← The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers
The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers
Music, Writing, And The Mind-Body Connection With Jennifer Roig-Francoli
01:03:11
How can creativity be expressed in both writing and music? How can you improve your creativity by being more mindful of your physical body? How can you manage anxiety when speaking or performing? Jennifer Roig-Francoli gives her thoughts in this interv...
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- [00:01]
Joanna Penn
Welcome to the Creative Penn 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 811 of the podcast and it is Sunday 1st June 2025. As I record this, we are almost at half a year, which is always crazy to consider. So in today's show I talk to Jennifer Roy Franker Lee about music writing and the mind body connection. You couldn't get a more different episode than last week, which I really like. We talk about whether creating with different from creating with words, how the mind body connection affects our work and also our wider experience of life and perhaps what might be causing us pain as well as dealing with performance anxiety when speaking and more. So that's coming up in the interview section in Writing and Publishing things. First up, hats off to Taylor Swift, who is a great example of an independent creator running one of the world's biggest, most significant entertainment businesses by a creator. And this week, Taylor bought back the rights to her first six albums, saying, all of the music I've ever made now belongs to me, which is so great because this is one of the keystones of the indie creator career. And by the way, I'm not a swiftie. Like I could name like one or two of Taylor Swift songs. I just think she is a great example of someone who is both a creator and a businesswoman. So if you own and control your intellectual property rights, you can make all kinds of creative and business choices along the way without asking for permission because you are in charge. And then of course, you can license things yourself. You can make money in different ways or you can sell them all over again, as we've seen a lot of older artists do. I guess most recently Bob Dylan sold his back catalogue as he's he's still alive, still creating. But that is something that people can do later in life. And of course Taylor is incredibly influential for a certain demographic. Some of you may be swifties, but also lots of young people. So as an independent creator taking control of her intellectual property rights, I think it's a very inspirational example and hopefully will make people look more carefully at the contracts they sign. Now obviously she originally signed those contracts as a teenager, but those contracts that you sign can have a big effect on your future And I feel like often you don't know where it's going to go. We're not all going to be Taylor Swift, that's for sure. But even if you lose control of something that you can make a little bit of money on, then is it worth it? So yes, definitely. Reading contracts is so important. Also, Becca Syme is on the Book Funnel podcast talking about understanding the rules of publishing. And of course Becca also says, always says question the premise. So even if there are so called rules that you find you can still question them. So the interview goes into understanding the game of publishing because of course it is a game and there are different games. People think, oh, it's one thing, but it is so not one thing. It is very different playing the game of getting a traditional publishing deal. It's a different game trying to get millions of KU page reads. And it is a different game if you want to do a six figure Kickstarter or make six figures on Shopify with direct sales or to do TikTok shop or whatever. So you have to decide game you want to play and then have a look at those rules. Becca also talks about motivation, the struggle with social media engagement. And in fact, just to comment on that, I have almost completely pulled back from social now. It's just, just something that doesn't engage me personally. It also talks about navigating discoverability in a saturated market. And she has this thing, she says Loki is in charge of the market, not Captain America in terms of it's unpredictable. And of course Loki, the, the Norse God of mischief. And yeah, completely unpredictable. There are almost no rules, I guess when it comes to the market, Captain America is like, oh, it should be done this way. And we all of this. And so I like that quote. I think that's brilliant. Loki is in charge of the market, not Captain America. Also, you can fail for years and then become a millionaire. Like you can write tens and tens of books and then nothing happens and then suddenly hit it big. Or you can hit it out the park with your first book and then fail forevermore. So yeah, Becca says your will to publish is the only thing that matters. You need to maintain your desire to do this and your joy. Yeah. And what's the point otherwise? That's why I'm still doing this. Like, even if AI writes a hundred times better than you in the future, does it even matter? No, it doesn't. Because we love the writing, we love creating things. I love the process of turning what's in my head, these crazy things in my head into a physical product. I mean, I really do love that. I love, I guess it's more than manifesting. It is turning ideas into physical objects of books. And in terms of what I love most, I love books. If you came into my house, you'd be like, oh, I guess she really likes books. It's obvious from what I spend my money on and what I enjoy doing. So yes, does it even matter if you make any money from your books? I mean, unless you are actually making a living this way, when of course it does. But if you love to write and publish and talk to other authors and readers, then you're going to do this anyway. So always good to listen to Becca Becca Syme on the Book Funnel podcast. Actually, I'm going on that soon. So they go into a lot of interesting things actually. And of course we love Book Funnel because they help us all sell direct, which is fantastic. And then of course, if you want to play the game of self publishing, my 4th edition of successful self publishing is out now. 4th edition and the title is Purple, so there are obviously other editions out there, but make sure you're getting the purple one. If you want to play the indie game, it might help. In this expanded edition I go into the updated publishing platforms and opportunities, direct sales, special editions, crowdfunding, and a new section on generative AI and using tools effectively as an artisan author. And what's interesting is that it's a much bigger book than it used to be. It used to be almost a pamphlet, the original one. And of course self publishing used to be a lot simpler because we didn't have so much choice. Now we have so much choice, the options are ever expanding. So yes, it is out now, successful self publishing. You can find the links@thecreativepen.com SSP4 and also I'm on the publishing Performance podcast