This is The Write Now Podcast with Sarah Werner, Episode 100: I Have No Idea What I’m Doing.

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 yes, this is our 100th episode of the Write Now podcast. Technically, there are more than 100 episodes of the podcast, but any extra episodes are courtesy of the Coffee Break spinoff which I did for a couple of years where I interviewed authors and writers and creative folks and sort of just had interesting conversations with them. Those are largely over on my Patreon. If you want to go check those out, they are at patreon.com/sarahrheawerner. That’s P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com/S-A-R-A-H R-H-E-A W-E-R-N-E-R. But yes, this is the 100th official episode of the Write Now podcast. So welcome, I’m so glad you’re here.

If this is the first time that you’re listening to this show, welcome. If this is your 100th time listening to the show, welcome. Welcome to everyone. If you are a writer, you are welcome here. If you are thinking about being a writer, you are welcome here. If you love to write and are scared to think about writing, you are welcome here. Everyone is welcome here. So, I was thinking about what I wanted to do for the 100th episode of the Write Now podcast. So this podcast has been going since 2015 and we have over a million downloads, we have merchandise, we have all these things that are going for it. And so I was like, “Oh, man! We need to make the 100th episode really special.”

So first and foremost, I want to say thank you. Yes, you. Even if this is your first time listening to the show, or again, if you’ve been listening since the beginning, thank you so much for being here. This show would not exist without you. I’ve learned a lot over the past couple of years doing this show. One of the things I’ve learned is that gratitude is everything. So I want you to know how grateful I am that you’re here listening to me. That is such a gift, that is such a treat, and I am extremely grateful for it. Another thing I’ve learned is that just when you think you’ve got everything in life figured out, life sort of just pulls the rug out from under you and sends you sprawling into the hallway.

I say this because I was jotting down ideas for what I wanted this 100th episode to be. And I was like, “Well, I could do like, oh, 100 things I’ve learned about writing.” But they were all failing. Everything I came up with was things that we’ve already talked about on the show. So if you want 100 things I’ve learned about writing, please go listen to the previous 99 episodes of the Write Now podcast. They’re all there, they’re all free, waiting to be listened to. I also had a topic come up in one of my ride-alongs. So I’ve been doing these create-alongs on Wednesday and Friday evenings over on twitch.tv/sarahrheawerner. And I get a lot of questions from writers just as we’re talking and as we’re writing and creating together.

And one of them was, how do I deal with the soggy middle of my work in progress? It was something that I was struggling with too and I was like, “Oh, maybe I’ll do that for my 100th episode.” So I went ahead and I outlined it and I called it The Slog. It was going to be me talking about what to do when you’re in the pit of despair with your project and what to do when you are just stuck and you don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, and I was like, “Well, do I really want episode 100 be called The Slog?” So I’m going to save that episode that I planned out for another week. So you will get that episode just not this week. And then, and perhaps you can identify with this, then I get into a place where I was writing down all these topic ideas and just nothing was good enough for my 100th episode.

I was like, “Aah, man! I could talk about self-sabotage, but do I really want that to be my 100th episode? And oh! Is this or that good enough to talk about for this monumental milestone?” My friend, Jordan, who I’ve talked about on the show before suggested that I just have a completely raw, unedited rant about the topic of my choice, and I was like, “Oh my gosh! I don’t know if the world’s ready for that.” I don’t know. Are you ready for that? I don’t know. So I got to the point where I had this mixture of fear of doing anything for the 100th episode and some pretty intense imposter syndrome. So what I did was I sat down and I started journaling. I’ve talked about journaling on this show before. It is a fantastic way, at least for me and maybe for you as well, to just simply get a grasp on all of those thoughts that are flying through your mind.

It’s a great way to pin them down, literally, figuratively, however it works for you. And yes, I also considered doing an episode on journaling for my 100th episode, but again, it just didn’t feel right. I often enjoy doing guided journaling. So there’s the kind of journaling that you freestyle, where you just sit down and you start writing. Sometimes I like to do that, sometimes if I don’t have anything immediately at the tip of my brain, I like to go to a guided journaling session. So I went out to one of my favorite resources, Amie McNee who is @inspiredtowrite over on Instagram, has a really great journaling resource. So it’s a paid product, so I purchased it a couple of months ago just as a tool to help me through my journaling.

