Pen Pals

Back to Work: The Autumn Novel Theory (And Other Excuses)

• Krisserin Canary and Kelton Wright • Season 2 • Episode 1

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Krisserin and Kelton are back for Season 2! They dive into their summer writing goals with the brutal honesty that only true accountability partners can provide. Kelton reveals why she convinced her therapist that her novel is "seasonally inappropriate" for summer writing, pivoting instead to a memoir proposal that practically wrote itself in three days. Meanwhile, Krisserin confesses to feeling overwhelmed by alpha reader feedback and discovers the humbling truth about her editing skills while reading her speculative novel aloud to an agent friend.

Between tales of COVID summers, PTA obligations, and toddler daycare transitions, they explore the reality of fitting writing into lives that refuse to pause for creative pursuits. The conversation takes an illuminating turn as they discuss eye-opening insights from Krisserin's manuscript consultations, including why multi-book deals might be financial suicide and the uncomfortable question every writer should ask: what's your monetary goal for this book?

From Kelton's new "Rewilding" class to their shared revelation that they've been treating book publishing like winning the lottery instead of a achievable career goal, this episode captures the messy, non-linear reality of pursuing publication while living full, complicated lives. Plus: why over-editing exists, the art of pivoting to projects that energize you, and their ambitious fall goals that just might change everything.

Learn more about Kelton's class: The Rewilding here.

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Music by Golden Hour Oasis Studios

Kelton:

It's recording. Hi Krisserin.

Krisserin:

It's like we haven't done this in a while. You know?

Kelton:

Yeah, you know, 40 minutes of technical difficulties. Why not?

Krisserin:

wouldn't be an episode of pen pals without it. Well, Kelton,

Kelton:

What was the problem?

Krisserin:

ready to get back to work?

Kelton:

I am ready to get back to work. Krisserin

Speaker:

I'm Krisserin Canary. And I'm Kelton Wright. Follow our quest to publish our first novels from first drafts, to query letters through inevitable rejections and hopefully eventual success from California to Colorado. This is pen pals.

Krisserin:

How is your summer?

Kelton:

It was good. I think we left off with me feeling like I should be focusing my time on the memoir. And not the novel. And so let me tell you, I did not focus on that novel. For one moment, I tried to tell my beloved therapist, Donna, that it's not a summer novel, and so I don't wanna write it in the summer. In the summer. It's like it's an. Autumn winter novel. I'm like, you gotta, you gotta wait till it's seasonally right to write it. And so I didn't work on it at all and I spent a lot of time working on my memoir proposal and that that thing is like almost ready to go.

Krisserin:

Well before I give you con congratulations for so much work on your memoir, I have to say, that is probably the best excuse I've ever heard for not working on a book.

Kelton:

Listen, I, I think it's true. It's like if your book is set in the summer, you should write it spring, summer, and then not work on it the rest of the time.

Krisserin:

Well then, what's my excuse i'm looking at our notes from our last episode your goals for the summer were better narration system for I think walking while you were writing, you know, upload narrated scenes, make a novel plan for the summer, and attend Jami Attenberg 1000 words of Summer. So how did those goals go before we, we dive into your memoir work and some other things that you worked on the summer besides your novel?

Kelton:

Better narration, tick. I'm using Otter ai. Despite all my ethical concerns with AI, Otter AI is a great narration system and gets it completely accurate, and so I don't have to worry about my notes app getting things horribly wrong. I did upload all of the scenes that I'd narrated and edited them so that they were actual writing and not just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I did the first half of Jami Attenberg a thousand Words of Summer, so I did get a quite a bit of writing done for something I didn't wanna be doing. And I didn't think about novel structure in any way at all.

Krisserin:

That's like three outta four,

Kelton:

That's three outta four. I feel pretty good about that. Yeah.

Krisserin:

Yeah.

Kelton:

What were your goals? Remind me.

Krisserin:

Um, let's see. Based on this document that we had at the end of, season, I said I wanted to edit my novel based on feedback identify agents to query, get set up to query in the fall and submit to something None of those things. I know, know. Well, just so know what happened, I did get, I did get all of my, feedback from my lovely Alpha readers and you know what I came away with was this feeling that I have to substantively. I need to, I need to change the There's like big changes that I need to make at the end of the book, which I'm happy with. And I had like an inkling that I wanted to do it, but what ended up happening was I just felt very overwhelmed by the amount of. that I need to fix. Added to that, I was gone for a lot of the summer. I went to my sister-in-law's wedding in Europe at the beginning of summer. I was in Portland for two weeks. I got COVID in the middle of all of that, which was horrible. And then I came back to a sweltering Los Angeles and a race to get ready for school starting. So it's just been a very busy summer and I did not get a lot of writing done. I did try. I did open up my book and like look at it and make small edits here and there, but I didn't get anywhere near close to where I thought I would be on this book. But that being said, in the last month been doing manuscript consultations with an agent that is a friend of mine. Who very generously puts two hour blocks in my calendar, and I've literally just been reading my speculative novel to her, and it's been really, yeah, it's been incredible and disheartening because I thought that I had edited to as near perfection as possible that book, I thought it was like tight from a grammar perspective, tight from a continuity perspective, and let me tell you, it was not so i'm so glad I queried 70 agents with it in that state because man, oh man, I'm reading it out loud, which by the way, I tell everyone to do so I am a total hypocrite. Thinking that I had done that and realizing that it was in such poor shape.'cause I'm finding all kinds of mistakes, which is just killing my spirit little by little. But it's been really great because, it's really fun to read your book to someone. To get all of their reactions in real time,

Kelton:

Yeah.

