Embracing the Shadow Self for Authentic Writing with Joanna Penn

What's hiding in your shadow self, and how can you use it to improve your writing?

Today's conversation with Joanna Penn is a brilliant look at what it takes to unearth the raw essence of author creativity.

Joanna Penn writes non-fiction for authors and is an award-nominated, New York Times and USA Today bestselling thriller author as J.F. Penn. She’s also an award-winning podcaster, creative entrepreneur, and international professional speaker. www.TheCreativePenn.com

In this interview, we talk about her book "Writing the Shadow" while reflecting on our own personal strides in writing and business - from transitioning from the corporate world to the arts, tackling email conundrums, and developing a growth mindset.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:37

Hi everyone, welcome to the AuthorWeal podcast. I'm Greta Boris, USA Today Bestselling Mystery Thriller. Author.

Speaker 2: 0:45

And I'm Megan Haskell, award-winning fantasy adventure author. Together we are the AuthorWeal this week. We have one of our bucket list guests on the show, the fantabulous Joanna Penn. It was such an honor to interview her about her book Writing the Shadow, which, by the way, if you have not yet picked up that book, you totally should. She talks about how to tap into the parts of yourself that you've hidden from the world to foster greater depth and emotion in your stories. It's a great interview and we were so excited that she could join us. We've been listening to her for years, so this is going to be a really good one. But before we get into that, greta, how are things going for you this week?

Speaker 1: 1:30

Oh well, much better than last week. But before I say that, I do want to also echo Joanna Penn, and I think I say it on the podcast. It's been really one of my virtual mentors. I've been following her for probably close to 10 years, yeah, and so if you guys haven't heard her podcast, the Creative Penn, you are missing out. So anyway, yes, just wanted to highlight that is one heck of an interview coming up. So me, I'm happy to say, my email account is fixed with all the things. I am authenticated and demarked and marked up and whatever, and it was a rugged process but it's done. Other than that, I set up a couple of new Facebook ads this week, so I'm chewing my fingernails to see if they're going to be good ones and perform. And then, as you know, I have been buried in creating our new courses, which I feel are going great, and I cannot wait for them to be done for one reason because then we can tell the world about them.

Speaker 2: 2:38

Yeah yeah, we are so close and honestly, that's. My big news this week too, is just that we are so close to being done, at least with the recordings and everything. It'll take a little bit more time to get it edited and uploaded and all the worksheets prepped and Everything, pretty.

Speaker 2: 2:58

All the descriptions and copywriting and stuff like that too. So we do still have quite a bit of work to do, but the recordings and the content are essentially done and I'm feeling really, really good about it. So yeah, stay tuned for more on that, all you listeners, because it's going to be good. On the fiction side of my life, actually, my writing case has been picking up a little, which I'm really happy about. I've been averaging around 500 words each morning session and then getting some extra time in the afternoons too. So for some people that might not seem like a ton, but given all the work we've been doing on the courses and all the other things that have been going on, I made a pie yesterday for Valentine's Day. It took up most of my morning, but I was very proud of it and I don't care if I missed work.

Speaker 1: 3:48

There you go. You know it was Valentine's.

Speaker 2: 3:50

Day. It was Valentine's Day, so I made a pie Apple pie, in case you were wondering with a heart cut into the crust it was lovely.

Speaker 1: 3:59

It sounds very pretty. I made artichokes. We always make artichokes on Valentine's Day. Do not ask me why, but they're much easier than a pie. There you go, yeah.

Speaker 2: 4:09

Anyway, but yeah, so my writing speed has been picking up, which is great. I'm feeling pretty good so far about the first draft of Aether Burns and I'm excited to keep making progress on that. So I guess that's it. So, with that said, let's jump on in and get to the good stuff. Today we are incredibly honored to have Joanna Penne on the show. This is like kind of a little dream come true for us, so we're thrilled to have her here. But, in case you don't know, joanna Penne writes nonfiction for authors and is an award nominated New York Times and USA Today bestselling thriller author. As JF Penne, she's also an award-winning podcaster, creative entrepreneur and international professional speaker. So, joanna, welcome to the show. We are so thrilled to have you here.

