Beth Barany shares insights on fiction writing, story-telling, empowering women and practical writing and self-publishing tips.
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Welcome to Episode 19 of the Create Your Story Podcast on Fiction Writing and Empowering Your Practical Writing Life. I’m joined by Beth Barany, award winning author, multi genre writer and creativity coach and teacher.
You can listen above or via your favourite podcast app. And/or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
In this episode, we chat about:
- Choosing fiction writing
- Genre fiction and life stories
- World-building and dialoguing with characters
- Centring women in stories as main characters
- Women’s power to negotiate in story and life
- Creative coaching for genre fiction writers
- Writing the best way that works for you
- Discovering your best writing process
- Beth’s writing process and rituals
- Top practical productivity tips for writers
- Filling your well creatively
- Self-publishing tips and processes
Transcript of podcast
Introduction
Welcome to Episode 19 of the Create Your Story Podcast and it’s the 28 of July as I record this.
I’m excited to have Beth Barany join us for the podcast today.
Beth Barany is an award winning author who writes in several genres including young adult adventure fantasy, paranormal romance, and science fiction mysteries. Inspired by living abroad in France and Quebec, she loves creating magical tales of romance, mystery, and adventure that empower women and girls to be the heroes of their own lives. For her day job, Beth helps other novelists write, publish, and market their books as a creativity coach and a teacher. For fun, Beth enjoys walking her neighborhood, gardening, and watching movies and traveling with her husband, author Ezra Barany. They live in Oakland, California with a piano and over 1,000 books.
This is such an incredibly inspiring conversation on storytelling, genre fiction writing, empowering women in story, creative process and finding your own writing process with so practical writing tips all the way through. Beth shares about her own life story as a writer and creativity coach and how she supports other writers to achieve their writing goals.
Grab a pen and a notebook and get ready to jot down ideas to inspire your writing story and practices. I guarantee you will take away so many thoughts to apply in practical and empowering ways from this conversation. Take some time too to learn about Beth’s work and books and connect with her via her website and social media. Beth also has a new podcast out, How to Write the Future, launched in July 2022. The podcast is “for science fiction writers who want to create optimistic stories because when we vision what is possible, we help make it so”. Links in the show notes as ever.
So let’s head into the interview with Beth.
Transcript of interview with Beth Barany
Terri Connellan: Hello, Beth. And welcome to the Create Your Story Podcast.
Beth Barany: Hi Terri thank you so much for having me.
Terri Connellan: It’ll be great to chat today. I know. And it’s just great to connect with you too and to talk about story and writing from many perspectives today. So to kick us off, can you provide a brief overview about your background, how you got to be where you are and the work that you do now?
Beth Barany: Absolutely. Like a lot of writers, I wanted to be a writer since I was small and have been dabbling for quite some time and pursued journalism for a long time. But really my love was fiction and I had a crossroads moment around age 30. Like a lot of people do, and I realized I needed to choose between journalism and fiction. And in fact, a good friend of mine said to me, you need to do one thing, Beth, because I was agonizing between the two. And so I chose fiction because it really spoke to my heart more than journalism. Journalism seemed practical. It was interesting, it was fun. It was also a lot of hard work trying to figure out how to be a freelance writer.
And when I decided to pursue fiction, seriously, it helped me just pursue it as something from the heart while I had a day job. So I didn’t put pressure on it for the longest time to make any kind of money for me. And, fast forward to now where I’ve written all these novels, it really feels like I made the right choice.
I’m so grateful for that. And I started teaching actually, started teaching English to foreigners when I was about the same around 30, 31, because my husband and I were gonna go abroad. We didn’t know where. We got married. And then we were like, yes, we’re gonna go abroad. So we both prepared by getting that four weeks certification to teach English to foreigners.
And that gave me a really lovely teaching background and teaching experience. And I started working in the field as a teacher, teaching English here in the states, before we went abroad, when we ended up going to Paris, France. So I also have been teaching for as long as I’ve been serious about fiction.
I’ve also been teaching actively. And when it came time to be self-employed, which is its own story, that was 16 years ago. I knew that it was gonna be teaching writing, teaching and coaching, coaching writers, cause I had stumbled upon creativity coaching which I got some training in and, you know, always knew I’d be a creativity coach for writers.
I didn’t quite know what that meant at the start, but I knew the creative umbrella was big enough, so I could invent as I went.
So that’s a little bit about that journey and that all kind of coalesced 16 years ago and fast forward to now, I’ve just kind of niched down as I went. First, it was all writers, fiction and nonfiction. It was always oriented towards books because I knew I loved the tangibleness of the books and about eight or nine years ago, I really started honing in on just helping fiction writers and specifically genre fiction writers, which is what I love to read. You know, science fiction, fantasy, mystery, romance, adventure, whatever mashup of those, that was always, always my love since I was a teenager. Actually, since I started reading, as a small girl. So that’s a little bit about my journey and I’m as passionate today as ever about teaching, writing and about writing. It still drives me tremendously today.
Terri Connellan: Oh, fabulous. It’s lovely to hear your journey from that love of books, love of writing through journalism, through fiction, through teaching others and how it’s evolved along the way. Thanks for sharing that with us. So you are an author in several genres, reflecting that love of genre fiction, including young adult adventure, fantasy, paranormal romance, science fiction mysteries. Can you tell us how you came to write in so many diverse genres?
Beth Barany: Well, it didn’t happen overnight. That’s for sure. Ironically, I started with historical fiction, my very first novel, and that was just an exercise in completion. Like I just started writing it spontaneously. I consciously decided, this will be set in 1850s or sixties Paris. Cause I loved that period. I pursued it. It was an exercise in finishing a novel. It took me five years and it taught me a lot. And especially taught me that I did not want to stick to the facts I wanted to make it up. I really wanted it. It kind of came alive for me as I was finishing that project. I’m like, oh, I really love fantasy.
I really love the fairy tales and folklore that I read as a child. So I tried to do that in my second book. It was inspired by the hero’s journey as it’s mapped out in the book, The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler. But it ended up being a time travel to the future with romance, with spies, with mystery. And I had a character who was an investigator and the woman was a bar owner who was kind of in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It was really fun, but I couldn’t do anything with it. I didn’t know how to sell it. It was just my second book. I didn’t know what I was doing. So then I put that aside after struggling with it. And I came back to a story that I wrote when I was 20, a three page story about Henrietta, the dragon slayer, who was telling her adventure in a tavern and kind of drunk about how she killed this dragon.
