This is The Write Now Podcast with Sarah Werner. Episode 60, Make Them Tell You No.

Welcome to Write Now, the podcast that helps aspiring writers and all writers to find the time, energy and courage you need to pursue your passion and to write every day. I’m your host, Sarah Werner. And in past episodes of this show, I’ve talked about the importance of saying, “No,” whether that’s to obligations, too many projects or people who are toxic in your life. Today, we’re going to be talking not about how to tell people no, but how to make them tell you no. And this is taking a little bit of a different spin on things, and I hope you enjoy it. But before we jump right in, just a few quick things.

I have some wonderful new reviews out on iTunes that I’d like to share with you. The first one is from Ex-army Geek who says, “Five stars. I would be lost without this. The thing that makes this podcast great is the laid back atmosphere. The information is solid and the presentation is well given. I stumbled across Sarah a while ago and was bingeing on this podcast, so I know that the content is here and inspiration is waiting for you to take a chance on the Write Now Podcast.” Thank you so much, Ex-army Geek. You just made my day.

The second review is from Ginerva Holmes and it says, “Five stars. You need Sarah Werner. If you are a writer, you need Sarah Werner. Every day, I find myself going to iTunes to listen to Sarah’s calming and motivational voice. She is honest and so incredibly inspiring. Werner isn’t afraid to open up her world to us and admit the mistakes she makes so other writers can learn from her. I constantly find myself with a notebook open when I listen to take notes and write down inspiring quotes. She’s funny, real, and will give you so much insight on being a writer.” Thank you, Gernava. You are absolutely lovely.

Finally, another new review is from Lady Pseudonym and it says, “Five stars. Worth the time.” And she says, “I have a busy schedule and I’m selfish with my free time. This podcast is worth listening to. You’ll learn a lot of everything related to the craft. I listen in the car and come home ready to write.” That is wonderful Lady Pseudonym. That is exactly why I do this. Thank you so much for your kind words. Thank you for listening. Thank you for leaving a review out on iTunes.

If you would like to leave a review, you can do that too. You can go out to whatever podcasting application you listen on. Whether that’s iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, Overcast, TuneIn Radio, wherever you are right now, leave me a review. I love to know what people think of my show.

The other thing I wanted to touch on just real quick is that I’m thinking of separating out Coffee Break and Write Now Podcast episodes into two different podcast feeds. I’ve really been struggling lately to find a balance between Coffee Breaks and Write Now Podcast episodes. You might notice the three episodes before this one are Coffee Breaks and I feel kind of bad about that, even though I think they’re really good episodes, but I think that if you sign up and subscribe to a feed, you should get what you subscribed to. I don’t know, maybe look for that in the near future. Let me know what you think. If you think it’s a great idea, if you’re adamantly opposed to me splitting out the feeds, I would love to hear from you.

You can leave me a comment on the show notes for today’s episode, episode number 60, or you can go to my website, sarahwerner.com. That’s S-A-R-A-H-W-E-R-N-E-R.com. Navigate to the contact page and fill out the handy little contact form. Otherwise, I love getting email and I would love to get an email from you to hear your thoughts. You can email me AT hello@sarahwerner.com.

We’ve talked a little bit before about branding, and I think that separating out the two shows would solidify their branding. One would be very clearly a monologue show, which is me talking to you about writing in a hopefully inspiring way. The other would be interviews with writers and authors like yourself that would give you the energy to keep going, give you tips and tricks in the field and expert advice. So let me know your thoughts.

So jumping into the episode for today. Some of you may know that I am a little bit of a hoarder. Not like in the scary, like you go into my house and there’s cats everywhere. Oh, except there are. No, I just have two cats. It’s not like you go into my house and there’s wads of newspaper everywhere, and floor to ceiling files and books and dirty newspapers, and whatever else hoarders keep in their homes. I’m an information hoarder. I am a collector. Maybe that’s a nicer term to use for it, but I love collecting quotes. You might notice this if you follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, I have a huge collection of quotes that I’ve been collecting over the years, and I love to use them and share them with people. They’re really important to me. They keep me going. They keep me inspired. They’re a great way to spin off new ideas.

