← The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers
The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers
How to Pivot Careers, Co-Write Books, And Stay Connected As A Remote Creative With Pilar Orti
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How do you know when it's time to wrap up one phase of your life and move on to the next? What's the secret to staying connected as a writer when you're working alone? And if you have multiple passions and endless ideas,
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Welcome to the Creative Pen Podcast. I'm Joanna Penn, thriller author and creative entrepreneur, bringing you interviews, inspiration and information on writing, craft and creative business. You can find the episode show notes, your free author blueprint and lots more@thecreativepenn.com and that's Pen with a double N. And here's the show hello creatives, I'm Johanna Penn and this is episode number 831 of the podcast and it is Saturday the 4th of October 2025 as I record this and we are in the final third of the year. So whatever you want to achieve in 2025, now is the time to accelerate and make some good progress before the year turns once again. In today's show I'm talking to Pilar Orti about wrapping up life phases with books, which is certainly something I do too, as well as connection strategies for remote workers and writers co writing across continents, knowing when to end projects and balancing multiple interests while actually getting things done. So that's coming up in the interview section in Writing and Publishing and book marketing things. Well, first up, if you'd like to level up your writing skills, check out the new Writing Story bundle available for a limited time@storybundle.com writing so this is an ebook bundle. You can get lots of books. It includes Million Dollar how to Stand out as a Professional Writer by Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Mester, which is absolutely worth getting. If you want a long term career in industry, you need to be a professional and that has so many angles to it. One of them is how to be professional at live events and conferences. So if you're coming to Author Nation or attending any professional event that might be useful. The bundle also includes business essentials for writers, creating character arcs, books on world building tropes, long term success, podcasting, collaboration and co writing, productivity pacing, and also it includes my second edition of how to Write Non Fiction. It is an amazing ebook bundle with super useful books that you can get for a special price available for a limited time@storybundle.com writing storybundle.com writing so Russell Nolte had an interesting post on the author stack this week. An honest accounting from an extensive self audit of his publishing business from 2020 to 2025. So Russell is a multi passionate creator and has lots going on. He was one of the early writers in Kickstarter and has had periods focusing mainly on fiction and then periods focusing more on books for authors. So I do feel a certain kinship even though we run our businesses very differently and we're very Very different people for sure. He talks about revenue coming from retailers, subscriptions, crowdfunding conventions and direct sales. I won't go into all the numbers and everything, you can read that yourself. But he said a few things I wanted to comment on from his article. When you run a publishing based business, you spend money with the hope that whatever you invest this year multiplies significantly in future years. Unfortunately, more often than not, it turns out to be a wash. After all, publishing is a war of attrition. If you can break even on most projects, then you're happy to stay alive and fight another day. If you can average two times your investments across all your projects, you're doing pretty well. I've put money into 75 books during my career and every single one of them made a profit. Some barely and some blew past expectations, but none lost money. Compared to most publishers who lose money on 90% of their books, I find that pretty amazing and wear it like a badge of honour. I've never found a monster hit, but I've also never lost my shirt, which is how I keep doing this work. And I like that because I'm pretty similar here in that I've never had a monster hit, but I've never lost my shirt. And I think that's an important principle for doing this long term. You can't just try and base a career around getting some breakout hit because that never happens for most people. But you have to manage a business that does at least make some profit. It is important to acknowledge obviously most authors don't do this for the money and many authors make a living without their names ever being known by anyone, without getting massive of paydays, without being a name brand. But we do this because I guess if we can at least break even for our time as well as our costs, I think that's really important too. Too many authors don't factor their time into it. Like how much would you be paying for an hourly rate? But if you can manage Russell, as Russell says, we can keep doing this work and stay alive to fight another day. Because we are writers and we love writing and we love books and we just want to make more books and we have more ideas and we just want to keep creating. So I love that attitud if we can just make it to the next project because that's what we want to do. You also need to keep the 8020 rule in mind. 20% of your books will probably make 80% of your money. Some books sell a bit and then don't sell or don't sell at all. And others just keep going. Some might spike in sales. Maybe you did an epic launch or maybe you did a brilliant Kickstarter or something. But others are sort of small and consistent over a long time. So non fiction, my non fiction books for authors, particularly the craft ones, how to Write a Novel and how to write non fiction, they just consistently sell like month in, month out. Pilgrimage again sells month in, month out at a smaller volume for sure. But a certain number of people want to go on pilgrimage every year and so they find it. But that was written as a book of my heart anyway, so I never expected it to. I mean, it's such a niche book as well. So I was thinking about what Russell was saying, and also considering the books you write over a career, you do have to balance income producing. But that might not be books. It might be a day job or whatever, a podcast like this. But also building assets, and the assets keep bringing in income. So if I stop podcasting, if I stopped working right now, if I stopped the Patreon, if I stopped, you know what if I died, basically, if I died, my books would still keep burning because they are assets, they're income producing assets. So it is important to love every book you write and spend time on because we have such a limited amount of time. So don't waste time writing books you hate. You don't know whether or not they're going to work, but love them anyway. And as Russell says, platform shift, algorithms implode, retailers squeeze tighter, crowdfunding gets more crowded, costs rise, margins shrink, the people who made it two years ago vanish without a trace, and we stay calm and carry on with a stiff upper lip. And I certainly do that because I'm British and that's what we have over here. But this also resonated with me this week, and I wanted to remind you of the basics people get. So, oh, what's changed in like, book marketing and the author business? And I'm like, well, yeah, lots has changed, but lots has stayed the same. And something happened to a friend of mine this week. She had to leave her freelance job abruptly for certain reasons and was unable to take details of clients or anything. So she basically had to start her business again without any of the assets behind a business. And it reminded me of the global financial crisis. So back in 2008, remember that many of us were laid off. I was laid off in company at the time. I was working for a mining company in Australia and hundreds of us in the department were laid off on one day they printed out the stack of paper and then they just handed out a bit of paper to each one of us and we were done. And as I. And of course, because there were hundreds of us laid off that day in the same city, there was no other job to go to. So I remember going home on the train that day. It was one of these pivotal moments in my memory and also in my author business, because that was really when I went into this very hard. So I had been writing, but I hadn't really gone hard in the business side. So this was early 2008, and I was like, they just took away my only stream of income. I had one stream of income, that job, and it was a very well paid consulting job, and it's gone. And so I was pretty shocked at this because I'd never been in that situation before where one decision just took away the only stream of income. I had no power and I had no backup. And that is when I was like, right, I need multiple streams of income. I can never, ever be dependent on one stream of income again. And that was when I started. I started the creative pen.com later that year, started the podcast in the march following, and built this business off the back of that