And at that point, when I was 20, when I wrote it, I stopped it there. I didn’t know what to do with it. And now here I was fast forward at two books that were shoved in the closet. And I’m like, wait a minute. Now that didn’t quite work and book number two, didn’t quite work. What do I really, really, really love?
Oh, I love fantasy. I love folklore. I love fairy tales and I’ve always, always wanted an adventure story with a woman in charge going on adventures. Cause I grew up with Jack, the giant killer, Jack and the bean stalk, Jack and the seven giants. There’s all these Jack stories. And as a young child, eight years old, seven years old, I was upset that there wasn’t a girl going on those adventures.
So that was the impetus of the original story when I was 20. I’m like, she’s gonna go on adventures, but I was 20. I hadn’t yet gone on any adventures myself. So fast forward to there I was 35 years old about that and I was looking for the next story.
And I remembered this story or maybe someone reminded me of it. I sat down and now with some experience and life experience and writing experience, I was able to write that story. And that’s Henrietta the Dragon Slayer, which is book one in that trilogy. Everything clicked like my deep love from a childhood, my desire to put a woman in the driver’s seat of the adventure.
I now had the chops. I had the experience, I understood what the hero’s journey was, and it felt very intuitive for me. And I was able to write that story. So that’s really how fantasy came about. But I was also in love with romance. I love a lot of things like a lot of people. I’ve read widely and in my twenties I started reading a lot of romance and I really loved how romance helped me as a young woman just open my heart and help me define what I wanted in a love relationship.
So I joined the romance writing community here in the local San Francisco area and was trying my hand at it, dabbling dabbling. And while everyone else around me is writing romance, I was just doing my fantasy. Finally, a whole bunch of different events happened so that I came up with a fun idea. And my critique partners said, well, why don’t we all write a little romance around that fun idea? So I wrote a novella and I really fell in love with that shorter form. A novella is about a hundred pages. Novels are like 230 pages and upward, you know, standard novels, about 300 pages.
And that really got me excited to write short romances. And again, the paranormal, which is basically fantastical elements and I love magic. I always have. So every book has like a different kind of magic. And a lot of it is inspired by folklore. And some of it is inspired by other parts of my childhood, like Christmas elves have a place in my childhood.
So it was really a fun, playful space. And of course it still had the fantastical elements. And then science fiction came about because, again, many interests. I’ve been interested in science since I was a child. I studied science in high school. I was gonna be a doctor until about age 19 when I said, no, the college sciences are too hard and that’s not where my true love is, but I still loved science. And so about six years ago, I was trying to decide whether or not I would pursue more romance and more like paranormal, romantic adventure stories or this other idea, which was a woman investigator on a space station, which came to me in a literal dream.
So I was literally weighing these two ideas at a screenwriter’s conference and had a chance to pitch to the teacher in a big class on science fiction writing, screenplay writing for science fiction stories. The teacher said to me, oh, you’re writing CSI in space. And I said, yes, I am . That was so helpful to see what came out of me, which was an idea, a very strong idea and a very strong concept.
And I got really excited and I knew after sitting on it for about a day, I’m like, yeah, I’m pursuing this. I’m gonna pursue this. It kind of came to me pretty quickly that I would write four books fairly quickly. I wrote all four books in seven months.
I edited those books slowly, cause my father unfortunately was sick and dying. So while that was happening and I was helping with the caretaking, I was able to slowly edit those books while writing my business. And then in the fall of 2019, I knew it was time that I had done all the easy edits.
Now it’s time for the final edits and I released all four books, two in 2020, one in 2021 and then one in the spring of 2022. And those are the four books that I had written very quickly. And now I’m preparing to write book five. So it’s like you never know where the imagination’s gonna take you and who knows? Am I going to come up with other stories and different genres? Maybe, but right now I’m really dedicated to the science fiction mystery series.
I’m still pursuing fantasy. And I still have this romantic suspense adventure story on the back burner that I knew when I first came up with the idea in 2015, that it would take me at least a decade to write because it is big, it’s like a nine book series, all this world building, which I know we’ll get to later.
And so I have many ideas and they brew or percolate on the back burner until I really inquire into my creativity. What am I ready to write next? And I really let that one thing pop up and everything else gets to be pushed to the back-burner and that’s my creative process. So I unexpectedly am writing science fiction mysteries, but not totally. Like, if you look in my past, you’re like, oh yeah, I see all the signs. This is not out of the blue that I’m writing these genres.
Terri Connellan: Mm. Yeah. That’s fascinating to hear how your passion, your imagination and the craft has sort of come together over your journey. As you said, it’s one thing to get the idea, have the imagination, but then, you mentioned all the way through, you know, I was at this conference, I worked with this critique friend. There’s the craft aspects too all the way through.
And I loved too hearing how you follow up on the ideas, but also allow them to brew and to ferment and see what comes to the surface. It’s yeah, beautiful to hear about your process. With all of that, you must be incredibly skilled at world building. So what does world building mean to you and how do you go about creating different worlds in your fiction?
Beth Barany: That’s such a great question. And it’s something I’m deeply focused on now, cause I’m also creating a whole program and I’m launching a podcast on this topic called How to Write the Future. And that’s specifically for science fiction writers who want to build positive futures. But bringing it even further in terms of fantasy, really world building is creating a world that your characters live in.
They live in it. They are the ones who are my guides and every world has a past, you know, how it came to be, whether it’s the origin stories or the things the adults tell the children in school, what everyone’s telling each other in media. Hey, this is how we got here. Right? And then every world has its present day infrastructure and systems and the way things are that other people created in the past. And then every world has its vision for itself of the future. What they tell themselves they can be or what they can’t be. So every world has its rules. There’s always a boundary of some kind, and there’s always the dos and the don’ts, whether that’s through actual laws or the parents telling the children or the unspoken social customs.