Speaker 3: 5:01

Oh well, thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to talk to you both.

Speaker 2: 5:04

Absolutely so. We have been following you for years, years and years and years, I think both of us. When we first started deciding that we were going to really pursue a career as authors, we started listening to the podcast. I've read your books. I backed your most recent Kickstarter for the.

Speaker 1: 5:25

Writing of the.

Speaker 2: 5:25

Shadow which is amazing. Amazing. It resonated so hard. It was great. So we are honestly thrilled to have you here. But I would love to hear more about your journey into writing. I know you've had kind of a diverse wow, I can't talk today, I'm very sorry a diverse background and, like me, you started off in corporate. But tell us how you became a writer.

Speaker 3: 5:51

Yeah, sure. So obviously, like many people, after university I went and got a corporate job to pay the bills and it seemed like a proper career, you know, and I went into a consulting job. I have a degree in theology, which is completely random, but I went into consulting and got put on learning SAP, which is a large software package, and I ended up specialising in accounts payable and banking. So, like literally one of these jobs, I would go into companies and put in systems and I mean it was a great job in terms of it paid me really well. I got to travel around the world and do lots of things, but I just I was really miserable and I tried to leave several times. I set up other companies, I set up a scuba diving charter boat in New Zealand, I did some property investment, tried doing up properties and all of these other attempts to do stuff. And this was before really the internet made things easy. It was in the difficult days of the internet. So then I just really got to the end of my tether and I was crying at work and I was like what is the point? You know, what is the point in anything I do? I'm yeah, I can pay the bills and blah, blah blah. But there must be more to this. So I went on this sort of period of time where I was thinking about what I should do with my life. This is sort of early 30s. I think a lot of people probably hit this in the early 30s again later on, obviously, but you know, it was like what am I doing? And so that was also around the time Tim Ferriss released the four hour work week and I was really sort of getting into these books around making money on the internet.

Speaker 3: 7:35

And so, sort of 2006, blogging started taking off and I was like, wow, I could write from my room and I could make money. This would be crazy. And so I started learning all that. I started writing my first book, which eventually became career change, which is it was actually called something else originally I rewrote it later on but essentially I started trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, and in that process I discovered writing. And then so that was around 2008, I first self published and then the Kindle and the iPhone launched around then as well. So it was really the beginning of what has become a sort of 15 year digital publishing revolution.

Speaker 3: 8:22

When I started, you still had to sort of print books, have them in your living room and then mail each one. What's so funny is, course, when I'm doing that with some of our Kickstarter services, direct Sales back to that but there was no digital ebooks, downloadable PDFs. At the time, I used to put a tape in my car to convert it to an MP3 player and try and listen to staff, and it was super. We thought it was heyday, but it really wasn't. And so, yeah, that's 2008.

Speaker 3: 8:57

I first self published 2009. I started the creative pen podcast, which I'm still podcasting, and I then I started writing my first novel and I guess, fast forward 2011, I left my job. So it took me five years really to leave my job from 2006 when I started writing, and then it took a few years to make enough money to say I had a decent business around 2015. I started making really good money and overtook my previous salary and, yeah, basically have been full time since then. I have around 40 books across fiction and nonfiction and in the fiction, like thrillers, dark fantasy, horror crime, short stories and memoir as well. So, yeah, really, just keep experimenting, keep trying new things. But yeah, I think that's probably my story.

Speaker 1: 9:51

I love that you're so creative and trying so many creative hands, but actually suits. But yeah, I know I read. I think I read your first arcane novel and I also read desecration. It's like, well, that was very different and really, really enjoyed desecration Enjoy is probably the wrong word, but very, very intrigued and blew through it like it was a total page turner. It was great. So your diversity is just exciting and fun. And I think, just harkening back to what you were saying about your corporate job, I think that is one of the problems. If you have that creative streak, you get in a job where you're doing the same thing every single day. Even if that thing is a good thing, after a while it just makes you lose your mind, you know.

