From Paper Obsession to Published Pages - How we write books as Stationery Freaks
Hi, everybody, and welcome to another episode of Stationery Freaks with myself, Rob Lamb, and, of course.
Helen:With me, Helen Lazowski.
Rob:How are you, Helen?
Helen:I'm very well. Thank you. Not too bad. How about you?
Rob:Good. Very good. Very good. And this week, we might be sort of veering slightly away, at least from my perspective, about stationery and moving into a little bit more about digital because we're both gonna share how we write books. We like to write books.
Rob:We're both gonna share the process, so hopefully you'll enjoy this. But before that, stationary stories, Helen. Apparently, this week is National Stationery Week.
Helen:I know this because at least one person has bothered to tell me, did I know? And yes, it is National Stationery Week.
Rob:It is. The May 12 to the May 18 is officially National Stationery Week. Now, I think this sort of coincides with the London Stationery Show, which we put in our calendars. We even hinted on one podcast that we would go to the the event, and it slipped by and we we didn't go, did we?
Helen:We haven't got I mean, I think the flesh was willing. It's just the organizational skills, and the coordination. I mean, it's hard enough trying to find enough time to put a podcast together in our schedules without then trying to negotiate two days in London or whatever it would be.
Rob:%. I struggle sometimes to put the bin out each week. So, you know, it's it's definitely we'll aim for next year. Let's let's put it that way. We will aim for next year to to get to the London stationery show And maybe maybe we can see if we can get somebody from that show to come on this podcast and
Helen:That would be cool.
Rob:Explain, yeah, what it's about and, you know, what to expect if we ever get there.
Helen:Yeah. Absolutely.
Rob:Cool. So stationary stories, Helen, what is exciting stationary wise in your world?
Helen:Well, I have, I think I was waxing lyrical last time about a pen that I'd forgotten that I had, and last time, why did I not use it? I've remembered why. Having broke it out and put it back to use, the ink does not draw through fast enough and you're constantly having to open it up and twist the cartridge because it's one of these plunger cartridges, twist it so that it goes down a little bit, but just enough. And of course you do it too much and you get covered in ink. And we did a whole podcast on my, well, our stationary accidents mishap previously.
Helen:It was a very popular one. I don't know what that says about our audience, Rob.
Rob:All the top rated podcasts on there, end yourself with a pencil sharpener. Yeah.
Helen:People just love a little bit of Mae Hoe's long as it's in someone else's life, I think. So yes. So having worked out that that was the reason that I hadn't kept using that, I don't, to be fair, don't know whether that's my ink or the pen. I've switched over to using, these FriXion, by Pilot, which I've used before, but I don't, they're always too thick. I have a problem with lots of, ball pens and, even by raise and all of those kinds of things.
Helen:The nibs are too wide for my handwriting and certainly for using in my Hobonichi. So I've switched, I've managed to find one that I got from a stash on vintage, which was amazing. So I've got and bought more that are 0.4 or 0.5 wide rather than the 0.7, which is what was normal. And it makes all the difference. So I'm really enjoying that because you can rub out with your pen, which is just great.
Helen:As long as you're not signing legal documents apparently.
Rob:Okay. Well, that's good.
Helen:So that's one thing. And the other thing is, is the realization that just maybe our work life has changed quite a lot. And just maybe my Hobonichi experiment, maybe, you know, this is my second year. I'm thinking of maybe next year changing. So this is a heads up that there might be a smaller Hobonichi Weeks maybe to switch to.
Helen:I don't know. It's all very exciting.
Rob:Well, you know, think we'll go down a rabbit hole if I ask you why you're thinking of changing. So maybe we do a dedicated podcast on how you've got bored with your current system or too efficient with it or not efficient enough or whatever the reason is Maybe
Helen:later in the year when I've, when I've, when I've decided whether it's a real thing or not. And the only other thing that I've got to talk about is something digital not stationary, but I think it counts. It's a thing called Goblin tools and it's super cool. It's free on your desktop, but if you're using it on a, on the phone, you'll need to pay $1.99 for their app. I'm still testing it out, but basically you put in a giant project or a big thing that you've got to do that's really hard and you ask it to break it down and it makes suggestions to how you break that down and it's actually not rubbish.
