Sarah Rhea Werner (00:00):
This is the Write Now Podcast with Sarah Werner, Episode 160: Saying Vs. Doing.

(00:27):
Welcome to Write Now, the podcast that helps all writers — aspiring professional, and otherwise — to find the time, energy, and courage you need to pursue your passion and write. I’m your host, Sarah Werner, and I am sitting here with a cup of wonderful coffee and some birds chirping outside of my window, and I am thinking about all the things that we say that we’re going to do and all of the things that we actually do.

(00:59):
I’m thinking about this because of the Write Now Podcast. It’s presently June of 2024, and so far this year I have recorded and released exactly two episodes of what is supposed to be a weekly podcast. Since we’re halfway through the year, I was kind of sitting down with my journal and taking stock of what I’ve done this year, creatively project-wise, business wise, et cetera. And I realized going through my journals from earlier this year that I kept saying, I want to record more Write Now podcast episodes because I love it.

(01:38):
It’s fun, it’s fulfilling, I love communicating with other writers… I have a million reasons why I love doing this show, and yet there’s some part of me that says, well, if you really loved doing this show, Sarah, you would do it, and you would have more than two episodes recorded and released by the middle of this year. So obviously, there is some disconnect between what I am saying and what I am doing — and this applies to more than just podcasting. I’ve talked with so many… I don’t want to call them wannabe writers, because I feel like that’s kind of insulting. I’ve talked to so many people who say, “Oh my gosh, I want to write a book. I would love to write a book. I want to write a memoir. I would love to learn how to write poetry, et cetera.” And then… the things that they do don’t align with the things that they say.

(02:34):
Their first mistake was talking to me and telling me these things, because I am the kind of person that I hear that someone wants to write, whether it’s a book, a memoir, a single poem, and I latch onto that and I get real interested. My eyes get really wide and I lean forward and I say, “Did I hear that you’d like to write something?” And the person across from me, because I’m imagining they’re across from me, but I’ve had these conversations via text, via email, over coffee in classrooms. I have these conversations with people everywhere and they say, “Oh, I’ve always wanted to write a book.” I have a bad habit of taking people directly at their word. And so I realize, I fully realize that probably 80 to 90% of the people who say that to me when I say, “Hey, I’m a writer,” and they say, “Oh, I’ve always dreamed of writing a book,”

(03:32):
they’re just being polite. And I realize that that’s the first barrier between saying and doing. If you’re just being polite, if you have no intention whatsoever of ever writing anything, and yet you say, “Oh, I’ve always wanted to write a book,” I get it. You’re just telling me what I want to hear, you’re trying to engage me in conversation, whatever; you’re not actually stating to the universe itself that yes, I, person X, have always dreamed of writing a book, and I would love to do so at this very moment. I get it. Most people are just being polite, making conversation — but again, they’re talking to me. And so my response is, “Oh my gosh, how can I get you started?”

(04:17):
At that point, I tend to see one of two things. First, the 80 to 90% of people who were just saying that to be polite will get a sort of trapped or fearful look in their eye, which is my clue that they were just being polite and they’re terrified now that they’ve stepped into something and they cannot step back out.

(04:40):
And I’ll press them a little bit because I think, and maybe I am just being biased, but I think that a lot of people don’t know that they want to write, that they want to create something. It’s just not something that is part of the list of hopes and dreams that they’ve been putting together throughout their life. And so I really want to make sure like, well, okay, if you want to do this, I would love to help you think through it. Every once in a while, someone would be like, “Oh, okay.” And then we have a conversation from there. But largely, there’s a disconnect.

(05:12):
Now for the 10 to 20% of people who actually do want to write, I find that my lines of inquiry are still a little bit anxiety-inducing, which I get, because if you have this secret desire to write a book, et cetera, and someone suddenly puts you on the spot about it… yeah, you’re going to freak out. You haven’t thought this through, you don’t know what to say, and maybe it’s a secret longing that you haven’t shared with anyone before, and maybe I need to back off and stop being so aggressive about, “All right, let’s write this book!” Maybe that’s going to be my main takeaway from this episode is just “Sarah, calm down harassing people into writing.” Because I think that those people, when they say, “I want to write a book,” or, “I’ve always wanted to write a book,” they’re saying it with the same kind of energy — not in all cases, but often the same kind of energy — that I use when I say, “Boy, I really want to get back to recording weekly Write Now podcast episodes.” It’s a thing that I’ve actually wanted to do very much, and yet… I haven’t done it.