So keying into all of that is world building. And making decisions and some writers write that up ahead of time. Some writers figure it out as they write. Some do accommodation, some refine it in edits. I actually do a combination of all of those. I realised early on that it was overwhelming to try and figure out my world from some godlike perspective. That felt alien to me, even though it also felt what was expected.
A lot of people don’t realize that our idea of especially a fantasy is really filtered through what Tolkein did, who was a professor and that was his way. That was his way of going about things. That’s not the way, that was that person’s way. And so a lot of people that have come to expect fairy tales or fantasies to one, maybe have sort of a fairytale feeling where there is no world built or it all starts with a history.
And I just felt that was artificial. I’m a very character driven storyteller. So Henrietta is 17 at the opening of the book. She doesn’t know a whole lot about her world, but I realised if I could understand the world from her perspective, that was enough. So I would interview my character while I was brainstorming the story and also in edits.
And then as the series advanced, because there’s three books so far in the series, I interviewed other characters and what they knew about the world. Then sometimes I would be interviewing characters who never even showed up in the stories, but they became part of the background. Someone who knew someone or someone who maybe never had a speaking role, but they were there. And so I could interview them. And that became how I discovered the world, through my characters.
Terri Connellan: And how do you interview them? In a dialogue, written dialogue?
Beth Barany: Mm-hmm written dialogue. Yeah. I love doing that. And I think it’s important for writers to realize that we’re writers, writers write and the best way to discover the story is through writing. For a lot of people, not everyone has that process. I know my husband, who’s a writer. He can just lie in bed and daydream a whole bunch of things, make a lot of decisions and then write them down. Whereas I tend to be in that playful space, through the written form. I literally discover the story through the brainstorming process and the first drafting process.
Terri Connellan: Great. I love hearing different ways people come into the writing process. So do you think world building is something anybody can do? I guess some people might be naturally able to world build than others, or do you think it’s a skill anyone can learn?
Beth Barany: I think it’s a skill anyone can learn. I mean, if we think back to childhood. Most children get the opportunity to play and play make believe. Well ,they’re world building. They are literally world building. So for most people that is an instinct from childhood and to tap into that and to come back also to that childhood inspiration and then continue to nurture it.
I think there’s two big parts of world building. One is noticing what’s in your imagination and really giving yourself permission to write that down and to really imagine that as a fully realized reality. And then the other part is to study and research and fill your imagination with lots and lots of things that maybe you don’t know. Studying other cultures, reading books that you don’t normally read, getting to know folklore from other cultures that aren’t your own reading. Reading books and watching television, watching documentaries. Follow your interests and there you’re feeding your creativity.
And then from there then you get to sit down and then write down and see what comes out. See what’s ready to be articulated and enter into your story. So I absolutely think anyone can learn to do world building if that’s what they want. They especially have to want it yeah. And then I believe they can learn.
Terri Connellan: Great. And I love those two points about noticing and studying and research it’s beautiful to begin scoping that for people. So thank you. You’ve mentioned earlier that one of your driving themes is empowering women and girls to be the heroes of their own lives and to center them in your stories. I really love that. So tell us a bit more about this focus in your work.
Beth Barany: Absolutely. I really love putting my main characters as women in roles of leadership, either growing into leadership, which I notice I write a lot about in my young adult adventure fantasy. I mean appropriate for the age, being 17, 18. In my little paranormal series so far, all of my heroines are business owners of one kind or another. And I love exploring that.
They’re in charge, they decide and I love seeing that. When I was in my twenties and reading lots of romance, there was this one author who would also often put her heroines in that position of self leadership. I love you use the term self leadership in your work. And they were in charge and learning what that is and working hard to make those dreams reality.
And then I noticed with my science fiction mystery. She’s the lead detective and she is in charge and she’s also newly in charge. She’s in her thirties. So I am exploring kind of that stage of life and she’s in charge. And what does she do with her power and how does she run her team? And some of the day to day decisions while she’s both solving a mystery and running a team and dealing with people who have power out in her system that are deciding her fate.
So she’s kind of in the middle. She’s not entirely on her own. That’s also something I’m exploring. Like we, as women, we need to be in power, need to have our own power. And we are working within systems where there’s other people who have other kinds of power and we’re all in negotiations. And I wanna kind of presence that, that we are in negotiations all the time.
We don’t have to be the victim here. We can be equal to the powers that that are outside of us. And that’s the first time I’ve articulated that. That’s how I see it. And I think for so long, women have, and I’m speaking historically like long term, like several thousand years, we have been trained that we have no power. We’ve been told that we don’t have a voice.
So of course we believe it to survive. And so the paradigms are changing around the world and I want to be a part of that. I want my stories to show women with agency, with power negotiating, with others, with power making changes in the world, small or large, and really stepping into their, think you mentioned in your book, the zone of genius, or I was reading something about the zone of genius today.
I’m like, yeah. What if we are all in our zone of genius? So the more women and girls see that, the more opportunities open up in their own minds. So storytelling is so pivotal to that. This is how we learn is through story. Whether it’s a story from our parents or from the house of worship or from the school or from the government or the community center.
Adults are telling stories to children overtly and without speaking as well. So I’m a culture maker, I’m a storyteller. I want women and girls to open up to their possibilities and to see and hear new stories, whether they’re made up like by me. Or I even have a project where I want to do some retelling of historical stories that have been basically left out. And a lot of those are coming to light as well in our cultures. It’s time. I feel like it’s time. It’s now. So that drives me, the work I’m doing. It’s important that I show my woman investigator Janey McCallister doing her work.
And it’s important to me to show vulnerabilities as well. This is not about being superhuman. As much as I love my superheroes who are behind me in my figurines here on my desk, we all have vulnerabilities. Well, even they have vulnerabilities, Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel and Princess Leia. They also have vulnerabilities and look at what they did, look at the power they held and how they wielded their power. Those are the things I want to put into my stories and then continue to generate conversations around.
Terri Connellan: Oh, I really love that. And I love that it’s looking at different ages, like 17, like 30 like, moving on in life. I think that’s great because there’s different challenges for women and girls at different stages of life. And to be able to have stories they can read where they can see women with agency. I particularly enjoyed the points you made about negotiating equally with people in power. I’m thinking of stories which I won’t share cause they’re private stories, but they’ve been very much about that power of women to stand their own ground and to say, well, no, I’m here to do this and I’m not here to do that.