I was combing through my collection of quotes the other day and one really stood out to me. It’s from Shonda Rhimes, who was the head writer, or maybe is … I actually don’t know if Grey’s Anatomy is still going, don’t kill me … who is the head writer, producer and all sorts of other things of Grey’s Anatomy, as well as the newer show, Scandal. She’s very talented, very successful. I really zeroed in on something that she said, and I’ll read this to you verbatim. She says, “A lot of people dream, and while they’re busy dreaming the really happy people, the really successful people, the really interesting, powerful, engaged people are busy doing.”

I was looking at this in my sea of quotes and it really got me thinking. A lot of people talk about having a dream of being a writer. A lot of people enjoy sitting at their desk and imagining one day signing a pile of books at a book signing or speaking at a conference, or maybe living in their Stephen King style mansion amidst all of the books they’ve written. But for so many people, this never becomes more than a dream. You have to take action. You have to put in hard work and you have to be brave.

It’s really easy since we don’t see a lot of writers processes, to assume that books jump fully formed from their head like Athena from the head of Zeus, like the writer is just sitting there at their desk, staring off into space and all of a sudden out comes Sherlock Holmes or out comes The Fire Next Time, or out comes Pride and Prejudice. The books that we see, the work that we see is strangely passive. It’s strangely devoid of action. We see a book on a table and we say, “Oh boy, I love books.” We don’t say, “Oh wow, there is a collection of two years of grueling hard work for someone.” Or, “There is a collection of 10 or 12 or 20 years of grueling work for someone.” Unless you’ve published a book, in which case you probably do say that.

It’s so much easier to think that books are born passively. It’s so much easier to think that books just happen or they just occur. It’s easy to think that one day, while you’re sitting on your couch, watching TV, reading a book, hanging out with your cats or your kids or eating ice cream, whatever you do in your free time, it’s easy to imagine someone coming to your door Publisher Clearing House style with a giant check, except instead of being a giant check, it’s a book and they say, “Hello friend, this is your book. You have written it. Enjoy.” It’s really, really tempting to think that this will happen, that we’ll be chosen somehow to have written a book in past tense. It’s easy to sit around waiting for your book to magically appear. It’s easy to sit around dreaming about signing the books that you haven’t written yet, and you might never write.

A lot of people have dreams, but very, very, very few people fulfill those dreams because it’s not easy. It’s not passive. It takes action. It takes putting yourself out there. And you know what? That’s scary. I know it’s scary. I’m an introvert. I’m, I’m talking to you from behind a microphone and a whole bunch of audio foam telling you to stick your neck out there. But you know what? You can do it. And I’ve done it, despite my current seat behind my wall of audio foam in my office. I know you can do it. People have done it before and they will do it for years and years and years going into the future.

Here’s what I want you to think about. What is it that you want? You can want more than one thing. And in fact, if no one’s ever told you this before, you are allowed to want things from your life. You’re not stuck on a path that someone else has predetermined for you, even though sometimes it might feel like it. You are allowed to want a wonderful and joyous and exciting life. But on the flip side, just because you want something doesn’t mean that the Publisher’s Clearing House folks are going to come to your door with it wrapped nicely in a basket.

What is it that you are dreaming of doing or accomplishing? Since you’re listening to a podcast called Write Now, I’m going to just make the assumption that what you want has something to do with writing or creating. Maybe you want to see your screenplay on stage. Maybe you want to publish your novel. Maybe you want to sell your memoirs on the Amazon Store. Maybe you want to get paid to do technical writing. Maybe you want to build your personal brand with a blog. Maybe you want to start your own podcast or write and perform an audio drama. What is it that you are dreaming of doing or accomplishing?

Once you answer that question, ask yourself, “Okay, I want to” … and for the ease of this, we’ll just say, “I want to publish my novel.” Okay. The next step is realizing nobody is going to come to your door and say, “Excuse me sir,” or, “Madam, do you have a novel that you are just itching to publish? This is this your lucky day?” That is not going to happen. Although if it does, please tell me about it.