And the prompt that I landed on for today, courtesy of Amie, was, how do you feel about being alone? My initial reaction was, “Oh my gosh! I love being alone. I love it.” I love having the house to myself. I am a huge introvert. I love recharging. I love it when there are no demands on my time or my schedule. I love it when I can sit down and write and nobody is coming up to me and asking questions or needing help with something. There’s just something so pure about being alone. But then the journal prompt took me in a new direction and it asked, “What is the difference between when you have alone time and when you are lonely?’ And that, my beautiful, amazing writer friends is where I started down this line of thinking that led me to today’s 100th episode of the Write Now podcast.

Because I started responding to that particular question with my experience of living for a couple of years in an apartment in Chicago where I didn’t know anyone and actually being alone with no friends in a city that was bigger than anything that I could comprehend. But then I started thinking, really thinking, about what it meant to be lonely. I realized it was more than just me very sadly sitting around in my one room apartment in Chicago on a Friday night watching DVDs of Futurama and deciding whether or not I had the energy or the motivation to do some creative writing. And I think to some degree, I’m broadcasting this in the midst of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, a lot of us have felt that very visceral loneliness, especially if you’re an extrovert who just misses being around people.

But the kind of loneliness that I worked my way toward during this line of thought had a lot to do with where I started with the Write Now podcast and where I’ve come. And this is going to be hard to talk about, but I hope that in some way you relate to it and draw out meaning of your own that will help you in your own creative journey. So here’s the thing. Starting the Write Now podcast set me up as some kind of authority on writing. And to some degree, I’m comfortable with that. I’ve been writing my entire life, I have a four-year bachelor degree in writing, I get paid to write full-time, and when I speak about the topic, people seem to draw useful conclusions from what I have to say.

But in another sense, whenever I speak about writing, there’s this desperate little voice deep within my heart that screams, “But I have no idea what I’m doing.” I sit down to write and it’s trial and error. I sit down to write and it’s fear smashing me in the face. I sit down to write and I think, “Oh my gosh! Who am I? Who am I to do this?” And I realize on an intellectual level that, hey, that’s imposter syndrome. But I also realize that since recording the first episode of the Write Now podcast, I’ve begun a journey of not only improving as a writer and creator, but distancing myself from my authentic self. And this is what I realized when I was journaling about loneliness.

By establishing myself as an expert, as somebody who is in a position to talk to other people about writing, I’ve created a gulf between my authentic self and the self I feel like I need to project or present for my brand, for my podcast, the self that is an authority on writing, the self that knows things and can help people. While meanwhile inside, in my authentic self, I feel like I have no idea what I’m doing. And to be 100% honest, I am terrified to tell you that. I’m thinking that right now maybe several of you, especially if this is your first time listening to the show, you are hitting stop or pause and you are deleting this podcast from your podcast app, because if Sarah has no idea what she’s doing, why am I listening to her?

So if you leave now, I really don’t blame you. But if you stick around, I’d like to explore this further because I think it might have some effect or some ramifications on the life that you either are living or will soon be living as a writer and creator. There’s a famous line in Plato’s Apology of Socrates that goes, “All I know is that I know nothing.” Now, there’s some debate among scholars as to where the saying actually came from because the actual translation is slightly different, but this is the saying that has gained renown and that has given philosophy majors and people who love to read esoteric books fodder for thinking about what we know and what we think we know and what we take for granted.

And this phrase, all I know is that I know nothing, is essentially Socrates saying, “I have no idea what I’m doing and I’m okay with that.” Because in some sense, the more you learn, the more you realize how much you still have to learn. And I’ve really been thinking about that a lot lately. As I make money from writing, as people come to me for writing advice, all I want to tell them is, I’m sinking into this chasm where it feels like all the questions in the world are opening up to me and things that used to seem simple, things that I used to think I had answers to are no longer so simple. And this ties in with growing as a writer, this ties in with all of the public speaking and the podcasting and the Q&A sessions.

Because I feel like when I’m in public, so on a podcast, on an interview, on stage, when I’m talking about writing, I’m not allowed to admit that I don’t feel like I know anything. I have to put on this professional veneer that, “Oh, yes, I have answers to your questions. That’s why you’re here.” And I have some answers. I mean, I don’t think I’m 100% totally, completely useless. But there is that gulf of, I feel like I know less and less and less, or maybe I feel like I have more and more and more questions that don’t have simple answers while I am expected to know more and more and more about the craft, about the business, about success. Before I started the Write Now podcast, I could go out onto Twitter and be like, “Oh my gosh! You guys, I’m struggling. I’m flailing. I have no idea what I’m doing. Are there any other writers out there who feel the same way?”

