Episode 31
On this Episode of Fulfillment Equation
When this week’s guest, Sharon Bala, moved from a big city to a remote area, she found a door closed on her corporate communications career and a new one opened for pursuing her interest in being a writer. Fast forward years later, and Sharon has become an award-winning, best-selling author whose debut novel “The Boat People” has been a national hit.
In this episode, Sharon describes how she learned to let go of thinking about traditional measures of achievement and instead discovered how to find achievement in the work itself. As she explains, “All you can control are the words on the page, so for me the ambition is to make those words on the page as good as they can be – as true, as resonant, as interesting and as beautiful as they can be”. Redefining ambition allowed Sharon to let go of all of the things she couldn’t control (book sales, cover design, etc.) and focus on what she could control.
Sharon also offers helpful advice for venturing bravely into something new, particularly for aspiring writers. Often the hardest part is just getting started! How do you get from a place of nothing to a place of something? The answer is: one word at a time, one sentence at a time, one paragraph at a time, one chapter at a time. As Sharon says so simply, “if you want to be a writer, just start writing”!
She also describes how to manage your own expectations to take steps toward creating something you’ll be proud of. As Sharon says, “The first draft’s job is not to be good, it’s just to be done”. Then the second draft is a little better and the third draft is a little better and so on, until hopefully you reach a final draft that meets (or even better, exceeds) your expectations.
In our conversation we also explore developing resilience to failure and rejection, and how community is just as important to a writer as is solitude.
Finally, we build her equation (she is the first to rethink it as a pie chart with percentages!): 60% v + 30% cf + 10% en
Plus, what’s the one thing that Sharon says a lot of new writers underestimate? Listen to hear more!
Fulfillment is a good day of writing.
– Sharon Bala
About the Guest
Sharon Bala is a best-selling author whose debut novel, The Boat People, won the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction (among many other awards), was featured on CBC’s Canada Reads and has been translated into four languages. She lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland with her husband Tom and is a member of The Port Authority writing group.
Transcript
I’m Erin Mayo and welcome to the Fulfillment Equation, the podcast where we explore how to spark and foster more fulfillment in your own life through a focus on freedom, purpose and experiences. What’s your unique equation? Have you ever wanted to try something new? A few years ago, I decided that I wanted to spend more time writing as a creative endeavor. Specifically, I wanted to write a series of articles that would eventually all come together to form a comprehensive book called, you guessed it, the Fulfillment Equation. And that is the journey I’m on now. But how does one go about learning something new like this? I didn’t take a single literature course in university. I hadn’t dabbled in writing as a hobby before. I didn’t even keep a journal. Well, so far it seems that venturing bravely into something new involves two things.
show more01:03
Erin
Number one, stop thinking and just do, because the only way to get better at something is to take a crack at it over and over again. And number two, learn from people who know something about what it is you’re trying to do. Luckily for all of us, I happen to know someone who knows a great deal about being a writer. Today I am welcoming to the podcast Sharon Bala. Sharon’s number one best selling debut novel, the Boat People won the 2019 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction and has been translated into four languages. It was also long listed for the International Dublin Literary Award and the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and shortlisted for CBC’s Canada Reads, the Amazon Canada First Novel Award, the Thomas Rattle Atlantic Fiction Award, and the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award.
01:54
Erin
And while it’s nice to have all of this recognition, the fact is that Sharon’s success is not the main reason I want to talk to her today. I’ve known Sharon for 25 years and she’s quite simply a really great person. Sharon lives in St. John’s Newfoundland with her husband Tom, who by the way, is a math professor. How cool is that? Today, Sharon and I are going to dig into a few key Fulfillment Equation foundations that show up in her life as a writer, and perhaps she will also leave us with some of her wisdom on how we can foster our own creativity. Welcome Sharon!
02:27
Sharon
Hi, thank you for that introduction.
02:31
Erin
So I’ve given a bit of a bio, but before we dive into our conversation, I’d like for listeners to have a chance to get to know you a little bit better. So in your own words, tell us your story.
02:43
Sharon
Well, it’s funny that you said you hadn’t taken a literature class, and I think I’ve only taken one and a half.
02:53
Erin
Marginally more than me.
02:55
Sharon
Marginally more, yeah. When we were at Queen’s together, I took a first year English class. And then I think it was like maybe a third year English class, but it was only for one semester, so it was only half a credit. And I didn’t take any creative writing classes while I was there. Which, you know, if I could rewind my life and go back, I would take far more of those. Maybe, maybe. Although that’s a tricky thing, right? When you think about, like going back in time.
03:23
Erin
Oh, yeah.
03:24
Sharon
Would you screw it up? Would you? Not right where you are right now. Yeah. So the first time I started writing, really, that I remember, was in grade three. And it was in school. And our teacher would give us these creative writing assignments. I can’t even remember what they were, but we would get these full scat papers. Do you remember those? They were like extra long sheets of paper. And I think we had to complete either one side or both sides. But it was the first time that I remember feeling like I wanted to complete a school assignment. Not to finish the assignment or get a good grade or make my teacher happy, but because I genuinely wanted to do this thing. And when it was over, I wanted to keep going.
04:09
Sharon
Like, I remember filling out more and more of those sheets of paper so that was my first memory of being a writer. And then after that, the next time I remember really writing was when I was 13. My dad worked, I think, for Dell computers, but he brought home this. This big honking personal computer. Remember the PCs? The big ones? And my mom taught me because she had a typewriter. She taught me how to touch type before we learned it in school. And once I knew how to touch type, I could type so much faster than I could write, which is still the case. And then I would just come home from school and I would get on this computer and remember Word Perfect?