The key is we have to take action. We have to go to the desk. We have to drag out the notepad or turn on the computer. We have to write the words. We have to put in the hard work. And we have to be brave. Taking action, putting in the hard work and being brave. Why do I keep using the word brave? Because often what keeps us from taking action on our dreams or accomplishing what we want to accomplish, there’s a roadblock. 99 times out of 100, that roadblock is fear. That 1% of the time might be like, “Oh, someone cut off my hands and I can’t write.” Or, “I’m dead.” Or perhaps a little more feasibly, “This simply isn’t my writing season right now,” and that’s okay. We’ve talked about this before in previous episodes. But 99 times out 100, that roadblock is not the loss of our hands or our sudden death by a spontaneous combustion, but fear.

This is what I want you to ask yourself next, and I want you to be honest with your answer. You don’t have to say it out loud. You can write it down in a journal. You can type it out. Ask yourself, “What’s in my way? What am I afraid of? What is my particular roadblock of fear? Am I afraid that I’m going to get laughed at? Am I afraid of being rejected?” For me, those are the two most powerful fears. The fear that I will get laughed at, or I will be rejected. And rejection comes in many forms too. Maybe being laughed at is a form of rejection. Maybe getting fired is a form of rejection.

I went years and years at my job in marketing, assuming that there would come a day when everyone would notice my hard work, stand up, give me a round of applause and say, “Sarah, you’re doing a bang up job. You sure do deserve a promotion,” and then they would promote me and everything would be wonderful. Except that didn’t happen because this is real life, and unfortunately, if you want something, you can’t just sit around waiting for it to happen to you; you have to take action. You have to work hard and you have to be brave.

I had to ask for a promotion. A month before my annual review, I wrote a very nice little letter to my manager and to some of the partners at the firm. I said, “Hey, I’ve been here for however many years and here are all the things I’ve accomplished. Here are some things that I am hoping to accomplish moving forward, and I’d be able to do these if I were to be promoted to this new position. Here’s how this position will benefit me. Here’s how the position will benefit the company. What do you say?”

It was only after I asked for it, it was only after I stuck my neck out, wrote a letter, turned it into my manager, and sat there with my stomach churning, afraid that they’re going to be like, “How dare you ask us for something? How dare you say that you want something. In fact, for your audacity in asking for something, you’re fired.” That’s what I expected to hear. That’s not what they said. They actually said, “You know Sarah, you’re doing a great job. You deserve this promotion. I’m glad you asked for it. Here you go.” But if I never would have asked for that, if I would’ve let my fear of being fired get in my way, I never would have gotten the promotion. I never would’ve gotten my little pay bump. I never would have continued to grow in the company.

How did I take that step to become brave enough to ask for something that was really hard to ask for? Because let’s face it, if you’re like me, you hate asking for things. I would rather walk uphill to school both ways than ask for a ride. That’s just me. I am bad at asking for help, and it’s burned me more than a couple of times.

What I did to overcome the fear was I talked to somebody. This is one of my mentors. She told me two things that were extremely helpful. She said, “Sarah, what’s the worst that could happen?” I responded, “Well, they could laugh in my face. They could fire me. They could send me to jail. I could die in a gutter somewhere.” At this point she was like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, stop, stop.” She’s like, “Logically, rationally, what is the worst that can happen?” She said, “You know, if you ask for a raise, it’s not logical that you will cause an effect, end up dead in a gutter, so we’re just going to scratch that one off the list. If you ask for a raise, they will not laugh at you because they are professionals. If you ask for a raise, you will not end up in prison or whatever.”

“Sarah face it; the absolute worse rational thing that can happen in response to you asking for a raise is that they say no. And in fact,” she continued, “I want to challenge you. I want you to make them tell you no. Make them tell you no. It’s the only way you will get anywhere. It’s the only way you will get your book published. If you want to submit a story to a journal, if you want to submit your novel for publication, if you are querying an agent, this is my advice to you. Make them tell you no.”