(06:26):
Maybe this resonates with you. Maybe this is sort of where you are right now in your journey as a writer. Maybe for you, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. You get really excited about the idea of writing, but you can’t quite convince yourself to sit down and just do it. Now, there are a lot of reasons that we do things like this. We get excited by the idea, but then bogged down knowing how much work it will take, or how much it will cost, or how much we really don’t want the general public to hear what we think, or maybe we’re worried that we’ll get laughed out of town. But for me, I’ve been recording this show off and on haphazardly since… 2015 maybe, and at this point, I should know better. We’re coming up on 10 years. I know that releasing an episode of my podcast is not going to get me laughed out of town. I’m not going to lose face — I mean, unless it’s a really bad episode.

(07:29):
But I actually met with a mentor earlier this year, back when I was doing planning for 2024, and we worked through my different goals and intentions for the year. And in addition to finally finishing season two of Girl In Space, I also said, “And I want to get back to recording a weekly Write Now podcast episode.” I have plenty of topics. I have an ongoing list, an ongoing spreadsheet of at least a hundred different topics. Setup isn’t hard — I just have a USB mic that I plug into my computer. And I seriously love doing it. As I said before, it’s fulfilling. It’s fun. I love talking to you. So when she asked, “Okay, what’s keeping you from recording, producing, and releasing a weekly Write Now podcast episode?” I didn’t have an answer for her other than, “I want to do it, but I’m not doing it.”

(08:28):
Again, maybe this is something you have experienced or are experiencing with your writing. You love to write, it makes you feel great. You identify perhaps as a writer, but you haven’t written anything in months. My mentor suggested, “Well, this is very easily doable. Why don’t you just block off a chunk on your schedule each week for recording and editing? Have the same time maybe Wednesday afternoons or Tuesday mornings or whenever it works for you to make it a habit.” Oh, Wednesday is my recording day. I’m going to sit down, record an episode and just do it, and — I kid you not, get ready to judge me. Okay? The first thing that I wanted to say was in this whiny child’s voice, “But I don’t waaaaana.” And there was the disconnect. I wanted to, but I didn’t want to, and that’s a complicated thing to deal with. But I didn’t want to whine to my mentor that like, “Oh, I don’t waaaaaana,” and be petulant and like a little kid, because I want to look cool and smart. Like I know what I’m doing.

(09:46):
I want to be the kind of person who makes a commitment and sticks with it. I want to be a person who has integrity. I want to be a person who does things intentionally, with intentionality. I want to be accountable for the things that — not only the things that I say I want to do, but the things that I actually do want to do. Somewhere deep inside my heart, I want to podcast weekly… but some other part of me apparently does not. So what I ended up telling my mentor was, “I just keep intending to, and then I find I just don’t have the time or energy.” And she was like, “Great, let’s talk about how you can have the time and energy to record and release a weekly Write Now podcast episode!” And it was at that moment that I realized she was doing the same thing to me that I was doing to all of the other people who’ve said, “Oh, I’d love to write a book,” and secretly inside was conflicted, was scared, was facing some unknowable mountain of resistance.

(10:53):
Because I have the time. I have the energy. I dedicate every morning, at least four hours, to writing whatever project it is I’m working on. So Girl In Space, my next audio drama, a book that I’m working on, et cetera. But after that time, my afternoons are for business admin tasks, meetings, doing client work — if I have client work to do — and recording the Write Now podcast. Maybe you’ve done this, too — maybe you’ve set aside time on your calendar and you’ve said, “Each morning before I go to work, I’m going to write from six to 7:00 AM,” or, “I’m going to write once a week on Saturdays from 12 to 4:00 PM.” And then the time comes and you just feel like you hate everything and you just want to go to bed, even if you weren’t exhausted when you first got to that point. You want to do it, but you’re not doing it.

(11:57):
As I sort of struggled with this, my first thought was, “Oh, I should just go back to when I first started the podcast, when I was really excited about it and it was new and fresh and I was recording weekly episodes. What did that look like? Why did I do that? Why did I originally start this show, and can I regain some of that initial motivation and excitement?” And I allowed myself to ask that question because I’ve realized that while I had no viable reason not to be doing this, I was still not doing it. And I found that when we have resistance, there’s usually a very valid reason behind that resistance. It’s not because we’re lazy. It’s not because we’re wishy-washy. It’s not because we don’t actually want to do what we say we want to do. It’s because there’s an actual reason in there.