04:51
Erin
Yes.
04:51
Sharon
Yeah. I would write novels. I mean, they were terrible. They were all about teenagers dying badly on, like, deserted islands. And it was always, which teenager killed all their friends? I definitely wrote different kinds of garbage all the way through.
05:08
Erin
You were experimenting. You were experimenting.
05:10
Sharon
But I never thought I was going to be a writer. It was just something I did for fun. And then in high school, the last year of high school, we had a creative writing class that was offered for an English credit. And I did that. And it’s funny because I tried writing about something that was sort of. It was fiction, but it was based on something that had actually happened in my life, which was that family friends of ours, really more like friendly acquaintances of our family, had a really terrible thing happen in their family. And it was the first experience I had of the death of someone who is younger than me. And I tried to write about it when I was in high school.
05:52
Sharon
And I don’t know what happened to that story, but I remember thinking that was the first time I wrote something that was actually sort of true and good. And I had not forgotten that incident or forgotten that story exactly, but sort of thought that was the end of it. But then I went to university and I sort of put all the writing away for a very long time because I thought, well, that’s a hobby. That’s not what I’m going to do. That’s not like a viable career. Which, it’s true, it’s not a viable career.
06:29
Erin
Wait a minute. That’s not what you’re supposed to say. Where were the origins, though, of that belief that you had? And, and in all seriousness, do you think that they were valid?
06:42
Sharon
Yeah, yeah, they were totally valid. That that belief is totally valid. I think it came from a couple of places. One, when we were in high school and when we were in elementary school, we would read stories, none of them, but were written by people who looked like me, which is to say, like anyone who wasn’t white. But very few of those stories were even written by women. Like, if we think about it, if I think about that first year English class that I took in undergrad, I can think of exactly two women on the curriculum. One was Virginia Woolf and the other one was Katherine Mansfield. So not only were these women dead, but they were only two, and they looked nothing like me. And so there was that, which is not a connection I made at the time.
07:33
Sharon
But I think certainly not seeing people who looked like me either in the stories or in the kind of on the title pages of books certainly helped to kind of make me feel like this isn’t a valid career for me. But also there were like five careers and they were doctor, lawyer, accountant, engineer, teacher, and these five careers.
08:04
Erin
This came from like your upbringing?.
08:08
Sharon
Sort of, although my mother really said to me, don’t be a doctor because then you’ll give up your life. Like, you don’t. We had a. We had a doctor in the family and this doctor, like my mother felt and was probably correct, didn’t have any time for like any kind of life outside of medicine. And so she said, don’t be a doctor. And I did not have, oh, now.
08:29
Erin
Your list is down to four.
08:33
Erin
This is a freaking list.
08:34
Sharon
I wasn’t going to be a teacher either because, oh my God, going back to high school, why I thought I was going to be a lawyer for a while in high school. I thought that would be really fun. And I took some law classes and then I hit on this idea of being a counselor, like a psychologist, a clinical psychologist. And that’s what I went to school. That’s what I went to when we were at Queens. That’s what I was for a while doing. But then I took a bunch of psych classes and felt like it was very disheartening. It just didn’t feel like I could help people. That’s not true at all. But that’s the way that I felt. And I also maybe correctly felt like I couldn’t really listen to people and their problems without wanting to tell them what to do.
09:23
Sharon
It’s not a great way probably to be a therapist. And so it’s probably for the best that I didn’t end up doing that. So I had a first career in public relations, which is in communications, which was a great career. I really loved it and it was kind of great because I got to write a lot, although not creatively at all. It uses very different writing muscles, very different. But it was a great career and actually really came in handy for the part of my writing career that involves forward facing and marketing and promoting. Promoting myself. But yeah, then when I was about 30, we moved to St. John’s where I didn’t know a single person and the winters are very long and very hard. And the second year I was here I signed up for writing class in the evenings just for fun.
10:13
Sharon
And I thought this is going to be a fun way to spend some time and maybe I’ll meet people and I’ll make friends. And then I signed up to what’s called Writers NL now, which is the Writers alliance of the Province.
10:26
Erin
Okay.
10:27
Sharon
Through that opened a couple of doors, one of which was the opportunity to do a five month mentorship with a published author who worked with me one-on-one on these stories. So for a few years I was writing these short stories and sending them to be published in literary magazines across the country. And they were mostly getting, I mean they were all getting rejected. But it was a good practice. It’s good to kind of practice that muscle of rejection and resilience to rejection. And then in 2013, I had what I thought was a pretty good collection of short stories and I submitted those to an unpublished manuscript competition called The Fresh Fish. And I didn’t get shortlisted or long listed or win or anything, but when I sent those off, I thought, okay, that’s the end of one project.
11:22
Sharon
What’s my next project going to be? And I started thinking, well, I’ve been working on short stories for a couple of years now. I feel like I could maybe try to do something longer, like a novel. And that’s when I started working on what would become the Boat People. Newfoundland’s a really good place to be a writer, actually, because there’s a really good, supportive community here. But also we have a good number of competitions for unpublished authors and unpublished manuscripts, including one for a first novel that’s unpublished called the Percy Janes. It’s every year it’s free to submit to. And so I made that my deadline and I finished a first draft and submitted it to this award.