Speaker 3: 10:41

Yeah, and it's interesting and thanks. I know you like the dead things as well. We're writing.

Speaker 3: 10:47

Desecration is for those people who like dead things. But it's interesting. You talked there about the creative self and calling my company the creative pen and you of course, talk about roadblocks on the show. It took me years to think that I was creative and this is possibly a massive mindset. It's that when you take a sort of corporate job, you and especially because I was in software, sort of writing specs I wasn't programming but I was writing specific technical specifications and I think I shut down that creative side and that spiritual side as well for years and every day it was sort of undoing the creativity that you have as a child. And so I guess one of the roadblocks I hit was I didn't think I was creative.

Speaker 3: 11:32

I still have an interview on the creative pen where I say I can't write fiction. I just I just couldn't do that. There is evidence of that on this on my show, on the creative pen podcast, and so I did a lot of affirmations. I read a book called the success principles by Jack Canfield back then, sort of 2008 and 2009ish, whatever it was, and no, it must have been before that because it one of the things is sort of the affirmations. It was around the time of the secret as well.

Speaker 1: 12:02

Yeah, you remember the secret? Oh yeah, everybody I was working with was all secret fide.

Speaker 3: 12:08

Yeah, secret fide. And although some of that is a little bit much for me, the affirmation I carried and said every day I couldn't say it out loud for probably a year was I am creative, I am an author, and I had that. I still have to have the little card, and I couldn't say it out loud for ages. And now, of course, I definitely am creative and I definitely am an author. But I had to change my mindset before I could do the work. In order to do it and I guess that's another tip for people it really is step by step and you have, if you don't believe you can do something, you do have to start with with the mindset.

Speaker 2: 12:44

Yeah, no, I had a very similar experience as well. I mean, again, I have a corporate background, so I was doing forensic accounting back straight out of college.

Speaker 2: 12:54

Yeah, which is sounds really cool but really is just a lot of spreadsheets, which is fine, because I like spreadsheets too. But it took me, like you, it took me years to admit that I was a writer and then to call myself an author, because when I was in that corporate job it was almost almost taboo to be creative Like you, didn't talk about those things, you didn't share those parts of yourself with your coworkers and with the office culture and everything. It was all. How do you get promoted? How do you get ahead? What do you have to do? What are the numbers saying? Who's your latest client? Like all that stuff which was very, very corporate ladder, I suppose. But yeah, if you have that creative personality in your shadow self, which I'm reading now and I love it, like I said, it resonates so hard. But if you have that piece of yourself, letting that out can be both scary and absolutely freeing, which is fantastic.

Speaker 3: 13:58

Yeah, and it is interesting your spreadsheets I mean they're a definitely gift from our corporate career. And it's interesting now that you talk about systems and the author wheel has these sort of process minded things, which and I certainly am very grateful to the 13 years I spent as a consultant in business and even the accounting side, because I feel like from day one I had a goal for my business as in I want to make the same money I was making as a well paid consultant. So I always had in my mind I was going to make money, which I think is important. Too many authors think they'll never make any money.

Speaker 3: 14:38

And then the other thing was this is a business. You know, if you want to do this properly, whether you're traditionally published or an indie, you have to run a business. Otherwise it's a wonderful hobby and there's nothing wrong with it being a wonderful hobby. But it is either a business and a business does can do amazing things, but it also has to make money or it will fold. There has to be a reason to do this and you know we write I don't know one or two or three books for love, and we still write books for love, but there's no way I would have written all the books I have without actually also making me money and people reading them. I don't know about you, ladies.

Speaker 1: 15:16

Oh, yeah, I agree wholeheartedly and I also think that in especially for indie authors, income is a kind of a pat on the back saying you are okay at this job, yes, you can do this. So it sort of helps you to overcome that imposter syndrome thing. If you get a big publishing deal, traditional deal, that helps you take one step out of imposter syndrome potentially. But then if those books don't sell this is me if those books don't sell your traditional deal, then you very quickly slide back into it. So I do think not making money is more of a roadblock for a lot of authors and potentially, because they don't have the business background that you and Megan have, they're coming into it with a sort of a deficit. So I think that's a real plus. So it's interesting to me that it sounds like correct me if I'm wrong that maybe your greatest roadblock was this idea of accepting you are a creative. Is that true?