decision, basically. And we are in not a financial crisis, but we're certainly in a time of change in the job industry in a lot of ways in the author industry. And so I wanted to just rem you of thinking about, what are your streams of income, not just as an author, but just overall. How can you build up more streams of income so that if uncertain times come and things change, change speeds up. You can make money with an email because this is what it comes down to. Can you send an email to people who know who you are and make some money? And do you own that email list? And is that email list backed up? And when I wrote this yesterday, when I was preparing, I was like, oh, yeah, okay, good. I'll go and back up all my email lists and my websites and I do it periodically, but it reminded me to go do it. So while social media has a certain reach and podcasts like this have a certain reach, I still, I don't have most of your email addresses. I mean, I can put an episode out, but it's not the same. And Substack and Patreon and Amazon, you do not control that audience. They could just stop it tomorrow and they would just, you know, if Substack disappeared or Patreon or Amazon or any of these sites disappeared. Do you have an email list about of people. Do you have an email list of people who care about your books that you are in control of now? It doesn't mean that if you send an email people will actually buy something, but at least if you have a list you can try and starting Building an email list is a pain, I know, but we all start with just a basic sign up. Just if you'd like to hear from me, please sign up to my newsletter and then we add a reader magnet. So don't wait until you have a reader magnet. It doesn't need to be some fully engineered thing, optimized thing. I've never managed tagging or doing all the things you should do with email lists, but what I have done is always build them. I started my email list in 2008 and I know some of you have been on it that long. It is the backbone of my business, the backbone of my book marketing and it's my business security. I also wanted to add investing to that mix. I've been very serious about investing also since around 2008. So go back and listen to the episodes on financial independence if that's something you're interested in. And there are Also books@thecreativepen.com moneybooks if you would like to know more about that. That but yes, if you want a sustainable long term career then love the books you write and keep writing them. Build and actively maintain an email list of people who love the books you write and anything else you do and back it up regularly and also invest so you have another stream of income in the future and you can just write for the love of it. Anyway, so those are my baseline tips. Even though all these things are changing, I don't think those things change. And some people like oh well people don't email anymore. I'm like, yeah they do. They do. So any thoughts on this? Let me know in the comments or email me joannathecreativepenn.com in AI things or well, this is now a kind of crossover between AI and publishing and book marketing because their lines are increasingly blurred here because this week OpenAI introduced direct purchases through ChatGPT, starting with Etsy and coming soon to Shopify stores, which I've mentioned a while ago that this was going to come and I'm so excited about it. Of course this is only us at the moment, but it is the beginning of agentic purchases so we need to pay attention. So there you have a page on it chatgpt.com merchants from that page every day millions of people use chatgpt to figure out what to buy. And I'm certainly one of those. I basically just use it to buy. Yeah, for everything now it's just super useful now with Instant Checkout, they can buy directly from you inside those conversations. And remember, this is a page for merchants. So it's saying people can buy from you. Powered by the Agentic Commerce Protocol, an open standard built by OpenAI and Stripe, instant Checkout makes it simple for merchants and developers to connect with shoppers and grow sales. ChatGPT acts like a personal shopper. People describe what they're looking for, for example, a durable carry on $300. And ChatGPT recommends the most relevant products from across the web. Any merchant can be discovered. Products are ranked purely on relevance to the user's query and context. Instant Checkout items do not get a boost in product rankings. Product results in ChatGPT are ranked by relevance. Merchants appear when their products match a shopper's query. It's free to be discovered and you pay a small fee when a purchase is made. Instant Checkout is designed to connect, not disintermediate. You remain the merchant of record with full control over orders, payments, fulfillment and customer relationships. It's live in the US with US merchants right now, but the goal is to expand user and Merchant geographies. In 2026. There is a form on the website, so if you're an Etsy seller or a Shopify seller, you don't need to fill out the form as you will be getting this anyway. Oh, I'm super excited about this. On a bigger scale, the Agentic Commerce Protocol is an open standard that enables AI agents and businesses to transact seamlessly. So I've mentioned Agentic commerce before, basically that we're going to have. Instead of having to go and book all this stuff yourself for travel or find things you want to buy, you essentially have an agent that'd be like, okay, go find a present for my 8 year old niece and she likes this, this, this and this. And here's my budget. And this is definitely something that is coming in on a much wider scale and I would expect Amazon to embrace this at some point as more and more traffic goes into Chat GPT and Google AI search instead of Amazon itself. So I still buy from Amazon for example, but I will often I don't use the search bar on Amazon anymore. I use ChatGPT to figure out what I need and what I want to get and then go either directly to the website to buy it from or go to Amazon and just type in the link or I will ask for a link to Amazon UK or something like that. So my buying behaviour has changed completely in the last year. So yeah, I'm super excited about this. It is much better for long conversations about exact requirements and compares products. So for example, I just bought a bookshelf for my office and I didn't want a flat pack and I wanted certain size and certain colour and all of this and eventually through a chat I came up with one that was perfect and just ordered it and it was from an independent store and everything but I found it through chat so it is much better for these long conversations and I also use it for book discovery. I'm like, I like this book, this book, this book, this book give me some recommendations. And we've talked about Geo Generative Engine Optimization. It's also being called Answer engine Optimization. Go Back to episode 813 with Thomas Umstadt Jr. Back in June we talked about this and remember I talked about this in December 2023. So it's been a while coming. Like this is not new, this has been on the cards for a couple of years now. So yeah, it is on its way. And I also wanted to recommend if this is something you're interested in, if you want to get ahead of what is coming. I listened to a podcast interview on Lenny's podcast. It's a bit technical so probably don't have a listen if you don't like a bit of Tech. On the 14th of September titled the Ultimate Guide to How to Get ChatGPT to recommend your product with Ethan Smith. And it's interesting because he talks about the long, long, long, long, long, long, long tail. It used to be that we would consider keyword phrases, you know, three, six, seven words, whatever for Google, and now it's 30 keywords and keyword phrases. And I think this is great because you're not going to be able to hack this. In the interview they basically say, look, you just need to do a really good job of your product and then people will hopefully find it in these more complicated ways. So the traffic may be less. This is why it's the long, long, long, long, long, long, long tail. So the traffic might be a lot less than you're used to with the sort of old school traffic way it worked. But the conversion is super high because it's such a good match between intent and purchase. Once you've had a conversation with Chatg what you want and it's found something, it's probably going to be a good fit, like my bookshelf here. So this gives me hope and hopefully you as well. If you don't write to market, if you write cross genre and you write in a nuanced way and you're kind of just complicated, you know, you've already live in the long, long tale. This is definitely where I live and have felt hamstrung by the categories and keyword boxes. We've been forced into these kind of blunt instruments of trope driven stuff that just doesn't work for a lot of us who just don't want to be forced into these specific boxes. So I'm very hopeful about this. I I feel positive about Long Tail Discovery. So that's Lenny's podcast if you're interested. I also found a statistic on the conversion rate from Search Engine Land to prove this point. So while traffic volume is low, ChatGPT sessions convert at nearly 16% versus 1.8% for Google.
