[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello authors. I'm Joanne Morell, children's and young adult fiction writer and author of short nonfiction for authors. Thanks for joining me for the hybrid author podcast, sharing interviews from industry professionals to help you forge a career as a hybrid author, both independently and traditionally publishing your books. You can get the show notes for each episode and sign up for your free author pass over at the hybrid author website to discover your writing process, get tips on how to publish productively, and get comfortable promoting your book at www.hybridauthor.com au. Let's crack on with the episode.
[00:00:42] Speaker B: Hello authors.
I hope you're all keeping well in whatever part of the world you reside and listen to. The podcast in today's interview is a loner soul with me, and I'm chatting on creative freedom or artistic freedom, the ability to create without barriers, the fear of judgment, or any preconceived ideas about the creative process and artistic rules.
So on my author adventure this week, I have officially been accepted into a small business coaching program and I have a business mentor who meeting up I think it's in about two weeks time to have our first mentoring session. And yeah, if you've listened to the podcast for the last couple of years, you know that I went to a small business sort of luncheon once and I won some free business sessions and I really found having meeting with somebody talking through my book business. And this is what I'm talking about here. This is my business. The hybrid author Joanne Morrell all the books, all my endeavors, the fiction, the nonfiction, the screenplays, the speaking gigs, all of it as part of my business is good to be able to work through with somebody. And those sessions didn't last too long in the past, but these ones this goes for, I think it's about nine months. So yeah, it's good just to have a plan and work through that with somebody and keep you accountable, keep you on track. So me with my business. If you've been listening to the podcast for the last couple of weeks, you'll know I've been busy getting a financial table ready, getting a business plan ready, doing those sorts of things. And this is what it's all for. Figuring out what the purpose of the hybrid author is, what I want to achieve out of it, what I want to provide, to know yourself, adding value, that sort of thing. So that has been this week, and already it's so beneficial because the business mentor lady has forwarded me an event which it's an all day event in Perth, in the city next Tuesday, which I'm going to be attending. And it's on AI and how businesses are using artificial intelligence to incorporate into their processes. Now, I did a podcast episode on AI, will you or won't you AI? A few weeks back and just sort of making mention that I've been listening to the conversations take place in the writing and publishing industry last year. Various writers are sharing their process on how they're using AI tools to help with their book business and stuff like that. And I had played around with a couple of AI tools, I think it was last month or something like that, just to see what they could do. But it will be interesting to go to this talk and see how the actual process of watching how businesses are going to add this in, because obviously in that episode talked about these tools are here to stay. And a lot of people feel not just writing, publishing industry, but they're a threat to a lot of jobs and stuff like that. But I don't really feel that's the case. I think that they're going to enhance the way we do things. I just hope, my only sort of hope is that we don't dumb down by using them and we don't lose our specific skill set. And we're not just clicking and relying on this thing for answers. Like we're actually still using our brains, still using our talents and our abilities, and we don't just end up being not obsolete. That's not what's going to happen. But lazy, I suppose, is the word. So yeah, I'll keep you posted on that. That's going to be super interesting. It's a busy old week next week. I have got podcast batching day on Monday, so I've got about six episodes to record. I usually do batch episodes. It's just easier rather than doing it sort of one commitment, one a week. Doing it all in one day is good. And then I just record all these parts, which, by the way, again, I've just got used to recording my car. So I'm out in my car doing these intros and outros. And from doing this business coaching stuff, I've kind of sat down and made schedules because I'm keeping a diary of the hours that I'm implementing into the business and what I'm actually getting done in these hours and how effective things are. And if you've heard of Orna Ross from the alliance of Independent Authors, there is an episode on the podcast, fails me to remember which one, with Orna talking about creative planning for authors. And I've actually got one of her workbooks and I was looking through that and she talks about the three hats. There's the maker hat, which is obviously creating your books, the marketeer, which is kind of promoting them. And then the manager, which I guess is in charge of the finances and working on the business and all that sort of stuff. So just looking at the things that I'm doing in my book business and making sure that these three things are getting met. And I think that the creative side is in full swing for me this year. And I have been working, starting world building and character building. And I've got a date for that to be finished, which is this Sunday, which is the 17 March, which is funny because this work was looking to put into the Hungerford award, which is an award through our local publishing press here, Fremantle Press. Quite a nice big prestigious award. And the work's not going to be ready for it. I knew that. That's just the way it is. Roll with it. So I want to have at least a first draft done by the end of March. So if the world building, the character building and pretty rough plot is in place, then I can start writing at least a rough first draft by the end of this month. And I think that's doable. That's achievable. So I've got that going. It's been a fun week. There's a few book launches happening. There is a night with our stars tonight, but unfortunately I'm not going to be making it. But