Transcription:

Jay Rooke: What’s up Gonzo parents? I’m your host, Jay Rooke, welcome to another episode of The Gonzo Parenting Podcast. We’re excited to be here today. If you’ve ever gotten to that point in parenting where you’re pulling your hair out, and you’re saying to yourself, you know what? I could write a book about this. Or you’ve ever had been talking to friends or fellow parents and sharing your experience and your emotional journey through parenting time. And they’ve said something to you like, you know what? You should write a book. That’s what this episode is all about. Whether it’s writing, as far as essays, or may it be actually writing a book or some other form of creative expression. 

Today’s podcast is going to be all about how to tap into those inner creative skills, both to share your message with others to get that book or story out of your head and out into the world. And then also the cathartic aspect and the healing that goes on. When we take time to write and become more introspective about our own process. We’re going to have an expert today, Steph Ritz who owns Ritz Publishing, and she will talk you all through how to do all things book writing and publishing. And then afterwards, we’re going to talk to two moms that are parent authors and hear their perspective and experience through the parenting and book publishing process. With that, let’s talk to our guests. 

Hello, everyone. And with that let’s welcome Amber Trueblood to the podcast. Amber, welcome.

Amber Trueblood: Hi, Jay. Thank you for having me. I’m excited to chat about this today. I’m totally book obsessed.

Jay Rooke: You’ve been a frequent visitor to the Gonzo Parenting Community. So we’re happy to have you back and looking forward to hearing some of your knowledge today.

Amber Trueblood: Great. Let’s do it.

Jay Rooke: Amber, for those that haven’t heard some of your prior recordings here and The Gonzo Community, just give us a little bit of background about who you are? What you do, family status, and all that good stuff.

Amber Trueblood: Yeah. I have four sons. We were just talking about them a little bit before we hit record. And right now, because people always ask how old they are, they’re 10, 12, 14 and 15 years old. And I’m a writer and a coach. I’m a therapist, and I work from home. We did several years of homeschooling. Now everybody’s back in traditional school. So I’m launching my second book right now and spending a lot of time doing podcasts talking about that. And actually just about to submit the proposal for my third book. So I love talking about books and the process, what I’ve learned and what I would do differently the third, fourth and fifth time, so I’m super excited to dig in.

Jay Rooke: Awesome. Before we do, how about a little bit of context on your —

Amber Trueblood: Okay, yes. I don’t write mystery novels or sci fi. I write self help books primarily for moms and parents surrounded on wellness, mental health, emotional self care. And this most recent book is a lot about anxiety and overwhelm, and practical strategies that you can use realistically, easily, simply in your day. Because I love gathering tools and sharing strategies, and getting strategies. But they’re really worth nothing if you can’t actually realistically use them. And if you’re not going to use them regularly, then cares, right? It doesn’t matter. Like you could know the best diet or the most amazing recipes. Like this is a great metaphor for me. I could have a book of the most delicious recipes on the planet, I’m not gonna make them. I could have the ingredients in my fridge. It’s just not gonna happen. I’m sorry. I don’t care about it enough to make it happen, and make the time and space to do it. So my goal is to create like a container or a space for people to learn these skills, and then show them how to align with their own personal level of what motivates you. So I talk about what’s your motivation style a lot, I talk about different implementation strategies that you can use, I talk about a lot of things that can help you see for yourself what is going to be most likely to actually happen. So then, you get the benefits because there’s a lot of different things we could do. There’s like a thousand different things you can do that are going to help you to reduce stress and anxiety in your life. But that doesn’t mean you’re actually going to do any of them.

Jay Rooke: Yes, totally. Totally.

Amber Trueblood: So that’s how I work.

Jay Rooke: I love it. I think there’s so much to be said for finding the modality, or technique, or whatever it is, a vision that works for you. Realizing that all the rest, you can basically regard it as total BS if they’re not working for you and not embracing or shaming yourself for not pursuing them. And then when you’re talking about anxiety and overwhelm, as parents, I think what’s really interesting about becoming parents is we take on some psychological challenges that perhaps we had never dealt with before prior. And likely, I wouldn’t have considered myself necessarily an anxiety prone person prior to parenting, and how overwhelmed can set in, and how parenting overwhelm is different than work overwhelmed. The stakes just get higher and different and trigger us in different emotional ways. And then lastly, I love the application part, because I’m also an emotional intelligence junkie. I can be reading about all of those things. And we can talk about the science behind that. 

And once your security feels threatened, the amygdala starts to shut down and has a pretty poor frontal cortex and blah, blah, blah. And that’s all lovely and well, and I like to know that. But in the moment when one is seen, read, or triggered irrationally, or navigating some tough emotional stuff, that stuff doesn’t help. And so what are the fun and practical ways, and I’ll wrap sort of my reflecting here with this, which involves our children in that same process. My experience is it accelerates learning all around, it also models behavior, and it helps to break down one of my favorite parenting bullshit lies of all time, which is that mom and dad are perfect, and have all their stuff together. And so being able to sit and be vulnerable be like, you know what? When you do X, Y, Z, this is how it impacts me. Here’s how we’re going to navigate through this or whatever it might be. But just having that conversation with our kids and involving them in it, in my experience, extends the mileage, if you will.

Amber Trueblood: 100%. Yeah, it really, really does.

Jay Rooke: Let’s talk about how you got into the book writing aspect of it because I think part of what I want to do in our conversation today is help inspire and encourage those parents that might be sitting on an idea or don’t feel, hey, I’m not enough, or who am I to write a book, or all those types of things. And then saying, what are some other options for people? As you know, writing a book, no matter what a coach or publisher wants to say when they’re like, we’ll knock this out in three months, or just this chunk of time. It’s a legit time commitment of both time and money over an extended period of time. And for some folks, that’s not the right fit. And so might writing essays be your jam, like going for a walk and recording things and then transcribing it, and sending it to an editor. In my example, never in a million years would I have thought I’d be authoring a comic book. But here we are. And for me, comics became the medium. And so helping folks identify what their medium is, and recognizing that everyone has some story to tell and roll from there.

Amber Trueblood: Yeah, that’s beautiful. I think, oh, my gosh. I have like 8 million different responses that are popping into my head right now. So we could talk about the process, where do you want me to start?

Jay Rooke: Let’s start with the sort of Genesis around where this starts to come about. And so like, I’ll tee off, and I’d love to hear yours as well. But what one for me was starting to do a lot of personal introspection of what I was experiencing, and then recognizing that others were having a similar experience, but that wasn’t being talked about very much in the open.

Amber Trueblood: Okay. For me, I always wanted to get my PhD in Clinical Psychology and help people with their emotional and mental health. That was for me, the big draw. I ended up going to the Masters. I ended up getting an MBA first, which was such a waste of time. And then I went and got a master’s in clinical psych and started doing therapy, and was very, very frustrated with the pace with just too few people I was helping. And the format, the way it works for most people. It’s not very solution focused. A lot of people that are drawn to therapy are there for different reasons. And so to me, a solution focused more on a coaching method, one too many methods appealed to me. I also had four small children at the time. So it cost wise, logistic wise and financially didn’t make any sense for me to hire a babysitter to see one client at a time. This doesn’t make sense. I’ve always been a really big reader. I’ve always been obsessed with books. 