Krisserin:

you know, and the ways and all of that. So yeah, it's been really fun reading to somebody and I am hearing all the mistakes but I will say it has kind of reinvigorated my excitement for that book I'm thinking about what I wanna do with it if I want to actually pay to have it copy edited by a professional.'cause obviously I can't do it myself, as you know, I thought that I was a, a good editor and you know, I was an English literature major. I thought I had a pretty good grasp on, grammar. And had identified all the little things that I had changed that I needed to make consistent throughout the book. But I think getting some help could be a good thing to do. But, um, the Gustafson novel is just languishing right now. And I feel like, to your point, I feel like summer's just a really hard time to get work done for me personally. Just because it was so busy and I'm running around and there's so many other things to do. So I'm hoping that this season, this fall season will be a good reset for me even though things have, are busier than they've ever been at work and at school and my kids' school anyway.'cause I decided to join the parent faculty

Kelton:

Oh God.

Krisserin:

you know, just for,

Kelton:

Krisserin,

Krisserin:

excitement.

Kelton:

you're a novelist. You're not a PTA person. Goodness gracious.

Krisserin:

Por que no los dos?

Kelton:

I, I'm like, God, listen, I can't talk when I list all the things I'm working on right now. I just, we're just drinking outta the exact same class. Well, I list all the things I'm working on right now, and which I did for Donna. She was like, there has to be one of these that you can't do anymore. And I was like, no, no. I'm gonna do all of them. I'm gonna drive this train right into the wall. But I agree summer is not the time for that. I also had a COVID summer. What a dream. Love getting so, so, so, so sick in the summer. I, but I dedicated my writing to other stuff. I was building a class and I was writing the proposal and, you know, I am excited to look at the novel again. But I think realistically for me, September is still all memoir. All class and the novel will start again in October once the class starts. And I'm not like actively working on all that material, I should say what I'm talking about. I built a class, I built a class called the Rewilding. There's an autumn, winter, and spring practice. They're all different. And they are all at their core about, re embodying yourself and reconnecting with nature through writing and creativity. And so that class launches October 2nd. I'm really excited about it. It's a sixth session course that I built out of nowhere and you know, where it came from is narrating in the woods. So some of those things I was narrating in the woods were for the novel, but occasionally I was just getting these, like I was, I was just getting these essentially like lectures. Where I was talking about the things that the class is, you know, pertaining to, and I was recording them and bringing them back to the computer along with those novel scenes, and I was like, this is the, this is a class. At first I thought it was like for essays, for Shangri Logs, and then I was like, no, this is something different. And so I was like, why don't I start an entirely new challenging project, that changes the trajectory of my career and makes me feel more vulnerable and nervous about anything I've ever done before. Doesn't that sound fun?

Krisserin:

Sounds very Kelton.

Kelton:

It does. It does, doesn't it?

Krisserin:

know what I need more challenging things to take up my time that are

Kelton:

I mean, yeah. Not my book. I can't tell you Donna was pissed, but, you know that it's fine. I think if there's anything that I was really realizing this summer, is that I don't feel. I don't want, I don't, I listen, I like the novel I'm writing. I'm excited about it, but I don't feel energized by it. I feel daunted by it. I feel a little overwhelmed by it. I feel pressured by it. Whereas these other projects, I felt delighted and energized, and I really wanna write the novel, but it, it was more intuitive to work on these other projects. And you know, it's like if those projects. Had felt the way the novel felt in the beginning, then I would recognize that I'm just like trying something else to not finish, but they, they feel completely different start to finish. And the classes, I fully wrote, the class, I built a whole website. You know, I set up a payment plan on Squarespace. I push the limits of my technical capabilities, to complete that project. Whereas the novel, I, I ha feel myself dragging my feet. I mean, the memoir is challenging, but I also am like excited about it. I understand it, it makes sense to me. Obviously, I've been working on memoir style for the last four years, so. I took everybody's advice last spring, and was like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna dive into this.

Krisserin:

Can I, can I say something? I feel like, and maybe it's not just you, but you, I feel like writers. I feel like they have to really push themselves. Like, I've gotta work on the book, I gotta work on this thing. And it can feel daunting and it can feel like something that, you know, we are supposed to be doing because we've decided that like, this is what it means to be a writer. And I know you in particular were like, no, I've gotta have discipline. I've gotta do this thing. I have to really commit to working on this book. And you were kind of putting a lot of pressure on yourself. But when I wrote, my speculative fiction novel, I wrote it in a fugue. I wrote it so fast because I was so energized by it, and I was so excited by it. And I think that. There does come a point in working on a book because it's a marathon where you're like, fuck, this is a lot of work, but it's really difficult when you get in these kind of slumps it feels like you're climbing out of some sort of know, ditch trying to get back on track. So I'm happy that you decided to focus your energy on the things that excite you and invigorate you, because I feel like you have a tendency to be like, no, I'm gonna do this thing that I said I was gonna do, and because Donna's gonna beat my ass if I don't do it.