12:06
Sharon
And then while I was waiting for their results, I revised a couple of times and I ended up winning that award and getting a bit of money. And then I submitted a revised version of the manuscript to the Fresh Fish again, which is an award that comes every two years and it’s in the summer. So I submitted to that and I was shortlisted for that. And around the same time, everything sort of came kind of happened at once. And it was in the summer of 2015. So this. So the unpublished early version of the Boat People had these success with these two awards, and at the same time, I had maybe four or five short stories finally picked up for publication. I queried a couple of agents, three agents, and one of them said she would take me on.
13:00
Sharon
And then by February of the following year, she had sold the rights to the Boat People in Canada and the U.S. And that was like February of 2016. And I said, okay, I feel like I can let go of this first career and give up communications and be a writer full time.
13:20
Erin
Wow. What a feeling.
13:22
Sharon
Yeah.
13:23
Erin
What kind of change would you have needed to make in your mindset to go from living in or near Toronto, big city, corporate communications career, and then you’re living in a remote area of Canada, writing.
13:43
Sharon
We lived in downtown Toronto. If we still lived there’s no way I could be a writer. It’s just not financially feasible. I know people do it, and I’m not saying it can’t be done, but I’m a person who needs, like, reasonable amount of financial security and I cannot live with financial insecurity. So there’s no way I could have given up a very good communications career too.
14:10
Erin
Right. So hugely, this move. This move opened up that possibility for you.
14:17
Sharon
Yes. The other thing that happened is the move sort of forced the door close on communications in a certain way. We moved here in 2010, so the possibilities for remote work were quite different then. The possibilities to have a job at a head office that was remote was quite different then. So, yeah, I really felt like this ladder that had been on was suddenly a step stool in one career. But it was sort of like when that door closed and this other possibility opened where, you know, we could buy a house here, which realistically we could not do in Toronto. And even now, when I think about the rent we were paying back then and just guessing how much that place, that apartment that we love probably goes for it now, just like kind of want to cry.
15:10
Sharon
I don’t know how people do it, so. And then the other thing really is that the writing community here, as I said, is just incredible. And I was very lucky and I’m so fortunate to be part of it. So part of it is that physical move. The other thing is that in the interim between when I was in school and when I was starting to write, the number of books that were being published by people who look like me, by women, the number of books that were not just being published but being. Were being promoted, were at the front of the bookstores, that kind of thing. That whole landscape changed and it’s still really changing. And I think I, like, just when I published was like just at the beginning of that, in a way, it. That change sort of had to happen.
15:57
Erin
Right?
15:58
Sharon
Yeah. Yeah.
15:59
Erin
I have a couple of questions out of that because then if we circle back to earlier in the conversation where you felt like the choices were limited because of, you know, not a lot of women writers, not a lot of non white writers. Do you feel like if you were in that same spot now, that would be different? Has that changed that much?
16:23
Sharon
Like if I was 16 now?
16:25
Erin
Yeah.
16:26
Sharon
Oh, yes. Yes. Just based on what I’m hearing, my teacher friends tell me about what they’re teaching on their curriculums, based on school visits that I get to make virtually and in person, based on if you go to the bookstore and look around.
16:46
Erin
Yeah.
16:47
Sharon
The. It’s not just the curriculum, but there’s a big difference in the books there. Yeah.
16:54
Erin
That’s so good to hear. The other thing I was thinking about was when you were describing being very motivated in your communications career by, you know, this ladder or whatever, obviously there’s an achievement orientedness there.
17:07
Sharon
Oh, yeah. I wanted to be a director by 40. I remember saying to Tom, my husband, I was saying this when I was 25, if I am not a director or higher by the time I’m 40, I’m quitting this. I’m quitting this field because it won’t make any sense.
17:24
Erin
So did you find a similar type ladder in your new career as a writer? I don’t know enough about the industry to know, like, do you just have a new definition of what achievement orientedness looks like, or did you have to let go a little bit of that way of thinking?
17:42
Sharon
I don’t imagine or think about my writing career as being a ladder. It’s maybe more like snakes and ladders or shoots and ladders, because so much of the traditional markers of achievement. So things like how many copies of the book you sell and how much money you make on each book and how many awards the book is up for, those kinds of things are so out of your control and often have just as much to do, I think, with luck as they do with the quality of the work you put out. Yeah. And so much of it is really arbitrary. So the. The way that I think now about ambition and achievement in terms of my work is I have to let go of those markers. You know, like, how big of an advance am I going to get for a book?
18:46
Sharon
How many copies am I going to sell? You know, all that kind of stuff. I have to let it go. And instead I think about the achievement of the work itself. How close am I coming to writing this story in the way that I want to write it? How close is this sentence coming to getting across the feeling, the intangible emotion, the insight. The perfectness of the sentence. How close is that? You know, when I was talking about in my communications career, one of the ways in which I always wanted to be was always trying new things, always learning new things, always pushing myself. And that’s exactly the same in writing, except it’s. It’s in a creative way.
19:34
Erin
Your joy is in the creation and in the betterment of your own writing rather than in whatever result may or may not come from it.
19:45
Sharon
The results are completely out of the writer’s control. There’s just no way. I mean, you can do. It’s not. It’s not true. It’s not totally out of the writer’s control. You can do all the things and it can still not work, or you can do none of the things and somehow it’s. It’s like a blockbuster. And so all you can really control is the book that you put out or the story that you put out into the world. You can’t control the cover. You can’t control what’s on the back copy, like the way that they market it. You can’t control things like how the book is categorized.