And when I say obsessed, I love reading. And I also just love having books around me. I am physically soothed by books. And I thought everybody, kind of like when you grow up and you like all the little kids who want to be professional athletes or something like that, I thought everybody wants to write a book. And just you don’t always get to, because that’s something that not everybody gets to do. So I had kind of ignored that and been like, well, of course, everybody wants to write a book. And then about maybe after a couple of years after I had my fourth child, it all started to fold together. All of the self care, searching and learning, I was doing to help me with my emotional health and kind of pull myself out of the weeds of having four small children feeling quite anxious, overwhelmed and exhausted. I realized, wow, all that I’ve learned through this personal experience in my own research along with my psych experience, my psychology degree and the hours for my licensure, and all of that. My love of books, it just made all the sense in the world like, oh, my gosh, I can use this. I can put it into a book. I can help many people doing something that I already love to do, which is writing and learning more about the book world. So that was my genesis of, oh, my gosh. Okay, great. I’ll write a book about this. So for me, it was about impact. It was, how can I impact and help many people in a way that brings me joy in the process? That was like my end goal. And then joy in the process. To me, the answer was, oh, all right, books.

Jay Rooke: Love it. How about sort of that nudge to get going? If I could ask you to be a cheerleader for those on the fence or pooh poohing the idea of writing a book, or perhaps even those that might not know they have something like that.

Amber Trueblood: For me, motivation is, you can’t force yourself or talk yourself into it. So it’s about exposing yourself to inspiring stories like we’re doing here. What I did was I started reading books by authors about their writing process. And so there are a couple books. If you read On Writing by Stephen King, even if you’re not a Stephen King fan, or you’re not a fan of that genre, it doesn’t matter if it’s a fantastic book, Mary Karr has a book called The Art of Memoir. And there’s a third book that I always recommend to people by Dani Shapiro, D-A-N-I, Shapiro called Still Writing. And those I love, oh, and Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. So those four books are your assignments. What I love about those are, it shows the humanity of these amazing genius writers still to this day after their 7th, 8th, 14th books say, hoot my, like this is crap. This is terrible. I wrote something terrible today. Like who am I to be writing this? Why do I call myself a writer? They still think that, and they share their process. Oh, I rainstorm in the morning, and then I edit in the afternoons. Or I only write in these situations, or I write right after this. You learn their processes, and how different they are, and how they came about them. And to me, that was very inspiring. 

What I did, for instance, was my kids had just started homeschooling and there was this Korean spa near one of their homeschool classes. And so I would go sit at this Korean spa, and I would get a notebook and would start with writing my intention, my goal, how I wanted readers to feel when they read my words. So it became not about me, not about my ego, not about, am I a good writer? Will people like this? What will they think of me? Will they think this of me? Will they think this of my writing? It came about, who do I want to help? And how do I want them to feel as a result of reading my work? Yep. I saw I would start this process. Every time I sat down to write, I would first use this kind of journal prompt to get myself in the right mindset. Because as soon as it’s about ego, man, then you can’t write it. If it’s impossible, you’re just sabotaging yourself for the most part from the beginning. Unless you’re just total narcissists, or not narcissists, but think you’re amazing from the beginning and you’re just going to write everything. Then I would argue that you’re probably not going to write something that most people are going to want to read because it is about. So I would just write like, I want to write something that leaves people feeling empowered, inspired, happy, energized, connected, and understood, and felt, and seen, and heard and cared about. So I would start with writing all of that. And then I would flow into what I wanted to write that day, what chapter or the chapter outline. 

And I think that having a, I immediately got a developmental editor. And with this most recent book, I worked with a service like the one that we’re going to talk about later where they match made me. Well, I don’t know what the past tense of that word. But with somebody who I love, every time I have a new book in my mind, which is often, I call on her and we talk it through because it can be a very isolating experience. And having somebody that is safe to talk about it, because man, you share your work too early or with the wrong person and they just say one or two things, it can really sabotage your process. So who you share it with, and your intention. So if you share it with somebody, like for instance when I wrote my first book, I remember sending it out to a bunch of people. What do you guys think? Here’s the outline. Here’s the process. 

And I remember one woman who I thought was very smart. She was a mom and an attorney in a very specific arena. I forgot what exactly it was called. But she wrote me back and was like, this is for moms that can afford self care. This is not going to be helping moms that really need help in this socio economic group and with these types of challenges. And it really sent me into a tizzy. Oh, shit, I’m not helping. Oh, no, oh, no, no. And I had to really sit back and say, okay, well, actually, the people who are worrying about putting food on their table for their child, or in the midst of a horrible, abusive relationship, yeah, this book is actually not for them. And that’s, oh, hey, cool. But that really sent me into a tizzy like, what am I doing? Am I not caring about these moms who need my help? Your book can’t be everything to everybody. So getting really clear on that ahead of time would have allowed me to say to her, oh, actually, you’re totally right. This book is not for them. Maybe I’m the one to write that book, and maybe I’m not. But it can be super, super vulnerable and set you off course if you share too soon, or with the wrong people.

Jay Rooke: No, I love that. And it’s really sage advice and so true. Because I think of past writings that I attempted prior to this one and had your exact experience where I don’t, maybe I wrote 10-ish pages or so and was happy with the initial concept of where it was all going, and then got some negative feedback. I was like, well, this is all crap, man. Why even bother? And you’re just kind of, this isn’t me. And tossing that to the side. And then revisited. I think that’s a common experience for earlier stage authors. I love what you’re saying around setting a vision initially. And I think writing that down somewhere for somebody has kind of their Northstar around why they’re embarking on this process, because there’s going to be a lot of challenges along the way, and a lot of resistance. And so knowing why you’re doing this and being aligned to that concept will help pull you through those and avoid some of that crap. And then what I would also advise folks on is keeping the container loose, especially during those initial months or whatever you thought your initial Northstar might be. 

Also be open to that morphine a little bit like, oh, maybe my compass was just a touch off. And now that I’ve recalibrated, here’s actually where the Northstar is. And that’s not quitting on your idea, that’s not shapeshifting, or in a negative way that it’s kind of following the flow. And I think advice would be for most folks that haven’t done this yet. Your work takes on a life of its own somewhere along the way. And like you said, whether it’s a meeting somebody externally needs, whether you can afford to pay for some of the services that are out there, or reading a book on it, or just creating your own path. But I think it’s really, really hard to write anything of significant length without some rough roadmap and structure of where you want it to go. 

And then the final thing I’ll say, reflecting back on what you shared there, again, staying on structure, which is to have some structure around how you’re going to do this because this is like a workout, or a new diet, any of these other things. If you’re not going to do it and set up the time for it, it’s never going to happen. And learning what your rhythm is. I think what’s really liberating about this process is once we start to see, we can pay attention to what our right rhythm is whether that’s, like you said, waking up early and brainstorming. Maybe it’ll pull a tarot card and reflect on that. Maybe it’s after exercise or whatever those things are for you in which aspects you’d like to do then, is that the writing, is that the brainstorming, is it the line editing, whatever that looks like, and adjusting those. And going through that process, I think a lot of people for the first time realize, oh, this is how I’m best wired to do my best work. And hopefully can pull some of that into other areas of their life as well, where like, oh, if I’m great during these hours, this is what I should be doing in other aspects of my life. And maybe this portion of my day should be the mindless laundry time or whatever those things look like.