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It says Chat GBT isn't a discovery engine at scale yet, but when it does drive clicks, the sessions are among the most qualified in retail. So yeah, this is very interesting. If this is the future of book discovery and retail discovery in general, and direct sales through these engines really grows, I think this is very positive for us. But for sure it's a change and that change has been on its way for a while and that change is now speeding up. Also from AI the launch of the Sora video app this week in the US is interesting for many reasons. Now if you haven't seen it, it is a new generative video app from OpenAI and you may well have seen its videos coming into other channels like TikTok and Instagram Facebook reels. Basically you can use your own image or your friends images in the video which makes it super shareable and fun and people are loving it. So while short form generative videos has definitely been growing for a while and in the last few weeks Meta launched the video feed Vibes and Google incorporated VO3 into YouTube shorts. Most people didn't even notice this or there's been some negative reaction. But what I have seen with the Sora app launch is that even those people who said oh why do we need this? I hate this, this is awful. Then tried it and they love it. And it is an invite only app app in the US only. So it has this exclusivity halo. But yeah, I have a few thoughts on this. I mean first of all I I was like ugh. I definitely had that as my first reaction. Like no, because you know I'm not a short form video person anyway, not a video person in general. And short form video is already flooded with AI generated content on every platform and this just means it will be supercharged. And like so much around, AI is terrifying in many ways. And the potential for abuse and deep fakes and scams has just gone up exponent, essentially. But on the other side, from what I have seen on X, people are loving Sora. The AI videos are very good. People clearly enjoy making them, the quality is high, they're very funny, very shareable, you can put yourself in them or people who give you permission, like your friends. And if you love making video and you have a ton of ideas but you were finding it just too hard, then maybe this is the thing that helps now. Now, as I said, I'm conflicted on this. Like so often. I'm conflicted. We all are in this space. As a consumer, I don't watch video in general on any app. I prefer slower media without so much visual stimulation, which just hurts my eyes and my brain, basically. I'm pretty sensitive to sound and light and I don't listen to music in general and I like quiet and dark. But I love making images on midjourney and I have been animating those for book trailers and short form video. Clearly works for marketing. Clearly works. And if it's much easier to do, which it looks like it is, I definitely want to try it. So once I get access to Sora, I'm at least going to try it with a cameo, which is what they call it when you put yourself into a video, even if it's just to make a video, I can send to my family and say, don't trust videos of me and already don't trust audio of me because the tech is already too good. So be careful of scams. But let's take this away from the fun angle to direct sales. So TikTok already did this, right? So TikTok is a shopping engine. It is. It's called social media, but it's basically a shopping engine. That's what people use it for, like, oh, stuff I can buy. Cool. And that's how people are doing so well with booktok and all that. But let's think about the launch of this in the same week as ChatGPT merchant. So the, the way the searches for products and things go at the moment. This also happens on Google. Is that it? It surfaces images, still images. But what if it will feature generative video in future? What if we can use our book covers in cameos? What if somebody can use our book cover in a video of themselves holding the book. Will that make them more likely to buy that book? I don't know. Again, part of me is a bit ick about this. But what if people can generate pictures of themselves with their favourite authors that then make them care more? I don't know. I mean there are so many potential things about this. I think there are many options. And this is just day one, week one of this kind of thing. Maybe generative video for products is going to become part of the next wave. This is already happening. Amazon now has video generation of products not for books but on their sort of their seller platforms. And I subscribed to a newsletter on AI for e commerce and Amazon sellers. I'll link in the show notes. It's really good newsletter and the latest edition considered this angle. They said OpenAI isn't just trying to build a TikTok competitor, they're building a complete reimagining of how we discover and buy things. The combination of ChatGPT's research capabilities and Sora's potential for emotional manipulation, I mean engagement could create something we've never seen before, an AI ecosystem that might eventually guide you through every type of purchase, from the most considered to the most impulsive. So they recommend start experimenting with AI generated content. Figure out how to make your products work in this new world where the line between content and commerce doesn't just blur, it completely disappears. And keep some of that human weirdness that makes shopping more than just an efficient transfer of money for goods. Oh, so much to think about. But try and wear two hats as you consider this. I know I'm sort of throwing this at you all at once, but and you may not have seen any of this or heard about this yet, but try and consider these two hats. You might hate it personally and not want to use it and think it's ick, but you might also be interested as a bookmarker marketing tactic. Especially if you already consider or already use TikTok or other video platforms. And if this is something you want to approach in a sort of gentle manner, at least go watch some of the Sora videos. I guarantee some of them will make you laugh or at least you will realize how good the quality is. This also takes me back to this voice clone thing. If you remember probably a year or two ago I was like oh, I. I feel a bit odd about the voice clone thing. And part of me was thinking I would license my voice. And then I now have a voice clone, but I haven't licensed it I'm just using it myself and now I love it. So I've got two books now, Death Valley and Blood Vintage, both with my voice clone, and I love it. I think it is really effective. I think it is better than my human narration. And so I'm very open to this now. I actually think this platform might be something I could use, especially if it integrates with direct sales through ChatGPT. And we've all been waiting for the next platform play, like many of us have said now, for, I don't know, 18 months, maybe even two years. Things are broken, things are not working, what is coming next? So TikTok was the last big thing to take off and it's an unstable future for that. Right now there might be a US version of TikTok. People don't really know what's going to happen with that. But this also might be something that changes things. So this might be it, this might not be it, this might all crash and burn, who knows? But I would love to know what you think after you have at least watched some videos. And if you're in the US and you have access to Sora, please let me know your experience, what you think, how you think this might work with direct sales. I think this is a very interesting time. You can always email me joannathecreativepen.com so I know this is a bit of a longer introduction today, but I hope you found that interesting and useful. And now, in personal news, I'm in a horror promotion. So if you love horror, dark fantasy or paranormal, check out the deliciously twisted Halloween book sale running through october@ twistedtalesbooks.com Halloween. It features my story Catacomb, which is basically the movie Taken with Liam Neeson, which is a great movie. So Taken meets the Legend of Beowulf, set in the catacombs under Edinburgh. It is. It's modern day, but those are my sort of Vibes with 20 other books on special deals, including the lovely Mark Leslie Lefebvre, who has his One Hand Screaming collection in there, which is the book that made me realise that, like me, Mark is just such a lovely person and has such a dark side. So definitely have a look at that. Also JD Barker and a whole load of other authors you might know, and some new ones you can discover. So there's some really cool books in the promotion and some really cool book covers. So if you enjoy the Dark, head on over to twistedtalesbooks.com Halloween so I'm into my master's work now and it is Pretty full on. I am doing it full time while balancing all of this stuff. And I have a renewed respect for academic writing. I must say say I have in the past thought these academic books, they're so expensive, like how do they justify this? And now I realize that every paragraph of academic writing is just super intense. I mean, I can personally type a thousand words quite quickly, but a thousand words in an academic book is completely different. I also respect the commitment to checking source material, validated source material in an age of AI, including who the author is, do they have, have authority, all this kind of stuff. So I'm actually finding that really interesting and making me think a lot. And of course I've got various papers on different topics around death, which is fascinating. Also, I