20:23
Sharon
So, for example, in the public library system, my book, which is literally about refugees who have no home, is categorized as domestic fiction, which is pretty ironic, but also not unexpected because the author is a woman, and so, of course, what else would she write but domestic fiction.
20:40
Erin
I don’t even know what that category label means. Oh, fiction.
20:45
Sharon
It generally means fiction that takes place in a home or about a home. And it’s often put on women authors, like, by rote, because, of course, this is where we exist. Even though many men write what I consider domestic fiction as well and do it really well. But yes, the other categories could be, like, political fiction or refugee fiction, or like, these are all categories that I think sort of fit my book a little bit better. But, you know, you can’t control that. That’s totally out of your control. So all these things are out of your control. All you can control are the words on the page. And so for me, the. The sort of ambition is to make those words on the page as good as they can be.
21:30
Sharon
Meaning as true as they can be, as resonant as they can be, as interesting as they can be, as beautiful as they can be. I’m reading a lot of Alice Monroe right now because everyone is, because she just passed away. But she’s so brilliant. She’s so brilliant. And her way of getting at deep emotional truth and her access to human psychology is just almost unparalleled. And I’m working on a couple of short stories. I haven’t written short stories in a very long time, and I’ve just come back to them. So my ambition is to try to get these stories as close to. Not that I could ever write like Alice Munroe, like, no one can write like anyone else, but that way that she makes me as a reader, feel. I want readers to feel that when they read my work.
22:25
Sharon
And that’s my ambition, is to, like, get somehow there, which is a really harder and not as easy as just getting to be director. Yeah, I think it’s almost easier to be director because there’s, like, clear steps that you can take.
22:46
Erin
Right.
22:47
Sharon
Whereas how can you marvel a reader? How can you leave a reader feeling. I don’t even know how to describe it.
22:54
Erin
Well, I think what it is there’s no roadmap to that. Yeah, you know, like there’s no clear roadmap to that destination. And so you’re forging the way that’s bigger. Yeah, yeah. I wanted to talk a bit about feeling an intuition, and I think you segued us nicely as well because we’re touching on themes around uncertainty and ambiguity. And so how has feeling and intuition played a role in your life both personally and as a writer? And are these skills that you always had or have you had to develop them a little bit along the way?
23:38
Sharon
I think I’ve always been a person who acts from the gut, but I didn’t quite put my finger on that for a long time. And now that I’ve put my finger on it, I’m more attuned to it and can hopefully maybe sometimes do it in a way that is intentional rather than knee jerk. But in terms of intuition and feeling, for me that’s really important in writing. You know, some writers, there are these two camps of writers. This is like a kind of quick and dirty way to think about writers.
24:12
Erin
Okay.
24:13
Sharon
There are answers and there are who fly by the seat of their pants and there are plotters who will plot out a story. So they know before they begin what is the timeline, what’s the outline, what’s going to happen in each chapter, what’s going to happen in each scene. That’s the end of this. That’s one end of the spectrum. Or they might have a general idea, but generally they like to work with some kind of roadmap. And then there are other writers who just start to write without knowing anything and just kind of fly by the seat of their pants. Ironically, in my regular life, I’m very organized and conscientious and have a, you know, plan and a to do-list. And in my writing life, I am chaotic neutral or chaotic evil maybe. Do you know the.
25:08
Sharon
That grid of like law abiding versus law breaking and chaotic and neutral?
25:15
Erin
No, but is it a good old two by two?
25:17
Sharon
It’s a three by. It’s a three by three.
25:20
Erin
Okay.
25:21
Sharon
I think it comes from fantasy/sci fi maybe. Okay. From that world. And it’s this idea of you’ve got characters who are rule followers and characters who are rule breakers. And then you have the chaotic ones. Right. So it’s following chaotic rule breaking and then you have good evil and neutral, okay, plot characters. So if you think about the Joker, you know, he is chaotic evil and someone like Batman is. He’s not a rule follower, so he’s A rule breaker, but he’s good.
25:57
Erin
Yeah, yeah.
25:59
Sharon
And so you can plot characters this way. Anyway, my process is just completely chaotic. Lying by the seat of my pants, which makes me feel very uncomfortable sometimes. But I think it’s the only way I can write. And so I use a lot of intuition and feeling when I’m writing. I’ll often have a feeling of how I want the sentence. I won’t know the sentence, but I have a feeling I want to evoke. And then I just start putting words down, like not in a sentence, but just individual words.
26:31
Erin
Right.
26:31
Sharon
To see if one of them fits, gets close. And if it doesn’t get. If it’s close but not quite there, I’ll bring up thesaurus and see is there a better word? And then I find the word and then I. And then I build the rest of the sentence around the word.
26:46
Erin
Oh, neat.
26:47
Sharon
That’s how chaotic it is. That’s how chaotic it is. Yeah. Now, now think about writing a novel that way.
26:52
Erin
That’s awesome. But it seems to work. And so you’re able to straddle those two very different tie types of approaches in your home life and then in your writing life. That’s amazing.
27:07
Sharon
Yeah. And in the business side of my writing life, I’m very organized. And just the complete opposite of this, like, pantser approach.
27:15
Erin
Right.