And these are the terms on which I’ll be here and that takes a lot of bravery. It takes a lot of courage. So to be able to have those conversations, have this conversation and to see women having those conversations in story, I think is so powerful.
Beth Barany: Yeah. And just talking about this, you know, I had to learn how to negotiate in business. I didn’t know. I thought I knew, but when it came time in the training to practice it, I realized how I actually was unskilled and unpracticed in negotiation and didn’t really understand the ins and outs. So it is really awesome that we’re talking about this. It’s actually giving me some story ideas for the next book or a subsequent book to like really deeply put it in there and very overtly, because again, we aren’t necessarily taught how to negotiate.
Especially here in the United States, there’s a lot of either or conversations. You know, you’re either with me or you’re against me. Well, that leaves zero room for negotiation zero, absolutely zero. And it’s a zero sum game and it’s all, it’s a win, lose model. And how do you go from there? That’s the question.
Terri Connellan: Look forward to those ideas bearing fruit. Cause I think it’s really important work. So alongside your writing, you also help other novelists write, publish, and market their books as a creativity coach. So what support do you provide novelists and what are the common areas of challenge that you help address?
Beth Barany: I have a school called Barany School of Fiction where people can come in and learn the planning phase of writing novel, the writing phase, the editing phase, the publishing phase and the marketing phase. So we help, with the focus on genre fiction novelists, all these phases. We generally help people who are at the earlier stages of their writing.
They may be experienced at writing, maybe non-fiction, but they’ve never done fiction. And so we really help them gain clarity and offer very practical hands on tools to get moving. These lessons aren’t theoretical. They’re all designed to get you working on your story. And we’ve had hundreds and hundreds of students take our courses, both live and self paced, and it’s just fabulous to watch them really fulfil that dream of being a novelist.
And so we also offer once a year, a 60 day novel course, it’s actually coming up in 2022, starting October, one where we walk you through the process of planning your novel based on our ‘Plan Your Novel Like a Pro’ book, and course, the home study course. So we do this live in terms of weekly calls.
You have weekly support calls, and then in November, we invite you to write your novel. Write alongside the National Novel Writing challenge that was started here in the San Francisco bay area, and which is now international. So we use that energy and we provide support through this class we have. Two teachers other than me, plus me as a support and a coach. That’s the live class that we do every year.
And then I also work with writers one on one. I create customized programs for them. We’ll get on zoom or phone and we will meet on a regular basis sometimes twice a month, sometimes once a month. And we really work at their pace. They need highly customized work. And then every once in a while people come through and they’re like, oh, I just need one session. So we’ll do a deep dive session for clarity and transformational work. I bring in some of my other tools, including N L P, which is neurolinguistic programming, which is really a toolkit helping people with compassion to help them come to terms with where they are as well as support their transformation.
So a gentle transformative toolkit that I love. And I bring in my other skill set as well with all my tools as a writer and an editor.
So those are the main ways that I support people. And of course, I also teach workshops. I’ve been overseas multiple times and I’ve gone to multiple conferences. My favorite thing to do is get people working together in a room on their own material, activating people, inspiring them, helping them really get into action. That’s my absolute favorite thing to do. That’s how I support people in my role as a coach and a teacher and a workshop leader.
Terri Connellan: Awesome. And what sort of challenges do you find crop up most commonly? What issues are people facing?
Beth Barany: There’s the whole craft piece, learning the skills of craft, but really what I notice I’m helping people with the most is making friends with their creative process. Or another way of saying that is getting to know their creative process and separating out the should and the, oh, that’s how other people do it, or this is what it means to be a writer that they might have seen in a finished product. They don’t actually know how deeply messy the creative process is and how there’s a whole host of unknowns that they are basically walking through. And it can be scary if you’ve never done that. It can feel very uncertain. And they could really doubt themselves and then think something’s wrong with themselves.
So really a big part of my work is really helping people come to terms with their creative process and get to know what is their creative process and how can they harness that and make it work for them because each writer is unique. And while I can tell you how to design a character or how to design a world, or how to design a story arc, learning how to sit down and make friends with that creative process is really the work, in my opinion.
Terri Connellan: Yeah, it’s something that’s dear to my heart and my work too. I work with personality type, Jungian personality type in a similar way that you might use tools as insights into people’s personal preferences and processes. And, it’s absolutely right. There’s the writing process and the steps that you can go through, but there’s all the different ways we can approach that and navigate that process and find out what works for us. Whether we’re introvert preference or extrovert, for example, it’ll be different. So, yeah, really interesting. So how can writers use who they are to help write their book their own way?
Beth Barany: Yeah. I love this question and really the first place I usually start with everyone is where is their high point energy in the day? And let’s use that time for your creative work. So maybe some people like to write in the morning, like one of my clients. I have another client who would like to write right after dinner.
My favorite time to write is right after lunch so that’s my high standard energy time. Some people can write any time of day, like my husband. Other people want to write very late at night or very early in the morning . There’s no one right way. But I really inquire and I work with people, like, what is your favorite time? When is your energy the highest? If you could put your writing, let’s put it there and then help people come up with strategies and habits and help them harness the habits that are already working in their life and repurpose some of those things they may be doing unconsciously, but well, and regularly.
Like a lot of the self care habits we have, brushing your teeth is an example I use all the time. Or even just making sure we have our favorite breakfast every morning. Okay, what are the things that you do to ensure that happens? Let’s walk you through the writing process and let’s help you anchor the beginning, getting into the writing, the writing itself, and also some kind of closing ritual that allows you to kind of close the circle, so to speak.
And it allows you to go back to the other things that are happening in your life so these two points of entry are really powerful. Cause once you can really write in your prime time and really anchor the coming in and the doing and the leaving then you can get work done. Then you can show up and you can do the assignments in the planning class, or you can do whatever is next that you know is right for you and do the writing cause writer’s write. That’s what we do.
Terri Connellan: I think that’s great. Two really important places to start and when we’re talking about using who they are, it’s about, like you say, finding what’s the right time for you, when your energy is the best. Cause often we make choices that don’t always work in our best interests. Even though we might think it’s the right thing to do, cause everybody says, write in the morning or do this, but it might not be right for us.