thought it might be interesting to share around the university's AI policy. There is this really good process flow that they have on the policy page and I think every single publisher needs a process flow like this, which is basically you can use AI in research or checking your work, but not in the writing. Like it should not be writing and it should not be changing words for you or basically don't use it for writing assignments. And it's good to see the clear process flow and if you are an author struggling to work out where you think your line should be, maybe have a look at some university guidelines. I think that's actually quite considered. And yeah, I think publishers should all have a process flow like this on their submission websites. Anyway, it is a fascinating course. I've also been working on my slides for Author Nation coming up in a few weeks time in Las Vegas. If you are coming and you're from a wetter climate as I am, remember to bring a portable humidifier for the room. Just a little one. They're like 25 quid from Amazon. Put by your bed as you sleep. It will save you, I promise. Also bring nasal spray, eye drops, extra moisturiser because you will dry out. You'll be like, what is going on? And then if you dry out, if all your mucus things dry out, you will get sick. Basically this is my tip for surviving Las Vegas. And this will be my what, fifth time in Las Vegas. So maybe fourth. Fourth time. But yeah, I've been a number of times and I have, I have my process and my stuff and it certainly works better. So there you go. That's my tip for Las Vegas. We are having a patron only meetup. I'll also obviously just be around the conference, but we are having a meetup and I'm looking Forward to meeting lots of you. You tickets are still available at AuthorNation LIVE and James Patterson is the keynote, which should be interesting. So thanks for your emails and comments and photos this week. Lots of comments actually, Debbie said on Geoff's interview on Amazon ads. She said, I've attended Jeff's free classes online but found your questions and taking notes on them far more useful for my novels and approaching different angles for ads. Somehow this form format is beginning to sink into my brain. I'm really glad it helped. And I actually think that. I mean I'm someone who just avoids webinars and tutorials as well. I prefer to listen to stuff. So Debbie, I get it on YouTube the Tim Chandler says, oh, and this is just a nice comment. There's something wonderful about starting my week listening to your intro music and then the podcast. It's like that music puts me in the right mindset to tackle anything. Well that is good Tim, because. Because I don't know how long you've been listening, but I changed my music a while back because of a whole load of difficult things around copyright. When I got it years ago it was public domain and then the company got bought and blah blah blah. Anyway, I've changed the music over time so I'm glad you like the music. And Nina said on the interview with Colleen, she said, this is so inspiring. I love the way it was not really an interview, but a conversation where each of you shared ideas the other hadn't thought thought of sparking off each other and laughing at yourselves. I immediately signed up to Colleen's newsletter and am buying the procrastination book. On another note, yesterday I bought Rachel MacLean's Five Steps to Author Success. You interviewed Rachel last year, so I think podcasts do sell books, including in the long term. That is great and absolutely true. I get a lot of book recommendations from podcasts, so there's no way that the interview with Rachel a year ago could have a trackable link to the purchase that Nina just made on whatever place she made it. So you can't track podcast related book sales, but it does work for sure and thanks to Joel who sent a lovely photo of a stone cross. A brilliant spot in Coleraine, Northern Ireland. Abbot Comgall established a monastery here in the 5002 and this is the stump of an old stone cross. All that remains the yew trees around here probably preach the monastic use of the site and show it was a pagan site prior to Christianization. Amazing to think of the layers of history. Yes, that is wonderful. I do love a good stone cross okay, Please leave a comment on the podcast show notes@the creativepenn.com or on the YouTube channel, or email me. Send me pictures of where you're listening. JoannaTheCreativePenn.com I love to hear from you. It makes this more of a conversation. Or of course, pictures of your favourite cemetery or churchyard. I love that too. So today's show is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, Kobo's free, fast and easy self publishing platform favoured by independent authors all over the world. KWL was built by Authors for Authors and their mission is to help you reach digital readers wherever they are, however they want to read. Are you an indie author looking to reach readers around the world with Kobo Writing Life? Global distribution is at your fingertips. KWL allows you to publish your ebooks and make them available in over 190 countries and I have sold in 180 of them all in English, which is one of the reasons I really love Kobo. Whether your readers are in North America, Europe, Asia or anywhere else, Kobo Writing Life ensures your stories are accessible to a truly global audience audience plus you can track your international sales and see where your books are making an impact. Expand your reach and grow your readership with Kobo Writing Life today by visiting kobo.com writinglife that's kobo.com writinglife. They also have a really lovely help team, so if you're struggling with anything, just email the team. This type of corporate sponsorship pays for the hosting, transcription and editing, but my time in creating this show is sponsored by my community@patreon.com TheCreativePen thanks to the nine new patrons who've joined in the last week and thanks to everyone who's been supporting for months and years. If you join the community you get access to all my backlist videos and audio covering topics on writing, craft and author business, as well as extra Q and A shows and tutorials on AI tools. Last week I shared a video demo. I do still make videos. I shared a video of how I recently used Elevenlabs to make the Audiobook of Blood, Vintage Vintage, my folk horror novel digitally narrated by my voice clone, available now on my store in all jfpenbooks.com and coming everywhere 15th of October. So I showed in the video how I used 11 labs. The Patreon is a monthly subscription, the equivalent of buying me a black coffee a month or a couple of coffees if you're feeling generous. So if you get value from the show and you want more, come on over and join us@patreon.com P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com TheCreativePen Right, let's get into the interview. Pilar Orti is a non fiction and memoir author, as well as a voiceover artist, podcaster and Pilates instructor. So welcome to the show, Pilar.
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Thank you very much, Jo. Hello everyone. Hello creatives.
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It's exciting to talk to you. So tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and podcasting and your passionate career.
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B
Yeah. So I have to say that you will. I'm going to try and give you the bit that's more related to writing because if not, we'll be here for half an hour just with me bubbling on. Yes. So I think into writing, I always liked writing and I was thinking about this and I wrote my first play to be performed when I was seven. I think I got all my friends together and we did this little show. I think it, I don't know, I think it was about a soldier or something. I don't know why. And, and all throughout my teens, I kept writing plays and got my friends together to do them and we put on the shows. And looking back, I think for me writing has always been about sharing. So all the writing I've done, I've always wanted it to be public. So I've never journaled or anything like that. So I continued writing plays. Eventually I set up a theater company with a friend and we did some plays and then I did a translation of Lorca's play when five years passed. And that was the first time that I started to think that my work could be published in some way. So I looked for literary managers in theaters to see if they were interested in the show. I even sent it to Samuel French and what was it called? Osborne Books, all these small prints that specialized in theater. And they all came back with that same thing of it's a great translation, but it's really neat niche and nobody's going to want to see this Lorca play. And so I started to think about how to put it out there and came across self publishing. And once I saw that my work could get out there relatively easily, as in I didn't have to go through the whole trying to find a publisher process, I started to write a lot more and I again, I continued doing some stuff for the theater company and then I started blogging as well. I mean, we're talking now suppose the end of the 90s, 2000s, and then I wrote a book called the A to Z of Spanish culture, which was supposed to be a nice project with lots of friends and we would each take a letter of the Alphabet and of course, like these projects go, everyone dropped out and I ended up doing.
- [39:19]
A
The whole thing myself, doing the whole thing. And just we should say at this point. So you're Spanish. Are you writing at this point in English or in both?