this week. Well, last week it was as this goes out, talking about multiple income streams for authors beyond book sales. And it is video as well as audio as I talk with Teddy Smith about strategies for making a living, building a long term body of work, premium products and a lot more. So that's on the Publishing Performance podcast then in AI things. Well, there's a few interesting things this week, so you might remember that my Death Valley audiobook is narra created by my voice clone on 11 Labs, which is out now on my store JF Pen Books and will be on Spotify, 11 Reader, YouTube, other stores in the coming weeks. And you can listen to the first couple of chapters on this feed back in episode 802 so if you want to have a listen to my voice clone and compare it, obviously as I'm talking now, this is not my audiobook narrator voice, which is much more measured because I'm reading. This is my more conversational voice. But yes, you can have a listen, see what you think. Well, this week voice cloning took a huge leap into the mainstream as none other than Melania Trump. This is kind of crazy. Melania Trump revealed her memoir audiobook is narrated by her voice clone with 11 labs. So on X she called it a new era in publishing. I'm honored to bring you Melania, the AI audiobook narrated entirely using artificial intelligence in my own voice. Let the future of publishing begin. So it really doesn't matter what you think of Melania personally or politically. She is the wife of the President of the usa. And so this is bringing a lot of press to ElevenLabs for doing the tech side of voice cloning and also 11 reader for the audiobook. And I think it's going to start a bigger trend for people to want to do their own audiobooks with voice clones. The other thing I was like, oh, let's see if it's on audible because they don't allow that kind of thing on Audible. And I went on, it's not there. So I was like, so where is it? And so I went to her website. She is selling it direct on melania trump.com she's selling her AI audiobook direct. And I was like, well, who would have thought that Melania Trump would be an indie author? Which is essentially what this is. I know she has a massive team and all that, but selling an AI narrated audiobook direct seems pretty forward thinking in my mind. So I imagine it's got to be on the other stores at some point. But fascinating that she's doing it that way. It's also on 11 reader. So I imagine that people are going to be going there too. Lots of press on that and on the new publishing standard. Mark Williams addresses this in an article saying, by collaborating with 11 labs to clone her voice for multilingual audiobook production. Oh yes. And this is the other point. It's not just in English, it's in other languages. Spanish, Portuguese and Hindi, which in itself is. Is incredible. And that was impossible before, you know, an author could read their own memoir, obviously as a human, but you couldn't use their voice to put it into Hindi. So maybe that's something I should be doing. But yes, Mark says by collaborating with 11 labs to clone her voice for multilingual audiobook production, Melania Trump has thrust the publishing industry into a watershed moment. While critics may fixate on the author, the deeper story lies in the transformative and irreversible impact of AI voice technology on publishing. There are two advantages driving scalability. Audiobook production, traditionally reliant on costly studio time and voice actors, can now be streamlined. ElevenLabs technology requires just minutes of source audio to create a high fidelity voice clone, slashing production timelines and costs. And also the multilingual accessibility, which preserves tone and cadence across languages, eliminating the need for human translators to mimic her voice. A big leap forward into democratizing global content distribution for publishers, Mark says Such efficiency can be transformative when they are bold enough to step up. The rise of AI voice cloning unlocks new creative and commercial frontiers, hyper personalization, accessibility and the preservation of voices. But also there needs to be consent, licensing frameworks, clear labeling and prevention of deep fakes. Now I have on my Death Valley a big sticker that says digitally narrated and it's obviously in the text as well, but I've put it right on the COVID He finishes with Melania Trump's AI Narrated memoir is not a gimmick, it's a harbinger of industry wide reinvention. The technology's potential to democratize access, preserve legacies and innovate storytelling is immense, but the Luddite fringe is determined to cling to last century standards. Yes, there are risks, and some of these risks demand proactive governance. As ElevenLabs CEO Matty Stanisowski envisions a Spotify of voices, publishers must lead the charge in ethical adoption by meaningful adaption. The future of audiobooks isn't human versus machine. It's about crafting a symphony where both harmonize. That's Mark Williams on the new publishing standard, and he also posts on LinkedIn. And it's not just the future of audiobooks, it's the future of creativity. And publishing isn't human versus machine, it's the symphony where both harmonize. That's as you know, that is how I feel about it. So you can check out Death Valley in my voice clone on jfpenn.com Death Valley. All the links are there. So in other news, AI news, and this is another big one, the New York Times, which is suing OpenAI and Microsoft for use of copyright material, has done an AI licensing deal with Amazon. As reported by the Verge and other media, the New York Times has struck a multi year AI licensing deal with Amazon that will bring its editorial content to A variety of Amazon customer experiences. Under the agreement, Amazon will include summaries and short excerpts of the Times content in products like Alexa and will also use the Times articles to help train its AI models. So yes, it is also being used in training. So this is interesting because when the New York Times sued OpenAI Microsoft for the use of copyright material in training, everyone was like, oh, they're anti AI. And I know still authors will say, authors and publishers will say, well, when the New York Times wins that case, all of this is going away. There will be no AI stuff. It's all just going to go away. But it's so not. Because obviously the New York Times is not anti AI. They just want a better deal. So at some point I presume they're going to sign a very big deal with OpenAI and Microsoft. Also, I really don't know why they think Amazon's model training, original model training, because Amazon has their own models. I mean there are so many more models than ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini and Grok. And like there are so many models now. And Amazon's model was also originally trained on something and so was Anthropic's Claude, which Amazon is a massive investor in. So yeah, but anyway, the New York Times seems ready to make money from AI licensing, so interesting development. And I'm sure, I mean lots of other media companies have already signed