Helen:I mean, it's not spot on either, but just, it just removes so much cognitive load that I think anybody who has a stationary love because they are struggling with organization, that would be me, Goblin tools might be your, might be your salvation.
Rob:Sounds very good. Let me guess it's using some sort of AI.
Helen:Will be using an AI. Yes, it almost certainly will. But you know, AI is fine if it's, you know, I'm a fan of the the large language model kinds. I'm not really a fan of the j Gen AI stuff, you know?
Rob:Okay. That is definitely out of the realms of stage trainers, but who knows? Maybe not.
Helen:Okay.
Rob:Well, you know, we we did an episode about cracking open a new notebook. That was a couple of episodes ago, and we did a couple of fun little videos and we counted up how many notebooks we got. And, you know, I think you had about 35, 40, and I had a 16.
Helen:You had, yeah, a ridiculous number, Rob. Ridiculous. So so let me guess, you've got more?
Rob:I did. I did. I've got some more. And but interestingly, we in getting the the the sort of notebooks out for the video, I left them on my table, my desk in the studio for well, I put them away two days ago, and we did the episode probably nearly two months ago. And so they sat there for ages.
Rob:I couldn't bring myself to put them away. I don't know why. I just it it just felt overwhelming of trying to put these things back and maybe a little bit silly that I've got so many in the first place.
Helen:I know why you couldn't put them back, Rob, because they're pretty. They were beautiful. They were as beautiful as the day that you bought them.
Rob:I don't know. I think we came to the conclusion that yours are pretty and mine are very functional.
Helen:Oh yeah. Well, maybe that's true.
Rob:Anyway, I rearranged the studio a little bit. I was just a little bit overwhelmed with everything in there. So I've sorted it, cleaned it, minimalized it, and I put all the notebooks back away in the writing bureau. And, you know, a little bit of a self promotion possibly, but I'm starting a new brand on the side called Creative Soul Projects, and it's a family affair. So my eldest wants to go into marketing and advertising.
Rob:My middle kid's not too sure, and frankly, he's not really part of this project, but he might dip in. But my youngest is obsessed with making money. It's just like, what can we do to make some money? I'm like, okay. Fine.
Rob:So I wanted to kick start the Create A Soul projects anyway, and I've got a newsletter and it's sporadically added to, but I'm going full in with this. So all of my content that I've been doing, the books and everything which we're gonna talk about in a minute about how to write them, they haven't sat nicely with my other management company because they're not really about management at all. They're about communication, creativity, all that sort of stuff. So in order to do this and bring the family into it, we needed some new notebooks. It's a long winded way of saying, my youngest has got his own notebook where he's coming with t shirt designs and and all sorts of cool stuff and and some stuff that's definitely not gonna make the cut, I'll put it that way.
Rob:And my eldest is is coming up with marketing and the advertising and the strategies and all that kind of stuff in his notebook. And then, obviously, I needed a notebook as well because I'll be the, you know, person contributing the content and and doing the the writing and the videos and all that kind of stuff. So everything's moving to this project. And to do that, I was down a rabbit hole of stationary websites where somebody's waxing lyrical about Oxford composition notebooks.
Helen:Oh, yeah. Now I'd
Rob:heard about these, and I was a little bit tricked because on the image they got on their website, they look quite small. So I bought a pack of six, one for each of the boys and then a spare one for each of us potentially as well.
Helen:You're optimistic, Rob.
Rob:I know. And and they're a lot bigger than I was expecting. They're actually a five.
Helen:Oh, wow.
Rob:And they're really cool. They've got different colored front covers. The paper's okay. It's it's very school like. It's maybe not quite as plush as some of the stuff that we normally use, But it's just they're awesome.
Rob:They're really good. Hundreds and hundreds of pages, and we've colored in the front in our own personal style. And these are six more notebooks that I added to the 16 that I'd already got.
Helen:We should have photos of those all colored in, you know, to there.
Rob:We should do.
Helen:Right? Just show those. Yeah.
Rob:We should do. And then just one other side thing, obviously, we did an episode about mechanical pencils, and we got sent a couple of pencils, which you've still not received yours.
Helen:No. And I'm desperate to have it, But yeah. Okay.
Rob:Next time we're together or I will post it to you.