Amber Trueblood: I love that. I would caution people to when you say that it reminded me, one of the first developmental editors that I interviewed with, I think I sent her a couple pages of the first chapter. I’m saying in quotes, and sent it back to me. And it sounded like a robot wrote. She took all of my personal tone out of it, it didn’t sound like me at all. A lot of new authors could probably go say, okay, well, I guess this is better then. Because I don’t know what I’m doing. And they’re the experts. And I sent it to a few people and they were like, no. So also trust yourself. If you’re not feeling a good connection and you’re not, if you don’t get off those calls, or those meetings with whoever’s helping you feeling like, oh, my gosh, they helped me be even more me in my right. They helped me further that they clicked, they made connections, and I was too close to see Holy mackerel. I’m excited. If you come off of it being like, oh, I feel worse about myself. I don’t know that I love this direction. Is this better? Is this not? Really listen to that gut and check in with other people that you trust. But not everybody is going to make it better?

Jay Rooke: Can I throw in one line on that too? When one is experiencing that, again, whether it’s a developmental editor, or a friend that you’re trying to enlist, etcetera. If after this session, one of the lines in your head sounds like something to the effect of, this makes no sense to me. But they’re the experts, so I guess I should do it. And you move off of that. anytime I’ve ever done that with anybody, it’s been a dumpster fire of just like, yeah, why did I do that?

Amber Trueblood: Yeah. I’ve spent way too much money on things that I didn’t believe in, but I trusted their expertise more than I trusted my own gut. And I regretted it later.

Jay Rooke: And a beautiful learning experience unto itself. I’ve had so many of those. And I love that adage of the universe keeps showing us the same signs over again until we learn the lesson. And that aspect of really trusting our gut and intuition, especially in the modern world with stats and all the different ways we have to analyze things. We rarely view that as a legitimate way of making a decision.

Amber Trueblood: I do love the guide you mentioned. One of the things that seems to be very common expert advice that I found to be very helpful was that you do want to keep your creative brain separate from your editing brain. Creative mode, separate from your editing mode. If you try to edit at the same time as you’re writing it for the first time, you will often, people ask me if I have ever had writer’s block. One, I think it’s hard to have writer’s block as a parent, because you don’t have time. You’re not renting a cabin in the woods. You’re like, oh, shit, I have 90 minutes. I’m so glad to have this opportunity. At least that was my experience. I never had it because I was so, I had very limited time periods where I could do this. And so it was, how quickly can I get into this creative state and realign with my why, so that I can make the most out of this hour, or two hours, or three hours? How can I get out of my space? So that’s another tip. I have a neighbor across the street. Her mother lives in like an ADU, like a separate thing right behind her. She has this little like outdoor area. So I would pick up my stuff, I started working on. Whatever it was where I didn’t have internet connection, so they wouldn’t even get distracted by email, or take my computer, my journal, and I would go there and say, okay, I’m going to be here for two hours. I’m going to be here for three hours. I’m gonna be here for one hour. And that was super helpful. I did that in this last, the current book. But having like, okay, I’m going to be in creative mode. I’m not going to let myself edit. Even if it kills me, I’m not going to let myself edit. Okay, now this day, I’m going to totally edit. 

So when I was writing this first book, Stretch Marks, we were traveling. We were in a different city every week, and that’s a whole nother podcast show. But what I would do during the week as I would be in creative mode, I would write, and write, and write, and I would do it on the computer. And then before we leave for the next city, I would ,typically if we were staying at a residence Inn or something like that, I would ask the front desk to print it for me. And so they would print out, I would take it on the plane, and I would redline it on the plane. And so that was my editing mode. I liked to edit on paper, and I liked to create on the computer. It was totally separated. Separate times a day, separate air, physical places where I was doing it, and the material I was using was different. So that helped me stay in those two different modes, which helped the flow of the writing. It helped me actually to write the book in nine months. It took me to write the first one. The second one, I don’t want to say the time. I don’t want to scare people. They say how much time?

Jay Rooke: It just happened to be nine months for me for the first one.

Amber Trueblood: I mean, the second one, I ended up, I don’t know if you want to go into book proposals here, which really are only for nonfiction books.

Jay Rooke: Yeah. I think that’s probably farther down the line list. It’ll stick at an earlier stage for now.

Amber Trueblood: You don’t have to worry about that if you’re writing a fiction book.

Jay Rooke: Yes, absolutely. 100%. How about expectations around the publishing process? And so one, I would say, like anything else, it takes longer than you would expect it to. So be prepared for a long period of back and forth. And formatting is a pain in the butt and things of that nature. But expectations around that publishing day and when it finally comes out, it’s such a major milestone for us. We’re like, oh, my god, I wrote a book. When we were growing up, you had to have a publishing house, take on your book. And it was a very rare thing to become a published author. Now, with the beauty of self publishing, all of us can do it. We put the time and effort towards it. And so it has a different feel to what I want to say. Meaning, it’s got to be for you. There’s got to be some personal significance, this is my gift. This is my expression to the world. But you can’t attach outcomes of success, or financial profit, or anything like that as a measure for creating initially, in my opinion. But we’d love to hear your thoughts.

Amber Trueblood: I agree. Yeah, it can be very anticlimactic. So managing your expectations. And I do this by what everybody listening to this is doing is by educating yourself on other people’s experiences, because they are varied. They’re very varied. Some common trends, which is pub day is not like everybody starts sending you flowers and calls you and says congratulations on your pub day, and then takes you to dinner and you have to have a toast. That shit does not happen unless you schedule it. Unless you let that happen. So I had the benefit of hearing enough of these stories before my first pub date that I decided to spend what I would spend on one of my kids birthday parties on my pub day party. And I invited a bunch of friends to dinner, and I gave them all books. I made it very book launch party-ish, and it was beautiful. It was a beautiful, wonderful night. But I orchestrated it, I made it happen. And I paid for it. If I had done nothing, nothing would have happened. I would have been really like bombed. So taking it into your own hands. And sometimes, you think like, oh, I don’t need that. And then you spend six months, nine months, three years writing a book, and you might wish you had planned something.

Jay Rooke: Definitely. Definitely. And then on the flip side of that, we can also cover what it’s like to be at a book signing, and there’s crickets, the awkwardness of that.

Amber Trueblood: I just had one bookshop respond to me. And this is a bookshop, they said, you have to order your own books and bring them. Which to me is like defeats the purpose of having a frickin’ book shop in the first place. And they wanted it to be my first event in the area so that I’d invite all my friends and family. 

So basically, it’s on you to have anybody that shows up. And most of the people that would show up have already ordered a book. They’ve already ordered it, and I’ve already asked them to do a ton of other stuff for me around the book. So I basically told them, okay, thank you. I totally appreciate that. I don’t think this makes sense for me to do at this time. And I shot back to them some other opportunities to do a pop up at two events that I already have going on in San Diego to say, why would you want to do this? And I dropped them, hey, by the way, I have six months before pub day and I already have about 1200 orders to my publisher. So like, hint, hint, the book is doing well. Do you want to hop on board? It’s very easy to say, oh, you’re supposed to do events, so I’m gonna call all the hearts and nobles in my area instead of a book event. You feel very proud when you do that. And then you sit there and your two neighbors show up, and you take pictures. And maybe a couple people walk by and ask you about the book. I think maybe I sold two books total at any book events I’ve done. I’m doing very differently this time. And this is where I think the benefit of being a busy parent. You don’t have time to waste. In my book anyway, you want to spend your time in a way that is fun, and in a way that actually benefits your final goal. And so it made me much smarter about any activities for the book this time around. The ROI is much, much higher than the first time I did it because of the learnings from that first book.