Speaker 3: 16:25

Oh, I think it's one of them. A20, I was thinking about your questions. Obviously, you sent them to me before. I really don't like the word roadblock. I was thinking about it In my head. A roadblock is you're driving along a kind of a straight road and there's like a police roadblock or something and you stop and you deal with whatever it is and then you drive on, whereas I think for me, the metaphor of the last sort of 15 to 17 years really it seems so long is that it's more like a climb up a mountain, like it's step by step up a hill and then you get to the top of the mountain and then there's another mountain.

Speaker 2: 17:01

Or there's another peak.

Speaker 3: 17:02

There's another peak beyond and this is why this is a good career because, like you said before, if you're doing the same thing every month in, month out and I used to, you know, implementing systems you go to a company, you do the certain things, you put the system live, you leave, you go on, you do it elsewhere, whereas writing books I mean it is a project-based kind of career and making these assets but every book is different, every challenge is different, and then running the business is different, in that we've mentioned direct sales, doing a Kickstarter.

Speaker 3: 17:34

This is a completely different thing to learn than, say, self publishing a book and an e-book on Amazon, or doing an audio book for the first time, or doing some marketing or setting up a podcast. So every time you've mastered one thing, then it's like oh look, there's another thing. So I always feel like each mountain has. That's the way it feels, because I don't. I never felt like I kind of came to a stop and then got over something and then just carried on. It's always like it's moved to the next level. Does that make sense? It's kind of that's how in my head. That's how the author career is.

Speaker 2: 18:08

Yes, absolutely Makes good sense. But I have a question for you then how do you, how did you, when you were climbing these mountains and facing all of these challenges of-.

Speaker 3: 18:17

Still climbing Right still climbing.

Speaker 2: 18:20

We all are. I mean. That, again, is the beauty of this job, is you never stop. But how have you avoided that sense of being overwhelmed or choosing which route up the mountain you were gonna climb this month or this year, or what was that kind of decision process like for you?

Speaker 3: 18:40

It's interesting. I'm sure you know Becca Sein, her book with another co-writer whose name I can't remember right now, but Susan Biskoff I think she is. It's called Dear Writer, are you Intuitive? Yes, wonderful, wonderful book. And when I read that book I was like, oh my goodness, I'm intuitive and I kind of knew it before. But I was almost embarrassed. If you'd interviewed me before I read that book I would have said, oh, this was my process, but humans make up things later to justify the decision that they made. And when I read that book I was like, oh my goodness, I am intuitive and that is literally how I have made decisions.

Speaker 3: 19:26

I hated my last job, my job back in the day, and when I left I was like I'm not gonna do things that make me cry or that I hate. So I guess I've always tried things and if I hate it I have stopped. And if I feel some kind of attraction or some kind of a pull towards something, then I will investigate that further and then if there's some kind of negative feeling and it's all feelings and intuition then I stop doing it. So it's not like I make a positive and negative list and then do it in any kind of rational way, and I think it may be similar in my writing. In my fiction particularly, I'm a discovery writer, so I just don't know what the hell I'm doing, until each day I sit down and do it, and I don't even think I admitted all of this before I wrote how to write a novel, when I deconstructed my own process and I was like, oh, it's just chaos, you just wrangled chaos, and I'm pretty sure I've literally wrangled the chaos of the indie author business. But this is a sometimes this is a real problem, but most of the time it's made a very happy journey for me and one that I'd be like okay, well, let's learn podcasting, jump in and then over time it's worked out, it's doing its stuff and I really enjoy it. And but I keep giving TikTok as the example. I don't want to do video, I just don't do it so like we're on right now and I'm not on video, and so this makes me much happier and thus my career is far more sustainable otherwise.