Helen:I am worried it's going the same way as the, stationery that I left with you before the pandemic, Rob.
Rob:That's true, which I used. And and yeah. Thank you
Helen:for that. Joyfully unboxing and stealing, video of you. Yeah.
Rob:It is actually. Yeah. Forgot about that. Anyway, we got sent these two pens by a company called Penac, and a wonderful Japanese company sent us these two lovely mechanical pencils, a naught point five and a naught point seven. And I loved the naught point five.
Rob:I couldn't put it down until it ran out of lead. And so I followed your advice in last week's episode, and I scoured the entire house and my studio for spare mechanical pencil lead. Yeah. I found at least 15 of those little boxes of them, and not a single one of them was naught point five. They're full naught point seven.
Helen:Oh, no.
Rob:And they don't fit through the
Helen:No.
Rob:So that was deeply frustrating. So I'll be ordering some zero point fives, but great idea. Go around your house and find stationery that you forgot you'd got.
Helen:Shop your own stationery. I I recognized I recommend the Corinor, is that right? I'm trying to remember how you call it. It's something like Corinor. They do lovely lead.
Helen:And just if you're just buying, you don't necessarily need the mechanical pencil, but if you're just buying the lead, it's really nice, smooth, nice throwing lead.
Rob:I shall have a look.
Helen:I bought the 0.3 to go in that mechanical pencil. That's really, really cheap that I have, because it's, it came from that same Japanese vintage hall that a Japanese yeah. Stationary haul that I had on vintage. And it's 0.3, so I had to find
Rob:something Very fine. Very fine indeed. Okay. Maybe enough stationary stories. Today, we're gonna share how we write books.
Rob:And as per usual, with all of our episodes, we're probably gonna approach this in different ways. We have not done any discussion around this before the podcast started. So Helen's process and routine is gonna be new to me as it will be to you, our listeners. So Helen, how do you get started with writing a book?
Helen:So I have unsurprisingly several different notebooks for different things. So I have classes and in fact I think I've spoken about these before. I do writing classes every fortnight and I have a notebook for that because I do those by hand. You'd think I would do them because I can type much faster than I can write, I would use those that way, but I don't, I use it because when I have a novel, when I want to write a novel, and you know, I've started more than I've finished. I have to be honest, but I use a notebook from the very early stages for all the creative bits.
Helen:Because if I am, I'm allowed to draw lines, I'm allowed to scribble things. I'm allowed to click something from here and draw that it needs to go over there. It allows me to be really, really physical and still see the history of where I've come from. This is probably not making any sense at all, but I like pen and paper or pencil and paper. And I like, like you said, A5 notebook is ideal, maybe even the B5 ones which are slightly bigger.
Helen:And that's what I use for the creativity. So I use that for outlining and whether that's even just a chapter or whether that's a piece of, work on a character. And I don't bother with one book for characters and one book for all my stuff is completely jumbled up together. It's very much a start the creative process in a notebook and only when you're reasonably clear where it's going, put it into, and I use Scrivener, which is just a writing tool, but I that's really just to capture so that I can think as I can type as fast as I'm thinking. When you're actually creating, I really, really need the pen and paper.
Rob:Yeah. I was maybe we jump into the tools because I think people will be interested in the different writing tools that we use and maybe that sort of finalization process, but let's jump into that in a bit. When you're writing a book, do you have an idea of what you wanna write? And then that's the ideation process where you start fleshing out the characters and the world that they occupy and all the other good stuff that goes into a book?
Helen:Well
Rob:Or do you have like do you have ideas way before you start writing the book?
Helen:What I would do is I would have that initial idea and sometimes it can just be a scene. I just got a scene. And sometimes what I've done previously is just write that scene. And it's really, really tempting to then write the next scene and the next scene and keep expanding. And then you can go back to the beginning and go, Oh, I know how I want it to start.
Helen:And I know how I want it to end. And some people absolutely can write like that, but it's really, really hard for me to write like that. I can do it, but it's not pretty. And the work for joining things up is horrific and my brain just fights every inch of the way. So although it's easy in the short term to write like that, because that creative process of writing is like nothing else, it's amazing.