Jay Rooke: Absolutely. I think some great wisdom that I was handed down from a more experienced author, she said, you’re unlikely to make any real money off of book sales at the stage that most of us are at as early stage authors. She said, most of the money will come from the things that are peripheral to that, whether that’s a speaking engagement or a workshop, all that other stuff that can flow from there. The other one I wanted to say, going back to you how humbling that process can be at times coming up. There’s a friend of mine who wrote a book, and he was bombed at how few of his friends took the time to write a review. And then he goes, I went to Amazon, I looked at the reviews. My mom left me a review, but she only gave me four stars. And because I called her up and I’m like, Mom, what the hell? And she’s like, well, I didn’t want it to seem incredulous because I was your mother, so I thought that would make it seem more realistic. And I just thought that was such a good story.

Amber Trueblood: Totally. And sometimes Amazon wouldn’t let my mom even do a review. Because at one point that had been my Amazon like mailing address, it just blocked her, wouldn’t let the alert, or even do a review. If you get too many people to do reviews on the same day, then Amazon will block you because they think it’s like. So it’s like this crazy dance of what you can do. For instance, I just found out about that on Goodreads. I didn’t realize that Amazon bought Goodreads. And on Goodreads, you can write a review before the book comes out. Whereas on Amazon, you can’t. So recently, I created this Facebook like book launch team, and I asked them to go post a five star review on Goodreads. So there’s all these little things that you learn along the way that, and some of them are like, I don’t know if that’ll be helpful or not. But my guess is Amazon sees everything, especially in businesses they own. And if they see, hey, this book is getting a lot of action over here on Goodreads, it’s just way more likely to be on their radar. And as much as we might hate it or not want to admit it, Amazon has a huge, huge, huge amount of power in the world of publishing now. I’m still doing a lot with independent bookstores and whatnot. But it’s also intermingled for that. If you want your book to get out there, you gotta know what’s happening.

Jay Rooke: Yeah, yeah. Well, I think we’ve done a good enough job scaring folks into, hey, you got to recognize that this is a commitment and a path if you want to go all the way through. For those that might be feeling like, whoa, this is a big bite, and it’s not for them. What I would say is doing something else for oneself as a creative expression. So earlier, you were mentioning how you would have these 90 minute windows and go to the Korean spa. And that’s where you try it out. For me, it was very inspirationally motivated. So I would get a hit or I would get some image of something that I needed to write, or a story. And I get that shit eating grin or the twinkle in my eye. I’d be like, it’s my wife, like Alice, hey, I gotta go in the other room and write for about an hour. Can you take over kid duty? Those crazy hyper focused blurt sessions where in an hour and a half, you can write some absurd amounts of volume. And for me, that’s how I actually created things very, very quickly. I was just paying attention to those rhythms, and I get that we don’t all have the time to say, hey, I’m inspired. I’m gonna stop what I’m doing and move into it. But for me, looking for those hits were signals to start writing. And then the other thing that I’ll say on it is even had I not moved this forward and turned it into the Gonzo Parenting book and published something, the process itself was hugely cathartic and enjoyable. And when we think about parenting, most of us don’t get the self happy dose of brain chemicals that we like, doing the things that we enjoy. And so figuring out whatever it is for you that floats your boat, and then also recognizing that that does not necessarily mean that you cannot then commercialize it or move it to another platform. Everything about David Sedaris has some of the funniest books I’ve ever written, but they’re all essay style, or can you use a podcast, or format, or on, and on, and on. Finding your medium would be my take on.

Amber Trueblood: Yeah, I agree. I think that for all parents, the more busy your life is, the more you’ll benefit from finding ways not to clear your schedule and take a nap necessarily. But to find an activity that adds to your joy and refuels your emotional bank account. I can share a little tip here, if I may. One of the things that I do with a lot of my clients is I’ll have them list out the different types of activities that they typically do in a given day. I respond to email, I drive kids to and from places, I do dishes, I work on my writing, or I work on whatever it is you do for work types of activities. And then next to them on a scale of 0 to 10, you’re gonna write how much joy that gives you, how much does that refuel your energy or excite you versus deplete you. I always like to say that a five is neutral, like completely neutral. Take it and leave. It really doesn’t drain me, doesn’t really fill me up either. But I can take it or leave it. I’m fine with it. I kind of like driving the kids around, it’s relaxing, whatever. A 10 is like I could do this every single day, and I would never get sick. I love it. Love it. I love it. And a 1 or 0 is like, I could never do this again. I would be the happiest person. 

Okay, so here’s the thing, take a breath after you write them. Because if you have a ton of twos, and fours, and zeros and nothing on the high end, it can be just depressing when you look at it. So just do the scores quickly. And then here’s the thing, if you can add one thing to your list, that’s an 8, 9 or 10 that you do once a week, even to just one thing, whether that’s meditate, play racquetball, paint, get (inaudible) you did 20 years ago and start painting, anything that will refuel you, that gives you joy and energy, that’s an 8, 9 or 10. If you can add that to just once a week, what happens is this magical thing that doesn’t happen in normal math, all of the other things that are 2 and 3 end up being 4 or 5. So for me, it was going to dance classes. So at 40, which is like almost 10 years ago now, I started going back to, after a 25 year hiatus, hip hop dance classes. And I was not so great and didn’t know how to communicate with my body as readily as it had when I was 13, obviously. But I loved it, it was so fun. 

So I would come home on those days. Make the chicken and rice with broccoli for 800 times. And instead of being so depleted and irritated that I had to frickin’ do that for 700 times, it was neutral. I didn’t love cooking, but it didn’t wear on me. It didn’t drain me like it did. So I found that, oh, my gosh. I don’t have to wait until the day when all of a sudden, everything magically on my list is 9 or 10. Because I don’t know that. That never happens. But if I can just have one thing a week that’s an 8, 9 or 10 I lift. It doesn’t make mathematical sense, but I lift the average of everything on my list. And that would be the advice. So if that thing is writing a book, working on a book, great. If it’s working on a podcast, great. If it’s drawing, great. If it’s bike riding, if it’s rollerblading, the more it says on goal related to just the process itself that is the gift, the better. The questions you can ask yourself are like, what did I used to do that I really enjoyed that I haven’t done in a long time? What did I always wanted to do but never gave myself permission to do, like learn guitar, learn Italian, what is something that you want to do? But there is zero practical reason why you should do it. My favorite, it’s not going to lead to money. It’s not gonna lead to better health. It’s not going to lead to meeting new people or whatever. There’s no good reason you should do it, but you really want to. What’s your answer to that question? That’s your 8, 9 or 10

Jay Rooke: I love that. And especially the rising tide raises all boats type adage there around how that self care allows you to come back and raise the other ones. And I think this is almost every single podcast we’ve had on this podcast so far that has been one of the takeaways from parents was this specious gym around, hey, if I want to figure out how to be a better parent immediately, go do something that makes me happy. And most of us don’t allow this reverse wiring. We think we have to lean in hard or do X, Y, Z harder. But like you said, it doesn’t need to be a huge chunk of time. It doesn’t mean you’re an absentee mom or dad, or being negligent in your parenting duties. But those little breaks wherever we can find them to fill that cup make everything better. And I’ll see about this the other day, going back to modeling. I don’t want my kids growing up thinking that life ends once you become a parent, and it’s just drudgery and suffering because that’s not really the best image of it either.