licensing deals. So I imagine more to come. If you would like to learn more about being an AI assisted artisan author, you can still come to my webinar. There are tickets available for the Saturday 21st of June webinar and you need a ticket to attend live or get the replay. And you'll also get my prompt library, slides, video recording, audio recording, the whole thing. You can find details@thecreativepenn.com live. So in personal news. Well, I'm going to admit something to you this week. So I am usually pretty good about planning and scheduling my time, but it turns out that over these few weeks, the sort of last weeks of last two weeks of May, in the first week or so of June, I managed to schedule the release of two books at the same time, which is successful self publishing, the 4th edition and also Death Valley, which was obviously a originally on Kickstarter and is now coming out elsewhere. So I had that. I've been also obviously doing the narration for successful self publishing, not as a voice clone, as my human me, as well as preparing the AI webinar, which takes a lot of work to prep because I want it to be super, super awesome. And also my mum moved to Bath and I'm also having work done on my kitchen so you can imagine the level of stress that there has been now I don't know how I managed to schedule everything at the same time but it happened. I mean my mum's move was meant to be like a month ago so that did move into was a bit late but I wanted to kind of admit it because some of you seem to think I'm just very organized and plan everything and that everything always works out and you know it's mostly true. I am pretty organized but these few weeks have revealed a pretty big flaw in my mid year plan. But all that to say I'm almost through it. It's just been a real push and I have not scheduled really anything useful in terms of book launching activities so don't do what I do. I think I wanted to say in terms of launching successful self publishing, I'm literally telling you I'll send an email to the list and Death Valley will be out and I'll do some marketing on it at some point I'm sure. But yes, I'm really glad it's it's done. And of course with the successful self publishing I also have it in bundles on my store so on creativepennbooks.com and so I had to set up all the bundles and there's a lot more when you're selling direct than just uploading it once on KDP for example. So yes, all that to say I wanted to share. Sometimes you can over schedule and that's okay. I'm not going to push myself into doing any launch activities. I'm going to leave that till later, which is good. Oh also this is another thing I got I scheduled a promotion on desecration and again I scheduled this month ago my months ago and it's also in the same week. So if you're interested Desecration is on free promotion this week on Amazon so you can check that out. It's a crime thriller with a British detective, but it's really about the meaning of the physical body and resonating with the history of anatomy, body parts in jars, corpse art and more. The darker end of the British crime genre. More Mo Haider than Richard Osman. Definitely nowhere near Richard Osman. But yes, that's desecration. So I guess I have three book promotions in one week. And also on my books and travel show I talk to Katrina Turner about the geography of belonging and finding home, one of my perennial favourite topics to talk about. So thanks for your comments this week. On Dave's episode, Earl Trosky said on YouTube, I was glad to hear that Dave Morris talks politely to the AI when he works with them. Even though I know it's not sentient. I treat the AI with courtesy the same as I would a human. I don't know if I get anything in return, but at least I don't forget how to be thoughtful and kind. I'm 61 and have used AI for brainstorming, outlining some writing assistance and the work of blurbs and taglines. I feel like it adds another layer of fun to the writing. Absolutely, Earl. I'm with you there. I have a lot more fun when I'm collaborating with the AI tools. I laugh a lot more when I'm writing. It's hilarious. Okay, so please leave a comment on the podcast show notes@thecreativepenn.com or on the YouTube channel. You can 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 so today's show is sponsored by Atticus, which helps you write and format stunning books in ebook and print formats. It works across all platforms so you can use it whatever computer you work on. It is safe and secure, you own your data and it's also backed up to the cloud so you don't have to worry about losing anything. There are other kinds of software that do things separately, but Atticus has everything in one place so you can streamline your process. You can write your book in the editor, built for authors with the ability to drag and drop chapters, manage your book goals and writing habit, tracking, word count and all the usual writing elements. You can also collaborate with others, a co author, an editor or an ARC reader. If you want comments on the book later. You can then use Atticus to format your book or you can import an existing book to format. There are lots of different templates so you can choose the look and feel or use the custom theme builder and then you can preview your book on a variety of devices so you can see what it will look like. Your export will work on any book market and platform so you can get your book out into the world. Happy authors who use it say it is the one app to rule them all and easy to use for new writers. It's a one time payment and you get 30 days money back guarantee and you can start writing and formatting your books straight away. Check it out now@atticusio so this type of corporate sponsorship pays for the hosting, transcription and editing. But my time in creating the show is sponsored by my community@patreon.com TheCreativePen thanks to the 8 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 tutorials and demos on AI tools. Last week I did my live video Office Hours. I explained the many options for AI narrated audio and showed how to use midjourney to do consistent characters as well as answering patron questions live. 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 TheCreativePen right, let's get into the interview.
- [22:14]
Jennifer Roy Franco Lee
Jennifer Roy Franco Lee is an international prize winning violinist and certified Alexander Technique teacher. She's also a high performance coach and the author of Make Great Music with the Secret to Smarter Practice, Confident Performance and Living a Happier Life. So welcome to the show, Jennifer.
- [22:36]
Thank you so much for having me. I'm looking forward to talking with you.
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Oh yeah, I'm pretty excited about this. We were just saying before the recording.
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Joanna Penn
This is my first podcast.
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Jennifer Roy Franco Lee
It's really sort of about music and so I don't know why I've missed it so much after like 15 years of doing the show.