Helen:I would much rather sit down and have those ideas and then say, okay, well if this is my character, who is he? Why does he do this? What was his background? Where does he come from? Why, you know, all I ask, thank you so much to Jenny Cain, my tutor, asking a thousand questions, as many questions I have and lots of them are rubbish.
Helen:You don't care about the answers to most of them, but some of them you go, Oh yeah, that's really good. And that's how you're then building up the background to your plot. So by the time you've got this like arc of a plot, you've also got some other things that matter and need to be included in your story that you wouldn't have known until you got to the end and then you've to go back and put them all in. Yeah. And we're not talking about plot points.
Helen:We're talking about character traits and motivations and things that make it much easier to write the story. So I, for me, and this is just for me, planning it out. The best piece I ever wrote actually is coming out in an anthology later in the year. I, in fact, I will share that as soon as it's done, I'll share it. I think it's the best thing I've ever written.
Helen:And I did that. I want to say properly. So I did that exactly according to this, which was I started with some ideas and I did all of that hard work before I wrote. So, yeah.
Rob:So when you're ready to write, you've got a notebook that's I'm assuming it's a notebook per book that you're writing. You don't conflate the two together. Okay. And then you've got it's just free for whatever comes to you. Know, it might be a character expansion on one page.
Rob:It might be a bit of a plot expansion or you know, mind map or a doodle or an outline or something on the other.
Helen:So I think I said I was going on this really fancy train ride for the day, which I did, which was awesome. And actually what I did was I took a notebook with me and a pen rather than take the laptop where I could have written and created beautifully or edited, which is really what I need to do. Instead, what I did was I took the notebook with me and I said, right, okay, what is it that's causing me some trouble right now? And I have a character that is feeling quite two dimensional. I know lots of things about her, but not every, you know, it's not, most of that's not shining through in the book and why is it not shining through?
Helen:And it's because it's not strong enough. So I need to start filling out some of those questions. Where are we going with this character? And I took some photos and I posted it on my pen name website. So maybe I'll share that photo.
Helen:Yeah.
Rob:We can share it in the newsletter. And and just on that, yeah, every episode, we share a newsletter as well. You can find that at stationeryfreaks.com. It says Substack newsletter, and it's it's doing really well. Thank you everybody who is subscribing to the podcast and the newsletter.
Rob:So I assume as well when you went on this posh train ride that you went with your husband
Helen:I did.
Rob:Yeah. So I suppose there's a bit where it would have been really rude to just bash open the laptop and just write
Helen:You think that, but no, I mean, actually it didn't happen like this, but this was my defense mechanism for the fact that I am absolutely core introvert. And even if I'm outside talking to people, I know I do a podcast and all the rest of it, but talking to people is quite not difficult, but it takes a lot of effort for me. So my husband on the other hand is a born extrovert and he will talk to anybody about anything for any amount of time. And this was my way and I prepped with him beforehand and I said, quite happy for you to talk to anybody else anywhere, but I'm going to be writing as a defense mechanism. Is that okay?
Helen:And he was absolutely, I mean, you know, he's fine about that. He thinks I'm crazy just because it doesn't make any sense to him. But actually, it turned out, we had some really nice, interesting conversations, which are quite nice Very
Rob:good. Awesome. So all of your books start on paper as the
Helen:All of them. Meant I've thousands, Rob. Yes.
Rob:Yes. I
Helen:started writing a lot on paper. Yes.
Rob:So that's that kind of creative process of exploring an idea, bringing it to life, fleshing it out, doing that kind of stuff. And then you said you you jump into Scrivener, which I'm very familiar with Scrivener. I used it for many years. Why do you use Scrivener? Is there something in there that allows you, you know, obviously that tool has a huge amount of features, but why does that tool support taking what's on paper and in your mind and then turning it into words that other people are gonna read?
Helen:The reason I got Scrivener is completely because I got offered a really good deal with it when I was a consultant and I was running my own business. So it meant that I could put it through the business legitimately as a business expense. And I had a lifetime, lifetime. You buy Scrivener for your lifetime. So I did that.
Helen:So that's why I use Scrivener. No other reason other than the fact that that's what I chose at the time. And it has a steep learning curve. Yes. Cause I actually put it away for like four years before I picked it up again.