Speaker 3: 21:00

But to say that I definitely have made mistakes as well mistakes is difficult. I have learned things around thinking that I need to do stuff, so I have done busy work instead of writing sometimes. For example, let's take the Twitter, although I think Twitter has been amazing for me between 2009 and 2022. And then, when Elon Musk took it over and made it X, I was like, oh my goodness, have I just wasted however many 12 years, or whatever it is in building up a platform that now I've lost? But it was a super lesson, was a really good lesson, and I made a lot of relationships along the way.

Speaker 3: 21:42

But I guess this is to say that if you're someone listening who's feels like they're a bit chaotic, well you know, it doesn't really matter as long as you take another step forward. It's never gonna be a straight line up that mountain. You're gonna go off down this little path and it's gonna be maybe pretty for a bit, and then you're like I think I'm off track and you'll wind your way back up again. So yeah, I'm not sure that's the answer you wanted.

Speaker 1: 22:05

That was a fabulous answer and I actually think that that's really true. And what I hear about you when I listen to what you talk about is that you are a very courageous person and not everybody is as courageous as you are, and I think that's when I just came into my head. But I think that's one reason your podcast has been so, has such longevity and resonates with so many people, because you know when you will follow somebody who has that kind of courage, you sort of buck up and well, they can do it, you know, and I love that, because I do think what can turn a climb into a roadblock is fear. And this kind of segues nicely into your writing, the shadow book, because you do talk a lot about kind of dredging up those fears and facing those fears and building them into, I would say, both your fiction and your career.

Speaker 1: 23:07

And I have a little quote from your Kickstarter campaign that I just loved, and it was that we all long to write boldly, without filters or fear, to spin stories that capture the messy beauty of what it means to be human, tales that lay bare the truth of living, darkness and all, but something holds us back. Why don't you talk a little bit more about that, because I feel like that concept is not talked about enough in the author community or in the creative community too, like that musical background. So tell us a little bit more how you challenged that fear and you wrote that book. I think that took a lot of courage.

Speaker 3: 23:54

Yeah, it's funny, I would never use the word courageous about myself, so I appreciate you using that. Again. I feel like I have wanted to write this book on the shadow since I studied Young Ian's Psychology at university back in the 90s. I knew this was a topic I would eventually have to tackle. But as you've read the book and met Megan, there's a lot of personal stuff in there, and so, in terms of being fearless, I think writing things with memoir stuff in is always going to be really hard, and my previous memoir, pilgrimage, is much more. That was terrifying, frankly. That was terrifying because, going through midlife and menopause and mental health issues and all of this, I was like who's going to buy a midlife walking Pilgrimage book? I have it. Yeah, thank you. Well, that's the fun of things. So I think the first thing I would say is when we are most afraid, it is often when we are going to touch people the most. So the thing you're most afraid of sharing may well be the thing that people resonate with, and so, just to, I've had issues with writing the shadow because people don't really understand what it is, but I'll use a metaphor that is in the book, which is, let's say, when you're born or when you're a child, you have this castle with thousands of rooms and then over time you shut doors. So, like Megan and I shut doors to creativity when we took jobs in the corporate world that were not creative jobs. Other people shut other doors. They tell you you can't behave like that, you can't say that, you can't be that, you can't talk like that. Who do you think you are to do that? So over time we shut doors and shut doors, and shut doors and we're sort of left in this more narrow life and then at some point we realized that there are scary things behind some of the doors. We shut them because we're scared of what's behind them, or maybe some trauma, or. But it's not all about trauma. It's also like we were saying the shadow side of maybe you've been hiding, maybe someone listening has been hiding their desire to write because someone said to them early who do you think you are, or you'll never make any money this way, or you're stupid. It's amazing how many people like me who've been told they're stupid by teacher, parent, other person in authority and just because, for example, they couldn't identify with the way that lessons were taught, which, as we know now, people learn in different ways and so we've all got these things that we have hidden. And the shadow is more about what have you hidden that perhaps could benefit you. So where is the gold in your shadow and how can you bring that out?