Amber Trueblood: You’re modeling for them. They’re rushing everything.

Jay Rooke: Exactly. Any closing thoughts here? Any advice for parents that are just in that initial stage of kind of, do I have something or not? Or what should I do here? What’s that nudge or advice for the first step to just get the pen flowing?

Amber Trueblood: Yeah. I’m an avid meditator. So I think anything you can do to quiet your mind regularly will help with those moments of inspiration that you mentioned in my second book, the whole framework for it was a download that came right after meditation. So I’m a very, very big proponent of that kind of fight, fighting your mind, which is not something that comes easy for me or for a lot of parents. But the practice, the benefits of it have been so immediate and true to my life that it’s now a non negotiable. I meditate every morning and every night, and the time varies. Sometimes five minutes, sometimes 20 minutes, and 40 minutes if I’m in the flow and I don’t need to run out. That’s not often, but I give myself permission to have it be whatever time it can be. There is another book I’m gonna recommend called, The Book You Were Born To Write. It’s like a red and white book. I think it’s one of the most genius books written for people who are at this stage where they want to be, excited but hesitant, unsure, not sure where to start. Here’s an example. It talks about the publication process. It talks about journal prompts, just getting accustomed to the writing period, getting used to pen to paper. I would say, that’s personally and from experts I’ve read from. And by experts,I mean published authors that seem to still enjoy their craft. They’ll say, just start writing. Don’t expect it to be good right away. Just start writing, just start doing it. You’ve got to practice. Can’t expect it to come out like gold from the beginning and it won’t be, and that’s okay. So that would be my piece is just grab a piece of paper and start writing on it.

Jay Rooke: To that point, do you remember the title of the Steven Pressfield book, the Resistance?

Amber Trueblood: Oh, I was thinking about The War Of Art.

Jay Rooke: Yeah. We’ll have to put this in the show notes, folks. But Steven Pressfield is who I’m thinking of. And the basic gist of the book is like, unless you’re actually writing every day, you’re probably making up excuses for why it shouldn’t be happening, etcetera. And what I would kind of close on for my thought there would be, your children and your home life, and the personal process that you’re going through as a parent right now is all the muse you ever need to get going on something. And so even if you don’t have that great thought in mind yet, just get curious. Or the next time you get emotionally raised in one way or another writing about that, and kind of your version of the story, whether it’s through, we all get to relive ourselves through our children’s eyes over again as well. And so I think writing that process just as journaling can be a very cathartic experience that could nudge you more towards that next step.

Amber Trueblood: Yeah. And finding and Kelly Notaras in The Book You Were Born To Write talks about getting the implements, getting the pens that you really enjoy writing with getting the journals that you enjoy writing with, having a space that feels comfortable and cozy that you enjoy writing in, it may not be in your home, either. Like I had periods of time, especially during quarantine in the pandemic where I would take my coffee and my journal and walk out my front door and leave the house, go to a bench or a park and write there. So setting yourself up with the tools that make it more likely and more enjoyable can be really beneficial too.

Jay Rooke: Big time. Agreed. Yeah, and that was 100% for me. I have a friend that wrote a book like, wow, watching her kids. And I just could not do that to save my life. I needed silence and quiet all around me. So I get that. Yeah. Amber, thank you so much on behalf of myself, all of our listeners and our Gonzo community. Really appreciate your time today. And before leaving, would you please name your website and your books please?

Amber Trueblood: Yes, my website is just my first and last name, Amber Trueblood, T-R-U-E-B-L-O-O-D. And my book that is, yeah, that I’m excited about right now is The Unflustered Mom.

Jay Rooke: Awesome. And tell us a little bit more about the mentioned anxiety and overwhelm. I love the title, but who is it for?

Amber Trueblood: It’s for anybody who wants to feel less flustered and really feel that they’re flourishing in their relationships and in their personal life, in their parenting as well. It’s a guide with a lot of practical resources. So I break it down into five different anxiety styles. So you can take the flourish quiz at flourishquiz.com, find out your anxiety style, and then it goes into very specific, triggers contributing factors, superpowers and solutions for each anxiety style.

Jay Rooke: Love it, love it, love it. Well, thank you so much, really appreciate you today and all of your support and contributions to the Gonzo community, and we look forward to chatting with you again sometime soon.

Amber Trueblood: It’s been a pleasure. Really, really fun. Thank you.

Jay Rooke: What’s up Gonzo parents, it’s Jay Rooke here. Hey, question for you. Do you struggle to teach your children math? Or are your children struggling to pick up math skills? Check out what I’ve got for you. It’s called Elephant Learning. And it’s an app where their promise is that if your child uses it, check this out 10 minutes per day, three days per week, that after a couple of months, they will go up years and grade level equivalency in math skills. I found this fascinating. So we interviewed the founder of the company on the Gonzo Parenting Podcast. He told us all about the episodes titled The Hilarity Of Teaching Our Children, because I was bringing up in the podcast what a challenge this is to teach our kids especially post COVID, and how all the teaching techniques have changed. We put it to the test with our own kids before we shared it with you guys. Here’s the results. Our daughter, after a few months, went up 30 months in grade level equivalency. And our son went up to 12 months and grade level equivalency. Here’s what’s really cool, our son was already strong in math and got stronger at it. Our daughter was a little bit behind and not only got caught up, but advanced. It was an awesome experience for us. 

I want to share it with you guys. Go to gonzoparenting.com/math, that’s gonzoparenting.com/math, and you’ll be able to check out everything about Elephant Learning. The science behind it, their promise, how the company got launched, and you’ll be able to buy the product from there as one of our promotional co sponsors. So thanks a ton to Elephant Learning for supporting and working with Gonzo Parenting. And parents, I’m telling you, this is the real deal and a major time saver. We all know how important math skills are in life. Get your kids the support they need, gonzoparenting.com/math, and check it out. Thanks so much for supporting us. Let me know how your kids do with the app by the way.

All right everyone, and welcome back. We have here today, Steph Ritz. Steph, it’s super exciting that you’re here.

Steph Ritz: Thank you so much, Jay. I’m really excited.

Jay Rooke: Steph and I have a very interesting background. We met roughly seven-ish years ago, give or take. And actually at the Jay Fiset event. He was the gentleman who wrote the foreword to Gonzo Parenting, the comic book. And Steph and I stayed in contact over the years. And what Steph does is helps folks bring their books into the world and express themselves through authorship. We collaborated, and that’s how Gonzo Parenting came to be as far as the comic book launches the short story. But Steph, I’d love for you to expand on what you do for our listeners, especially around this whole theme of authorship.