- [39:28]
B
No. So I went to an English school. I think I landed there when I was five in Madrid. So I'm bilingual. My first written language is English and my first spoken language is Spanish. So unfortunately I've dropped writing in Spanish and I really struggle. But I forgot all my academic career has also been in English. So I think English is the language I feel most comfortable in when I'm writing. And yes, so everything I've written has been in English. And yes, looking at the etocerate of Spanish culture and I think I was sharing an office with a theater company, another couple of theater companies at the time. And at some point I mentioned this book, I said, oh, you're a writer or you want to publish some books? You have to listen to this great podcast called the Creative Pen. And. And that was my gateway into the whole world of. I mean I, I knew about podcasting because I'm also a voiceover artist and I've been one since 98 and that. But that really opened up that world. And so I continued writing and my relationship with writing up to a couple of years of ago was just I wrote main nonfiction about things I wanted to write about and looking back at where I was at at that time. So when I published a book on physical theatre, very small book, just as I was leaving the theatre company, I also wrote a little book about my life as a voiceover as I saw that that work was starting to dry out. So I think I'm wrapping up parts of my life with books. And last year, as I came to the end of my consultancy career, talking about working with remote teams, I spent some time just writing and either editing something I was working on or writing. And I decided after trying it for a few months that now was the time to write all those books I wanted to write and to also start looking at my writing as the main thing. I was focusing, focusing on the main thing because I, as you said, I. I always do lots of things. So that's where I'm. That's where I'm with the writing. Any questions? I can elaborate.
- [41:40]
A
Yeah, well, I, I like this idea of wrapping up parts of your life with books. I actually think that's a really interesting comment and I definitely feel that I. I guess maybe I've more started to do that. I feel that it's true for me, for my fiction as well. So my. For example, desecration and Del Deviants I wrote when we were in London and there about London. And then when I moved to Bath, I wrote my Matt Walker series which was set in Bath. And then the Pilgrimage book was about that Pilgrimage. So I really like that insight that sort of wrapping up parts of your life with books. So just come back to. You said you finished the consulting side. Was that a decision? Because I really wanted to get your insights in this finishing up things. Why did you stop doing the consulting side of things?
- [42:28]
B
So it's a mixture of things and I think also a great reflection of why do we end things, especially professional ones. So I set up a consultancy called Virtual not distant around maybe nine, 10 years ago to help leaders of remote teams and remote teams. And of course that was a different world then. And then through the pandemic as we know, it all exploded. So I started to. To get more work, but maybe not the kind of work I really wanted to do because I was coming into helping remote teams and remote work as an alternative way of working and something that could be embraced and set up in a. Set up carefully and in a sustainable way. And what I found after the whole, all the lockdowns and all the remote work, the forced remote work, and as organizations started to adopt maybe a little bit more flexible workings, hybrid work, that the clients or the people I would end up working with were not the ones that I should be helping or at least I couldn't help them in the way I wanted to help them because I have my vision and what had been left was a very different world. And I just, I wasn't comfortable anymore with what I was finding when I was going in. At the same time, let's be honest, the work started to dry up. So there wasn't this need anymore for people who needed to work remotely. They'd figure it out, some version that worked more or less for them. And I see it with my peers as well that the whole cohort, almost everyone has. Has pivoted. Or shifted. Yes. So it was a mixture of both. I have to say that I don't think the market wanted me anymore as much because before the pandemic it was great fun, but also so I couldn't find, I couldn't say and shape that way of working like I wanted to. So. So I decided to write more instead about it, as you say, to wrap up.
- [44:26]
A
To wrap up that. And that's interesting. So this new book, Connection and Disconnection in Remote Teams. So this is really, as you've said, is summing up all your thoughts and what your ideal situation is, I guess. And lots of people listen, work their day jobs separately and often write and write alone. I guess, you know, writers were often disconnected in many ways and we're not really in teams. But certainly I feel like connection and disconnection are huge themes for writers. So maybe you can give us some tips for connecting with other humans when we work disconnectedly.
- [45:04]
B
Well, unfortunately, one of the reasons I left consultancy was because all my answers were it depends. And that's why I went, you mentioned earlier, into lattest teaching, because that is very set and it depends very little. But a few things I think also where I'm talking about wrapping up, I think that's going to be. My theme is in just in 2019, this season of Connection Disconnection in Remote Teams was a podcast season that I created with a collaborator and with a lot of other people actually to talk about this theme of loneliness in remote teams because we saw that that was something that Remote Teams were struggling a lot. So we created a seven part episode series around it. And for all these years I've been looking back at that and thinking there's a lot of material here which could be useful for a lot of people. And also we don't want this loneliness thing of working alone becoming a problem because of loneliness. So I think that's interesting. What the book says and wants to say and my thoughts around it. So this, this what this book shows, what the podcast showed, and my co author Bri Kajati actually led most of those interviews is that you need a high level of self awareness to really find how you connect with others and then a level of awareness about how other people like to connect. So that this is why it really, it depends. I think that level of self awareness is what does it mean for me to feel like I belong in a community, like I belong with other professionals, like I connect to my collaborators. What is it about it? Is it. I came up with three things which are you can look at, do you connect across the work? So is that where you really get your value of yes, we're doing something together and this is interesting. This makes me want to be with you. We are together in this. So is it across the work or is it around the work? Is it actually the conversations like this one, Joanna, that we're talking which is around what's happening, is it that or is it away from the work? So some people do not want or don't connect through the work they do, but they really connect with somebody else's personal story or personal life or hobbies, etc. So I think what I've seen is that this word connection has the meaning that's out there is one meaning, but it's very wide. And so in understanding how you connect or when you prefer to connect in each way, because that also happens, then you can seek those opportunities which can be as you're saying in our case it can be online communities. But is it enough to be on a forum type community and that's enough for you to feel like you belong or do you actually need to find people who will go on a zoom call with you? So I think as well the technology has opened up lots of avenues. This is what's exciting and complicated that if you're someone who connects through writing, meeting and through you're okay being a little bit anonymous, you've got that. And if you're someone who likes to have a more interactive and seeing people and being real time, you can look for meetups online or away or in person.
- [48:23]
A
Yeah, I think, I think like you said, it's understanding yourself and being self aware and then respecting other people too. For example, we're we and the sort of level of connection. So we've emailed for many years. I was on your podcast years ago, but well, we've not hung out or you know, right now we're on audio only. We're not on video because I prefer audio, especially later in the day. And so we're connected but we're not closely connected.
- [48:53]
B
Yeah.
- [48:54]
A
And yet I would say we're aware of each other and we're in a sort of adjoining community. And then that's completely different from somebody who wants to be on video talking to people on Slack every day, wanting to be always chatting with other people. And so we have to learn how we can do this sustainably because that's the other thing, isn't it? Like I can, I can do video, but it's so tiring to me that I can't do it sustainably. So how can people learn more about what works for them in this connection way?