- [22:52]
Well, I'm honored to be the first.
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Yeah, indeed. But I am interested because why write a book? I tend to think that people have this primary mode of creativity and yours is, is clearly music. So why write a book?
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Well, I've wanted to write a book for a long time. My dad was an English professor, so my favorite class in school was writing. I used to keep journals. I wrote poetry stories from the time I was really little and I just always loved writing and it's also been therapeutic for me as an adult just writing for myself. So writing a book just was a thing I always wanted to do and the main thing was to get my ideas across about specifically the work that I do with the Alexander technique and music making and creativity. I just have a lot of ideas and I wanted to get them out there so a book made sense.
- [23:50]
So your dad was in the literature field. Were you also encouraged into music as a child? Like is that again because your primary method I guess is music. So Writing was second. Did you sort of do that for from a childhood?
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Yes. I'm told by my mother that when I was 2, I declared that I needed a violin. My parents are both musicians, so it kind of makes sense. They would sit around our living room in the evenings when I was a baby playing quartets with their friends. And I vaguely remember sitting in a rocking chair, like listening to them, watching them. And so when I was 2, I fell in love with the violin. My mom is a cellist and my dad is a violist, but I liked the violin. And when I was four years old, my mother discovered the Suzuki method and got me started. So I've been playing the violin since I was four.
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Yeah. Wow. It's so interesting, isn't it? And I think clearly when you were a kid and it was fun for you and it was all around you, and I. I said to you beforehand that I don't really listen to music. And I think part of that is my mom likes silence. And so we were never sort of allowed to have sound around. And I'm a very quiet person as well and often wear noise cancelling headphones. So it's so weird to me to kind of imagine your childhood with all this music. Which then sort of brings me to a question about if that's your main sort of thing that you do. How did you face the challenges around writing when you're used to doing something so different, Something so noisy, I guess.
- [25:33]
Funny, I don't think of it that way at all. And to be totally honest, I don't listen to much music myself either. I really enjoy making music even more than listening to it. But yes, it's pretty loud to have a violin right next to your ear.
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Joanna Penn
Yeah.
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Jennifer Roy Franco Lee
So I guess I don't really think of it as something different. In a way, a lot of my work and what I'm most interested in is how we get inspired and how we take that creative inspiration. How do we take that inspiration into ourselves? Like, how do we let it flow in the mind, the body, the soul, the whole that we are? How do we take these ideas that we have and then express them? So I feel like I have these ideas, whether they're musical ideas or thought ideas, concepts. There are ideas in my mind and somehow they need to get out so they can be expressed through music and they can be expressed through writing. And since I've always been writing, it was actually very easy for me to start writing this book when it was the right time, which is I tried three times to write this book. And the first time I wrote it or the first time I attempted it was maybe 15 years ago. And I sat down to write the book one summer on vacation, and I think I probably sat down two or three times to try to write this book and realized I was not ready at all to write this book. My ideas were totally not ready. They were unformed. It just was really hard. So I left it for more than a decade. And then a few years ago, I got back to it. I felt like it was time. And I got further into the process, maybe three, four months. But then life events took over and prevented me from continuing. So I took another break for maybe two years or something before I said, okay, third try is the charm. So I'm gonna try again. And I'm determined to make it work this time. And it was actually really easy to write most of the book. It just sort of flowed out of me. And it's no different from making music, really.
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Yeah. So that had been kind of incubating, and I think that's interesting. I've had that experience with a couple of my books, particularly one called Writing the Shadow around that Darker side of Ourselves and expressing that and that. I thought about that for, like, a couple of decades, really.
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Joanna Penn
But I guess that you said the.
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Jennifer Roy Franco Lee
Third time you tried again, there'll be people listening who may well have put off books or try to write books. How did you know that this time.
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Joanna Penn
It was going to work?
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Jennifer Roy Franco Lee
Or did you just start again with hope? And then it started working. Like, when is that moment that we know a project we put down is the right time to pick up?
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Well, part of the reason I wrote the book, one of them, to be completely honest, is that it fit into my business plan. And I run a coaching business for musicians. And it would serve a number of purposes for me from a business perspective to have the book out. For one thing, there are so many people in the world that I feel like could benefit from my services and what I teach, and yet so many people in the world can't afford my services. So one reason I wrote the book was to offer something really low cost to a much broader audience so they could benefit from the teachings. And it just felt like at this point in time, I knew clearly what I wanted to teach. Like, my system was formulated. I had been teaching it a certain way for a number of years already. It's like I really knew my stuff in a way that I didn't before. And I had. I went through certain life experiences, too, along the way that fed into the book. That's why the first time I tried writing it, I was just not ready. It wasn't the right time. And even the second time just didn't work because of other life events that ended up giving me more material for the actual book when it was the right time. So I can't really say other than that it just fit. Like, all the pieces fit. At that time. It was right for my business. It was right in my life. I had gotten to a point in my business financially, where I felt like I could kind of make my book number one for a whole year, which is what I did. So I really decided that it would be okay for me to focus mostly on the book for a whole year, and that would mean probably bringing in less income from other sources. It was sort of seeing that I could go through this process for a year and still be okay and not have to worry too much about working really hard on the other stuff, if that makes sense.