Helen:The reason I use it now is because it allows me to keep other data with your store, with the store. And it allows me to take snapshots and then edit freely. I can take a snapshot of what I've written and go, I really, I need this story to happen here. This, this chapter needs to be here and it needs to do these things, but I really don't like how I've written it. So you can take a snapshot of it.
Helen:If you choose, wipe it completely away, rewrite it, and then go back and see with your original version. And you can take as many of these as you like. That's really cool. Now when I write for competitions, it allows me to keep, hundreds of different folders and files in all different, it's massively flexible, which is why it's so hard to learn.
Rob:Yeah. And I like the fact that you can move chapters around and they work on concepts of sheets, don't they, where you can sort of move stuff around, which is quite helpful. That's really cool. So when you're when you're writing and you're in the process of typing on a keyboard and bringing this to life, do you jump out into your notes quite often, or is it just I'm locked in writing and that's The
Helen:act of writing things in a notebook is so that I've thought about it. I do occasionally go and pick stuff up and particularly from the classes that I do. Sometimes I'll know that I wrote something, a phrase that I really liked or, you know, you're like, Oh, you surprise yourself. You know, my, my teacher say you've got like four minutes to write a piece on this and you're like four minutes. And very occasionally you write something you think that I really like that.
Helen:And so yeah, occasionally I'll do that, but mostly, for the novel writing or even the short story writing thing, it's all done on paper and that's the thinking part of it. After that, really, I know what I'm doing. What about you? Are you anything like the same?
Rob:Yes. Similar. I mean, I've been writing for
Helen:long Yeah.
Rob:Yeah. And most of my books, although I do have a couple of fiction books in progress at the moment, most of mine are nonfiction, so it might be a slightly different process. But fundamentally, I follow the same sort of process. Now the reason I was asking about the ideas thing is because often my books come together sometimes in in the region of five or six years after I've had the initial idea for the book. And that sounds ridiculous, but maybe there's a kernel of an idea, and I'm a big fan of keeping what's called a commonplace book.
Helen:Yeah. Wish could
Rob:do an episode on that.
Helen:We should because I'm not really familiar with that at all and that would be really interesting for me to learn about.
Rob:Yeah. So ever since I can remember, I've been an ardent people watcher and it drives my family nuts because, you know, I'm always looking around at what are people doing, you know, how does what life operate, you know, what do I think this person's doing, you know, and I love just people watching. And people are the most fascinating gift when it comes to ideas for books because, you know, the reality is always weird in fiction. Especially at work, particularly at work, you're like, why are they doing this thing or why are they saying that or why do they behave that way? And so I captured these micro observations, and I'm a keen photographer, keen videographer as well.
Rob:So I'm always capturing things, pictures, images, frames, you know, always trying to understand the world around me, and these all go into a commonplace book. Now that isn't an analog book because it'd just be too difficult with the amount of stuff that I capture. Yeah. So I just use Apple Notes for that. It's just super easy to use on your phone, any idea at all.
Rob:Same with designs, anytime I see a cool picture or a design I like, I snap it and it ends up in Apple Notes. There's literally tens of thousands of notes in there.
Helen:Really?
Rob:And each one could become a a book in its own right. It's the kernel of an idea for a for a good book or a good idea. They might become videos or blog posts or even episodes of Stationery Freeze podcast. And but the the beauty lies in mashing those things together where you end up with, like, oh, these 10 things are really interesting. What if they all came together as part of a book?
Rob:So the writing of a book for me is usually extremely quick, not fiction. That tends to be a little bit longer. Really quick, like, literally in the space of a weekend, can have a non fiction book of seventy, eighty thousand words written. But the reality is I've been writing that book for five or six years and thinking about it, and I've captured it, and I've noodled over it. And then now is the time where actually it's time to bring this to life.
Rob:So at that point, I break out into paper, usually, my trusty yellow legal pads, where I I outline the book as a whole. You know, if I was to sell this, what's the blurb? So I generally start with that, and that allows me to set boundaries and constraints and give me some focus on what I'm writing. At that point, I then flesh out the idea a bit more, maybe do some doodling, some ideas, and just, you know, generally always on paper at this point. Yeah.