- [49:30]
B
Yeah, so, and I think that you, you, you mentioned as well respecting other people, I would add to that, that asking people and learning, learning to find out about other people. And that's how we can respect each other. So the learning aspect there's something that my friend Lisette Sutherland is very hot on, which are called personal manuals, which are things that people in remote teams do where they say how they work best or how they prefer to connect with other people or how they like to spend their day. Because what happens when you're away from people is that you're missing a lot of information. And sometimes we have to make this information explicit. If I'm trying to build a relationship, a professional relationship with someone, or if I want to connect a little bit more around the work, then I can say a little bit more about, well, I much prefer an audio conversation. Next time can we do audio or hey, I had a great time doing this video thing. Do you ever meet up with your friend, with other colleagues, or when we talk together, do you prefer email? So I, I think questioning how other people want to connect as well will help us then to strengthen those relationships. And I think that sometimes, going back to your questions on how we find out, sometimes we can maybe try something that we hadn't tried before or find out how other people are doing it. And for example, one example is I get a lot of pleasure from reading people's comments on Google Docs when I'm working on something together. So for me, working on a shared document really gives me something more than if an email is coming backwards and forwards because the comments are always there. Because in a way, when I go into a Google Doc, it's like I'm going to see someone else. I'm going to see the people I'm working with in this shared document. So that says to me, okay, if I can, I'll ask if we can work in this way. Whereas other people prefer email because for whatever reason, or audio as well, audio recordings. So I think, like you said, being aware of all the different modes of communication and seeing, seeing when we go, yeah, okay, now I'm really comfortable or I'm really excited now about this.
- [51:41]
A
Yeah, it's funny, I was just thinking then a lot of people pitch me by sending a video and I never, ever, ever, ever, ever will click on any video or if they've recorded some loom or even a personalized YouTube video, I literally will never look at them. And even people will send me an audio message and they expect me to listen to it. And even though I am general, I'm like, definitely not. So I mean, this is sort of understanding for pitching as well is sometimes you just assume something because you might be comfortable with it, but that other person on the other end just might not be. And so it's also fascinating to me that you love Google Doc comments because I, I hate that too. Like, is it our age as well, do you think? You know, I'm 50 and I feel like Slack messaging, for example, completely popped passed me by.
- [52:39]
B
I don't think, I don't think it's age because I'm only three years older than you and we, I think and, and as you say, I love Slack but I have a way of using it. That's another thing is that, and this feels very strange but when you're working with someone in remote teams, you have to make explicit things like this. So if you decide you're going to use Slack, okay, how are we going to use it? When can I get you urgently and is it okay to wait two days to reply to your message? It is by the way, unless you. It's urgent, but it's the use of it. So that's another very important thing, Joanna. And we're going more into the working together or even in communities. The technology is really widespread. It's ubiquitous at the moment and a lot of people have used either X technology or something similar and we all have our own ways of doing it. So we need to agree one or two things so that we use it in the same way so that we don't, we don't get, you know, for example, if you prefer to wait three or four days and I'm the one that wants everything urgently. So I think that being explicit but I don't, I don't, I don't think age. Well, I don't really know because I only work with people who are like 10 years younger or well my collaborator Reese, 20 years younger and we got on as well on the, on the docs.
- [53:56]
A
Yeah it's just. And not imposing judgment on other people based on they, they prefer to do things. It's just like well, we have to agree on a way to work together. But as you said, you've co written this book Connection on Disconnection with a writer in Australia without meeting in person. So obviously you use Google Docs. But tell us more about that process of co writing.
- [54:17]
B
It's been. Well, I love co writing and to be honest I've been waiting to co write a book for ages. I did create a book together which was a collection of blog posts with my colleague Maya Middlemes a long time ago. But this as being getting something almost from scratch because I think the fact that we had done that podcast season is important because we'd already worked together so there were a couple of things that meant that the book got a kind of. I mean as I'm talking to you, it's not finished yet, but hopefully when this comes out it will be at least on pre order. There were a few things which is one, we already had the material, but the material needed she and that actually, it's actually taken a few years because we started one process that didn't work and then we started a new process which has worked. So I think that that has been. Finding that we could both hook onto a process that was sustainable and that would get us both onto the computer has been really important. So Bri again, I'd met more or less like a few times working on the Season together, but we did do about a monthly catch up on Zoom or Google Hangouts, whatever, it doesn't matter online. And I think that was quite important because it just meant that we could just relax a little bit more during the conversation and the conversation could go anywhere and of course we could make faster decisions. So we didn't have that as a rule, but it happened and neither of us are very meeting people so we were fine with that. We had. You would have hated this process. We had so many Google Docs. But what we decided was instead of using a chat based application or email, we started talking in a Google document. It could be a word, so a shared document where we would work a little bit on the book and then we check out at the end of the day and we just write a few things or if something had happened in our personal lives that the other person needed to know, we wrote it there. And what's really nice about that is one we didn't end up with more chat messages. We always knew our conversation was only there, our written conversation. And now we have a record, we have a whole year of this project from the start right to the end. We might not do anything with it, but it's really nice to have. So that's been great. And then from the practical point of view of working on the text, yeah, we've used shared documents. We split up the chapters again just we had one person writing the first draft and then we went to in and commented, etc. But the one thing I do have to say, and thanks to you Joanna, because you've introduced me to generative AI, I have to say is, is that I'd been playing a lot with ChatGPT Claude, feeding into my own writing work. And that's why I approached Bri again last year in 2024 to start to work on this again, because we'd already tried to put the book together and we'd found it very dark, daunting, because we had transcripts from seven episodes, plus all the full interviews of. I think it was about seven or eight guests that Bri had done. And we were finding it really difficult to come into the page. So I ran by her, I said, what do you feel about generative AI? And we. I ran some ideas via Claude. I asked it to maybe generate some text based on the transcripts from our interviews. And we saw that there could be something there. And what Bri was saying was really useful for her was the fact that we created a project in Claude which had all the transcripts. And so you could say, oh, at some point we talked about, I don't know, somebody who had moved in the middle of nowhere and suddenly realized that their career prospects had decreased or something. Who was that? What episode was that in? And what did they say? And then instead of having to dig through all these transcripts, suddenly we had some. We had our own assistant that pulled it out. And the other thing was that for some chunks, it started to give us a common voice. It's not that Claude was writing everything, but it started to smooth the differences in both our voices. And so we found one voice for the book without. So you can't really tell who's writing which bit, but it's still us. It's really still us. So it's been interesting. It's. We've had technology as an intermediary, not just in the communication process, but also in the writing process. So it's been quite interesting.
- [59:07]
A
Yeah, I think that's great. And I certainly think these tools are really useful for when you have your own material. I'd also suggest to people Listening Notebook lm. Google's. Yeah. Where you can actually load the transcripts and it will only use those, whereas the other models will kind of bring insights from the rest of the model. So I think that's super useful. You did mention that you basically failed the first time around and the process didn't work the first time around, so. And you said it was just too daunting.
- [59:40]
B
Yeah.
- [59:40]
A
So was it literally just the volume of stuff and you didn't know where to start or, like, what. What other insights do you have from failing that, that first time around? Because I feel like a lot of people, when they approach any sort of big project, doing do maybe fail at things and then they don't come back to it. So any insights from the failure and Getting over that.
