Transcript

Pre-roll

D:Sorry, I am a little bit nervous

P:Oh goodness well we haven't met before but we are just having a chat.

D:Exactly, Nice an casual

Hello and Welcome to the Finding Elara Podcast, Building Worlds with Words and sharing those words with the world. A podcast for writers, world builders and artists that would like to take a mindful look inside their creations. Join Dianna as she dives into the depths of mindfulness and explores world building in all its diversity ever searching for Elara.

Hi Guys this is episode 9 of the show, If this is your first time then you won’t know this, but the intro is different again. I keep tweaking it trying to find the exact fit for the show I’ve even considered bringing someone in to do the intro for me so every show is a little different but that keeps things interesting. My name is Dianna and I am a writer who thought it would be a good idea to start a podcast about world building and mindfulness. If you ever feel challenged to find the right mindset to complete your creative endeavours or stuck when capturing the essence of your world then this is the podcast for you. Before we get on with the show I wanted to say a huge Thank you to all the people that have joined the search for Elara on the finding elara facebook community, all of the guests that have been on the show are in the group which is fantastic and incredibly inspiring. I recently opened up requests for next years show guests and I have received a wonderful response almost filling up the spots I have available for 2019. If you would like to come on as a guest for the show then please send me an email soon or you might miss out.

In the past week I have been pretty busy, my Nano is passed the 37k mark so I am actually on target which is good. My Chrismas story is plodding along, I am still trying to complete the cover with the cover artist but I have a better idea of what I am looking for now. I sat down with Joel and he's really good on photoshop so he did a little tweaking for me to put together a template. I put out my blog update which I do once a month, if you subscribe it will come straight to your inbox yes that is a shameless plug, my website is www.dlnix.com and there should are plenty of subscribe options for you to write your details on. moving forward I have decided that I am going to send out 3 emails a month, one for my monthly update and on for each guest since I have 2 each month. Plus I get 3 free shout outs for my email and I haven’t been using them so it is a bit of a waste. So I am stepping up my game.

I have not finished adding all the transcripts to the previous show notes as yet but I am getting there, transcripts are difficult and it turns out I can’t even pay my daughter to do them, she would prefer to read of do something more interesting. So she said. Oh well. I will keep my money to myself. I know there are programs online to transcribe but there are so many and I haven’t had time to research it properly, sort of a catch 22 there. I will figure it out eventually.

What else is new, I set up a page with ko-fi.com for Finding Elara. It is sort of like Patreon but you don’t have to subscribe and commit to a monthly payment you can just buy me a coffee if you like what I am doing here. Not literally a coffee, I drink tea, black with honey in the mornings and no honey throughout the day because I am sweet enough. Sometimes. I was stoked when I got a notification that someone bought me my first coffee, It was my Mum, she is a legend. That is all the updates I have for you this week as you know all the links will be on the show notes which are found at dlnix.com/finding-elara and this is episode 9.

In this episode I have a very special guest by the name of Pauline wiles. I reached out to Pauline after I saw a talk she did for the Alliance of Independent Authers on Mindfulness. It was the perfect timing, I had just recorded a few episodes and felt pretty brave until I got to the point of pressing the send button. It took my a few days but I got there in the ends and Pauline was, like all my guests to far, Amazing.

Pauline is British by birth and has retained a beautiful accent even though she is now a contented resident of California, although she admits to an occasional yearning for afternoon tea and historic homes. An author, speaker and productivity mentor, Pauline writes light-hearted women’s fiction as well as material on time management and organizing for creatives. Her debut novel, Saving Saffron Sweeting, reached the quarter final in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. Recognizing that many self-published authors feel overwhelmed by their writing and publishing activities, Pauline mentors other indie authors in practical ways to conquer stress and boost productivity. She believes pragmatic self-care is the foundation of a long and happy writing career. Her own version of this includes plentiful tea, cake, and running. Get more tips on productivity for authors at http://www.paulinewiles.com/writers you can reach her through her website and if you search for paulinewiles on facebook, twitter and pinterest you will be able to find her online. I will have all of her contact information in the show notes and on my socials. And just because Pauline was so wonderful, she has a free copy of her book Saving Saffrom Sweeting to give away to one lucky listener. All you have to do to enter is listen to the show and let me know what you thought about it. It is that easy.

So without further ado here is my interview with Pauline.

D: Hello Pauline lovely to meet you how are you today?

P: Hello Dianna, I'm good thank you so much for inviting me. 