Beth Barany: Absolutely. And here’s another point. Some people are like, oh, all the experts say I should write every. And I say no, if that isn’t working for you, don’t try and squeeze yourself into that. I notice now that I’m generating a lot of nonfiction content consciously, I’m writing every day, because it’s part of my wellbeing. When I’m working on a story, it is generally, I’ve tracked it, it’s like four to six days a week. So just because there’s the perceived wisdom and the experts are saying, you should do it this way, actually do it the way it works for you.
For example, I have another client who tends to write on the weekends. Some evenings he can fit in after a long day of work. But it’s the weekends. He calls himself a binge writer and that has served him. He’s gotten this far, he is polishing up his fantasy novel. It is his way.
Other people are writing when all the kids are out of the house, or other people are writing whatever they can at these odd little moments. So what I notice is it doesn’t really matter what the experts say. What matters is what works for you. So dig into that, lean into that, use your natural inclination and go with it.
Which means writing down ideas in the middle of the night or dictating into your phone, when you’re driving. I have another client, he drives a lot for his work. And so I was helping him figure out the tech and the tools and opening up the possibility that he can dictate his book. He doesn’t need to type his book. And he was like, wow. Oh my God, that’s perfect. Because he also moving into voice acting and he is very auditory and very verbal. So that was perfect for him. And just helping him settle into that routine. He’s like, oh my goodness. I could get my novel done in like a month. It was so beautiful to watch him dig into his skills, his strengths, his habits that were already working for him.
So I really encourage people to open up that possibility and ask what if I could make it work? What would be the best ingredients for me, and really kind of push away perceived wisdom, because that can sometimes get in the way of what your heart is saying to you. No matter how odd it looks from the outside, that doesn’t matter.
What matters is that you get in your creative groove. It really doesn’t matter the way it might appear. You’re stepping outside of yourself and you’re putting yourself into someone else’s imagined perception of you. It’s completely made up. it’s entirely a fiction. Awesome. You’re a fiction writer. Let’s focus on the stories you wanna tell. It can be very easy in this world of social media to really feel the gaze of the other, but it’s not always appropriate in the creative writing process to be paying any attention to that.
There comes a time, especially when you’re in the editing phase and where you’re working on bringing your work out into the world. You do want to start perceiving the gaze of the other. That helps us refine our work. But in the beginning phases, we need to protect the space, put up tall walls of that garden and really let yourself flourish within your own vibration, your own energy, your own heart, because that is where the truth is. We all want each other’s truth. We don’t want perceived wisdom. There’s already that stuff out there. We wanna know what you think, what you vision, what’s in your heart.
Terri Connellan: Mm. Yeah, that’s beautiful. And I love that question. Great one for us all to ask ourselves. What if I could make it work? That’s fabulous. I love that. It’s a great one to journal on just to have a good think about as a take away from our conversation. So thank you. So what does your writing process look like? I’m really interested to know. You’ve touch a little bit about the brewing and the ideas that come and the world building but yeah, tell us a bit more about what your writing process looks like.
Beth Barany: Well, I’ve really been going through a shift in the last six months or so, where I’ve realized that I used to have a bucket for fiction writing and then a bucket for the nonfiction writing, which would include marketing writing, and curriculum writing and, and the weekly newsletter, which is like an inspirational essay and the how to pieces and all of the instructional things.
And they were living in two different territories. And I realised, actually this has been brewing for almost a year now, that I wanted to put a bigger boundary around it. So there was one bucket and it was called creating. And that’s where I would create whatever content, whether it was fiction or non-fiction, whether it was for the novel or the short story or the podcast that’s coming out or the weekly newsletter or whatever is ready to pop.
So I’ve noticed over the years that when I sit down to write with an intention to write, sometimes surprising things come out. I realised I wanted to offer myself more opportunities to let that happen. So generally now in the mornings, right after breakfast and actually during breakfast too, I’m like in a study mode in the mornings. I watch videos. I listen to things. Ted talks, things about the latest science, launches. I watch the space industry or self-help introspective. I’m very much into human design or some random interesting thing on screenplay writing. And then I want to move into creating. So I like to go walk to a cafe, 12 minute walk from my house here in Oakland and work on, kind of like talking to myself, asking myself what’s ready to be born? What’s ready to be discussed?
So I have a little journaling process where I ask myself, I have little prompts. Literally it’s like a little template. I open up the template and I have my little prompts. And then I just start, cause I read the prompts. One of my favorite prompts is, ‘ So what I really wanna say is…”. It’s almost like there’s a burbling conversation, a little below the surface and I have to start writing to hear the, so what I really wanna say is.. And it’s almost like, okay, Beth, yes, tell us what you have to say.
And then we start going and I do produce a newsletter every week and now I have this podcast brewing and I wanna put the two together. So like today I wrote the script, but I realized, oh, I’m writing the newsletter and I’m writing the podcast script at the same time. That made me really happy, really excited about that.
So I can start to not have to do so much work, double work. You know, now it could be one thing pretty much, which is super exciting. And then generally, I’m in a little bit of a fallow period. And then right after lunch, during lunch, I often go back to kind of a study period. I’m prepping for a podcast or I’m learning about podcasting or I’m studying the latest launch, what just happened or wherever my fancy, my curiosity takes me.
And then I generally move into fiction and I have a little ritual. I get into fiction. I put on my soundtrack that I’ve made, which is like hours and hours and hours of music I’ve brought together. A lot of Star Trek music and from other films and just kind of this moving music that’s very like adventure. There are some songs with words, but mostly none, no words. And I just kind of pick up the thread of wherever I am, whatever I’m doing.
I sometimes start with journaling and I call it journal to write. So I have a journal entry space inside of my writing program, which is Scrivener, where I keep all my story research and where I put my first drafts. And I just talk to myself about whatever with the intent of getting to fiction. So sometimes I’m encountering resistance and I don’t know why. And so I have a little conversation with myself and then somehow I inevitably, I start asking myself story questions, and then I’m like, I’m in.