yeah, it's a busy, busy time for book people at the moment. There's a lot happening. So if you're in your local area and you're looking for something to do, get yourself out there to some of these events that are happening, because fill up your inspiration. The world building for my book, which was loosely based on a town that I visited over the weekend. I went down to, if you listened to the last episode, Margaret river visited a friend. That was after the talk that I'd done in Australia. And there's a town that I visited that I'm loosely basing my fictional town on for the young adult novel that I'm writing. And yeah, I incorporated things that I saw and experienced at that town into the world building and the character building of my book this week, which was really nice just to have that real world setting in my mind, but build fictional stories out of it as well. I went for a walk around the town. It was pretty dead, actually. Like country towns. I guess I just thought on a Saturday morning there was a couple of tourists in some of the coffee shops. And then I was like, where is everyone? There was like a biking event, and that was it. I never saw a soul, so who knows what everyone was up to. And I went for a walk along the river. It was sort of like in the forest bit. And when I turned, deserted streets, residential streets, and when I turned the corner, there was this emu in the middle of the road, and I was like, oh, what I do. And this thing just sort of like looked at me and I looked at it and I just kind of slowly started backing away because emus, I think they're wild animals, but they can be a bit vicious as well. And there was all these, there was about five or six or seven little baby emus that were in. I thought they were in an enclosure, but they obviously weren't. And then they started walking across to the adult emu, and then they all started walking up the street together. And it was in the clearing where I needed to go. But I put a post on social media because I just couldn't believe it was such a sight. Only in Australia put with, I think it was the land down under song. But it was quite an experience. So no doubt that will make it into my book somehow. You just need to get out and experience things for yourself. You can make stuff up, but without actually going and doing and seeing.
Sometimes there's not too much to draw upon as well.
Loved getting away. The drive back was a bit brutal, but just the longest I've ever driven, which was like three and a half, nearly 4 hours, stopping and stuff. So I was pretty tired by then. Definitely had a great experience over the weekend, visiting places and meeting local writers and chatting about roadblocks in writing. And yeah, it was fantastic.
So if you love the podcast or any of the episodes have helped you further in your author career, you can now pay it forward. By buymeacoffee
[email protected] thehbridauthor let's all support each other. Creative freedom. The ability to create without barriers, the fear of judgment, or any preconceived ideas about the creative process. So what do I mean by creative freedom? Well, if you think in terms of what I've just said, creative freedom, you can apply creative freedom to whatever you like. You can apply it to the work in terms of talking about creating your work without fear or judgment, not thinking of the work and who it's intended for, and putting up barriers. This is just what I've talked about in this talk. The roadblocks in writing are effectively barriers that we place in front of ourselves to stop us from progressing forward. Now, some people can start a work or tackle a work, and then they can stop before they even get started because of the barriers that they put in place, rules, regulations, that they feel that the work has to be so creative freedom is effectively moving those barriers. And so how do you do that? How do you remove them? Well, the first way is to identify them, acknowledge them. If you're neuterating or you're procrastinating for some whatever reason, and you're experiencing that, that you're not sitting down and actually getting any work done. Why? Why is that? Actually consider why you're not doing it. I think a lot of times in the past when I have procrastinated, like I could tell you now, my writing time, I'd go and sit down, I'd immediately get up and go to the toilet, and I'd probably do this about a million times. And then I'd have to get like a drink or it's process. And it's about watching yourself and your habits and your behaviors and changing them up to be more productive, really not procrastinating, but being productive. So I became aware of, again, this was something that I talk about roadblocks in writing, and I have talked about in the podcast before. For me, one of the roadblocks is rereading over my work. Now that falls down to perfectionism and wanting the work to be the best it can be. But it's a really snail's pace at working. And for me, who wants to earn an income from this and has it as a business, I need to work at a faster pace without the quality being jeopardized. So for me, that is just getting to the end of a first draft and going back over it and then adding in the bits that need to be made to make it the nice flowery language to make it all flow, to make it all fit. There's other things that are more important before, in my case anyway, before you do all the nice language. In fact, that should probably be last when it comes to building, or else it's up to you. Your process is your process, but the outcome of the process needs to fit your goals and aspirations. And what I was doing certainly didn't. What I'm doing now does. And I feel like my work is so much better for it, and I'm more productive as well. So creative freedom in writing, you can achieve that by removing the barriers that you place in your work. So your thoughts about the specific work, the work is crap. It's not any good. It's not going to go further, no one's going to read it. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Who cares at this point? Just finish the damn thing and then you can have your opinions about it if you like. Because by the end you'll probably have changed your mind so much. Like, it was great, it was crap, it was amazing, it was rubbish. It was the best thing you've ever written by the end. So remove that. Let the creative freedom flow to just have fun and play and create. Let your imagination run wild. I'm having such a ball doing the world building for this young adult novel that I'm writing because I'm doing what I love to do, which is dream and make up and make believe and use my imagination. Although obviously I just said that I have been to the town that I'm loosely basing it on. I'm making the people up and I'm making things up and I just love it. I love to do the backstory and how these characters are all connecting together, what is their story. It's just fun. It's real fun. That to me feels like I'm creating without fear or judgment of what people think about it. I'm just enjoying the process. I don't know. I've got a rough idea of what is going to happen, but I don't know how it's all going to come together by doing this, this world building and character building and dreaming and imagining and just having fun with the work. The creative freedom in the work to play and just enjoy. I am loving where it's going and I'm not thinking about if it is a young adult audience. The characters in it, to be honest, are around about 17 age. So what some people might call new adult, which is like more of an adult readership than say a teenage readership. But I'm the demographic, I would read something like this. And I think that you do need to write for yourself as well sometimes because, yeah, creative freedom, if you're not thinking about your target audience at the end, then it is for you. Your writing should be for you first and foremost, I think. Because a lot of people say if you're not enjoying it, you're not enjoying what you're doing, then who else is going to enjoy it with the work? Create what you want to create and then you can go back and assess and pick at it or leave it or have other people look at it and things like that. So creative freedom in writing is removing the barriers that you put there throughout the story that you're thinking about publication and stuff like that, I think you need to just do the work, and then once you feel it's finished or even a draft or whatever, then you can start either bringing it back in. Break rules to writing. Like, what I've found really funny about this career is I did a writing degree, many of you might know, and I actually found that, that it made me a better writer, but it also riddled me with rules, the rules and regulations of writing and grammar and all that sort of stuff, and how you're supposed to do certain things. And actually that became a barrier for me. That became a roadblock to creating, to just feeling like I could creatively be free to create whatever I wanted and however I wanted, because you've got these little literary ties that you can techniques and things you can do. But I think especially with the term the hybrid author, so hybrid, it's not one way of doing things. It's about incorporating all sorts of different things. And the other day I looked up all the genres there are of books, and I just thought, how fun would it be to try and mash it all up? Like, really, I understand that readers, when they read a book, a romance or whatnot, they expect a certain thing to happen at the end. But I'm not saying remove that from the story. I'm thinking incorporate all these things into one, like one big hybrid book and see what happens. Play. It's about play and creating something different and just having fun with it. All that, to me is what creative freedom is all about, especially in the work. When you're moving creative freedom over into, say, publishing, that is a little bit different. We never used to have creative freedom in publishing until self publishing came along. And obviously, for those, any of you who don't know, like hybrid publishing, to me the term is you can go back and look, there is an episode with P. L. Stewart on the hybrid author podcast. I think it's like, I couldn't tell you what number, but it's all the ways of publishing or something like that. All the ways of hybrid publishing. And he talks you through all the different aspects. So creative freedom in publishing is choosing which way you're going to publish, which way works best for you. We're lucky that we've got so many choices these days, and you do so without feeling judgment or fear about going down the route that you've chosen, because that's what you want to do. And there's lots of different people doing different things. You don't have to feel like just because you're doing something different, it's no better. The more the unique the better, if you ask me. What about creative freedom when it comes to making money? Well, also, sorry, back to creative freedom with the work. I'm kind of just winging this episode, if it's not obvious already that it's just a bunch of ramblings, but it's just thoughts on creative freedom and how they apply and how we can sort of use them. But I did think creative freedom to be able to adapt your work into different forms and different formats, to me that's creative freedom. Having this idea and stretching it out into as many different aspects as possible. And that is what I'm going to sort of double down on this year and creating stuff. I'm going to try with each of my products to create as many different forms of them as possible. When I was in uni, I learned of this lady, gosh, I'm so bad for remembering names and stuff, but I think she was playwright. She used to write books and stuff, but then she would adapt her work into plays as well. And sometimes the books wouldn't do so well, but the plays would do really well. So if you've got an idea, how about using your creative freedom to turn it into as many different aspects as you can, many different formats, and even in marketing as well, you've got this book. How can you use creative freedom to just create without create a whole marketing story for your book through social media using AI tools as well? We've just got so much good stuff in our lives at the moment, as creatives, as writers, as whoever listens that does something else. Had a lot of artists actually come to that talk in Australand and said that the know roblox in writing applied the things that I chatted about. Obviously barriers and stuff is, it's all applicable to any artistic form, especially in the arts. And yeah, that's something another, another thing as well, earning an income to allow you the financial stability to have the free them to create what you want, when you want. So I guess