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Yeah. And I love that you said it was the right time in your business as well, because I think what that does, too, is it helps you get out of your own head and think about other people. And sometimes that's what we need. It's like you can get lost in so many words, and then when you think, okay, who are my audience and who am I trying to serve of? And that also helped you because you were like, I know how this fits with the people that I coach and the people who can't afford the coaching can afford a book. And I think that's fantastic. Like, so often with these deep and meaningful books, we can get lost in our. In our own heads, right?
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Yes. I think I was completely lost in my own head the first time I tried.
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Joanna Penn
Yeah.
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Jennifer Roy Franco Lee
And it's making out.
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Joanna Penn
So.
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Jennifer Roy Franco Lee
You said it took about a year. So how did that year go? Was it a lot of rewriting, or. You said it kind of flowed. Was a lot of editorial or tell people what your creative process was like for that time?
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Yes. Well, I have to say there was one piece of advice that made it possible, because without that piece of advice, there's no way I would have finished that book in the time that I did. And the advice was to not edit as I was going along, because I tend to. I have perfectionistic tendencies. I tell my students I'm a recovering perfectionist, and my old way of writing would be about the process of writing and getting it right as I'm writing. And that just wasn't going to work for me because that would take way too long. And it also meant that, like, if I started writing that way, there are a thousand different ways to say something. So if I kept finding a better way to say something, or saying, no, this isn't quite the right word here. Let me find another way to if. And then I would have another idea, and it would take me off into tangents, and then pretty, pretty soon I would have no idea what I was writing about. And so for me to censor myself and, like, give myself a rule, you're not allowed to edit while you're writing. You just write. And you're going to write this chapter today, or whatever it was. Sometimes I did a certain number of words. Sometimes I said, okay, this is the chapter, or I. Sometimes I didn't even have a plan, but for the most part, I would just write and not let myself edit. That saved me that book.
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Yeah, I totally agree with you. And that's how I do it, too. Everyone has different processes, but that I think that's really important. So let's talk a bit about some of the aspects of being a musician, and you cover some of this in the book. I mean, it's in the subtitle, Confident Performance. And I was thinking about this now you've performed at Carnegie hall, which is.
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Joanna Penn
Kind of one of those amazing things.
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Jennifer Roy Franco Lee
And as authors, we need to become more comfortable with performing. And many of us are introverts. Many of us are like, we just don't want to get on stage and do this. So what are some of your tips for performing our work or reading our work in a way that engages audiences?
- [33:54]
Oh, that's a great question. And I just have to say that even though I've been performing since I was a really young child with the violin, it took me a really long time to be brave enough to speak in public. And the fact that I'm here doing podcasts and interviews and speaking from stages is just mind blowing to me because I was an extremely shy, introverted child. And somehow, because I started performing with the violin very young, and it was just a natural thing that was easy for me. That was no problem. But speaking, I really had to work on that. And the breakthrough for me was like, to give you an example, I actually knew how bad I was at speaking in public. So in college, I signed up for this class on public speaking, and we needed to memorize a poem for the second class. And I thought, oh, this is fine. I can memorize music, no problem. So I memorized the poem, but I freaked out. I was so terrified. So I got to this class, and I stood up and I think I got maybe the first two lines out and my mind went totally blank and there was no way I could retrieve anything else from that poem. And unfortunately I was so mortified that I dropped the class and I never went back. Back. Long story short, I actually didn't work on speaking intentionally, but as a result of my Alexander Technique teacher training, which takes three years, by the way, it's like 1600 hours to get certified as an Alexander Technique teacher. Through that process, I opened up in my whole self. And in opening up in my whole self, including speaking with other people in the class, it became much, much easier for me to kind of expose myself and be myself in public through words. So just like speaking off the cuff like we are now, I can do it now, and I find it really fun, but it was mortifying earlier. So I completely understand what you're talking about and I do have some tips. Performance anxiety is a big thing that I help my musicians with. And through the way that I teach the Alexander Technique, which is actually called Primal Alexander, we're really learning how to connect how we're thinking with how we're feeling in the body. And so it's really important when you're feeling nervous or anxious to just notice that without judging it to begin with. So observation, self observation is one of our best tools to be able to, and it's a human gift to be able to self reflect and sort of see yourself from outside and to observe and watch and ask yourself, what's going on? What's actually happening to me right now in this moment? So I'm doing this for myself right now. And anybody listening, I invite you to just ask yourself, like, what's happening to me right now? What am I noticing? And if you're nervous, then you'll probably notice symptoms like the heart racing or sweating or shaking or shrinking, getting tight. All these things that happen when you're in a fight, flight, freeze or fawn response. There's a tightening, there's a constriction going on in the system and it's uncomfortable. We don't like that feeling. So what we usually do is we try to fix it or make it go away or mask it somehow. And none of those things really works. I mean, they can work to a point. But the best way that I've found that is really foolproof and it works for everybody I've ever worked with is is if you really just stop and get curious like a little kid, like you're a Martian that has no Idea what's going on. You're just a scientist taking observations, and you are your own science experiment or you're a detective. You want to find out. You just want information, like, what is happening to this human being right now? What's happening? Oh, my heart is racing. Or, oh, I'm shaking. And then if we can develop the response of, oh, oh, that's interesting. What else is happening? And to keep asking, what else? Without any rush and without any judgment, to just be with the experience, that in itself is incredibly powerful. And when you really stick with it, with that attitude, and the attitude is everything. It's that childlike curiosity where you're just. Just take. You're giving yourself the time to notice and be curious and not trying to change your experience, except you don't get fixated on it. So you keep asking yourself, okay, interesting. What else?