D: I actually saw you online when you did mindfulness a talk on...

P: The Alliance of independant authors yes they have and online program twice a year.

D: and how many times have you done that program yourself.

P: That was my first time with them. I have watched previous programs and very much enjoyed the content so it was a nice change to take part this time with them.

D: I thought that it was amazing to watch and it was very inspiring and of course that led me to emailing you so can you please tell me a little bit about how you find mindfulness in your day?

P: There are three ways really that mindfulness seems to fit in my day, one in the morning, one in the evening and one kind of in the middle. I have an aspiration, I won't say I manage it every day but I have the hope of doing a 10 minute  morning meditation.

I use an app on my phone to help guide me in that and I find that is just the right length of time for me pause and take some quiet breathing time on my own. But ten minutes feel very doable it's not the length of time that feels daunting or that it's taking up the most of the morning.

Then, we are extremely lucky we live in northern California and we have water outside the house. It's actually a bit of water the joins up with the San Fransisco Bay and there's always bird life out there so whenever I and coming and going or in the kitchen making tea I can look outside and just check on what the birds are doing. Pelicans and egrets and so on and that's a really nice way to pause and just check in with nature. And my final thing in the evening before bedtime I am doing a very simple journaling exercise I don't want to make this sound overly complicated or impressive because it's really not it's the simple bullet journal technique and the two pages that I am diligent about keeping up are I write one line as to how the day went so literally just a one liner on the feeling for the day and then I am colouring a little box to represent my mood for the day that's called a year in pixels and I have 5 possible moods. Five possible colours and it's just a really fin exercise for me to not down how the day was.

D: so you colour in a square for the colour of the day?

P: Yes. I took a standard page in a line journal and I made 365 little boxes. Just a fun, well they are less than a centimetre in size each to yes it's just a little square. And then i get the sense of, ooh I've had 4 days in a productive mood or I've had three days in a grumpy mood. That's kind of insightful.

D: That would be interesting to see at the end of the year. 

P: Yes very much so and it takes so little time so I think that's another thing worth mentioning that a habit like this when it takes seconds to do it feels very easy to keep it up.

D: Are you going to post the picture at the end of the year on your blog? 

P: I may do. I'll see how many happy and productive days I have versus the tired and grumpy ones.

D: So what sparked your interest in helping others find mindfulness in their days?

P: Well although my first novel was written during a break from work when I was actually at home. My subsequent books I was writing and publishing independently along side a day job. And I got to the point after two or three years of that where frankly I was feeling stressed and over whelmed and there wasn't much fun left in my writing and I realise that I had to get very intentional and very mindful about slowing down a bit and enjoying the moment rather than chasing my constant self imposed deadlines. So I actually took the whole of 2017 to work very purposefully on different ways that I thought might help me with those challenges.

One of the ones that I found incredibly useful was the practice of mindfulness and by the end of that project, I called it my serenity project I found that I wanted to help others who might be experiencing the same feelings of being fatigued and overwhelmed at everything that was involved in their writing and their publishing and promoting their books. So from that came my book Indie with ease. Which I call my self help guide for self published authors. and it's really very much aimed at the reducing stress kind of improving the sense of well being for independent authors.

D: Yeah you sort of need to try and find some balance in your writing life for it to be successful.

P: Absolutely. and i think that many authors are very self driven we set ourselves ambitious deadlines for  the books that we think we are going to write and in some cases self publish we can be quite hard on ourselves if we are not meeting those goals.

D: Have you gone back to work now or are you still committing to full time writing?

P: So in 2017 i was working but alongside the I chose these little mini projects for myself to try to enhance my sense of calm and what I called my serenity. I was off work earlier something like 2013 I guess and that's when I wrote my first novel and then I was back in the workplace for about five years and now indeed I am off again which is a great luxury. 

D: For sure. Can you tell me a little bit about the books that you have put out to the world?

P: Yes absolutely so I started off and still write light hearted women's fiction. My first novel Saving Saffron Sweeting is set in a fictional english village.  and i describe it as a woman running away to England when her marriage goes wrong. And then I stuck with that same village for two subsequent novels and the draft I am working on now will also be in that same fictional setting. I think that I chose that as a setting for me novels because at that stage and still the case actually I certainly didn't feel qualified to write in an American tone of voice. I found that the British voice came more naturally to me. And when I first got started I think that i was processing a little bit of home sickness for England. So the village is rather an idealised for of what you might expect to find in an English village these days. Definitely some of the scenes in there represent things that I was missing and some of the things that I would enjoy if I were there.