the consideration that comes into this is there is writers out there who write to market, that things are selling, they're going to write a book, and probably more the self. I'm talking about self publishers here because traditional publishing, there's no point in writing a book and trying to get it traditionally published. By the time you actually get the deal and by the time the book actually comes out, something else is probably going to be hot stuff and your book is what it is. Whereas I think there's some people who self publish out there who watch what genre is hot, and then they write a book in that category, and they get it out there. And these are prolific, fast writers, I guess. So they don't feel having an income that gives you the creative freedom to create what you want rather than what you have to. To earn money is what I mean here by creative freedom with money. So are there things that you feel you have to write, you feel you have to create, or you have to do for you, in turn, to have to have to be able to have the creative freedom to create the books that you actually want to write. So, for me, I've started out in the children's fiction, but I don't have anything out there published in children's fiction, not anymore. And I seek traditional representation for that. I have two nonfiction books at the moment, so for me, I plan to add another two onto that list, and that would probably make more sense, because then I can bundle those together and sell them as a bundle effectively. So it feels like those are the kind of books I have to write to then be earning me an income to be able to create the fiction, which is my passion. I absolutely adore fiction, and it's what I want to write. Nonfiction was never part and parcel, but that's what has come out through my experiences, and I've still got a lot more to say with nonfiction. Actually, I like nonfiction. I've read a lot of it. I think nonfiction, for me, it's just reading about other people's experiences on things that you have an interest on and learning effectively from their mistakes, hopefully. I wrote a women's fiction last year, and that has taken a different turn. So we'll find out in May what turn it takes. So if it wins the competition and I get a traditional publishing deal, then that's between me and the publisher for when another women's fiction book comes out.
If I don't win it and I'm going back to putting it out myself, which was their original plan, then another book in that series would probably be a good, smart thing to be building up that as an income for the business. So what are the things that you have to do to achieve creative freedom when it comes to money? There's books that you have to write to earn an income, and then the books you want to write that are just out there in the universe, I suppose, floating around. You've got nothing to back it up just yet. And I suppose I've always been that person. I've always just not really looked at it strategically, and I've always just done creative freedom.
I've always just written what I wanted to write, kind of.
I feel like I've got a bit lost over the years with some of the middle grade stories and picture books that I've written, and I think that's all been creative. But when it comes to voice, and it comes to me, I am an older voice and I write for an older audience. And this is something that has really taken me a while to come back to. It's like I've done a full circle from writing that women's fiction. It was so liberating, so freeing to write in the kind of way that I want to write, in the language that I want to write and what I've got to say, rather than the children's fiction where you've got to censor what you've got to say. And I don't want to just write simple language. I want to write flowers, flowery language. So what does creative freedom mean to you? Are you writing freely, creatively? Are you writing freely in your creative works at the present? Or are you thinking of the end game, thinking of the target audience and stumping yourself before you've even gotten started? When it comes to publishing, creating creative freedom, are you following the crowd, or are you doing what you want to do, what fits best for you and creative freedom in money. Consider how you're earning your money, and how you want to be earning your money, and how you want your money working for you. You can create. You can achieve creative freedom.
So there you have it, folks. Me chatting about creative freedom, the ability to create without barriers, the fear of judgment, or any preconceived ideas about the creative process. We all enter into this for different reasons, and we all end up having different experiences. So my experiences are not going to be the same as your experiences, but we can consider how we do things. What stops us from doing these things when it comes to our creative writing? And what are the goals and the aspirations we've got with our writing, and how we can achieve them without overcoming barriers that we place there? To get to a state of creative freedom, and creative freedom for you will mean something completely different to what it means for me. But it's just this episode was just to be considering that term and applying it to your business if you've got one, or your writing, and figuring out if you are rigidly sticking to a creative process you believe is what you've got to do, especially if it's someone else's process. Find your own because there is no one way of doing things. That is what the hybrid author is all about. It's doing all different things, and everybody's process is different. Everyone's story is different. Everyone's got something different to say. So find what you effectively have and want to say and how you want to go about creating creative freedom for yourself and your books. Next time on the hybrid Author podcast, we have Zach Rogao unearthing stories within your family, and he is an award winning author, editor, or translator of more than 20 books and works for theater. I wish you well in your author adventure this next week. That's it for me. Bye for now.
[00:24:23] Speaker A: That's the end for now, authors. I hope you are further forward in your author adventure after listening, and I hope you'll listen next time. Remember to head on over to the hybrid author website at www. Dot hybrid dotler.com dot au to get your free author pass. It's bye for now.