- [60:02]
B
Yeah. I think it was the fact that we were always coming to a blank page. So we had the material, and especially Bree, she was closer to the material and she had less time than I had as well. So I think time was definitely a factor, which is why I went back to her and said, look, I think this can save us some time as well as help us in other ways. So time was really a factor. The blank page was a factor. Whereas this time we felt that we could start with something even if it was. I prompted the generative AI with this prompt to write I don't know chapter one. And this is what it's come up with. Okay, well, I like this point. I like this point. Yeah. Okay, we can now work on chapter one, but at least we've got something that we could both start from as well, which is quite important. So I think it was mainly. It's the classic. It was time and it was the blank page and the all. Also this feeling of how we had organized the material. Again, technology you need to find the right space for you to work in. We were using Notion, which has a lot of moving parts. And in the end we just went Back to transcripts, PDFs, Google Docs, which are nicely set in our folder. So that was another learning is that we needed our own office space that worked for us. And the first. First time it didn't quite work and the second time it helped us. So I think maybe.
- [61:30]
A
Yeah, that's good. Yeah. I mean, I've tried Notion several times. I even had like a tutorial with someone and it just. I just couldn't. It didn't work for me. It didn't click at all. And I think this is really important for people listening. You. You don't have to use like, you can hear people say, oh, well, this transformed my process and it's just amazing. But it doesn't work for your brain. Whatever your brain wants, you know, you can't force it. It's into a different way for sure. Try things. But if you just like I have tried Notion several times and I'm like, no, it just my. I just cannot get it. Yeah. So I just go back to when I still use Scrivener for my first drafts and I, you know. Yeah, paste everything Scrivener. But when I co. I have co written several times using Google Drive and Google Docs as the sort of beginning place. And it is still probably the simple, simplest idea, isn't it?
- [62:25]
B
Yeah, yeah. And I think what you. Yeah, Google Docs is Definitely simple because you've got a blank page. But now, of course, you have to push away the AI that's trying to.
- [62:35]
A
That'S trying to do everything.
- [62:36]
B
Yeah, but I think that what you said of why, what was it about the first time that didn't work is really important because this is something that is often missing one as individuals and then also definitely as collaborators and in teams is that we try something, it doesn't work and we don't stop to think why. It doesn't mean we go, why? And then we try and make it work again. No, we think, okay, why didn't this work? What else could work? Or sometimes we've got the right technology, but we need to adapt something. So we ask why didn't this work? And we went, okay, maybe what we need to do is something different. Or actually like you say, well, this is not going to work. But now we know that when we look for the next thing, it's got to have this, this and this. But that step especially because we don't like to think back, oh, why didn't that work? It's quite hard work for the brain, but I think it's quite. And like you said, technology, I feel like some apps, I find them so easy to use and other ones, they just, it's not talking about, I mean, technology and humans, they go together. And for me, technology, sometimes you have to have the same, that connection with it and it's easy. You can get your brain around it, you can get your hands around it in a way metaphorically. And I think we acknowledge that and it's fine.
- [63:55]
A
Yeah, exactly. Use what works for you. But I wanted to circle back on the sort of ending things because you have paused and you've done these seasons. Like you said, this book was born out of a seven part season. You've paused some of your shows, you've ended others, and maybe just talk about, like, how do you know when something is ending and when is it not that failure? Because you've just explained how something didn't work, so that was a failure. But you did decide to end that. Whereas some of your podcasts and like your consulting, you ended that it wasn't a failure, you made a decision to end it. So how do you know when something is finished and end it in a way that feels positive and satisfying?
- [64:41]
B
Yeah. So for me it's when I really don't want to do something anymore or when something is a bit of a drag sometimes there's some signs, like, I'll go back to a very Long time. So I used to teach physical theater and acting a long time ago. And I remember going, going to. I was doing, maybe I was doing, I think two hours a week only in a drama school around the corner. And I went on my way there, and every now and then, because this was before lots of email, I would turn up and my class would have been cancelled. It was great because I still got paid, but my class would have been cancelled and no one had told me. And I found myself walking one day towards the school going, I wish, I hope that the class has been cancelled. And I went, okay, okay, that's it. This is something I don't want to do anymore. So there's those kind of signs that I really listen to is when I really don't want to do something. Then the podcasts, I mean, the podcasts are creative projects, so they are driven by a curiosity at that moment, or I have to say, a lot of the shows I've done, I've done with co hosts. So sometimes I've just done it because I wanted to do something with this person and something has come up. And I think that even if something with podcasting, because you mentioned with the. With the podcast in particular, I didn't have anything else to say. I had nothing more to say. And I thought, well, that's it. So I was doing a show with Call Management Cafe, with Tim Burgess, who's actually the boss of Bree, who I was writing with, who I'm writing with. And both of us have left. Left organizational. The organizational world. Neither of us lead people anymore, and we're like, what are we doing? This show, Management Cafe, was just like therapy and reminiscing of how it used to be and what happened to this and what happened to that. So I think that understanding if it's. Especially if it's a creative project that you keep doing, and suddenly you're like, I don't know why I'm doing this. I have nothing more to say. I'm getting tired of the sound of my own voice in whatever way. And then wrapping up, wrapping up. I think this, especially with creative projects, we need to try so many things to understand what it is we want to do, what it is that we like doing. And I'm being very, very lucky in that respect that I've been able to try lots of different things in my life. And because of that, I've learned to try things that don't work out without thinking again that there's something wrong with it. And of course, some things don't work out and they have larger consequences than others. But understanding that, especially in the creative. In a creative process, whatever you're doing, you touch on one thing and then that doesn't work well. Maybe that's not the right thing for you there and then. And you can always come back to those kinds of things. So I think it's recognizing that that's not the right thing to be doing anymore and just seeing it as something that. I'm going to put it to one side. Side now, because, okay, it might be doing well, but I'm not getting anything out of it.
- [67:44]
A
Yeah. It's funny, though. So I was thinking them, and you mentioned earlier that the. Your voiceover work, that. That is. There's less work there than there used to be.
- [67:54]
B
Yeah.
- [67:55]
A
And I guess that's a lot to do with AI digital voice. And I guess for some people, sometimes the decision. Decision as to things ending is not necessarily theirs or they need to do it for money or something. And I think this is probably happening to a lot of people is that they're seeing some streams of income begin to dwindle because of whatever reasons. So how do you pivot into something new? Like what's your process? Do you end something and then learn something new? Or. Or do you make sure these overlap? So you have periods where you're still earning from the old, old ways?