27:15
Sharon
Like in my work, if you hire me to write an article or something like that, I’m going to write the article in this chaotic way. That’s going to be the process. But it’s going to be done on time and I’m not going to be flying by the seat of my pants. And I’m going to have an idea of when I’m writing before I start writing. You know, if you hire me to come and speak to your class, I’m going to be there on time. I’m going to have done homework and prepared. But yeah, if I’m working on a short story like I am now, it’s just.
27:47
Erin
That was kind of liberating, actually. What have you learned about the importance of mindset when it comes to being a writer?
27:56
Sharon
Oh, that’s a good question. So much of being a writer is figuring out a mindset that’s going to work for you. So figuring out where you sit on this spectrum of pantser versus plotter, realistically, not what do you aspire to be, but what are you. And then just sitting in that and getting comfortable with it and figuring out a process where you’re not fighting it. And then the other side of mindset is also getting used to failure and rejection and finding a balance between sitting in those bad feelings and not letting them overwhelm you. So not ignore. I don’t think you can really ignore them because they will find a way to come out, but you also can’t let them take over because then you’ll never do your work and you will be miserable to other writers.
28:58
Sharon
Because we are all in competition with each other. I mean, our books are there on the shelf, and you as the customer, have to decide how much of your limited budget you’re going to spend on those books. And so not every book can be bought. And also we don’t have all the time in the world. And so not every book can be read. So you. We are all inherently in competition with each other, but we can also work together. And it’s so much nicer when we work together and when we support each other. And even as we are in competition with each other, we are also all in conversation with each other, and our books are in conversation with each other. And none of our books or our stories can exist on its own.
29:42
Sharon
We all are getting better through reading each other’s work and improving our own craft by listening to each other talk at events or interviewing each other, or just talking to each other. Our books are part of a community of books, and we are all part of a community as well. So those feelings of rejection and loss, you know when you don’t get a good book deal or you don’t get an agent or the book doesn’t sell at all and you’ve written this manuscript and you’ve worked hard on it and you can’t find a publisher for it or even just you’re struggling to get a story written and your friend has, like, written three novels in the interim. Everyone feels bad. But you can’t let those feelings overwhelm you. Otherwise you’ll just. I think you’ll just take it out on other people.
30:41
Sharon
Slash yourself, slash your work. And so part of the mindset is just figuring this kind of stuff out and figuring out a way to keep writing even when your stories don’t get accepted or you can’t find a home for a story. Finding a mindset that allows you to just keep trying and trying.
31:03
Erin
How do you deal with the rejection? How do you deal with the competition? How do you keep showing up?
31:10
Sharon
Part of it is relying on the community because everyone who’s a writer has been through this. And I guess the nice thing about being a grown up is that unlike when we were young, we sort of know that we’re not special, that everyone is the same and everyone basically has the same struggles. And so for me, it is relying on a close group of writer friends who I can rely on because they know what it means when I say, I have sent this story out 17 places, and they know what it means when I say, you know, we’re, we’re struggling to sell the manuscript. They know exactly what that means. And so when they say, oh, that sucks, it feels better than when someone who’s not a writer sympathizes.
32:03
Erin
Authentic. And it’s with empathy.
32:05
Sharon
Yes. Because they’re thinking about all the times that they had the same failure.
32:09
Erin
Right.
32:09
Sharon
And so that’s part of it. And then for me, the big part of it is just going back to the work because that’s all I can control. And if I have a good day of writing, I feel good.
32:19
Erin
You’ve already answered the second part of my next question, which was around what role does community and connection play in writing? So I’ll ask the first part, which is, what role does solitude play in writing?
32:32
Sharon
Oh, I feel like all my day is solitude. But also I feel like I’m never really alone when I’m writing fiction because I have all these characters. Right. So I’m not alone. It’s also important for me to have solitude with books I’m reading and to be in the worlds of other authors and in with their characters. That’s really important for me. Do you know this expression art monster?
32:56
Erin
No.
32:57
Sharon
I’m trying to think of who coined it. Now I think it’s an American author. Whoever originally coined this expression, it might not be their take on it. My definition is an art monster is a person who does nothing but their. Their artwork and they ignore everything. And so once in a while, usually once every summer actually, my husband goes to the cabin and spends time with his brother and takes the dog and I’m home really alone. And what can happen then is I can become an art monster who works until 3am and doesn’t get up until 11 in the morning and maybe eats at weird times and maybe doesn’t leave the house and maybe doesn’t shower and maybe doesn’t talk to anybody and just kind of becomes this kind of monster in a cave.
33:45
Erin
You’re engrossed in it. Yeah, yeah.
33:48
Sharon
And it’s great. It can be really fruitful and incredible. And I had a period like this last summer for about a week or so, and it was wonderful. But also it was terrible because it’s terrible to be a monster. It’s really terrible to be a monster. I mean, for one thing, it’s probably not great to be up until 3.
34:12
Erin
It’s maybe not sustainable, but I can definitely relate to that in that I do sometimes find a great deal of fulfillment and satisfaction from having the ability to be really engrossed in something, like to the point where you’re forgetting to eat. That’s when you know, like, you’re into something.
34:32
Sharon
So the part of the monstrousness is this aspect of selfishness, sure. Which comes with zero guilt. When I get to be home alone and there’s no. But being a monster is also completely unsustainable. And that kind of solitude for me is also incredibly unsustainable. And I start to go a little squirrely. And so what I’ve learned, this is also part of maybe the mindset or process, is that in these periods of time when I know I’m going to get to be an art monster, I try to schedule social breaks. I am scheduled to leave the house and see real people and interact with real people and maybe go see some art and maybe go see a play, maybe go see a movie, maybe sit out somewhere and have a drink with someone. Yeah, but that.