(12:57):
And so I thought back to, okay, why did I initially start the Write Now podcast? And it was for a lot of reasons. I was working for a marketing agency at the time and I decided that, oh, I can start experimenting with a podcast. And in 2015, there weren’t a lot of podcasts, especially about niche topics like work/life/writing balance. So I wanted to do some experimenting there. It was new. I got to learn all the equipment. I learned how to edit. It was this beautiful, fresh, exciting new thing. And I think as with many things, the excitement wears off. There’s an initial jump in our hearts, an initial spark that gets us really raring to go on something, but inevitably the honeymoon phase goes away. And what are we left with? And again, this may be something you’ve experienced with your writing or with a creative project. The initial excitement fades away, and what are you left with?

(14:02):
So I made a list, and in addition to that sort of initial spark of excitement about something new, I realized I genuinely really want to talk about the creative process. It’s something that I think I actually need to do. Like I said earlier, I always feel great after I record and publish an episode. It feels great. It feels fulfilling. I seriously love doing it. It’s brought me great opportunities in my life. It’s helped me meet some amazing people. I have nothing but good things to say about podcasting and, for that matter writing.

(14:36):
But I also realized that amidst those other things, one of the reasons I had started the Write Now podcast was as an act of resistance or rebellion against where I was in my career at that time. I was frustrated. I felt like I wasn’t being heard at work. I felt like I had all of these cool, creative ideas and nobody wanted to hear them. And the Write Now podcast was a safe place for me to explore how I felt, and to connect with other people who felt the same way.

(15:12):
But since 2015, my circumstances have changed very drastically. I am now writing full-time for myself. I don’t have a day job that I can rebel against or resist. I don’t have that friction in my life that propels me the same way it used to. Also, since then, I’ve worked out a lot of personal issues. I have been diagnosed with clinical depression, generalized anxiety disorder, and ADHD. And initially, the Write Now podcast was a way for me to talk about these things I was struggling with that didn’t yet have a name or a diagnosis, but now I do have those things. And I still struggle with them, but I know what they are and I have built systems in my life to cope with them, work around them, et cetera.

(16:01):
I’m also finding the fulfillment I used to get from the Write Now podcast from several other places. I have another podcast — it’s an audio drama called Girl In Space — and I also am executive producer for my husband Tim’s show, Omen. The times are also just different. Podcasting is different than it was nine years ago, and in those nine years, we’ve gone through a global pandemic that has changed the way that we talk to and relate to each other, and it’s changed the way that we consume media. It’s changed the kinds of conversations we’re having.

(16:38):
Nine years ago, I was really into social media and personal branding, and today, I can’t bear to open up social media because it’s going to make me feel bad in some kind of way. Scrolling through TikTok or Instagram or Facebook or Twitter makes me feel bad. I used to do it for dopamine hits. I used to do it because the infinite scroll is very addictive to our brains. But I slowly started to realize that, oh, every time I go onto Instagram, I feel bad about myself because I’m comparing myself to other people. I’m feeling like, oh, I should be posting more to Instagram. Oh, I should have a strategy. Oh, I should take better pictures. Or I go onto Twitter and I’m like, oh my gosh, the world is a dumpster fire and everything is terrible. Or I go onto TikTok and I think, wow, I am not a video creator. I’m an audio creator, and I feel like I’m getting left behind. So there’s just all of these terrible feelings that come out of social media, and initially, the Write Now podcast was a way for me to interact with other people on social media, and it’s kind of no longer that.

(17:52):
And so I had to ask, “Have I just changed? Have my circumstances just changed enough over the last nine years that I’m a fundamentally different person now than I was then? And so I have a different relationship now than I did then with my creative projects, including the Write Now podcast?” The answer is yes. I feel like if we’re doing this life thing right, we’re going to change constantly over time. Our priorities change, our desires change, our motives for doing things change; the way that we live our daily lives changes, whether we want it to or not. And so I had to ask, “Am I being honest with myself? Do I really still want to record and publish weekly episodes of the Write Now podcast? Or am I holding on to some fragment of the past? Am I holding on to some sort of vestigial desire that has since been replaced by other things? Do I really actually still want to do this?” What particular itch did this project scratch and am I getting that scratching elsewhere? That’s a terrible analogy, but I think you know where I’m going with this.

(19:14):
We need to ask, is this something that I actually want to do, or is this something I have already unconsciously or subconsciously dismissed from my life? Has some part of me let go of this desire, or has some part of me given up on this idea, on this dream? Do I still actually get anything out of the experience of making this show? Is it worth the effort that I put in? Because each of these 30 minute episodes takes anywhere between eight and 15 hours to edit, produce, et cetera.