- [68:35]
B
Yeah. So just going back to the voiceover, because that's a very good example, as you said, of. I still work as a voiceover, but not very much, because when we're talking, a few years ago, actually, my own work didn't decrease because of the AI. It decreased because of the Internet, great Internet connections that we can now have with voices in Spain. So I'm a Spanish voiceover in London. And before, we always did the. Our recordings in London, whereas the Internet connections got better. They can now beam into Spain and they have a wider talent pool there. The other thing that happened was the home studios. I don't have a home studio. I've got. It's in, you know, my bedroom's good enough for podcasting, but not for client work. And I started to see it was pre pandemic that, yes, the artificial intelligence was taking all the small jobs. Like, they press one for this, press two for that. And that was actually a decision talking about when to shift. I saw that coming and I had to make a choice for myself, which was do I set up a home studio or do I get out and do something else? Which is why I started the consultancy on the side and yes, of course I love voiceover and it still brings some income. So talking of that, I think starting to do something and trying it out while you're still doing your income generating work is a very good, good idea because you can do, you can start to try. Maybe, maybe I'm going to do this thing, I don't know, could be writing, I really want to write, but I don't have the time. Right. I'm going to try and do two hours a day and see if I still like it, if I have to do it. Because I think that when you discover that you can go into a profession is if you have to do something, is it still that joyful? So finding out how, how sustainable your new career might be by doing again, little experiments before you decide to take a big plunge. And again I've you said it many times and your guests have as well that when we go, when we leave us, I was going to say a secure job, but when we leave something that is a recurring income at the moment, we have to look at our figures, we have to look at how we're going to live before we take that plunge and then start making our plans around, around that if you can go work a little bit less at your full time job, you know, four days a week instead of five and things like that. But not be, and not be afraid of the fact that that might not happen. We might try it and it's okay if actually we discover that, you know what, the stress of thinking that I'm going to have to earn an income with this is making me sick. That's fine, pull right back. It might not be the right moment as well. Again, see what it is bringing up in you. So I've recently again trained as a Pilates teacher, which actually is just going to be a small talking of income. It's going to be a small part of my income. But I just noticed that I was really enjoying the classes, that I was getting really curious about it and that's how I know that it's time to move on to something else. I might not leave behind what I've already got, but I need to start looking into something else. I find myself listening to podcasts around the subject. I read around the subject subject. I start to want to know more and that's when I know, when I start to bring in the input from other places and when I start to really soak in lots of other information, that's when I know, okay, something is shifting. I have to look at this and then I'VE tried lots of things. I mean, at one point I started doing cartoons and I've got this Happy Daisy. So I looked into is merchandising. Could that work? Well, no, because the money coming in from all the print on demand merchandising sites is really small and also they treat you not very well. Okay, that won't do. I'll put it to one side. It might turn into a comic at some point, but for now I've got to do something else. And I've had to train myself because you can hear me where that I can go anywhere, anytime. I've had to train myself now to go, no, that is for later. Write it down, make notes, as we all say. Have a place where you can record your thoughts around that thing you really want to do. But now is not the right moment. So now I'm doing this book and I'm doing the Pilates thing and that's it for now. I've got lots of things that are going to come after, but for now.
- [73:04]
A
Not everything all at once. Yeah, because you're also a finisher. I think this is really awesome because I. And it's interesting because I do talk to a lot of creatives who are similar to both you and me. We have lots and lots of ideas and start lots of things, but a lot of people can't finish their. Them and so they've got too many projects on the go at the same time. And like people say to me all the time, oh, you must be so, so busy. And I'm like, actually, I'm not that busy. I mean, I don't. It might sound like I work on a ton of things, but I don't really, you know, I'm kind of launching one book, but. And then writing another book and, and doing this show. And so I. I feel like the finishing energy is just as important. So is that something you've had to learn or is that just something you have naturally, which is, I must finish this thing before I move on to the next thing.
- [73:55]
B
Yeah, it's natural. I've always had this. When we first set up the theatre company, I remember my friend Philip, who we set it up with, he said, yeah, I'm like an ideas person. You're a finisher. Yes, I am. I think it comes naturally. I don't know what is. I don't like open endings and open loops, but it also, it comes back to this. Knowing that costs something. Because you don't succeed at something, it doesn't mean you're not a great person didn't put it very well, but you know what I mean? So finishing for me sometimes is not doing it anymore. It doesn't mean I've completed the project. It doesn't mean that I've made a success of this thing I wanted to do. It means I've gone, you know what, in one year, how much have I enjoyed this? How successful, as in, if it was supposed to bring income, did it bring an income? Blah, blah, blah. You know what? Okay, let's wrap that up. And that's okay. Put it away. And sometimes it is about okay. This book is dragging. I mean, my books, Jonah, they take so long, like three or four years, but that if it's worth it, then I finish it. I have put some books away, I put some ideas away. I had some brilliant ideas about things and I thought, am I going to be able to do that? It's going to take me three more years and I have to do all this research, put it in the ideas list. And being okay with that.
- [75:16]
A
Yeah, I think being okay with it. I mean, I'm the same. I. I have a massive drive, so I use Dropbo, my main drive, and I've got this for later kind of folder structure. And sometimes I do indulge myself, especially now with like deep research on ChatGPT. Sometimes I'll be like, do a deep research into this topic to just see if I want to go deeper into it. And I always say recommend like 20 books on this subject. And then if I want desperately to kind of get into all that, it's like you said, if I feel that need to research, then I will dive into that more seriously. Like right now by my desk, I have about 20 physical books on Gothic cathedrals and architecture and beauty and awe and wonder and all the. And that's like I just needed to go down that rabbit hole. But some, a lot of the time I'll be like, yeah, okay, I'm not quite ready to do that. So it sounds like we have a similar process on what to spend the time on. I guess projects that are worth spending the time on.
- [76:16]
B
Yeah. And I think you develop an instinct at some point or a process or you trust that the right thing will kind of stare you in the face or something. Because I think that that is also a process and it will be different for everyone is learning to trust how we manage our ideas. And there was something else I was going to say and. Oh, the other thing is, of course, that it's also okay to dream. So sometimes I know I'm not going to. I would have loved to be a cozy mystery writer. I still have my first novel there waiting for me and sometimes just dream and I dream I have this series and it's okay. I don't have to then turn it into anything. And I wonder sometimes when we, when our. When something we love or love doing, like writing, can be so close to how we want to earn an income. I think that sometimes we forget that it's okay to dream about plans and then we let them go. And that's fine.
- [77:13]
A
Yeah, I think that's good. Hold. Hold some of them lightly or hold them lightly until you decide to commit. And then if you're going to commit, commit, then absolutely commit. But yeah, no, this has been super useful and we are out of time. So where can people find you and everything you do online?
- [77:30]
B
Well, I have one website that I'm sure will be there for a while, which is Pilar rights dot com. That's P I L A R Writes, as in writing and then on LinkedIn. I'm Pilar Orti.
- [77:42]
A
Fantastic. Well, thanks so much for your time, Pilar. That was great.
- [77:46]
B
Thanks, Joanna. Thank you so much. This has been. I've been listening to your show forever, so this has been like amazing. And thank you everyone for listening too. Thank you, Joanna.
- [77:58]
A
So I hope you found the discussion with Pilar interesting and that it might inspire you to branch out in a new direction, pivot, end things or mark a new stage in your life with a book. Let me know what you think of the interview or anything I covered in the introduction. Please leave a comment on the podcast Show Notes at the creative pen.com or on the YouTube channel, or email me joannathecreativepenny.com pen.com send me pictures of where you're listening or your favourite cemetery or churchyard next Monday. I'm talking about author branding and standing out in a crowded market with Steve Brock. In the meantime, happy writing and I'll see you next time. Thanks for listening today. I hope you found it helpful. You can find the backlist episodes and show notes@thecreativepenn.com podcast and you can get your free Author blueprint@thecreativepen.com Blueprint. If you'd like to connect, you can find me on Facebook and X hecreative pen or on Instagram and Facebook jfpenauthor. Happy writing and I'll see you next time.