do it with and grow with … I guess the thesis of this podcast would be bring joy, force it into the process, because we put ourselves under so much hell. So, this is my attempt to bring clarity, workbook pages, community.

Tomi Adeyemi:
We’ve had over 500 students in the past year and a half. Valentino sponsored 50 students last year. It’s really special and it’s growing. We actually have a special discount code for your listeners. So, if they use the code “write now,” yes, on brand, they’ll get $50 off the enrollment price.

Tomi Adeyemi:
So yeah, it’s open for enrollment now. We’re launching this next generation for the students January 12th and yeah, I really love it. It started with the pandemic and it was like, okay, we’d been planning it, but it was April 2020. We’re like, “We’re all stuck at home. We might as well see who wants to write with us.”

Tomi Adeyemi:
And I’ve literally been Zooming with that initial group of students for like a year and a half now. There’s babies that have popped up and I’m like, “There’s another baby. We have another Zoom baby.” So, even this conversation with you now has just been … There’s something so fuzzy when writers get together and they’re like, “Writing, right?”

Tomi Adeyemi:
It’s like those toy story aliens that come together, who are like, “You are like me.”

Sarah Rhea Werner:
Hahahaha … Yes.

Tomi Adeyemi:
We’re going through this thing the same way, so I absolutely love it and I just can’t wait to work with more writers and to keep growing opportunities. I’ve always wanted everything I’ve gone through on my journey to be useful, because otherwise it’s like that was just painful. So I just love the idea of building this new generation of writers and preparing people to have writing careers with a hopeful, optimistic look.

Tomi Adeyemi:
Because there are so many opportunities for writers. We talked about that. Success is getting to do another job. Every person and their grandmother has a streamer. All of these shows are based off of books. There are web toons, there is IP development, there is video game writing. I think we all approach this like it’s such a scarce platform. We approach it like there’s so much scarcity in this industry, there’s not room for me.

Tomi Adeyemi:
And I’m like, “No there’s room, so let’s grow as writers and let me teach you about these opportunities and start looking at your career.” Like, “Okay, you love TV? So, why don’t you start writing your pilot too? Why don’t you take this positive mindset that you are going to have a career as a writer and you are going to get to use these talent in all these different spaces and fields.” So, it’s a really special community.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
I love that. I love to hear it. I love that, I did not know this before we started this call, we are very much on the same wavelength. I love your energy and I think that your class will be an amazing opportunity for my listeners. Again, I’ll have a link to that in the description for today’s episode out in the show notes and you can also get $50 off as Tomi said using the coupon code, “Write now”, W-R-I-T-E-N-O-W, and boy, I’m just so happy and excited right now. You have been just such a delight and such a joy to talk to. I want all writers to feel this extra joy when they dive into their writing sessions and you’ve just brought us so close to that today. So thank you for being here. Any final thoughts, advice, anything that you’d like to leave our listeners with?

Tomi Adeyemi:
I would just say find that happy, safe, creative space. Our world is so hectic. It’s so hectic. So find that, live in that, revel in that, vacation in the real world. Go there for like tacos and then go back to your mind.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
I love it. I love it. Thank you.

Tomi Adeyemi:
Thank you.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
This has been a beautiful delight. I am going to go ahead and say thank you. Again, everyone please check out the Writer’s Roadmap course. Please read Tomi’s books. They’re amazing. Children of Blood and Bone and then the second and third one. The second one’s out, third one is in the process.

Tomi Adeyemi:
It is in process.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
I love to hear that and I’m wishing you all the luck on that.

Tomi Adeyemi:
Thank you.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
And all the joy for that.

 [Outtro music.]