And I was part of a community of writers. But today, I don’t feel like I can do that. Whether consciously or unconsciously, I’ve built up this brand that tells people, “Hello, I am an authority on this and I can help you. Come listen to my podcast.” And I feel like if I go out onto Twitter now and I say, “I have no idea what I’m doing,” then that invalidates my podcast. It invalidates everything I’ve done for the last 100 episodes. Nobody wants to take a class from a teacher who says, “I have no idea what I’m doing.” But that’s why I wanted to do that for the 100th episode of the Write Now podcast. Yes, Madorie, we all have questions. And again, this comes from my journaling session where I realized I’ve isolated myself.

I’ve gotten really wrapped up in this brand of being a person who speaks about creativity and a creative lifestyle and creative writing to the point where I’m no longer my authentic self in any public place and that is incredibly lonely. When you can’t be honest and authentic and talk about what’s going on, what your fears and your hopes and your dreams are, that’s loneliness. And I realized it’s self-imposed. I realized no one has ever told me, “Sarah, you can no longer be honest about your creative writing journey.” Nobody is saying that and nobody necessarily wants that, but the performance gets exhausting. Feeling the need to project an authority or some kind of extra special knowledge that I don’t feel like I really have doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t feel genuine or authentic.

So in this episode, I want to tell you, I’m still learning. I don’t have all the answers. I want to be helpful of course, but I don’t have all of the answers. All I have is a willingness to ask questions and a desire to have discussions about what we’re all going through as writers and creators. As I thought about the previous 99 episodes of the Write Now podcast, I realized that each of these episodes isn’t necessarily so much me coming out and saying, “Hey, here’s how you write,” but more a question, what do we struggle with? Where are we going? What does success mean? What happens when we’re terrified of writing? What happens when that terror keeps us from doing the thing we feel we are meant to do, that thing that gives us joy and fulfillment.

Because here’s the thing, I don’t know if there are any authorities on writing. There are people whose work we admire and there are people who have found the kind of success that maybe we are searching for ourselves, but I don’t know if I believe that there is one correct way to write or one correct way to create or one correct way to live a fulfilling, creative life. And what even is a fulfilling creative life? I’m still figuring that out. I’m still involved in this grand experiment, this trial and error phase that I am starting to think is going to last my entire life. I’m starting to wonder if the easy answers maybe aren’t so easy and I’m starting to realize that maybe that’s what life is. Maybe you can identify with this too, but I’ve always been the sort of person who looks to the future.

I’m always thinking about what’s next. What project am I going to work on next? What am I going to complete next? Who am I going to become? And what is that person going to do? And with that mindset, while it can be helpful in some ways, it doesn’t ground me in the present. It doesn’t let me exist where I am in my journey right now. I’m always looking for some kind of finish line and not paying attention to the ground beneath my feet. But what if we allowed ourselves to admit that we don’t have all the answers? What if we allowed ourselves to admit that we kind of have no idea what we’re doing, that we’re just making this up as we go along, that we’re just living in a very extended period of trial and error, that maybe the creative life is a life that’s full of questions more than it is answers?

What if, as the cliche goes, it’s the journey that matters and it’s not the destination? What if writing is about discovery and growth and creation and forming relationships with other people who are going through that same journey? What if it’s not about finding some predetermined finish line but rather forging a path to a new place that is satisfying and fulfilling for you? Now, there are tips and tricks that work for some people and there are tips and tricks that work for other people. Some people set a timer while they write. Some people set an alarm so that they start writing at a certain time. Some people need to make sure that their butt is in their seat and that they are moving their fingers on the keyboard or scribbling notes in a notebook.

Some people need a cup of coffee. Some people need to journal before they write and get those morning pages out of the way. Some people enjoy their journey more than others. Some people, like me, get in their own way more often than not. But I’m starting to think that the creative journey doesn’t actually have a set destination. Sure, you can hit milestones, you can say, “Oh, I’ve just published my first book,” or, “I just made my first $10,000 for my first book,” or, “Oh, I just got on this show,” or, “Oh, I got a speaking gig at this conference,” or, “Oh, I can finally leave my day job to write full-time,” but I don’t know if there’s necessarily a place where we stop, where we have all the answers, where we stop learning and growing and experimenting and often failing and getting back up and trying again.