And then I scurry off to edit or to research or to plan or to write. So whatever’s next. I let that bubble up. And then that’s the writing phase. And then usually in the afternoons, I have appointments. I have a client appointment or a podcast interview or a marketing conversation or a networking conversation. I’m more into the, let’s talk to people phase of my day for a few hours. And then I actually take a dinner break and then my husband and I sit on the couch and sometimes we watch shows together. But often we’re doing our own thing and I might do a little bit more work. If I’m in a high creative phase, I’m like, oh, I wanna have to edit this thing for a client or I need to prep this or I need to plan that or, oh, I’m researching this.
It’s kind of a play space. And sometimes it’s a workspace as well. But I’m not usually creating new content in the evening. That is not the high point for me. So that’s like a typical day, not every day is like that. But I’ve had many days like that.
A big caveat to all of this is like, that’s great. But sometimes it’s not like that. Sometimes like yesterday I took the afternoon off and I watched behind the scenes about Star Trek, Strange New Worlds and it fed my soul. I needed that. I needed to hear other storytellers talk about how they create their stories. And I needed to be in the fan chair instead of in the creative chair. I needed to be a fan girl. It just fed me so much. I love what that show is up to. It feeds me because it helped me think about, well, what am I up to as a science fiction writer. I am very inspired by the Star Trek universe and what that show has always tried to do and by its optimism and its hope, and I needed to connect to that.
So I’m really also working to allow myself to not do what I think I should do, but do what my soul needs in the moment. And it doesn’t look like it should most of the time and that’s okay. Yeah. That’s why I’m a creative entrepreneur.
Terri Connellan: Yeah, that’s right. And in all of that, it’s just shows how complex the world of being a creative entrepreneur is because you’ve got your creative work, you’ve got the preparation, the learning, the craft, the earning an income, the running a business. But the actual writing, and I think what you’ve showed really well in that description, there is how you center the writing in the energy time of the day and protect it and make sure for the most part it happens. But you also of course make time to fill your well, which is lovely.
Beth Barany: Yeah, absolutely. And then there’s some days, like a few days ago I spent a lot of my time marketing and I have people helping me. I have people on my team and I’m like, oh, I have to initiate a lot of the material. Then I can give it to other people to work on. And we’re always creating new things within the business. So I had to create new marketing content and then I’m bringing other people in to help me.
And there a big part of being a creative entrepreneur is I’ve had to learn how to market and then how do I build systems around that? So I also spend time and in fact, today, the rest of my day will probably be working on those systems and helping my team operate those systems. And I love that actually. I love creating systems. That’s why I’m a teacher. That’s why I created all this curriculum. It’s like, here’s a system, go operate it. You know, give it to the writers to operate, create their own stories.
Terri Connellan: Well, that’s fabulous. So with so many books published in a number of genres, what are your top productivity tips for writers?
Beth Barany: Protect your writing time. Figure out what your prime time is and protect your writing time and protect yourself. So for me, that means I have had to cut out interferences, things that would upset me unnecessarily. So I don’t watch the news. And my husband likes paying attention to the current politics of the day, which I find very upsetting.
So he knows not to have it on when I’m around. We have a negotiation about that so that’s protecting my spirit, my soul. So protect your writing space and protect your spirit. Those are two things.
And then something that I do personally, is that I have found lots of ways to be inspired. And I have come to realize that this little study period that I do in the morning, it really is about inspiration. That’s why I kind of let myself do it however I would like in the moment. And it’s so pivotal to me. It means that I spend a lot of time alone and that’s okay. I live with another writer. We both spend a lot of time alone.
And I think part of productivity is also scoping down. What I’ve seen with a lot of writers is they think, oh, I gotta write this book. Oh my God. And they see it as a one big chunk. But in fact, you don’t get there in a day. Right? We don’t climb Mount Everest in a day and, and they do a lot of planning before they climb Mount Everest. So for me, productivity is also about kind of roadmap. I do a lot of planning and I also scope it down.
So I’m constantly asking myself, what can I actually get done today? What can I get done in one hour or even 30 minutes or even five? I’ve seen writers, my students and clients use that tool, that helps them. So whatever gets you moving. And that sometimes means, I have five minutes. What can I do in five minutes? Or. I know for me, I like 15, 20 minutes, but this morning I actually wrote in a span of 10 minutes, I did all this productivity work.
I like it. There’s something about giving yourself a very enclosed amount of time and putting on a timer if you need it. We push out all the distractions and all we’re doing for this very small amount of time is we’re writing on this one thing. We’re not trying to write the whole book. We’re just trying to write a hundred words. I have friends who’ve written novels that way. There’s like 100 word challenges where you write a hundred words every day. I have friends who’ve written books that way. It’s super awesome. I love it. And it’s very satisfying.
Part of productivity is writing more, more often and the people who get really good at their sport and their craft, they do more repetitions more often. And brain science has shown us that that is how we learn. So if you really want to get better at writing, it’s more productive to give yourself five minutes a day. It could be depending on who you are. Even this author of mine who loves to write on the weekends, he’s discovered that he really wants to write more often. So now what he does after his long day of work, he says, okay, five minutes. I’m just gonna work on five minutes for my novel. And then that gets him moving. So now he is writing more often, he’s editing more often, and that allows the learning to happen quicker because what we crave too is results.
So if you can give yourself a daily win, that is self-reinforcing and then you’re like, oh, I did that five minutes. Wow. Well, look at the words I did, awesome. Tomorrow. Boom it’s tomorrow, which is now today. you set the timer for maybe seven minutes, do some writing. Wow. I did it. Right. So you just build up the win and that allows you to get stronger, it’s self-reinforcing and within a week, you know, look at everything you’ve written within a month, look at everything you’ve written. So whatever you can do to give yourself that real world evidence of progress helps build momentum, pick up speed, advances learning.
And then one last piece of productivity is maybe you need accountability, which is just sharing with someone. Oh, look what I did, which is super fun. My husband and I do that all the time. Oh, can I just read you this cool paragraph. Or it’s joining a critique group or it’s hiring a coach joining a class. There’s a lot of ways that you can get accountability. And so I’m kind of in the business of that people say, ah, they pay me money because it gets ’em to show up. It gets ’em to do the work. And it also I’m their first audience. They get to share work with me in a very safe space and they get to say, look what I’ve done. And I get to say yay with them. You know? And, that is like the self-reinforcing positive reinforcement helps ’em keep moving.