A couple of months ago, I got to teach a webinar on rejection with my good friend, Rachel Thompson. We talked about exactly this, when you submit work, what’s the worst thing that can happen? The editor is not going to come and burn your house down. The agent you’re querying is not going to start drowning puppies. Or I guess if they do, it’s not your fault. They can’t take anything away from you. The worst thing that can happen is that they say no. The worst thing that can happen is they decide to pass on your work, and maybe they send you a rejection letter.

If you go into this with a make them tell you no attitude, you will begin collecting rejection letters as badges of honor, and say, “Look at these 10 rejection slips I have right here. This represents 10 times that I was brave. This represents 10 times that I stuck my neck out for something I created and something I believe in, and that is awesome.” I made them tell me no, because who’s more likely to get published the person who sends out their manuscript in the face of a very real rejection letter or the person who sits on their couch, dreaming about one day writing a novel that they will never write. Because at the end of the day, you don’t get what you don’t ask for.

I wish the world didn’t work this way. I wish that things were just and fair. And that us quiet writing types would be recognized for the hard work that we do, that we wouldn’t have to stick our neck out, that the Publisher’s Clearing House would come to our door with a book contract and a giant check for a million dollars. But that’s not the world we live in.

So figure out what it is you want. Whether it’s a novel you want to publish, a novel you want to write, a book of poetry you want to self-publish, a raise that you feel like you deserve at work, a story that you want to submit to a magazine, heck maybe you even want to talk to your manager about getting more writing responsibilities in your current job, whatever it is, take action, put in the hard work and be brave. Make them tell you no. It’s the only way you’re going to get to where you want to be. It will be worth the risk.

One of my favorite things about this podcast is that I get to thank so many people at the end of it. These are people who love what I’m doing, who support what I’m doing, and to whom I am extremely grateful. Most notably today, I’d like to thank my Patreon patrons. Patreon is a secure third party donation platform that lets you pledge a dollar per episode, $2 per episode, $700 million per episode, whatever you think this information is worth to you in your journey as a writer. In particular, I would like to thank official cool cats, Sean Locke and Rebecca Werner, official bookworms, Matthew Paulson, Gary Medina and Lilith Black, official rad dude, the Sioux Empire Podcast and caffeine enablers, Barbara Miller, Harrison Werner, Colleen Cotolessa, and War Writer. Seriously, thank you so much. I would not be able to do this without you. Thank you.

If you’re interested in becoming one of these wonderful illustrious Patreon members, you can go out to sarahwerner.com/patreon. That’s P-A-T-R-E-O-N. If you want to contribute financially, but not in a recurring way, you can do that as well. Just go out to my website and click on the tip jar. You can throw a couple books my way, buy me a coffee, keep me caffeinated, whatever floats your boat. Another cool thing you can do on my website is sign up for my newsletter.

Okay, the dude across the street just started cutting down a tree or something. It’s crazy loud. It’s actually kind of funny. I just looked out the window and he’s using this massive John Deere grass mower to mow a lawn the size of a postage stamp. Maybe it was an investment he just felt he really needed to make. He’s like, “Yes, I am the king of my lawn.” He’s coming around for another pass.

Sometimes when there’s people mowing or doing really loud work outside, or if the guys in the back of my house at the graveyard are chainsawing down trees, what have you, part of me is like, “Don’t they realize I’m in here trying to record a podcast?” And then I realized, “No, no, they don’t. They don’t care. They have no idea what you’re doing. And in fact, Sarah, you’re the weird one who is trying to record a podcast on a summer day when lawns are growing and trees apparently need chainsawing.”

All right, I waited until the dude was done mowing his lawn. Actually I don’t have a lot more to say. So with that, this has been episode 60 of the Write Now Podcast, the podcast that helps aspiring writers and all writers to find the time, energy and courage you need to pursue your passion and to write every day. I’m Sarah Werner, and I encourage you to take action, work hard and be brave.