Rob:I then move into a digital tool, a mind map tool, where I create the outline of the book in a mind map. And the reason I do that digitally is so I can move stuff around because I never get it right first time. And then I can expand each of these ideas, which ultimately are chapters of a book into what's gonna be in there, and you can see where you might have constraints or duplications or gaps or anything. It's a really nice tool for doing that. Yeah.
Rob:Once I've got that, I print that out, and then I jump into paper again to keep noodling the idea until it's it's formed. And I can almost kind of in my mind see the beginning and the end of the book and everything that's in it and capture all ideas for, you know, visuals that I might need, etcetera. Then it's time to get into digital. Now I use a tool called Lattix, which is fairly new. It's quite similar to Scrivener, but it's also got the ability to plug into Zotero, which is a reference citation tool.
Rob:And because my work's non fiction, it's really important that I reference correctly. So it's got the same idea with Sheets and all that kind of stuff, you can move things around, which is really good. Once I finished in there it's a bit complicated now. Mhmm. Once I've written it, I then export that into Google Docs.
Rob:And the reason for Google Docs is because I can take it anywhere, it's super transferable, and I really like the interface, it's really minimalist.
Helen:If you're talking to publishers as well, they want it in
Rob:Yeah, potentially, potentially.
Helen:Oh, Google Docs, usually Word as well. The formatting gets messed up when you export, even if you try your best, it's to do with the fact that you're trying to move a whole load of stuff from one thing to another. Never a single instance.
Rob:Word creeps into my process in a minute, but Google Docs for me is a really nice writing environment. It's very minimalist. It's got just enough tools. Word can be a little bit complicated, and frankly, with formatting, sometimes you wonder, what are you doing wrong? I wish that remember the staple that used to pop up and insult you?
Rob:Do remember?
Helen:It was a paper clip.
Rob:Oh, it's a paper clip. It It's
Helen:stuff of legend now. It's, you know, gone into sort of it's the original I
Rob:know. And it used to insult you and say, are you trying to do this? It was like, no, I'm not actually. So what makes you think I am?
Helen:I've got my AI tools that do that now, Rob.
Rob:Yeah. So Google Docs for the for the the editing's always the hardest bit for me, always, because you've gotta cut stuff out that you really wanted to keep and, you know, it's really about fine tuning it and making sure it's it's good. Then I export to Word, and the reason for that is Word generally tends to have a better editor in it in terms of, you know, doing grammar and spell checks as that initial pass through. Yeah. And then depending on what I'm gonna do with it, if it's on Amazon, then I might export it in Amazon format.
Rob:But I've done a lot of self publishing recently. So then there's another stage where I import it into a tool called Affinity Publisher, which is a desktop publishing tool. And that's when I can add images, format it into a magazine style or a really
Helen:fun PDF. And that's that self published thing, isn't it? I mean, that just
Rob:%.
Helen:It makes me want to cry. Just all those steps. Just that sucks. I mean, I know that's the stuff that you you love doing it. You genuinely get so much joy out of it.
Helen:That makes me want to cry. It's just too many steps. It's too much too much. I have to be perfect and I'd have to be perfect at every single step. Do you know what the odds are of that?
Helen:So slow.
Rob:It's it's practice though. I mean, I I used to do desktop publishing when I was at university in school And for the I did two books, Take a Day Off and Zero to Keynote, and they're both self published. So when you're trying to publish with a print manufacturer, they require it in a certain format Yeah. With lead edges and all that kind of stuff. And it can get a little bit tricky and you but they check it, so that's a good thing.
Rob:You can upload and it'll go, no. No. No. You've got this wrong. And then you can preview it and see whether it's correct.
Rob:So depending on where it's going afterwards, there's three or four different routes, but that's the the crux of it. Start on paper, start writing it years ago, basically, start on paper, move to digital tools for efficiency and effectiveness, and Yeah. You've gotta publish it. It's gonna have to be digital probably. And then, yeah, off into wherever it goes to.
Rob:That's the process.
Helen:I'm in awe of that. It's, you know, I love the creative side of things, but that's, I mean, I don't know. Maybe, maybe that level of detail and attention to detail would come naturally if I was doing it because it's my stuff, right? I would want it to be exactly right. Yeah.
Helen:But the fear of getting it wrong and it not being perfect would keep me from doing it. I mean, just sounds terrifying, Rob.