35:22
Sharon
I came to that kind of the hard way by being a monster and just kind of feeling sort of miserable and not knowing why. So for me, solitude is important, but equally important is the part of my life that is not solitude, that is in community. And I think that requires a little bit more purposefulness when you’re a writer and don’t have a 9 to 5 kind of a job.
35:48
Erin
Right.
35:49
Sharon
But also, as important as it is for me to nourish the creative aspect by reading, it’s equally important for me to nourish the creative aspect by being out in the world among people. Because where else am I going to hear excellent dialogue that I can bring up to the page? Where else am I going to see interesting, like, human interactions? You know, where else am I going to be able to pick out features of faces and bodies and gestures and body language to bring back to the page? Like, where is all of that going to come from, if not from the world? I had a real problem in the pandemic and I sit outside and try to eavesdrop on all of my neighbors as much as possible. But it was a sort of a limited. It was a limited.
36:42
Erin
That’s hilarious. But that makes a lot of sense. I love that. Do you have any tips for people who are interested in dipping their toes into new things creatively or bringing more creativity into their lives.
36:56
Sharon
I think you said it in the introduction, which is like, just to do it.
37:00
Erin
Yeah, definitely.
37:01
Sharon
Just to do it. If you. If you want to be a writer, then just start writing. I mean, it’s sounds really stupid, but if you write, you’re a writer. So I would say start writing. I would say. One thing that a lot of writers, when they’re first starting out, underestimate is the importance of reading. And not just reading, but reading carefully and closely paying attention to what is interesting to you. What makes you turn pages, what makes you stop to reread the words, to really, like, what makes. What are those moments that make you stop and say huh? And then think. And people always say, we’re trying to get the reader to turn the page.
37:39
Sharon
And I think, yes, but also for me, I’m trying to get the reader to also stop and go, huh, and, like, have that feeling of huh, resonate with them through their day, so that they’re coming back kind of mentally to the thing that I have given them rather than just consuming it. Like, it’s a. Like it’s a quick meal that you’re swallowing down by turning pages.
38:05
Erin
Oh, yeah.
38:06
Sharon
And try to figure out what it is that you like. Like what’s your taste as a reader? And then that’ll help you figure out what kind of stories you want to write. And then you’re also reading carefully for craft. So when you figure out that the author has done something that you like, that resonates with you, that makes you think or that makes you turn the page or whatever it is that you appreciate. You’re trying to then figure out how have they done it. So that’s like reading for craft. I. I liken it to dissection. You know, in biology class, you’re like.
38:45
Erin
A little reading scientist.
38:47
Sharon
Yes. Yes. You’re approaching it like a kind of scientist, really, analytically. What is it that the author has done? There’s so many good resources all over the web that will teach you aspects of craft. There are also excellent books. There are also classes you can take. You can check out your library or local university and see, is there a writer in residence? Can you learn from them? Are there low fee or pay what you can or free writing workshops or classes that you can do as a result of the pandemic. There’s so much available kind of online, so you’re not limited by geography as much. And then maybe you take an evening class like I did. Maybe you get a little bit brave and submit your work to a publication or to a contest. There are lots of options that are.
39:34
Sharon
Again, like free submission or low fee submission. Yeah, that’s my advice on writing. And the other thing I would say is that when I was first starting, a lot of what I wrote was really bad. And I felt it was bad because I was.
39:50
Erin
At the time, Even at the time you felt it was bad, or is it more just looking back now?
39:55
Sharon
No, at the time, I knew it was bad. I knew it was bad because maybe that’s not the right word. No, I mean, it was bad, but it. It wasn’t. It wasn’t doing the thing I wanted it to do. And I thought that was a bad thing, but actually that’s a normal thing. And I think if you think you’re writing isn’t meeting your expectations, let’s put it that way, let’s take away bad and good and say, is it meeting your expectations? If you feel like your work is not meeting your expectations, that’s a good thing because it means that you have taste and your taste is high. There’s a whole kind of little talk about this by Ira Glass, you know, from this American Life. And he. You can probably find it on YouTube.
40:34
Sharon
He talks about how when you’re first starting out, everything is bad. And that’s a good sign. It means that you have taste and your taste is good. And you recognize that the things you’re writing aren’t meeting your taste. And so you just keep working at it. And now when I look back at some of that stuff, I can see that there were good sentences, they were strong sentences. And it was that knowledge that there were these, like, moments of good writing and these moments of clarity of thought and clarity of sentiment. And those were the things that kept me going. And those were also the things that made me see that the rest of it wasn’t at that level.
41:13
Erin
Right, right.
41:15
Sharon
But even now, you know, the things I work on, I. I know that they’re. They’re not good. And that’s fine. That’s the point of a first draft. The first draft’s job is not to be good. It’s just to be done. That’s the job of the first draft. The job of the second draft is not to be good. It’s to be better than the first draft. On and on until you get the final draft.
41:39
Erin
Nice.
41:40
Sharon
That draft, the purpose of that draft is to be as excellent as you can make it.
41:44
Erin
That’s amazing. I love that continuous improvement approach and just the recognition that if you see something that’s not meeting your expectations, then it’s a good thing because it’s actually helping you narrow in on exactly where it is that you want to work to better.