D: Because you've set a few books in the same world you have created how heavily have you gone into the world building of your novel setting.

P: So in the first book I had pretty much in my head what this village was like and who lived there and all those moving parts and by the time I wrote the second novel I realised I was in deep trouble if I didn't actually come up with a Map as you probably know yourself It's all very well thinking it straight in your head but when you actually realise that someone had to walk from A to B and turn left here and right there it can be very different. So the village itself is fictional although the places around it are real so whenever the characters leave the village they are typically visiting real locations and that brings it's own sort of research for me.  To make sure that I am getting all those facts right aswell.

D: So do you take research trips?

P: Well I certainly take trips back to England to see my family, I am not yet at the point with my novel writing where I think I could convince the taxman that they need to be deductible trips, but I usually usually when I'm there my notebook is out and my ears are waggling for little details that I can be putting into the novels yes.

D: Fantastic what are you what are your plans for future books are you going to stay in this setting or?

P: I feel I have two or three books in this village setting yes. It does now feel very familiar and dear to me some of the other characters are asking for their own novels to be honest. Then I wouldn't rule out doing another setting somewhere else close by in england. Whether I will ever take the leaf and set some fiction in the USA I'm not sure.

D: Time will tell.

P: It will.

D: So why did you pick that genre to write in. Is that just what you related to most? 

I had always enjoyed reading light women's fiction and romantic comedies I read clearly from other genres and types of book as well but I found when I sat down to write that I wasn't in a position to attempt great literary fiction. The words certainly came more easier to me if I kept things for early light-hearted on the page and then a couple of other things just lined up for Serendipity. I was in my local library one day and there staring out at me up from the shelf was a book called how to write a chick lit novel and equally I was having a coffee with a friend one day and she recommended an online organisation that she's used to take a class and when I went to their website one of the first courses that I was browsing and found there was called how to write a chick lit novel. So the stars I think we're lining up for me to attempt that kind of genre.

D: It all fell in to place for you.

P: Something like that yes it's still falling but it's so comfortable territory for me to write and that's for sure.

D: So where do you see yourself in your career in 5 years.

P: Well I love to write. I tell people that I multi-passionate and that I get interested in lots of things and like to write all about them or rather write about all of them. So I'll definitely still be writing some fiction. But I also very much enjoyed writing the book aimed at helping other authors. So I can definitely see myself producing further material and further books on productivity and stress management for writers and creative and anyone really who wants to be a bit more purposeful or mindful about their productivity.

D: Did you find it easier to write non-fiction.

P: I am not sure it was easier, it was certainly very different. The Non-fiction project definitely taught me the value of having a strong outline before you begin a non-fiction project. I think in fiction we're encouraged to write that hasty and fairly haphazard first draft and then to edit. But you know where told get the first draft down whatever you do don't stop writing just right until that first draft is done and I found with a nonfiction book that, without a strong outline and a clear idea of what messages belong in each chapter my editing tough became much more onerous too sore to sort that out afterwards,

D: So it's sort of the opposite you needed the you needed more of a strong skeleton. 

P: I think so. I mean the great thing is it can all be fixed at the editing stage. It's just a case of how much you enjoy each stage. and weather you want to be editing something where you feel lik, well certainly I felt like in the non fictiond book I had said the same thing in two or three different places and I had to get more structured with myself.

D: You didn't want it to be repetitive.

P: Absolutely. It's one of those were it's not guiding someone from A to Z so inevitably I'm referencing forward backwards in the book but no no reader enjoys feeling that they been told the same thing and several different ways.

D: Who would you say your ideal reader is for your fiction books?

P: For my fiction books my ideal readers are women who identify strongly as anglophiles and because in many of my novels I go into some of the differences that Americans find when they visit England my books have a strong appeal actually to american women who have visited once or twice or would like to visit.

D: Do you have an excerpt from your book you would like to read to the audience.

P: Let's try this one which is from my first novel. The novel's called Saving Saffron Sweeting and that's the name of the village Saffron Sweeting and this is very early on in the book when the main character Grace who is British but living in California. She has found out that her husband husband cheating on her so here we go...

"I'm not sleeping with her it was just one time one stupid bloody time I'm so sorry."

"I don't believe you you knew about that god damn purple wall," I was looking around wildly seeking my escape route I didn't want to be in the same room with him.

"Alright, so I happened to see her bedroom. That doesn't mean anything."