- [39:06]
Yeah. Yeah. And obviously your Alexander technique is a physical practice. And this idea of being in the body, I feel like so often as. As authors, different to musicians, especially with the violin, like, your body is making the sound like you're moving with an instrument. And as writers, I feel like so much of it is in our heads. And yet, as you say, going on a stage or speaking is physical. You are a physical human in this experience. So I like that you. You talk about that. I also find, because I do a lot of speaking, I always do sort of writing beforehand, and I just write, thank you. That I can serve the audience. And again, like we said at the beginning, it's. I'm here for them. This isn't actually about me. This is what I can help them with. And is that similar to you as a musician? You're really thinking about serving the people who are listening?
- [39:58]
Mm, yeah. That's a beautiful way to think. I love how you. You do that before you go out.
- [40:03]
It just changes my perspective from being obsessed about how I feel to trying to help other people with whatever they're looking for.
- [40:12]
That's really a great point. It is so good to include both. I mean, ultimately, the way I look at it is that I want to be open and responsive to both what's going on inside me and what's going on outside of me. And ultimately, I feel like I can best serve the world around me when I'm making sure that I'm taking care of myself first. Like, when I'm at my best best, that's when I have my best to give. It's interesting what you said. Also, you might be surprised because I never thought of playing the violin. As a physical activity until I ended up having physical problems. I mean, I really thought of it as a mental thing and I really had a mind body split where I had this really false notion, first of all, that there is such a thing as a mental activity that's just mental or a physical activity that's just physical. I mean, that's just not true because, I mean, even as a writer, you do have an instrument because you have a pen or a pencil or a computer. And you actually do need to use your physical body to get those ideas out of your brain. So it's really not so different from a violinist who has a violin and a bow to get the ideas out. So I actually used to always think it was a mental activity. And I had this prejudice against what I thought of as physical activities. Like, my brother, for example, was really into sports and I liked sports when I was really little. I didn't have a mind body split when I was really little. But the older I got, the more, I guess, praise I got for being more intellectual and getting good grades in school and all that kind of thing. And the violin was included in there for me. And so then I, like, I didn't think much of sports. And yeah, there was a whole dynamic in my family too that just was in me kind of messed up and caused problems down the road. Because if you don't recognize how you can't really separate the mind and the body, ultimately something is going to suffer.
- [42:42]
This is so funny because this is exactly the same for me. My brother also was the sporty one and played basketball and he. Yeah, he snowboards and he skateboards and he. In terms of physical intelligence, like he is physically intelligent in terms of just amazing, amazing physical awareness. And it took me also probably 25, 30 years. And then you hit like 35, right, and you, your body starts hurting and then you hit 40 and it gets worse and then you have to start doing something. And I actually ended up damaging my, myself and getting help for that. So you talk in the book about chronic pain and your own physical stuff that led you to Alexander technique. So tell us a bit about that. Because people listening, if they're not already in pain from writing, they're probably going to be. So tell us more.
- [43:30]
Oh, dear, I don't know. Yeah, so. Well, I found the Alexander technique because I had neck pain and it wasn't actually directly from playing the violin because at that time I had young children and I had not been playing the violin that seriously for a while. I had a major career that I kind of cut short when I was 19 and got married at 20. I kind of stopped playing as a soloist. And then I spent quite a few years just playing the violin in other capacities. But my heart wasn't really into it because I'm just by nature a soloist. And I loved doing that. It made me happy, it was exciting. And I just stopped all of that. And then I got married at 20, started playing in orchestras and teaching violin and things I never really wanted to do, but just to earn some money. And so it's good because I kept up my skills. But ultimately I was suffering because I didn't have a creative outlet other than my family. And of course, having children is a beautiful creative outlet, but carrying around little toddlers on my hip and my alignment was completely off and I wasn't, it was really stressful. Like I didn't have family around to help and just I got progressively less happy. And as I got less happy and I had more stress and then physical stress of carrying, lifting my children and carrying them around. One day I ended up with neck pain that would not go away. And then I ended up going to doctors and chiropractors and nobody could really help until I finally ended up at an Alexander technique teacher's studio. And that completely changed my entire life. So I went for pain, but it was actually a deeper, creative kind of pain. It wasn't about the violin. It was about blocked creativity for me.
- [45:44]
And I mean, I guess if people don't know, tell us what it is in a sort of quick way.
- [45:49]
Oh, sure, yes. And you mentioned earlier that it's a physical technique, but actually I think of it as a whole person technique. And I know why you would think that, because most of, like, if people look up Alexander technique, you'll probably find things about posture and you'll see a practitioner touching the student gently, like gentle manipulation and moving, sitting and standing. It can give the impression that it's about the physical body only, but it's really much deeper than that. And I've been fascinated since the beginning of my Alexander journey to know what was underneath. And so for me, with the Alexander technique is it's a way to connect how you're thinking with how you're feeling, both physically and emotionally. And when you learn how to connect and integrate your whole self, your mind, body, emotions, when you are more integrated and whole and you bring that whole of you into activity, you can learn how to do whatever you want to do with much more ease, much less effort, much less tension and much more joy. So that for me is what the Alexander Technique is. And that's what also. That's also why I teach it without touch, so that I can empower my students to learn to think differently, to get different results.