41:59
Sharon
Yeah. I mean, I don’t ever want to get to the point where I feel like, oh, I’ve done it now. Right. I’m the perfect writer. I’m the writer I want to be. Because I, I would hope that, and I think that this is true, that my taste is improved and my ambition for my work is higher and higher all the time. Right. So I’m always like raising that bar and yes, to get better. I mean, I’m sure this is the same with every art, with every craft, with every sport, every kind of work. You’re always trying to improve.
42:26
Erin
Human nature, perhaps.
42:30
Sharon
Yeah, yeah. You’re always going to evolve.
42:33
Erin
Yeah. Let’s build your equation. So we’re going to start by figuring out what are the things that you like to do as part of a regular week.
42:45
Sharon
Okay. So a good chunk of it has to be community oriented. Like I, I think relationality is something that is sometimes forgotten in life, that we don’t live on our own, we don’t exist on our own. Even if you live on your own in your own home, you’re not on an island. And if you are, you’re probably going to wither away. You live in community with your neighbors, with your circle of friends, with your peers, with your co-workers, with your colleagues, with the people you pass on the street who you don’t know that well. And so for me, a big part of what makes me feel fulfilled is feeling part of a community, which means I want to spend time with my community. That could mean chatting with people I meet on a dog walk.
43:37
Sharon
It could mean going to a yoga class with a friend. It could mean going to a party, seeing a bunch of friends. I know. And having dinner together. It’s so nice right now. It’s so a lot of time is spent outside chatting with my neighbors on our decks.
43:55
Erin
Yeah, nice. I called that community/friendship. Does that sound reasonable?
44:01
Sharon
Yeah, Yeah. I mean, it could also be like chiming into the group chat.
44:05
Erin
Sure. Online community.
44:08
Sharon
In that case, talking to my mom. You know?
44:12
Erin
What else? Writing.
44:14
Sharon
Yeah, writing. The creative part of writing is really important. And the time I have to spend with creative writing really fluctuates because my work isn’t 9 to 5 and because the freelance part of my work is so feast and famine that then it makes the creative writing part kind of feast and famine. And sometimes I. I just went through the between, like Christmas to the end of March. I had a pretty extended period of working on my novel, the next novel that’s coming out, where I got notes from my editor. And I was at a pretty tight deadline and just had to really, like, focus in and do that almost to the exclusion of every other kind of work. But now things are a little more flexible and I’m. I have more time to do some freelance work.
45:06
Sharon
But yes, working on creative work has to be in there somewhere. Reading is part of that too. Yeah. And the other part of it too, of what I consider a kind of work is. I mean, it’s really nice work, but it’s also work is going to a play or seeing a movie or watching a TV show and paying attention and thinking about how is the story constructed? Where is my attention waning and why? And what are they doing with dialog? What are they doing with the form of storytelling? How can I use this for myself? So part of my work is that I also need some kind of physical activity. So that could be going to a spin class or running on the treadmill or going to yoga class or going. The weather is so nice right now.
45:57
Sharon
We get to go on hikes, like really nice hikes. Being out in nature is really important.
46:04
Erin
That’s great. So we’ve got community/friendship, creative writing, reading, studying storytelling is what I called your whole movies, TV thing. Exercise, nature. I’m wondering if there’s stuff that you have to do to support your writing that isn’t your writing.
46:24
Sharon
Oh, yeah, yeah. There’s only. There’s like the administrative part of like I’m. I run my own business. Right. I’m essentially my own business. So there’s the administrative side of things. There’s also the freelance side of things. So for today, for example, I pitched a couple of reviews. I work one-on-one with emerging writers or people who are figuring out how to write. I work with them on their manuscripts. I’m reading for a competition right now, so I had to kind of read some submissions. So there’s all of that sort of work that makes money because I can’t rely on the creative writing to make money, although I am lucky and my creative writing does make money. But it’s. Yeah. To. I have to apply to a couple of writer in residence gigs. So it’s like all that kind of stuff. There’s really four parts.
47:11
Sharon
There’s the admin part, the freelance part, the creative writing part, and then the marketing part of the work. And this stuff is always, like, the mix of how much time I spend on any of these things in any given day or any given month is always fluctuating.
47:30
Erin
It will be a little bit interesting as we transition here into putting some proportions, because obviously what I’m hearing is, you know, you almost have a proportion for those four pieces, and then within that, it depends on what stage you’re at with your writing.
47:49
Sharon
Yeah, I mean, if I could have my way, I would do zero freelance and zero admin and like, 80. 20, 80 writing, 20 marketing. But if I want to sell books, then I have to do more marketing than that.
48:07
Erin
So if you think about a typical week, maybe we won’t go into the details of those four pieces because they can fluctuate so much. But, like, how many blocks of time would you give to the lot of it?
48:22
Sharon
Yeah, I think it’s probably, maybe easier for me to think about it in terms of percentage. Percentages. Like a pie. And then, like. Like, I would say, if it. If the week is a pie.
48:34
Erin
Yes.
48:35
Sharon
Then I think I’d want at least maybe 25% of that pie to be some kind of relational activity where it’s like going for a walk with my husband and we’re having, like, a nice chat as we walk. Or maybe it’s getting together with friends to go and see, like, an art show, an art exhibit or something like that. Or like, a long conversation with my best friend who lives on the other side of the country. I would say at least 25%.
49:01
Erin
If we’re doing a pie instead, then what proportion would be all of the work stuff we did already? Is that like 50% or 40?
49:10
Sharon
What does 50 look like? 50 plus 25 is 75.