"No, it means everything." I was sobbing now. "It means i will never trust you again." 

I wish I'd had the panache to storm out of our apartment in an expensive cloud of chanelle perfume. I wish I'd owned a louie Vitton bag to grab on my way to check in to a luxury hotel where I'd instigate a passionate revenge fling with a 19 year old bell boy.  Unfortunately I clambered off the sofa with pins and needles in my legs and tripped over my blankie instead. Then I trailed soggy tissues across the floor and locked myself in the bathroom were my only company was a dog ears copy of National Geographic. I had followed my British husband and his job from London to California but my own attempt to the American Dream had flopped. I'd been working crazily, had failed to see my marriage falling apart and felt like a total fool. I certainly couldn't afford to kick James out and stay in our apartments on my own. My so called business was barely breathing. I had no idea how many months or years of scraping by might be ahead of me if I tend to to build a list of design clients who weren't going to thank me by stealing my husband. Did I have the energy to move out find a job and rebuild my life in the fast moving world of Silicon Valley? What the heck was I doing in this country anyway all I wanted was to crawl under the bed covers and hide preferably with a packet of imported Cadbury's biscuits. In the small mocking hours of the next morning I found myself unearthing a suitcase from the closet with safety seclusion and comfort food as my primary motive I booked a flight home to England.

D: That sounds really good I don't normally read chick lit but I would read that. I am totally going to get it now. (Post note, I have it on my kindle in my TBR list)

P: Many people asked me if I had had experience with my husband cheating on me at a conference and my answer to that is not yet as far as I know.

D: I don't think you ever really want experience with in person.

P: Hopefully not.

D: I take it the rest of the book she is in the English village you created.

P: Yes. She arrives in england I think in chapter 2 and settles in to this little village to lick her wounds and figure out who she is as a person.

D: Awesome. Does she end up checking up with a 19 year old?

P: Not quite a 19 year old but there is definitely some further romantic interest in her future.

D: Brilliant. I will have to read it and find out. I will do a review on it in a couple of weeks when I have read it.

P: Okay.

D: Alright well thank you so much for coming on to the show today. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me and I hope that my listeners really enjoyed as well if they have any questions I will post all of your information on the show notes and I'll put a little ad out with all your details on there as well thank you again so much for coming on the show.

P: Sounds good, thank you Dianna it was a pleasure.

Music.

D: Pauline decided to stay on and help me with a Buffy night section this week. Go ahead Pauline.

P: OK well I came up with two books which have made an impression on me recently one of a novel and one is nonfiction I was on holiday on vacation in Iceland and made it my goal to read a piece of Fiction set in Iceland and the book that everyone was talking about was Burial Rites By Hannah Kent know this is definitely not the kind of book that I write myself and it's not necessarily something that I would want to read every time I pick up a book it's a pretty dark and distressing story of a young woman who's been sentenced to death because she murdered her employer. Set in Iceland in 1829 and what was fascinating about this for me at the time in rural communities and Iceland they didn't have the facilities to hold convicted prisoners until their execution and so she was actually sent to live on a farm with a family for the interim period while the authorities figured out what to do with her next. So the story unfolds as she arrives at the farm they're clearly horrified by the new guest and the book precedes and we learn more about this character and what's happened with her and her her back story.

D: I noticed there's a lot of 5 star reviews so it must be quite immersive and interesting to continue reading.

P: Yes. I certainly couldn't put it down I was in Iceland at the time I read it and of course modern day Iceland is very different But it was still very chilling to me to picture quite so vividly what this woman would have experienced. And it was particularly memorable for my because it underlined at that time in society if a woman found herself in a bad employment situation and particularly a bad employments situation in the middle of an Icelandic winter she had no choice whatsoever she had to stick it out because leaving just wasn't an option on the table for her.

D: So did she actually kill her employer?

P: You'd like me to go with the spoiler?

D: No. maybe? Do I want to know?

P: I think part of the enjoyment of the book is slowly discovering her story. Certainly for a time the reader wonders it the trial had proceeded fairly and so on and so forth. Then of course the ultimate question is whether the sentence of execution will be carried out. and it's not actually till one which is the back of the book that the note from the offer reveals how heavily this was based on real life so that's a nice layer to the tale as well.

D: Interesting.

P: But yes, I would certainly say for anyone who wants to pick up one of my books and have a nice light easy evening reading this book is all together a different level of troubling darkness much and higher state.