- [47:17]
Yeah, I've definitely found I do a lot of weight training and I felt like I've learned so much about what the body and mind connection is just from being much more present in my body, which I wasn't for so long as an author. But obviously you work with musicians who are suffering pain. And some people listening might also be musicians. But what are the sort of things that people come to you with that relate to the mind and body connection or the creativity that some people listening might recognize or find useful?
- [47:50]
Yes, and I'll just say as an aside, I'm always open to working with non musicians. And in fact, when I first started teaching Alexander Technique, I wanted to work with anybody but musicians, believe it or not. So I spent quite a while working with firefighters and journalists and teachers and all kinds of other people. So I'm always open to that. And recently I had a photographer join one of my classes because ultimately we're all, we're just, we're all human, so we're all working on the same things. We're working on how do you bring your whole self to whatever activity is that you're engaged in, that you're interested in, whether you're a musician or a writer or whatever it is that you do. And the specific things that people come to me for generally have to do with improving their skills, like to get better at whatever the activity is or they have physical pain. Like a lot of musicians end up with tendinitis, neck pain, back pain, carpal tunnel, you know, real physical issues where it's like career threatening because if you can't, if you have tendonitis, you can't play the violin or the piano, you have to stop. And there are a lot of famous musicians in the media. Like recently there have been quite a few people who have had to just take long breaks. I mean, it happens with, to athletes too. Ultimately, musicians are athletes. We just work with fine motor skills and the. Obviously what we're producing is different. We're producing music and they're producing a football game. But it really doesn't matter because we're human. So we need to learn how to think in a way that. Well, here's something that I always come back to. It's a favorite quote of mine from Frederick Matthias Alexander, who is the originator of this technique. He said mine is A method for the control of human reaction. End quote. So mind is a method for the control of human reaction, and we are reacting to stimuli in our lives all day long, unconsciously or consciously. So for me, this process is about learning to be more conscious of how we're reacting to things and noticing, okay, well, if I react to XYZ by getting tight, like, for instance, if I react to speaking in public by getting tight and my body's getting stiff, do I like that result? And if I don't like that result, then maybe I could examine my attitude or how I'm thinking and think differently. And Alexander learned how to solve. He actually started all this. The Alexander technique originated in his performance issue of getting hoarse when he was speaking in public. Because he was an actor, not a musician, he had speech. So everything we're talking about is really pertinent, you know, for writers who need to speak in public, too. That's what Alexander had to do. And he would get hoarse, and then he wouldn't be able to recite Shakespeare, which was his love. So he also. He was. Went to specialists and nobody could help him. So he figured, either I have to quit and not speak in public and not be an actor and do something else, or I need to figure out this problem and solve it myself, which is what he did. Thanks to him, we have this method that is amazing.
- [51:23]
Yeah. I find this so interesting. And for people listening, I mean, you mentioned carpal tunnel there. I know loads of writers who end up having that operation, carpal tunnel, and. Or people with. With back pain who were just on a lot of meds. And I. I feel like people think that it can't be solved in any other way than medically. So when I. I pretty much gave myself a shoulder injury from hunching over my keyboard and basically tore my rotator cuff from hunching.
- [51:54]
Sorry. Very common, though, I'm sure.
- [51:57]
Yeah, well, exactly. But people think, oh, and then I went. So I went to a specialist. I got the steroid injection to immed, stop the pain. And the shoulder guy said to me, this was about six years ago, like 44 years old. He said, if you don't sort this out with your posture, you know, do weight training, reverse this. You will be back here and I will have to keep seeing you.
- [52:19]
Joanna Penn
It was good.
- [52:19]
Jennifer Roy Franco Lee
He gave me a real talking to and basically said, yeah, get out of here and sort this out.
- [52:24]
And.
- [52:25]
But it's so interesting to me because I know some people listening will be like, well, no, this is clearly just a physical thing that I have to fix with an operation or drugs or whatever. So do you incorporate the medical side into your practice or is it very much that this takes time to work on your body?
- [52:43]
So I don't diagnose, I don't have that training, not trained to diagnose anything physical like that. But we do. I mean, Alexander technique, there's actually quite a bit of research on it. Unfortunately, it's like the best kept secret in the world because it really does help anybody with anything. It's just really hard to get people to believe that if you're saying I can help you with anything. But that's been my experience. And even for, I mean, of course, thank goodness for surgeons and thank goodness for doctors and thank goodness for drugs that are helping people and saving lives. And I'm in no way saying we shouldn't have all that. However, there are so many surgeries that are performed that are unnecessary in my opinion. And in my experience also, I've worked with so many people who were about to have a surgery and then came to me as a last resort or had the surgery and it wasn't getting better and it didn't solve the problem problem or had this treatment and they have to keep going back again and again and again. So it's pretty clear to me that there's a purpose, there's a reason for the medical profession and they serve a very important purpose. And yet there's a huge aspect that's completely missing that they are not trained in, which is seeing the whole person and treating the whole person. Of course, there are alternative practitioners and people who do that, and that's great. And I don't think of myself as a medical practitioner of any kind in any way. But it's really very remarkable that I've had lots of people come to me primarily because they had pain. And I'm thinking of one person in particular that comes to mind immediately. Now, another one, two people actually, who were told by their doctors that they would always be in pain because the issues that they had were so severe, like from multiple car accidents, from broken vertebrae, from slipped discs, from like really serious physical things that you can see on, on a scan. Right? They're real things. And yet through practicing the awareness etudes, those are studies, like little awareness exercises that I give my students, I have them do just a few minutes every day. And I say, take these like they're antibiotics. You don't skip a dose. You prioritize this. And it's really easy, really simple, but you have to stick with it and Then you have a, there's kind of a paradigm shift that happens when you start to look at life a little differently and you notice that everything's related and you start noticing how you react to things and you get curious and then you just keep observing and wondering and experimenting with thinking differently and then your pain starts dissolving. It's amazing. And I've had so many people tell me actually use the word miraculous and I don't know, I don't know what's going on. I do believe there are mysterious forces in the world. But it's also a very, very practical technique that people don't have to believe in. They just need to be curious enough to try something different. If you keep doing the same thing, you'll get the same results. And that's what we do. When we go to the computer, for example, we open up the computer and we typically do the same things and we have the same attitude and we are not aware of the rest of the world. We shut out our peripheral vision. We forget about space behind us, we forget about the rest of our lives and we become so narrow minded that our bodies just follow the mind. The body becomes narrowed because it follows the narrow mindedness and the narrow focus. And we're taught that in school. We are, it's drilled into us that we need to focus and concentrate. And the way that we're taught to concentrate is to narrow how we're thinking. And the body is innocent. The body just reflects what we're doing with the mind and that's why we end up in pain.