Steph Ritz: Yeah, for sure. So I came into the book world with a famous step dad who passed away before getting his autobiography published. And then my mom worked on it. And two years later, she passed away. Even before I’d finished my degrees in writing and in education, I had already published my first book. But it’s never been just a book. It’s really how the book leaves a legacy, how it tells your story, as well as all of the stories below what normally everyone sees. And so when Jay and I were working on his most recent book, Gonzo Parenting and the comic book that was one of the big themes that we looked at was not only what were the comics, but what is the addition and built all of these extra pieces into it, including a letter to his wife and a letter to his kids that come at the end. And it’s those types of things, these lasting legacies that also don’t only live in a book, they’re in the real world. They’re online. They’re in all these aspects of what we’re doing. And slowly, it went from being this ghost writer who was working on these integrated content platforms into actually publishing. And Jay was one of those, what? First 10 or so that I’ve published. So it’s been a beautiful journey. Very exciting.

Jay Rooke: When you’re talking about that legacy component, I love this thought you were chatting about a client of yours that was exploring, creating a family cookbook and keeping on to those recipes and things like that, but also the beauty of being able to tell the story that goes along with the recipes and have the sort of family heirloom.

Steph Ritz: Yeah, there’s so many great things. I’m just about to release three books as part of a collaboration series. And it’s been really fun to have parents writing with their children, our sisters writing together in the book and sharing these opportunities and writing these stories. I know the very first person who signed up when I said, hey, I’m looking at maybe offering a collaboration. She said, yes, please. And I’d like to bring my son. I want to write a chapter about my son’s birth because there’s this beautiful birth story in this area. She’s known as the woman who left her child in existence. And it was this whole story. And then she wanted to write it down while she’s still here. And of course, she hopes to be around for the next generation. That’s not guaranteed, you never know. And so it is really important to take those times to pause and to tell your stories. And to tell them again, and again, because your child, if they’re hearing your story at four years old, at 10 years old, or 40 years old, they’re going to hear it with different ears and see it from different eyes and different perspectives. Of course, it would be great if you were there to tell those stories. But you never know.

Jay Rooke: Absolutely. And it adds that additional flavor to it. Because I think especially our generation has so much of our kids’ upbringings stored in their iPhone, and quick snapshots here and there. But not the stories that go alongside that, and especially as families don’t all stay in one town for their entire lives anymore. Everyone starts to spread out, it becomes tougher to maintain and guard some of those family storytelling.

Steph Ritz: It’s really important to keep these memories as well as to heal some of your own memories. The idea that one of the things that Jay and I have always spent some time looking at or agreeing upon in a perspective is that you have to heal some of what you experienced as a child purely because of the circumstances that your parents were in. And finding that forgiveness, finding new ways to parent, letting go of what was while also accepting the beautiful pieces that you want to carry forward into it. And writing these stories, what you write in a rough draft versus what you published might be different levels. But there is a lot of healing that goes on when you’re able to pause and look at these actions, and look at these stories, and look through lines of the generations.

Jay Rooke: Absolutely. And I love that concept of the healing process of it. Because oftentimes, it feels like journaling was like, oh, wait, now there’s a book here, or there’s a story there. Here’s a chapter that came out of that. And with me also leaving with a new understanding of what that situation actually was, I think back so often to this enormous bush that was in my grandparents backyard, as a child, and going back maybe a decade ago and seeing that it was only about just, I mean, you know the way it looks when you’re a child that experience and then be able to capture that story. And then think for yourself, what were these folks experiencing? Wow, this was going on for me? Like you said, very healing.

Steph Ritz: Yeah, it is. It’s really to look at yourself when you were that age to tell a story from your younger self. But then to realize that your child is that age now too is such an eye-awakening moment to recognize how much you remember from what they’re living right now.

Jay Rooke: Yes, yep. So again, with the theme of today’s podcast, let’s dive into a little bit around how parents can start to explore these initial steps into authorship. And I think the first one that I would throw out would be that daunting concept of like, whoa, do I have to write a whole book now? And can I take that on? What are some of those baby steps to trickle into it? But for those that either have a book in their head or thought of one that they’ve never taken action on, or for those that, for example, don’t think they have any story to tell. The sort of coaxing that out how you work with folks?

Steph Ritz: Yeah, it’s so interesting. This group that just went through this collaboration are 27 authors in my group. And there’s so many different people who say, well, I don’t have a tale to tell. And then the minute that you put a pen to paper, that you take that commitment of pausing in life to actually think in your life like, oh, well, I could tell the story, or that story, or that story, right? And I’m sure you could think of a few stories that you might not want to tell your children. And then you get into these questions of authenticity and the truth of the experience. One of the reasons that I ended up in the book world was, so my stepdad had painted this painting for Smithsonian Magazine. So quite a famous magazine. And he, the cover was all about probability. And it was all these pennies, and every single penny had landed heads up. Every single one. It’s statistically impossible, right? 

So for me, I looked at this painting and I thought it was absolutely hilarious. And he goes to tell me that they didn’t get it, they didn’t use it in the magazine, and they never hired him. About five years later, I found out that it had nothing to do with them liking or disliking the painting. It’s that he had gotten into a fight with the curator of his magazine, and they wouldn’t work with him anymore. But he had written his autobiography with the story he had told me. Not the real story of what happened. And so when I read through his autobiography, there were all these moments that I would start laughing because I could hear in my head the stories below the stories. And the publisher said, please, let’s write all of this out. And we go stick it out together and create a whole biography to match the autobiography to tell the real stories of what was happening, and not the artist’s perspective of the stories.

Jay Rooke: Quick pause here. By the way, for those that haven’t read it yet or watch the movie in a book, I think about big fish as you talk about this, and that is the storytelling and behind that, and just the beauty of the process and how funny it can be.

Steph Ritz: Yeah, it’s a lot of fun. And it was fun to include both stories and see that perspective through. And then when I decided to take on another writing project, it led me to the giant California redwoods. At the time, I was a caregiver for my grandma in Wisconsin, and writing was the, I couldn’t be in a classroom and 24/7 on call as a caregiver. And so I said, sure, let’s take on another book. And I was led to this man who had a phenomenal idea, but not a good writer at all. And I rewrote his website and said, hey, I hear you’re looking to write a book? And within a week, I was in California. It was like around 4rth of July. So I’m sitting on the sunny wraparound porch with these eucalyptus leaves all around ghostwriting, these stories Just interviewing hours, and hours, and hours of recordings of what this guy’s methodologies were in life. And then after caregiving duties ended and everything got wrapped up, I said I’m gonna go move to California. And then I’ve been leading writing retreats here ever since this idea of stepping out of life, pausing long enough to notice that you do have this magnificent center, this experience, as well as stepping into these 3000 year old trees. I mean, how many other writers have sat under those same trees. 

The books that you read. Hemingway is one of them that is well known for going through the redwoods multiple times, sitting under those trees and being inspired. And so there is that aspect of just taking yourself out of life and going right, right, right. And so writing retreats is a good way, as well as in collaboration with others who are all looking at what their issues are, or how to move forward. And my guess is that you probably have had at least one book idea, if not three. Just kind of like rambling around in there. Jay is a great example of it. We started initially working on the book project, Gonzo Parenting, the origins. So a collection of all of the Facebook posts and funny pictures and videos during COVID. 