Speaker 3: 26:54

So another thing for me is I wrote, and the story I tell is when I was at school and I wrote a nightmare in an English class. So we meant to write a story. I wrote a nightmare, I have, and the teacher said to me I think it was about 11 or 12, you can't write that, it's too dark, there's something wrong with you, you can't write this stuff. And so I kind of internalised that need to write the darker story. But, as Gretto, as you've read Desecration, that was my fifth novel and it was the moment when I really started to delve into that darker side of what I wanted to write.

Speaker 3: 27:31

And that has and it's interesting because Joanna Penn you're talking to Joanna Penn, really, but JF Penn, my fiction side is kind of a much darker personality and is not so upbeat. To be honest it is interesting how we can incorporate these various aspects of ourselves into our work, into our fiction and nonfiction, and I feel like writing the Shadow is a crossover between the two sides of myself and also, I think, because I wrote how to Write Nonfiction and how to Write a Novel and this is my other craft book and I feel like this craft book is the one that I think is most me behind it. You know, so often we do self-helpy, self-helpy, but this one has a lot more memoir in. So, yeah, I'd encourage people to not face your fears. That's too hard. Kind of slide in from an angle, trying to incorporate them into your work.

Speaker 2: 28:30

Yeah, Well, so one of the metaphors that I loved and I guess it's not originally yours, I think, but it just really it was great for me it was the chariot with a white horse and a black horse or a shadow horse, and the white horse is the horse that goes along the path that society has said is OK.

Speaker 2: 28:52

They follow all the rules, they stay within the lines, et cetera, et cetera, whereas the shadow horse is the wild chaos of your personality.

Speaker 2: 29:02

And when they're running together you feel more fulfilled, everything's moving smoothly.

Speaker 2: 29:08

But when you try to suppress that chaos horse, it tends to want to fight against the reins and take you in other directions that maybe aren't so satisfying or whatever.

Speaker 2: 29:25

But I really liked that metaphor as I think when both professionally, creatively, artistically, we can use both sides of our personalities, both parts of ourselves or all parts of ourselves, and maybe we don't always share all parts of ourselves in all situations.

Speaker 2: 29:45

In fact, when we talk to some of our students that's one of the things I discourage you pick the pieces that you're ready and willing to share, depending on the scenario that you're in. Like if you're going to a con, you're going to present yourself differently than if you're going to a professional workshop. Right, that all makes sense. But when you can access both or all sides of yourself, everything seems to just click, and I think that's what's so fabulous about your book and about the shadow, but it's something that I hadn't ever really considered or understood, maybe prior to starting to learn about the shadow self and all of that. So tell us a little bit how you found your way into the shadow. I know you said you were a theology or you studied theology and university and psychology, but have you always had, have you always known or been exploring or studying this aspect of psychology?

Speaker 3: 30:49

Yeah, so just on the chariot. So it's Plato's chariot that is in there. It's, you know, like thousands of years old, that metaphor. And just to say that castle's metaphor, debbie Ford, that was from her, just to be clear, and it's all. Obviously cited citations are in the book.

Speaker 2: 31:06

Yes, they are. They are no plagiarism here.

Speaker 3: 31:10

No plagiarism here, but yes, so the in terms of me I did. I'm so grateful that when I was so I guess in the UK we do a levels they're called a levels when you're between the ages of 16 and 18. And I was able to do psychology at a level. So at that age was my first taste of psychology and I had a wonderful teacher who really sort of made me interested in it and I think I would have learned about Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud and all of that back then. I'm always been a massive reader so I would have been reading the books then.