Rob:Well, I think ultimately though, it's publishing piece, isn't it? At some point when you've finished your novels, whether they're in Word or Scrivener or whatever, there's a piece where if you get a book deal, then they take care of that. Know, there's a piece where they do the bit than I do, which is the publishing piece. Yeah. My goal with many of the books, either a Kindle book, which is fairly straightforward to get it into the Kindle bookstore, or it's a physical book that I'm self publishing, I'm using a printer to do that.
Rob:So that piece after you've finished is, you know, normally done by the publisher or you do it yourself if you're gonna go down the self published route. So it sounds complicated but other people would do that for you when you land your book deal, Helen.
Helen:Yes, absolutely when I land my book deal, the chances of that are so slim but I do, in order to get stuff out because I write all sorts of things. So it's not just novels. So I do put that onto a very small tiny website, very new website. So when it's got some stuff on, I'll show, you know, actual, you know, more than 100 word micro fiction stories on I will share that with people so that they can have a look. But yeah.
Rob:Yeah, definitely. Sounds good. Sounds good. So, yeah, I think the the only thing during my process is I do have a scrap piece of paper. It's not a scrap piece of paper at all.
Rob:It's a very nice rodeo notebook that I have next to me with with tear off pages, reporter style notebook, very, very small one. And all the way through my writing, I'm always having an extra idea or something I wanna go and revisit or an image that I'd like to create. And so it's just a running list of actions, basically. And during the writing process, it's super quick, scribble it down, get back to writing. That's the, you know, writing and editing, two two different things.
Rob:But then I have to go back through the list and, you know, blah blah blah, go Absolutely.
Helen:All of those things.
Rob:And the one thing I didn't mention is I generally, depending on how, I guess, much paper I'm willing to waste, I generally print the book as well at the end and go through that as part of the editing process as well.
Helen:So I was gonna ask about that. So when I've, well, I finished the first draft and in order to get myself to read it all properly, like I would a reader, I just bundled it out and sent it over to my Kindle. So I read it like I would with any other Kindle book. Other readers are available, I'm sure. But do you not do it that way or you physically print it off?
Rob:It depends how big the book is. So the one that I've just finished, and I'm about to get into the Affinity Publisher part of that, the self publishing piece, is about 84,000 words. So it's a big it's a big it's a novel sized book. Yeah.
Helen:Yeah. Absolutely.
Rob:Not novel. It's a nonfiction. So I probably won't print that because that is a staggering amount of paper and ink, and that it it just feels so wrong to do that.
Helen:I recognize my I recommend my route with the Kindle, really, I think.
Rob:Yeah. Well, I for smaller books, yes, I will print them, and there's there's something really tactile about going through a sheet of paper with a pen and marking it and highlighting and drawing on it. To your point, you can see the arrows where you say I wanna move this to here and that
Helen:to here,
Rob:etcetera. For this latest book, I will probably put it into PDF and then get it onto my iPad where I can then read it and use the Apple Pen to highlight.
Helen:Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.
Rob:It's similar, but it's it's not there's something nice about having your manuscript or having your your book in paper. You can go and sit in a coffee shop, you can go and sit in the lounge or whatever and just go through it.
Helen:I would I would if I if I had less structural problems and it was just it was just spelling and grammar, I probably would be there with you, Rob, but, but right now where I am with my current thing, there's a lot of, I mean, I have a whole chapter that is not, I don't even know if I need to, I might take it out altogether. You know, there's that kind of, is that level. I I've left sentences half finished and then started something else because I know where the story's got to go, but I haven't, I obviously, when I was writing it, I don't want to interrupt my thought processes to get stuck, to find just the right word. So there's lots of like insert sensible word here kind of things. So, yeah.
Helen:But once it's cleaner, maybe, maybe that's a good idea.
Rob:Maybe.
Helen:Red pen. I like the idea of a red pen. I might need to buy one Rob.
Rob:That's it. You're going to need a red pen for sure.
Helen:I'm going to need a red pen. Oh no, no. Look, I've just looked. I have a red FriXion pen, so that will be perfect because I'll able to rub it out if I realize that my mistake was a mistake.
Rob:Awesome. Awesome. I was gonna ask you one I mean, we're this is a fairly long cast now, actually. We're longer than usual. So but I think it's a really interesting topic.