D: I think it's good to try and expand what you read and just open your mind to different experiences when you are looking into literary fiction and nonfiction because it gives you a different perspective.

P: Absolutely. Just because I write light, you know, escapist fiction doesn't mean there aren't many other ways to enjoy a tale and another world. This is a debut novel which meant makes it particularly startling about the acclaim it's received. I think as a rewarding encouragement for any other author of not yet published their first book. And definitely for a writer for me it was a lesson in in keeping the stakes very high in a novel. I think that one of the things that romantic comedy can suffer from is the perhaps often feel like a mater of life and death and there is no denying when you're immersed in a book where the characters life is at stake that there's a deeper connection I think.

D: Oh for sure. Well then on a lighter note. How about we talk about your non fiction book.

P: Sure so I have read a number of books by Laura Vanderkam she is a writer who tends to focus on time management and she has a recent release called off the clock, I believe the subtitle something about getting more done. But she really makes the point of how much we can all learn if we track our time for a short while now she's been tracking her time for years and I'm not sure many of us are ready to sign up for that but she's even just two weeks of no time for each hour of the day what you're actually doing can be very revealing and I should say about two days, give or take. But even so, the Insights from you were very helpful. I certainly wouldn't suggest that anyone gets obsessive about noting down every minute. But as authors and writers I think sometimes we do what Vanderkam had uncovered in her research which is that we all like to tell ourselves stories as to where our time goes. And or how much or how little time we have for certain things.

D: Like when you have a food Diary to be aware of what you're eating for a diet it is a time diary?

P: Absolutely it is a very similar principle. So Vanderkam has tracked her time for years she can tell us exactly how many hours per night she sleeps on average. She know how many times she's managed to exercise she knows how much time she spent reading and even in the couple of days when I tried the exercise there were definitely some insights for me. 

D: That's interesting. Did it make you want to change something things that you do?

P: Well, one of the discussions I had with somebody online revealed that she thought this meant that we were trying to use every single hour of the day productively. Vandercam has another book called 168hours which is exactly how many hours that are  in a week. I absolutely refute the suggestion that we should try and be productive all the time. But for me I would like to get to the point where I am being purposeful and productive and intentional and mindful about my work or I'm in complete Leisure mode where I'm not even kidding myself that I'm working and I think the sad thing for us these days is I suspect most of us are spending more and more time in that kind of grey area where we're not truly being productive and mindful but we're not truly enjoying our time off either.

D: Because you're regretful for what you haven't finished.

P: Yeah, or the classic thing is you're scrolling through Social Media and it kind of feels like you're relaxing but you're really not. Or if you're like me I can get very involved in work that feels like it's useful and productive but isn't actually leading anywhere. So I can go off down in rabbit holes and think I'm working where really I'm not actually being intentional.

D: I get that way with research. I need to look to know this so I look into it and then I'm like, do I really need to know this right now or am I just being busy?

P: Yes and I think that's where mindfulness, just coming back to what we said earlier. That's where mindfulness can really help because you can catch yourself. You can get maybe three or four minutes into that research and you  can think. Is this really helpful right now? When I sat down at my computer is this really what I intended to be doing with my time. And so I just think it's a really nice signal to ourselves to step back and question that. Maybe turn that time for some other purpose.

D: Very true so it's just awareness of your actions. 

P: Yeah, I find noticing what I am doing and questioning whether what I am doing is helpful and whether or not it is what I intended and whether it is really leading me towards the goals that are meaningful to me. THat fan be very key.

D: Fantastic. So thank you so much for that Again. 

P: No problem.

D: Thank you again for being on the show.

P: Okay it was my pleasure thank you.

Music

End

And that's all I have for you today. the music is by bensound.com if you need some free music online check it out. Pauline was such an amazing guest I was so stoked to have her on the show. She was full of so much experience and wisdom it was a really interesthing talking to her. As I did say before if you would like to get a copy of saving saffron sweeting all you have to do it contact me through my website, through Facebook, through the Finding Elara Community any way you choose and tell me what you thought about episode 9 of Finding Elara. 

If you would like to know more about Pauline all if her contact information is on the show notes dlnix.com/finding-elara and this is episode 9.

next week is one of my solo episodes which should be lots of fun I'll be able to tell you what's happening with my book for Christmas one and how I went with Nano cause I should have finished it by then if you would like to be a guest on the show like I said earlier please contact me soon because the slots are filling up really quickly and I'm almost all set for 2019 thank you so much for listening to the show if you have any questions please get in touch and until next time keep up the search