That helped me as a beginning writer. I joined a critique group right away, I met my husband there. And I had to show up, I got to critique other people’s work. I had to turn in my work I knew I needed that. And I know not everyone needs that, but if you are serious about pursuing writing and you notice you’re not moving, you probably need some kind of outside accountability and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Terri Connellan: Yeah, for sure. Some fabulous gems there. All the way through, as you were talking through those productivity tips I was nodding and thinking about how important they are. And I particularly like that idea of scoping down. I’m writing a novel. I’m researching a novel, which is what I’m doing at moment. It can feel so huge. But if you can just say, well, today in this five or 10 minutes or 15 minutes, I’m just going to summarize what I just read in that chapter, like just keep it really simple, you can move ahead. So yeah, really resonate with that.
And also the accountability. I learn about accountability by co-writing virtually with a friend in short bursts using, you know, exactly that. And then now we’ve set up a group, The Writing Road Trip, that’s centred around that, just writing together. We actually don’t critique, but we write together and we do it in short bursts and we have a quick chat about what we’ve done, then we do it again and all those practical strategies work so well. So thank you for sharing that. Sure. So, publishing, can you give us a few insights on how you publish your books?
Beth Barany: Yes. So I’m independently published. I’m self-published. Both my husband and I are primarily self-published. I have a few interesting little publishing deals that happened when I wasn’t looking for them exactly. So that means I’m entirely in control of the whole publishing process. And I’ve been at this long enough. So I build in some marketing essentially at the very beginning of the planning process. And actually those are already installed in our Plan Your Novel Like a Pro material.
And this helps us peak at the marketplace, even at the very beginning. It’s also part of the creative design of a book, in my opinion. So I have my eye on publication. It really motivates me. I have a cover designer that I work with and it has always motivated me even right when I was starting out at the very beginning to start to envision my book covers. That’s more from an inner perspective of something that motivates me forward. And then in terms of publishing, I use the tools available. I use print on demand, currently we use Amazon’s print on demand and we use Ingram Spark ‘s version. We use actually Lightning Source right now.
We have invested in tools. So for example, we use this wonderful tool called Vellum. It’s a standalone piece of software that allows you to lay out your books, both epub and print. We love that. Before that existed, I’ve used other tools. And I really care about the finished product. I really care about how a physical book looks. So I take a lot of time to daydream about that and notice that, and I’m always caressing books. So I’ve tried a lot of different things with publishing and the first four books and the science fiction mystery series, the Janey McCallister mystery series I used pre-orders and I’m probably not going to do pre-orders per se.
I’ve experimented with different ways to fund my book. I did a Kickstarter this past spring, which basically reimbursed me. I upfront all the costs, but then the Kickstarter allowed me to reimburse some of those production costs and the book was about ready to be published. So I don’t use Kickstarters to fund the beginning of the process, just mostly to market.
And then publishing is really about marketing. It’s really about finding your audience. So I’ve invested a lot of time and energy and trainings, et cetera, to figure out ways to find my marketplace. And honestly, that’s an ongoing effort. I feel like I’m always improving in that area and I can always do better. I’ve always come up with fun ways to do that, to find my audience.
I offer a class on self-publishing eBooks. I used to book produce for other people. They would hire me to walk them through that whole process so I know a lot about it. I probably produced gosh, over 30 books, including mine and my husbands and clients. And, you know, I love it, I love that the means of production are in our hands. I mean, I really control the entire process just about, except for royalties. I’m beholden to other folks on that unless I sell directly, which I occasionally do, or I did for the Kickstarter. And I’m probably gonna do more of.
I think frankly, that’s the future of publishing, for independently published authors, is to sell direct to the readers. We’re almost a hundred percent. We have the tools and I have friends who do sell direct to the readers and I do occasionally sell direct. And I’ve done a lot of book fairs, where I’ve sold directly to readers as well. So, yeah, I love that publishing has become completely pretty much in our control. And I think in partnership with printers and vendors and things like that.
Terri Connellan: Oh, thank you. Those insights are really fascinating. I’m someone who’s really interested in self-publishing. I didn’t actually self-publish my first book, Wholehearted. I worked with a small press independent publisher, but it was only because I just found it quite overwhelming and I wanted to partner with someone to walk through the process.
But, I just think it’s so exciting as you do that we have this ability to take the whole process from idea through to publish a book ourselves and to control every aspect of the process and it’s a creative process. So thank you really exciting. And, I love too just seeing how people can market. A friend of mine’s just published a book. He’s one of the podcast guest, Joe Arrigo, he’s posted on Etsy, [including] a PDF on Etsy. I noticed your Kickstarter. People use Payhip, lots of different ways. And I think that ability to work through online retailers but also pursue our own options is totally exciting. So thanks so much for that insight.
So we’re just about towards the end of our chat today. It’s been so fascinating and there’s two questions I always ask guests on the podcast. So interested in your insights. So the first one is how have you created your story over your lifetime?
Beth Barany: I really love this question. And I feel like my story is a story of transformation and of almost constant transformation. I really recognized as an adult how many times I’ve reinvented myself and I probably will continue to do so. I really love the imagery of the Phoenix. It lives its life, burns up into a pile of ashes reborn. So I’ve had many experiences like that, where it feels like you’re dying, but really you’re just completely changing yet again. And I’ve had many experiences like this as an adult and pretty much starting probably when I was 16.
I got to live abroad in Quebec and learn French and I was an exchange student and that was a very clear transformation. I could really experience it very vividly. And of course, coming home, and then going to college, all the different transformations. Just being in business as long as I have now, I probably have gone through, I count kind of roughly four or five transformations already, just in the time I’ve been in business. And I’m right in the middle of a new one. I’m starting a new chapter right now with my How to Write the Future material. And it’s exciting.
And so part of having transformation as my story is that there’s always a period of painful, unknown, where, and I noticed you spoke of this in your chapter where what was doesn’t work anymore, and what is, has not come into being in any kind of way.
You just know it’s something out there, but it’s dark and it’s unknown. So there’s this a crossroads feeling, this very low energy feeling, this confusion, this pain about not knowing, which is something I go through. And I feel like I’ve been through that a bit in the last few months. And now as my, How to Write the Future material starts to solidify and I start working on it and I start voicing it, wow. It’s like, oh, I see it. I see the pathway in front of me. I don’t have all the steps in front of me, but I have the next few steps.