- [57:01]
Yeah. And particularly like circling back to what we were saying about what we were rewarded for as, you know, good girls who were doing well at school and doing what we were told and doing well on exams. And I feel like I spent like 30 years denying my body and what my body needed. And then I've essentially had to change direction. And now a lot of what I do every day is physical movement in, in order to help fuel my creativity and everything else. You know, I'm much happier when I move and if I, I start to be in pain, I, I will get moving. So I love what you're doing. I think it's, it's fascinating. But just one last question before we go. So the end of the, at the end of the book and subtitle is Living a Happier Life. So I wondered, how do all these things come together for you now with the writing and the music and your business. Do you still have your music as a kind of separate thing to your Business.
- [57:56]
I love that question. I've basically spent my whole life working on integrating everything. And actually it is pretty integrated, I have to say, because I do my own marketing, for example. Example for my coaching business, which entails a lot of writing, which when I first started this business, it and realized how much time was going to have to go into marketing, it was a little overwhelming. And it's the last thing I ever thought that I could enjoy doing, selling anything, far from my artistic beliefs about life. But it's either market yourself or. Or have somebody else do it or starve. So I learned how to market and I realized if I need to do this, I might as well figure out a way to enjoy it. And I do love writing. And so I actually have done a lot of training. I've bought courses and had coaches and had a lot of coaching and copywriting. And so it's. My writing is definitely a part of my day, every day. Day. And my music is what I write about. So even though I'm not necessarily performing much anymore these days, it's been a few years since my last performance or real performance. I've performed live on Facebook, if that counts.
- [59:18]
Joanna Penn
I think that does.
- [59:21]
Jennifer Roy Franco Lee
So I still like. I still play my instrument, but I don't need it to feed my creativity. And that's what I realized when I was 19, honestly, that I didn't need it to be a creative person and I don't need to write. But I enjoy writing and I enjoy making music and I also enjoy going for walks in nature. And ultimately it's really about. And this is what I'm really working on is how can I be really myself, authentically myself right now? And being who I am includes connecting with people and that's a form of expression and that's creative. So if I can get out of my way and allow inspiration to guide me, that's a really creative process and I'm doing that right now and I hope to get better at it as I go through life.
- [60:18]
Fantastic.
- [60:19]
Happy. There's where the happy comes in.
- [60:21]
Yeah, absolutely. So where can people find you and your book and everything you do online?
- [60:29]
I have a website. It's www.artoffreedom.me. so it's me. That's my website. And Facebook is my main way to connect with people. I'm very accessible. People can also contact me through the website and I have a YouTube channel. If anybody wants to hear my music, just look up my name on YouTube and you'll have plenty of music to listen to as well as as teaching videos, talking about these kinds of things.
- [60:57]
Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Jennifer. That was great.
- [61:00]
Thank you so much, Joanne.
- [61:05]
Joanna Penn
So I hope you found the interview with Jennifer interesting. And it's always good to be reminded that we are more than just brains attached to a computer screen or a keyboard, that we have physical bodies that need moving every day, preferably in nature somehow, as much as possible. I think the I increasingly think the sedentary writer and desk worker is one of the most unhealthy jobs there is. So if you're in pain, which a lot of us will be, then check out the book Desk Bound by Kelly and Juliet Starrett. That's desk Bound. It really is a bit of a shocker when you look into it and look after yourself. Focus on self care and you will help your writing, your creativity, your happiness and your author career at the same time. So let me know what you think of today's episode. Leave a comment on the podcast Show Notes at the Creative Pen or on the YouTube channel. You can comment on X at the Creative Pen or email me joannathecreativepen.com Send me pictures of where you're listening or your favorite cemetery or churchyard. Next week I'm talking to J.D. barker about casting a wider net in terms of writing and author business. And remember, you can get successful self publishing the 4th edition now at thecreativepenn.com SSP4. And if you'd like to join me for my AI assisted artisan author webinar, the links are are@thecreativepen.com live. 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@thecreativepen.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 at the Creative Pen or on Instagram and Facebook @jfpenauthor. Happy writing and I'll see you next time.