The actual jokes of where these comics came from. And the comic book took on its whole life of its own and ended up ahead of this other book. The other books that are still in progress. But when we started writing out all of the pieces for Jay and for Gonzo Parenting, what came up as more important was creating space for mindful parenting for Jay to be able to have a structure and a space to hold for those parents, and to allow them to really dive into some pretty deep conversations. And then once he created that space, he’s like, okay, great. Now we can go back to working on the book and writing the other pieces that are still coming. But now they’re spaced sitting there waiting and helping to help all of these people, because it isn’t just a book. It’s really how you integrate whatever you’re writing with your life. And sometimes, you have to write that story. But you don’t necessarily want to tell. So you can heal it and move on, and show up as a better person for your children, or while you’re going through.

Jay Rooke: For sure. And I see that there’s no real structure to it, or a specific route. Rather, it was more what I want to say, as far as if you’re out there, if you’re thinking about, hey, I’d like to get a little bit into this. But oh, I don’t want to be sitting in front of a computer in Starbucks for seven hours on the weekend, or whatever, all the limiting beliefs we make up. You can just loosely hold, hey, I’m gonna get there. And then figure out your way of doing it. You can record while you go on a walk, and then have it transcribed and then edited around a little bit. Or you can work with somebody like staff and have story prompts going on. You don’t need a whole cohesive story. It could be a collection of essays. There’s a million ways to skin the cat, and just sitting down with somebody like yourself and brainstorming around what’s important to you, and how to set that in motion, and then moving around to the hard parts. You were saying earlier stuff, not everybody’s a great writer that has a story to tell. And so there’s also lots of ways to work with ghost writers and you record some of your content, and then hand it off to them, and they put your story into written words.

Steph Ritz: Yeah. To write a book, you don’t necessarily have to be a writer. And at the same time, I’d rather challenge you all. Because if you’re in business at all, in any sort of way, you’re a writer. We write billions of emails every single day. And while you might not think of it, it is like a thought process of structuring. There’s just a lady who went through the collaboration process, she was emailing me last night telling me how amazing it is because she is a numbers, an accountant. She’s like, I didn’t think I could write, let alone that I had any stories to tell. And when I sat down to write an 11 page rough draft for you, I ended up writing 50 pages. And now, she’s cut that down to 11 pages. And we’re working on a solo book so she can tell her story in entirety. But she went from saying, I am not a writer. I can’t do this. I am about to be published, and I’m working on my second novel. So it’s a big experience when you allow yourself. It takes something in the right person. So that’s where I’ve worked with the people that feel called to work with me because you have to be able to trust me. 

And when we go through these ghostwriting sessions, in order to pull these stories out and follow where it goes, which is fascinating. Because of the comic book and some of these other aspects, you just never know where the idea is going to spark from. But until you start motion, there can be no momentum. You have to just get the ball rolling. And that’s where it’s really nice to say, go take yourself off the grid and go right for a couple of days. Or come to my writing retreat in July. Or sign up to do just a chapter. 11 pages is not that big of a commitment versus 100 pages which can sound big and scary. And yet Jay’s first hundred some page book is very few words. If you think about it, there’s a lot of comics, titles and commentaries. But the writing piece of it, you might be wanting to create a children’s book. One of my favorite ghost writing projects is that of a grandpa that he would storytel with his son, and they’d write up the notes of it, and then I’d go turn it into stories and illustrate them. So we did this as a fun little side project of writing. They didn’t even write it, they concept it and sent it to a writer to have their stories created for them. There’s so many different ways to start creating beauty or what I am so called for is for you to get the ideas out of your head and into the hands of those that can really benefit from it. Whether that is your child, your parent, your neighbor, or whomever. It doesn’t really matter, but it’s really getting it all there and getting the stories out. When I started offering publishing publicly, part of it was that Jay and I had been booked to go to retreat. And then COVID happened. 

And then the next year, we’re gonna do a retreat and some giant wildfires came through right at the property where we’re looking at doing this retreat. And then I ended up going to the doctor who found a freckle on my eye and said, well, either it’s just a freckle, or you have six months left to live. And I was like, okay, well if I have six months left to live, what am I going to do with my life? And for me, it was helping all of these writers that I had been working with finally get their books published. And I stepped into publishing and offering the publishing mastermind around it. Would you know that by the time we get to the end of that first year mastermind, I ended up getting t-boned in a car accident. And so twice within one year. I am reminded over and over again, how fleeting life is, tomorrow is not guaranteed. And I’ve said that before, but I keep saying it because it’s so true. While my stepdad had written his autobiography, my mom spent the end of her life working on getting his autobiography published and never took the time to tell any of her stories. So it’s only what we have in my memories that can be written and passed down to the generations below me. That’s it. And if you don’t tell your story, who will?

Jay Rooke: Yes, absolutely. I appreciate that story. One of the things that I was thinking about as well that my cousin does every year is she’s sort of the family historian around photos, and we gather all the photos from different family members, put them all together, and then give it as a calendar gift to my grandmother. And one of the things that I had heard from someone else that they had done to capture some of those family stories was to get a handful of writing prompts and questions that you would ask each person in the family as an example, and they just sit there with their iPhone, and you know, speak it out. And then it’s not too hard to then make a compilation of that, and then send that to ghostwriting. And all of a sudden, we have all the different family versions of Christmas, whatever year it was. Or that family vacation that went sideways, and where the whole family history and whatever it might be. But I love how creative you can get with all of this.

Steph Ritz: Yeah, that is one of the reasons or one of the things that I love the most is the idea that the right story prompt tends to unlock. It might be one question, but you have 10 memories come up all at the same time. And the question really becomes then which memory do you want to share versus I don’t have anything to say. So I’ve built a couple of story prompt decks, and I use them as part of the series. One of the beauties that I really like is using them impromptu. So whichever question shows up, and whatever memory it elicits will guide you in that direction of what you’re trying to create, and what story you want to share. But you’re right, there’s so much that needs to be said and ways to get multiple generations in it. One of the ladies that I’m currently working with, when she was a kid, she sailed the world twice. Not all the way around the world, but she went out sailing for months on end with her family on this big sailboat twice. And both times that she was sailing as a young adult, she journaled. And so she is now taking her journals, plus photographs and drawings from these different family members, and turning it into like a coffee table book because, she and her brother are a handful of years away from taking their children on the same type of sailing trips that they grew up doing with their parents, these big epic things that really shaped her life. 

And so it’s one of those examples, again, where I guess she’s writing intro some transitions and cleaning a little bit up. The journals have existed for many, many years. The photographs and the drawings have existed. But the idea of putting them all together into a place that then becomes almost like the invitation to the next generation, The Call to Adventures is just beautiful. And it’s really exciting. And that’s for her. Yes, she has all these other book ideas. But this is what she really wants to do as the legacy of her family. And so she’s doing her own business stuff and her other books in that generation. And then this is what we’re working on that other side of life. It’s really just her and her family.

Jay Rooke: And I love this sort of like daydream coolness and have it been written at sea and we can all think about that narration around Captain’s Log, May 25th.

Steph Ritz: Oh, it’s totally written like that. What is it written from a 12 year old girl’s perspective? So she’s like, waterlogged. Again, my brother’s in my cabin.

Jay Rooke: Namesake of this marine toilet.