49:15
Erin
Yeah. And then we have reading and studying storytelling and exercise in nature.
49:22
Sharon
Okay. Exercise in nature should be like. Should be five. Okay, 5%. Some of that kind of overlaps, right? Like, I go to. For a walk with a friend or go to a spin class with a friend.
49:33
Erin
Do you see them as a category together, or do you see them as separate, the exercise in nature?
49:39
Sharon
No, I think they’re probably separate. It’s hard because the weather here is so bad, and sometimes you just. You’re not getting out into nature apart from, like, walking in a miserable weather with the dog. And then. And then in the summer, I will drop everything and just take days off of work to go outside, because that’s. That’s when you’re getting It. But ideal. Let’s say 5% is exercise and 5 is nature.
50:02
Erin
Sure. How much is reading?
50:05
Sharon
Well, I count reading as work, actually, so it’s in there with the 50%. Maybe that 50 needs to be higher.
50:14
Erin
Okay, I think we’re getting somewhere here. What I’m going to do is I’m going to lump some stuff together, and I think we’ve got some good percentages out of that. I guess the only other question I have is, like, we talked about the community and friendship piece. Is time with your spouse in that, too, or did you want that as a separate one?
50:35
Sharon
Nope, he’s in there.
50:36
Erin
Okay, perfect. So I’m gonna up that one a little bit. Okay. I think yours is actually pretty simple. We’ve got 60% of. I’m going to call it work. And I kind of hate how that word has all sorts of connotations, but it’s 60% of things like creative writing, reading, studying storytelling, your administration, your freelance, and your marketing. It’s all of the things that are part of your occupation or whatever it is that you want to call that.
51:10
Sharon
I get a lot of fulfillment out of work. I mean, I’m. It’s really a privilege, and it’s very lucky to get to do work you love and that you think of not as work so much as a vocation.
51:23
Erin
Oh, a vocation. I like that.
51:25
Sharon
Yeah. Until my brain goes, don’t plan to retire. And I’m always working. You know, if my husband and I are making dinner and we’re having a conversation and he’s telling me about some scandal in the math department, or he’s, you know, just telling me about something that happened in his day, I am always some part of my brain mining it and always putting it away for later. Yeah. So I’m working or like, if I’m out and about, like people watching or chatting with friends and they’re telling me things, I’m also thinking about what are the psychological kind of waves, undercurrents, in this scenario between all of us who are here, between what’s happening in the anecdote they’re telling me? I’m always sort of at work in that way, putting things for later. And so I don’t think about work as a dirty word.
52:29
Erin
I like how you called it vocation. So. So here’s what we’ve got. And you are the first to develop their equation in percentages. So I think that’s pretty exciting. 60% vocation, which includes creative writing, reading, studying, storytelling, the administration, the freelance, the marketing, all of that stuff in different proportions depending on where you are in your work cycle. And then we’ve got 30%, which is community, friendship, spouse, all of those interactions with other people. And then 10% for things like exercise and nature.
53:09
Sharon
Yeah, that sounds pretty good actually. Nice.
53:13
Erin
Before I let you go, we’ll just do a few quick rapid fire questions. Are you ready?
53:19
Sharon
Yes.
53:20
Erin
Okay, finish the sentence. Fulfillment is…
53:22
Sharon
A good day of writing.
53:27
Erin
Give me an example of a small moment of joy you had in the last 24 hours.
53:32
Sharon
I was sitting outside this morning. I woke up really early this morning and I was sitting on the deck in the sun and it was that perfect temperature and the dogs were under the table at my feet and I was working on a story quietly, in solitude before anyone woke up, anyone at all. It was great.
53:55
Erin
You painted a perfect picture there. I love it. What is a book you read or a podcast you listen to that changed the way you think?
54:04
Sharon
I’m reading one right now, actually. I’m listening to it on audible and it is completely changing the way I think. It is called Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution. It’s a non fiction by Dr. Cat Bohannon. I’m probably saying her name wrong, but it looks at human evolution from the perspective of the female body.
54:28
Erin
That would be really interesting. And we don’t often have books told from a female perspective or the contributions that women have made along the way to.
54:38
Sharon
And the necessity of the female body driving evolution.
54:43
Erin
In one sentence. What does freedom look like to you?
54:47
Sharon
Agency and choice.
54:49
Erin
What is the coolest place you visited or a place you visited that exceeded your expectations?
54:55
Sharon
Japan. We went in 2006 and it was never on my bucket list. And once we got there, I realized I was so wrong. It is the most incredible country.
55:08
Erin
What is something you do regularly to fill your own cup?
55:12
Sharon
I go to a really good yoga class or it’s like a Sunday and I make a nice slow meal by myself with a podcast or a book.
55:22
Erin
Oh, that sounds amazing. Sharon, thank you so much for being on the podcast. This has been just lovely. I feel like I’ve learned a lot about creativity and writing and just personally, it’s been so lovely to reconnect. I’m grateful for this opportunity and you’ve fed into my community and friendship bucket today. So thank you for that.
55:44
Sharon
Thanks, Erin. That was really fun.
55:46
Erin
And what’s up for the rest of your day? Now you have to do one of these things.
55:50
Sharon
I have to take the dogs for a walk. I haven’t taken them for a walk yet. And then I’m gonna read some Alice Monroe.
55:59
Erin
Lovely. Thank you again, Sharon. This was just so great. Have a good walk with your pups.
56:05
Sharon
Thanks. Bye.