(19:55):
There’s a phrase in there that really bothers me, and that is the idea of giving up. Have I given up? Do I want to give up? That’s a really loaded phrase for me, and probably a lot of you. It signals so many things — passivity, defeat, and the idea of what does happen to a dream deferred? Is the gulf between what I say and what I do based on a lie that I’ve been telling myself?

(20:26):
If this is anything that you’ve ever struggled with, I do encourage you to sit down and take a moment, or two moments, or more than that, to slow down and listen to your core self. This is really hard to do because I think often what we want for ourselves is inextricably entangled with what other people want for us, and what we do to please other people, and what we’ve been told, et cetera. But really ask yourself, what are you saying and not doing?

(21:02):
What do you want your life to be about?

(21:06):
What do you value?

(21:08):
And does the act of writing or creating or podcasting line up with your values? Are your actions generally consistent with the things that you value? And is it time to change what it is you’re doing or saying? Is it time to reevaluate the person you used to be and reconcile that with the person you are today? What will it take for you to feel whole and do you feel whole and fulfilled and complete already without this particular slice of your life? Are you too busy? Are you unmotivated? Have all of your ideas faded away? Are you clinging on to a dream that has died?

(21:57):
These are not questions that I can answer for you, unfortunately; they were hard enough to answer for myself. But if there’s something in your life that you keep saying you want to do and then not doing, I really encourage you to ask yourself, “Why?” Ask yourself these questions that we’ve been talking about. And I don’t think that the answer to any of these questions is going to be something like, “Well, I’m just not creative anymore,” or “Welp, I guess I just have to give up any desire I ever had of creating anything.” Those are not good or acceptable answers, at least in my opinion.

(22:41):
We are fundamentally creative people, and I think that it’s more likely that we have found creative fulfillment elsewhere. If we have let our current dreams or our past dreams of being a writer of doing something like that fade away, chances are you have found a creative outlet in something else cooking or sewing or dancing or painting. Chances are you’re experiencing that creative fulfillment elsewhere, and that’s great. Most creative people I know aren’t just one thing. Yeah, you may be great at writing. You might be strong at writing, but yeah, you also knit and you paint and you like to do crafting, et cetera. A lot of us are just interested in a lot of different ways to express our creativity. But if you find yourself asking that question and you find yourself saying, “No, I am not feeling creatively fulfilled right now,” I encourage you to really figure out, really devote the time and the mental energy to figuring out what’s going on there, because you need some avenue of creative fulfillment in your life.

(24:03):
And if you say you want to write and you’re not writing, and you’re in a place of defeat or despair or depression or any of those other awful feelings, there might be a very valid reason or block or chunk of resistance that’s in your way, and I think that needs to be explored. I know that there are people who say, “Oh, there’s no such thing as writer’s block. It’s just fear.” Okay, but yeah, fear is a huge thing. Resistance is real. We can’t turn up our noses at it and just say, “You’re not trying hard enough.”

(24:43):
I realized somewhere along this process that I was saying I wanted to keep doing the Write Now podcast because I enjoyed the sense of fulfillment I got out of it, but I was experiencing creative fulfillment from my other creative projects, and that was something that I have really had to wrestle with and I am still wrestling with. And it took me a while before I realized that the kind of fulfillment I get from something like the Write Now podcast is actually different from the creative fulfillment that I get from my other creative projects, and that the Write Now podcast still fills a very important role in my creative life. But doing it on a weekly basis may not be as feasible because again, life has changed. I’ve changed. You’ve changed. I love recording this show, but I haven’t been able to do it on a consistent weekly basis because I have so much else going on. I needed to dig down and understand the various degrees of resistance that I was having to this.

(25:52):
And the thing is, once you realize and identify and understand the reason that you’ve been saying something and not acting on it, it’s not a forever thing. Maybe what you say and what you do haven’t been in alignment lately because your job is in a really rocky place, or you’ve had medical issues, or you have a new child and they are draining all of your energy, or a million other very, very valid reasons why this may not be the right season for you in which to create. But seasons pass. Boy, have I learned that lesson. Seasons pass, and if you decide to put your creative project on hold for now, that does not mean you can’t pick it up a month from now, six months from now, next year. I don’t know if this is some kind of wavering of integrity on my part or not, but the decisions that I make about my creative work and life are never permanent, and I don’t want them to be permanent.