And it’s so clear to me that as long as I continue having conversations, writing content and talking to the people I would really like to talk to, I am creating the path as I go. I’ve just seen that time and time again. And that’s what they talk about in the entrepreneurship world. Very much as a creative entrepreneur, it’s like you are creating the path as you walk it. So part of the journey is having a tremendous amount of trust in this process, which is very scary and very kind of lonely on some levels because I’m the only one who can walk this path, but I’ve actually come to terms with that. I feel expansive towards what’s possible.
And I also see how I’m bringing people along with me, which is so beautiful. And I also see how there’s the other trail blazers out there, who I get to wave at and compare notes to and talk shop. We’re all these amazing trailblazers and we’re all weaving together something. It’s still in the unknown phase which is a whole new world I hope, that’s positive for everyone and of the benefit of all.
Terri Connellan: Mm, I love that. It really gladdens my heart, that whole description, because that’s pretty much what my whole book was about too, in many ways, just how to navigate that messy middle of, whether it’s a big change or just like you were saying, different transformations that we go through. And I feel like I’m in another messy middle myself at the minute. It’s iterative, but we learn new skills for navigating that uncertain space. And I think we learn that it’s okay to sit with it and as you say, from your practices that you do each day to learn new skills, to fill your well to do the work, to sort of find the way ahead through just sitting with what might be in that liminal space. It’s quite an exciting time, isn’t it?
Beth Barany: It is. It is. And I also want to presence that sometimes, I mean, we have been through and maybe still will continue to go through very challenging time on a global level. And there’s a lot of grief. There’s a lot of sadness. I write about grief. My first four books. Grief is part of those stories and losing my father in 2018, it’s like boom presencing the grief and his illness that, you know, when someone goes through a progressively declining illness, that’s very, very sad. So being okay with the emotions, whatever they may be, whether it’s sadness or just that down energy, for me, I’ve just have to create space for that.
And part of the transformation is letting myself be in that, not knowing, feeling sad, the doldrums, just things aren’t moving. And you know, there’s no wind in my sail and I get kind of upset about that because I’m such a productive person. When it’s not happening and I don’t feel any kind of energetic push towards the next thing, I can make myself wrong for that. And that will just compound it. When I just kind of like be in the sadness and eat ice cream, it’s okay. And watch my favorite TV show is fine. Cause I know the energy will shift and I know the inspiration will come back. But too often it’s easy to put ourselves down for being down. And it’s actually like, well, what if we could just be down and that’s okay. Mm.
That allows actually the energy of emotion to just move through us, which is the definition of emotion. Right. It’s e-motion, to move this movement, this current and, just kind of allow that to be. Cause it is right? There’s actually nothing we can do. Like you were describing in your book in your beautiful first chapter, it’s like sometimes we just need to sit on the couch, cozy up, have our favorite dear pet with us. I too have cats and just really let ourselves be there.
Terri Connellan: Yeah, that’s amazing.. So what are your top wholehearted self -leadership tips and practices, especially for women?
Beth Barany: Well, I would go back to being with our emotions and being very compassionate with ourselves and those emotions. I would say that’s number one. Number two, really trusting the instincts that come up, whatever those passions might be. They may seem unusual. They may seem outta left field, or maybe there’s something deep from one’s childhood, to really explore them and nurture them and take a little risk and do something a little bit new. And then the third thing is to ask ‘what if?’ what if it could be different? What if it could be better than this? What if it’s actually all okay?
Terri Connellan: I love that. It’s just lovely to hear people’s learning over their lifetime of how they’ve created their story and what their tips are for for others. So thank you for sharing that. Just to finish up, Beth, can you tell us where people can find out more about you and your work online?
Beth Barany: Absolutely so people can find me at bethbarany.com. I hang out a lot on Twitter for social media. So that’s at @BethBarany and then the other social media channel that I like to interact on is LinkedIn actually same @BethBarany. I’m not so much on the other socials so if you try and get a response from me, you’re not going to get one on a timely basis. I also invite people to email me and my contact information is out there. And then lastly, I have a really fun blog. It’s called Writer’s Fun Zone and it’s by and for writers. And it’s really a fun way to engage with material and learn more about what we do also, and it’s there for everyone. Also, How to Write the Future podcast is blossoming and people can find me through that as well.
Terri Connellan: That’s exciting. A new podcast. That’s great. Oh, thanks so much for your time, Beth today, it’s been really great to chat.
Beth Barany: Oh, really wonderful. So thank you so much for having me.
About Beth Barany
Award winning author, Beth Barany writes in several genres including young adult adventure fantasy, paranormal romance, and science fiction mysteries. Inspired by living abroad in France and Quebec, she loves creating magical tales of romance, mystery, and adventure that empower women and girls to be the heroes of their own lives. For her day job, Beth helps other novelists write, publish, and market their books as a creativity coach and a teacher. For fun, Beth enjoys walking her neighborhood, gardening, and watching movies and traveling with her husband, author Ezra Barany. They live in Oakland, California with a piano and over 1,000 books.
Website: author.bethbarany.com/
Twitter: twitter.com/bethbarany
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/bethbarany/
Resources for authors: author.bethbarany.com/bio-beth-barany/resources-for-authors/
Terri’s links to explore
Books:
Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition: https://www.quietwriting.com/wholehearted-book/ & quick links to buy: books2read.com/wholehearted
Wholehearted Companion Workbook: https://www.quietwriting.com/wholehearted-companion-workbook/ & quick links to buy: books2read.com/b/companion
Free resources:
Chapter 1 of Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition: quietwriting.net/wholehearted-chapter-1
Personal Action Checklist for Creating More Meaning + Purpose: https://www.quietwriting.net/checklist
Coaching and writing programs:
Work with me: quietwriting.com/work-with-me/
The Writing Road Trip with Beth Cregan: quietwriting.net/writingroadtrip
Connect on social media
Instagram: instagram.com/writingquietly/
Facebook: facebook.com/writingquietly
Twitter: twitter.com/writingquietly
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/terri-connellan/