This is what I want to say for the 100th episode of the Write Now podcast. I’m going to continue experimenting. I’m going to continue asking questions. I’m probably going to continue way overthinking things and getting in my own way. But I’m also going to ground myself in that space, and I’m going to be generous with myself, and I’m going to be patient with myself, and I’m going to be kind to myself, and I’m going to try my best to remember that there’s no right way of doing this. When you think of it that way, maybe there’s really no way that we can fail. All I know for sure is that I have no idea what I’m doing. All I know for sure is that I know nothing. All I know for sure is that as we move forward, as we figure things out, as we stumble down the paths that we are simultaneously treading and creating, we need to be honest with ourselves and with others.

I don’t have all of the answers for you, but I can help you and ask you the questions that you need to ask to find those answers yourself. And at the end of the day, I think that that’s what a writing community does best, is encourage, and inspire, and to keep asking, and to keep ourselves asking, “What’s meaningful? What’s fulfilling. What do we want?” And to give ourselves permission to admit that we’re not perfect, that we’re not the ultimate authority, that we’re just finding our way down this path, and that we’re grateful to have so many other amazing creators along for the journey. I am so grateful for you. Whether this is the first time you’re listening to this show or whether you’ve been listening for years, thank you for being here.

Thank you for coming into this space with me and being willing to talk about writing and to ask questions about the creative journey. I would especially like to thank my amazing patrons out on Patreon. Patreon is a secure third-party donation platform that lets people donate money to this show to keep it running, to pay for hosting costs and equipment and all of that other stuff. I’m especially grateful today for Amanda Dixon, Julian Vincent Thornburgh, Laurie, Leslie Madsen, Regina Calabrese, Sean Locke, TJ Bricke, Tiffany Joyner, Leslie Duncan, Ricardo Lugo, and Sara Lauzon. As always, thank you so incredibly much for your financial support. If you do not have the means to support the show financially, that is a million percent okay.

One of the best ways that this show grows is by you telling other people about it. And so if you find what I say in this show valuable, let someone else know about it. Tell them to check out the Write Now podcast with Sarah Werner out on… gosh, out on everywhere; Apple podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Pandora, Google, something or other… It’s out there. Also, if you have questions, comments, if you have thoughts to share about today’s episode or about any episode, please let me know. There is a comments section in the show notes for every single episode of the Write Now podcast where you can let me know your thoughts. I really want to keep this as an open conversation among us creatives.

And so, if you’re interested in letting me know your thoughts about this episode, you can go out to sarahwerner.com. That’s S-A-R-A-H W-E-R-N-E-R.com and navigate to the show notes for today’s episode, episode 100. I read and respond personally to every single comment that I get out on my website, and so I would just love to engage with you there. Also out on my website, you can sign up for my Dear Creators newsletter. It comes out every Monday and it is a very candid and very honest continued look at what it means to be a writer and creator in the modern world. And so you can sign up, it’s completely free. You can sign up for that out on my website, sarahwerner.com. Also in honor of this being the 100th episode, I’m going to be doing a fun little giveaway for the 100th episode.

If you’re interested in participating in that, I will have details on that soon within the Dear Creators newsletter and out on my website. I’ve been doing create-alongs as I mentioned earlier in today’s episode out on Facebook and out on Twitch. I broadcast simultaneously, so both of those. Basically, they’re just kind of live streams where we hang out and we create together. We start the sessions by talking a little bit about writing and creating. We write together for an hour and then we come back and discuss what we struggled with, what we learned, how the process went for us, whether we stared at the wall and didn’t get any writing done. So I would like to invite you to join us. It’s every Wednesday and Friday evening at 7:00 PM Central Time.

And that’s out in my I Am A Writer Facebook group, which I invite you to join. It’s completely free and obligation free. It’s out on Twitch. You can find me at twitch.tv/sarahrheawerner. That’s S-A-R-A-H R-H-E-A W-E-R-N-E-R. Again, it’s free out there as well, so it’s just whatever platform you’re more comfortable joining us on. So yeah, I would love to see you there for a create-along on a Wednesday or Friday evening. I may also expand those two different days and times as well, but I’m still getting used to live streaming and having my face available in a video, which is really uncomfortable for me. I like hiding behind my little podcasting microphone. All right. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being here. Thank you for being present.

Thank you for joining me on this weird and wild journey that is the creative process. This has been the 100th episode 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 I am here to say that I have no idea what I’m doing.