Speaker 3: 31:48

And then when I went to Oxford to do theology, I did a specialism in psychology of religion and I had a young in psychologist who was who was one of my lecturers, and at Oxford you do one on one tutorials. It's quite a different system, so you have a lot more in depth time with with the dons as such the professors. So I absolutely specialized in that area and became absolutely fascinated. In fact in my arcane series Morgan Sierra, my main character is a psychologist at Oxford University specializing in religion, and I was like it's funny because of course I then went into it and all of that and. But I brought my theological interest into my fiction. Pretty much every single one of my books has some kind of religious angle. I'm not a Christian myself, by the way, but it is fascinating to me. So, yeah, I kind of got into it then and I think I've always felt this darker side, this darker pull, and I read a lot of fantasy. You know, when I was a kid as well, I still read a lot of fantasy, but I think I just always had that sense of it and then I didn't know what to do with that idea and it's an idea to talk in the book about how the shadow can play out in your life. So I did for a while have a lot of sort of binge drinking at work not at work but after work, yeah, after work. And it would be like, like you said, I would spend all this time, you know, running my white horse, being respectable and doing the right job and doing it really, really well, and you know paying my taxes and do it, and I'm like there was no outlet, there was no creativity and my dark horse would kind of explode into this sort of drinking and misbehaving. And then I would go back to work and it would all be fine to keep it under check again, and it feels like if you don't have that outlet, if you don't have a way to let your dark horse run, then it can play out in other ways in your life that are quite destructive. So I feel like I have been sort of thinking about this for a really long time and I think just on the timing of writing that book.

Speaker 3: 33:58

This is another thing I wanted to say to people is we have these things that we want to write, but again my intuition told me that I was not ready to write that book for a really long time. I had so many Scrivener projects. I tried to start it multiple times, but each time I was like I don't know how to tackle this project. It's too big, it means too much, I just don't know. And then I wrote Pilgrimage, which again was a completely book that came out of nowhere for me, and then I was like OK, now I understand how to do writing the shadow. So just as a tip for people, I guess is try to listen to when you're ready to write different things. We all grow as writers and learn and become better as we practice. I have in mind to write something along the lines of the Stand by Stephen King, but that is like the doorstop of a book.

Speaker 1: 34:55

Yes, it is.

Speaker 3: 34:57

It's huge and I'm like, oh my goodness, one day I'll write my post-apocalyptic epic.

Speaker 2: 35:02

Vance's theme.

Speaker 3: 35:03

But that might be a while, because I don't write that kind of book right now. So we all grow and learn over time. But I guess the other things to consider is that there are themes that come up over and over again in our writing and you have to pay attention to that because that's important to you. But it also attracts people who it resonates with too, and they're your readers.

Speaker 1: 35:25

Yeah, and that's it. There's a lot of wisdom in that and also in everything you just said, but especially too, about the season you're in, like recognizing the season that you're in, you know you don't plant carrots in the dark days of winter. You know, like you have to know, and I think that is just something that kind of comes with time too and learning to listen to your intuition. And I do love that book by Becca Simon and in fact Becca is just, she's, just really she's very wise.

Speaker 1: 35:59

She is One of my favorites yeah.

Speaker 3: 36:02

Yeah, Sorry, I was going to say I also wanted to say about writing the Shadow. Another thing about a bigger book like that and when I say a bigger it's not physically bigger, it has a lot of weight, I think, in it. When I wrote it I knew that it would not touch everyone right now. So, like, how to write a novel? It's like, okay, how to write a novel. I know I want that because I want to write a novel.

Speaker 3: 36:29

But writing the Shadow I feel like it's one of these books that I hope will sell for the rest of my life. But it's never going to have this massive spike of sales. And that's another thing to say to people is, sometimes these books that we write they're not necessarily going to be some massive hit, but hopefully there'll be a sort of sleeper book that people find their way to, and so you have to have this idea of patience and this sort of knowledge and or knowledge is the wrong word Knowing might be a better word Knowing that people will find it when they need it. That's kind of how I feel about writing the Shadow is that I think I hope it's going to have longevity, more than many of my other sort of more practical nonfiction books. I don't know what do you think, Megan? You said it touched you.

Speaker 2: 37:22

Yeah, no, I think so. I think for me personally because I have, over the last few years, become more and more interested in personality typing and understanding myself and like this is like a exploration that I've been going through for the last few years that I've talked about a lot I think you're on the podcast and elsewhere but I think that's important. So I think for me it was absolutely the right time for this book. But I can absolutely see how for some people it would be quite honestly, too scary or too difficult to tackle. I think you have to go through some phases first before you get to that stage where you're ready to tackle some of these more difficult internal issues. But that being said, yeah, I, there's nothing in there. It's not like like you know how to write, how to write fast productivity books right, you're going to have some tips and tricks, but some things are going to quickly go out of date because tools change or because, systems change or whatever.