Rob:How can you how do you write multiple books at the same time?
Helen:Oh, because that's how my brain works. Yeah. If you get stuck, if I get stuck with, what's gonna happen next in this story or if I get stuck with how to solve a problem. I mean, I wrote the current novel I have absolutely stuck me because I had a, it's basically a locked room mystery and I did not have a solution. So, you know, that can take really long time.
Helen:So instead of just staring at a blank screen and saying, look, I'm gonna write every day, which I do and I still don't know the answer. You just go and do something else because your subconscious is still working on it, right? So you go and do, right, I'm gonna write about gold mining as was the case for me or I'm gonna go and write about, know, don't know, lost loves and whatever it is, whatever my current short story or I do lots and lots of professional, no I don't mean professional, I mean lots and lots of competitions which are not professional but some of them have prizes but the particular ones I really like are the ones where you get feedback. So there are some really great ones where you can get feedback, You submit your little story and it might be, I don't know, 500 words, it might be a hundred words, writing a story in a hundred words, super, super good discipline, really, really hot. And so you can do that and this is why I try these because I think that it's really, really good for discipline for your language usage.
Helen:And it's really good for getting rid of all the real is that I put into my spoken speech that you shouldn't put into written, written text. So those kinds of words. And when I initially write, when I write the draft, write how I speak. That's really awful because there's so much, you know, I can take 20% of it out.
Rob:Yeah, but I think that's the, you know, it's whatever works, isn't it? Know, read a lot about how other people write and I'm like, God, I wish I could do that. Then I think actually
Helen:You don't.
Rob:Yeah. I don't know whether I need to because you know, there's no shortage of books. There's another one gonna well, actually, I've got about four on the go at the moment, and I've actually got three that are that are waiting to go. I just haven't I just haven't for some reason launched them. So it's it's things like that where you just it's working for me.
Rob:I'm I'm comfortable. I'm happy.
Helen:And the other thing that's really, really handy is that the the tutor I have is really reminds you when you have that imposter syndrome of there are so many good books out there that nobody's telling your story your way, it's only you. And somebody out there will really resonate with it. And actually I'm not, you know, I don't need thousands of people to really like it. I just need a couple of people who go, Hey, that's quite cool because you know, I'm a simple girl. That's
Rob:it. And it's just the the act of of writing whatever whatever helps you to get the words down is the important piece, isn't it? Know, the words are there and then you can start chopping and changing and deleting and refactoring. But, yeah. Awesome.
Rob:Good. Good. Right. We're at, like, 38 on this one. This is well longer than usual.
Rob:So thank you if you're still listening.
Helen:Hopefully, I'll edit some of the, slip ups of mine out, Rob, please.
Rob:Yeah. Possibly. I might add a few more in from previous casts just to spice things up.
Helen:That's so you.
Rob:I do. I've got, like, a little folder that's all Helen's outtakes, and I haven't really. Don't don't worry. I I I don't I
Helen:bet you do. My swearing's better now than it was in the early days.
Rob:Yeah. There's definitely a lot less of that, which is which is good. No need for a parental advisory sticker on the podcast anymore.
Helen:No. No. That's quite good. Yeah. Should be.
Helen:This is personal growth, Rob. Right?
Rob:I think it is. It's changed anyway, whatever it is. So alright. Well, thank you everybody for sticking with us, and it's not been strictly about stationery, but it's a process that I think a lot of people are interested in. They'd love to be able to write a book or they're out actually writing books.
Rob:So please do let us know if you're writing a book or you're doing any sort of writing, what your process is. Leave a comment on the newsletter. It's probably the easiest way to do that. And, again, you can find that stationaryfreaks.com, and the newsletter will accompany this podcast. And yeah, we're still blown away with the numbers, aren't we Helen, every time we check?
Helen:We really are and yeah, we'll put links to everything we've talked about, a couple of tools and all of the things, even Scrivener and what was it? Lexicon or something you called it? Lattix. Lattix, there you go.
Rob:Yeah. We'll put links to all of that into the newsletter as well. So, yeah, thanks again for listening everybody, and we look forward to seeing you or speaking to you in the next podcast. Take care. Bye bye.
Helen:Bye.