Steph Ritz: Yes, we finally have a refrigerator. The next shower. So it’s a lot of fun as a publisher for me and as a ghostwriter. It’s amazingly fun to get to hear all the stories as well as the people that I take on are the people who are really committed to getting the stories out. Someone asked me as I was bringing in or welcoming people to publishing this year, they’re like, well, how many people finish? And I was like, that’s a good question. You signed up for this program, how far are you going to get in it? And I sat down and I was like, there are two people over the last few years that haven’t finished. One of them finished her book, but her business went completely in a different direction. So the book became irrelevant before we got published. So she’s just holding it. And she’s maybe we’ll do something with it or reapply it in a different direction. But she decided not to move forward, because she didn’t want to dilute this new direction she was going. And there’s one other person who a few weeks into starting with Jay a couple of years ago, she got diagnosed with cancer. And she said, I can’t do this right now. I really need to focus on my healing journey. And then last year, she been on this journey and she just came back saying, well, it’s two years later, and they’re still taking bits and pieces out. Right now, I’m cancer free. But you never know. But it sounds like my healing journey is just going to be the journey of my life, and I cannot wait anymore. These pieces are still waiting to be done. She has the complete programs, all these videos, but she wants the workbook and get it out into other people’s hands. She’s like, well, it might be a little slower than I planned to get this all done. But we’re gonna go through it. And we’re going to dedicate the time because this is what I’m most passionate about.

Jay Rooke: When writing, especially as you were saying earlier, I find it interesting how introspective the process quickly becomes. And we’d love to hear your thoughts around, oftentimes, the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves are the ones that dictate all of the other stories. And so for parents out there, what’s a way that you would advise individuals to start to explore, hey, am I being the right narrator of my own story right now, or the right tone, or whatever that might look like?

Steph Ritz: I think that’s one of the great things of working with someone else versus trying to write it on your own to get that perspective of what you’re saying. There are many times that I’ve had someone write something and I say, hey, let’s look at this from a different perspective and see if we can write it a little bit more healed than where you’re at right now. At times, it’s really hard to share what needs to be said. It’s really hard to share your truth. But when you sit down to write with someone else, they can help guide you. I’m not writing your book for you. For me, what I call it is more like interviewing it out of you. And so when you get onto this writing process using a ghostwriter or using the story prompts, you’ll be telling a story. But you might start turning. And that ghostwriter or those prompts will help bring you back to the story that you’re trying to create. Or to pause and say, great, can we add more detail? I’d like to be able to actually see what you’re seeing in your memory. Right now, I’m hearing a bunch of names, but I can’t see these people. Oh, yeah, she was wearing a purple hat. I always loved her lace up shoes. And all of a sudden, these characters start coming to life. But when you’re writing it, you make all these assumptions. Because you know what you saw, you know what lives inside of your head. And so whether it’s with a group or with an individual ghostwriter, of course, getting your rough draft down, it’s great. But when you start to develop it into something that can change the world, or change someone else’s mind, it’s awe inspiring to see.

Jay Rooke: Absolutely.

Steph Ritz: My very first book launch was back in high school. I started editing poetry in middle school for little book clubs that were going on back then. But when I was in high school, I was approached to offer a gay straight alliance. I was in something called the diversity club. And it was the same year that the Supreme Court said that this is okay, and you have to allow this. And our school still wasn’t approving it. And so this junior or senior, she reached out to me and she said, hey, Steph, can we do this together? I said, sure, no problem. And then someone introduced me to a book called, Am I Blue. That’s all the short story collections of really famous authors in the genre of LBGTQ+ whatever. And we wrote the publisher and told her that we were looking at doing a pay it forward campaign with the book. So either put the hand like you are reading it, and then put it into the hands of someone that needs to read it, or try to get it submitted into your school’s library. So it’s available for more people to read. And they gave us cases of these books. And we pasted a little call to action into the books and gave them out all over. Of course, I didn’t know it at the time, but we were one of the first 10 gay straight alliances in America at the time. I didn’t know this, I was just doing like, I was in theater, my friends were getting bullied, here’s someone saying we want to do this, and they’ll do most of the work. They just need diversity. Let’s make it happen. It changed the world. We literally sparked a campaign that changed the world. And of course, it wasn’t just us. There were all sorts of people working on this, doing their individual tasks to get this going. But what it is today and how it exists? Almost every single high school out there that’s not a religious based High School, who knew? Who knew that’s what that book campaign was going to do?

Jay Rooke: Love inspiration. How would this differ from folks that might be considering reaching out? Can you tell them how to reach out to you, and what sort of that initial process looks like about working with you?

Steph Ritz: Yeah. I am most chatty on Facebook. So that is a good place to come find me. But you can also find me at stephritz.com. And there’s information about what I call hybrid publishing. So the traditional world says, I published the book. Jay has to reach out to me in order to get author copies, or to change his price, or do whatever. I’m much more on like, tomorrow’s not guaranteed. I want you to have that control over your own book in your own writing. I call it hybrid publishing. I’m doing all the registration and helping you through the process. But it’s on your Amazon KDP. So you have the control from here on out to do whatever you want with your book. And then in July, we are gathering. There are people coming from all over the world for a book writing retreat and a book party of Ritz books authors. And that is at the very end of July, which then leads right into the next collaboration series. And we’re playing with titles right now. We haven’t quite decided, partly it’s the group. So maybe if you’re interested in reaching out and saying, hey, I have this idea. I’d love to bring in some authors, and we can get a collaboration going just for Gonzo Parenting. Parents or people in the Gonzo parents world. So yeah, it’s a lot of fun. 

There’s always something ongoing, but it always starts with a conversation. Always starts with a conversation. There’s no way to just sign up with me. Let’s have a conversation, see if we’re a fit to work together, see if we get to a place where we feel like we could pull something out. I would say as many people come to me, probably half of them, I point to other people who are doing similar but slightly different things. Because it’s really about finding the right fit for you. And so it’s important for me, but it’s also important for you that we find the right fit. But if you have questions about the industry, that is one of those things that shows up, I don’t know about publishing, how do I do this? Well, let’s get your press kit ready with you. If you want to go do traditional publishing, if you want to do your own publishing, or you’re just looking to write a story. But it starts with saying, I’m here and I’m ready. And I’m gonna try.

Jay Rooke: I love that stuff. I want to say thank you so much on behalf of myself and all of our listeners. I enjoyed this conversation a ton. Working with you was a blast. Wouldn’t have happened otherwise. And I think that the biggest thing I would say to listeners is that you can’t do brain surgery on yourself. And if you think about any home improvement project that you are not qualified for that you tried to DIY and a year later with all the broken parts, it’s still sitting there only to go and undo it. Do yourself a favor and work with somebody the first time through. It’s cleaner, faster and a lot more fun. But I’ll leave it at that. Steph, any closing thoughts on your end?

Steph Ritz: I think the big thing is you might have that manuscript even started and tucked away. And it’s okay to pull it out, dust it off and revive it. And whatever that story is that you wish that you had recorded or have from the generations above you that aren’t here anymore, just think about what that would be at the stories that you could tell today. That would mean so much to the generations that come after you.

Jay Rooke: Yeah, super cool. With that, thank you so very much.

Steph Ritz: Thank you, Jay. Much appreciated.