Speaker 2: 38:27

I think writing the shadow is more evergreen simply because it's a subject that, as you pointed out, has been around for thousands of years. It's not going anywhere. So yeah, it might not. I mean, I don't know how your sales have been, or, and I actually didn't follow up on what your final numbers were for the Kickstarter, so I don't know. If it was, they were very good.

Speaker 1: 38:55

I supported the campaign I followed and, yeah, they were very good. So they're obvious. The book is obviously resonating. Yes, a goodly number of people. So, yeah, so.

Speaker 2: 39:06

I think you're, but I think, like so many things too with writing, that's kind of the joy of being indie in particular is that you don't have to absolutely knock it out of the park on day one. I mean, it certainly helps, it's certainly nice, it's a good thing when it happens, but if it doesn't, we do always have the ability to go back and change, change the marketing, you know, refresh the cover. You can work on that backlist and that stuff does last as long as you want to push it or as long as you're willing to put effort behind it. I think a book like this has even more longevity just because the subject matter is very personal and very you know of a time within a person's life, but not of a time within a society's life, if that makes sense.

Speaker 1: 39:58

Yeah, thank you. Well, and there's certain books, too, that are like the kind of books that you can read and dip into over a long period of time yourself, and I think I have a number of books like that, and I think this one is going to become one of them. Where you're, there's certain times, you're ready for certain pieces of it, but maybe not the whole thing. Or you read the whole thing and you get a certain thing out of it, and then three years later, you're in a different place in your life and all of a sudden, you get something completely different out of it, because it's absolutely because you're comparing yourself to this process, and I think that's a number, but you know, like the War of Art is another one that kind of does that for me.

Speaker 3: 40:46

Oh, thank you, Because Stephen Pressfield blurted it.

Speaker 1: 40:50

Wow, that is like a little coup. You know, I love Stephen Pressfield. That book is really amazing. So all that to say for people listening, if you are in that place, that you want to kind of get a little deeper, because, oh, this was a point I wanted to make from the very beginning, before we started talking, and that is and this is brief because we're going to wrap up here, but with the fear of AI writing books looming over us I think this is so timely because AI isn't this.

Speaker 1: 41:27

You know, this is human and a machine. Just, no matter how well it can follow the formula and fill in the whatever, it's still not human. And so I think of becoming more in touch with our, our shadow selves, our inner selves, what who we are as human beings, what makes us unique, what makes you and me and Megan all completely different people with different lives in life. Ai is not going to be able to do that. So I think it's a very, very timely topic in a very timely book. Absolutely no. Thank you so much and thank you for writing it.

Speaker 2: 42:07

Thank you for tackling your own shadow so that you can share it with us, so that we can tackle ours, and I have not.

Speaker 1: 42:15

I've read several parts of it, but I haven't gotten to read as much of it as I want, because Christmas, that is Christmas. Anyway, enough on that. So, joanna, why don't you tell people where they can find out more about you your podcast, your books and everything you have going on?

Speaker 3: 42:33

Sure, well, as this is a podcast, you could always come on over to my podcast, which is the creative pen with a double N, and you'll find it on wherever you're listening to this. My website is the creative pencom and you can buy writing the shadow in all the usual places or direct from me, creative pen bookscom, and if you fancy my fiction, that is J F Hen bookscom.

Speaker 2: 43:00

And it's always better to shop direct when you can. So please, please, try to do that if you can.

Speaker 1: 43:07

Yeah Well, this has just been wonderful and I'm just going to leave it there. I'm not going to do any. I think y'all should just go run over and look at Joanna Penn stuff. You know that we have stuff at the author wheelcom, but we're here every week. Joanna Penn's here only once in a while. So head on over to her stuff and until next time, keep your stories rolling.