(27:01):
I know that there’s poets like Rimbaud, who I want to say was early 19th century, but I’m probably wrong because it has been years since I’ve studied the poets. But I think at the age of 19 or some other very young age, Rimbaud, who had written a lot of poetry in his life, decided at that very young age that he never wanted to write again. And he stopped writing, never wrote again, went to Africa maybe to hunt lions or something, and was like never heard from again. Don’t be like Rimbaud. Don’t be eaten by lions. Don’t cut something out of your life that you may want to regain later. Allow yourself to take breaks, but also allow yourself to pick up things that have served you in the past and may yet still serve you in the future.

(27:56):
So if you’re saying, I want to write a book, and your actions don’t align with that, you haven’t been writing, you haven’t even been jotting down ideas, start thinking about why. Journal about why. Let yourself be really curious about your own motivations and what’s really going on in your heart. The answer or answers might be really, really complicated because we as people are really, really complicated, and we have a lot of anger and resentment and despair and hopelessness that we deal with on a daily basis. So don’t permanently lose that part of yourself, that part of you who initially said, “I want to write a book,” or “I want to write a poem,” or “I want to get published in some way.” Listen to that, because that desire comes from somewhere. If you find that you still have that desire, and I think you probably do — again, unless it’s being fulfilled in some other way — keep it not necessarily at the forefront of your mind, but keep it in there somewhere. Leave the opportunity to one day write a book, leave that opportunity open periodically ask yourself, “Hey, I’ve always wanted to write a book. Is this the season? Do I want to start jotting things down and making notes? Would that feel good? Would that feel fulfilling? And right? What do I want? What do I value? What is the difference between what I’m saying and what I’m doing and how can I fulfill the longings of my heart through my actions?”

(29:37):
This is, again, a really complicated subject, and there’s a lot of other stuff that I did not talk about in this episode that comes into play. Things like other people’s expectations, things like judgment, things like life circumstances actually and truly standing in your way. I would love to hear in the comments for today’s episode what you think. I would love to hear if you’re willing to share it. I would love to hear is there some gulf, some distance between what you say you want to do and what you actually find yourself doing? What does that look like? Is it related to your creativity? Does it have anything to do with your creative fulfillment as a creative person? What does that look like and how are you exploring it or how do you want to explore it? And if you’ve already explored it, what did you discover?

(30:38):
I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments for today’s episode. This is episode number 160, and you can leave a comment, which I will read and hopefully respond to, by going out to sarah werner dot com — that’s S-A-R-A-H-W-E-R-N-E R dot com — navigating to the show notes for today’s episode, and scrolling all the way down to the bottom. You’re going to have to scroll past the show notes and the transcript and all sorts of other stuff, but at the very bottom, there should be a place where you can leave your thoughts.

(31:11):
As for the Write Now podcast, I’m not stopping it. I love doing it. I’m going to continue recording and releasing episodes, and I think the compromise there is that it’s not going to be on a weekly basis, but I don’t think people are really expecting that from me anymore anyway, given that so far this year, I have only recorded and released two episodes. So there’s more to come, just not on a weekly schedule.

(31:38):
I also want to say thank you to those of you who are supporting this show financially. The Write Now podcast is out on Patreon, which, you may already know, is a secure third-party donation platform that allows you to donate a dollar per episode, two dollars per episode, a thousand dollars per episode, whatever you feel moved to donate. Patreon supporters get access to episodes a little bit early, and also help make this show available to everyone around the world for free. Everything that keeps this show running comes from donations.

(32:18):
So special, super extra thanks to patrons Laurie, Regina Calabrese, Amber Fratesi, Charmaine Ferreira, Mike Tefft, Poppy Brown, Summer, Tiffany Joyner, and Whitney McGruder. You are all so wonderful and generous, and I’m grateful for each and every one of you. Thank you for donating to the show.

(32:45):
If Patreon’s not your thing, you can also donate via PayPal or Ko-fi or “coffee” or however you say it, and if financial liquidity is not your thing, you can just tell someone else about this show. That actually is a very beautiful thing that you can do to help this show find and maintain its audience, is to just tell someone else, a writer, a friend, a teacher, about the Write Now podcast. If it’s someone who’s not really into podcasts, maybe show them how to download an episode onto their phone or other device that really, truly does help to spread the word and the work that I’m doing here.

(33:26):
And with that, this has been episode 160 of the Write Now Podcast, the podcast that helps all writers — aspiring professional, and otherwise — to find the time, energy, and courage you need to pursue your passion and write. I’m Sarah Werner, and hopefully I will be speaking to you again soon.