Kelton:

I know. I'm like, how do I redirect Donna?

Krisserin:

Yeah, I mean, it's sometimes the things that we start don't serve us to finish, and I think that that's okay. And I'm, also think that taking time away from things are, is really helpful, you know,

Kelton:

Yeah.

Krisserin:

you know, the, Gustafson novel, I did put it down for quite a long time and now I'm kind of picking up the speculative fiction novel again, and I will come back to the Gustafson novel and I feel like I have the energy I think the important thing is to just continue working and to continue writing no matter what. That's kind of where I've landed is as long as I'm working on something and trying to improve and, and make whatever project I'm working on better, I think that that's like the most important thing and I feel like I'll get there eventually, hopefully. Maybe

Kelton:

So what is our big goal for this year? Listen, we're back at season two. You know, people expect things. I'm hoping that at the end of September, I begin querying the proposal. That's a big plan of mine. I need to look at agents in that space. I, there's one who's, who is, already said that they're open to receiving it, and I, I wanna look at who I wanna work with. I think, there's no reason to not. To not shoot for it. Like once you have it and be like, okay, well let's, let's try, I know there's sort of an art to querying where you gotta, you gotta go to an order. So, but we'll, we'll see about that. But that's my big September goal end of September, which is a little tough. I'm having quite a bit of travel in September, but, not to anything fun. I'm going to a wedding and I'm going to my parents' house, but. None of these people listen to this. So, I mean, the wedding's gonna be fun. It's more just like we have to take two days to drive there and then we have to stay in a part of LA that I don't love and I don't have any time to see anyone, before I have to fly out to Idaho, where me and the baby are going without Ben. So that'll be a little challenging.

Krisserin:

Flying with the baby by yourself is not ideal.

Kelton:

last time it happened, we both got COVID. So if that happens again, I, you can assume I will never be getting on an airplane again.

Krisserin:

God, I, I, I was not prepared for you to ask me that question, like what my goals are. I will say meeting with you weekly in the winter and the spring was a huge motivation for me to get work done. So I do feel like now that we are going to be meeting it's gonna help me at least solidify my mind, what I wanna do and what I wanna be working on in terms of my goals for this next season don't really have anything super solid. I feel like as we get into the season a little bit more, things will make sense. I don't. I don't wanna say something now that I look back on. I'm like, that was dumb. I, you know, I'm gonna finish reading this book to my friend and, get her feedback on it. So that'll be great. I also have in the hop a copy editor that I've been talking to that I think originally I wanted to have work on the Gustafson novel.'cause one of my alpha readers was like, girl, you need a copy editor. And so I reached out to this woman, and she has availability. So I think I might actually have her work on, once I get the notes from, the, the manuscript consultation, I actually might have her work on. The, speculative fiction novel and get some feedback on where I should go from there. You know, this manuscript consultation when we started it was really interesting'cause she was asking me all these questions like, who's your dream agent? I was like, I don't know. I. I don't know, like, you know, the, the agents that I were, my dream agents or the, of the agents of the authors that I admire, I already queried them and they didn't respond to me. So I think my, you know, figuring out what that looks like and getting her advice,'cause she is an agent

Kelton:

Yeah.

Krisserin:

What I should do next. Even she was like, what's, do you have a, you would love talking to her. She was like, what's your financial goal for this book? And I was like.

Kelton:

What a.

Krisserin:

to like, yeah. She was like, are you trying to buy a house? Are you trying to, do you have debt you're trying to pay off? Like, do you have a goal? And I told her, I was like, well, I've always imagined getting a multi-book deal. And she was like, I hate multi-book deals. Why are you, giving away money? She's like, you sell your first book, you get how like$400,000 you sell your second book, you get six to$800,000 you sell your, she's like, imagine if JK Rowling signed an eight book deal for Harry Potter.

Kelton:

I didn't know that. She didn't.

Krisserin:

been? She did not.

Kelton:

Wow.

Krisserin:

like, but imagine what a mistake that would've been

Kelton:

Yeah, tell me.

Krisserin:

if she

Kelton:

Wow.

Krisserin:

that. You know?

Kelton:

Let me tell you something silly about me. The idea of signing a multi-book deal to me is way too much like guaranteed time to them. I'm like, listen, what if I don't wanna write another book? And now I have to, now I have anything someone tells me I have to do. I'm like, no, I'm sorry. That's not gonna work for me.

Krisserin:

This is very true about you. I have like two or three books, so that's why I was like, I'll

Kelton:

Yeah.

Krisserin:

all sold at once. But now I realize that is not. A good idea. But I feel like coming out of this manuscript consultation, I have a little bit more clarity about what I wanna do. But ultimately my goal is to meet with you weekly and just to keep working.'cause I haven't been working over the summer. I really, you know, a lot of time doing other things outside and with family which was great. It was very restorative and except for the COVID part, but yeah, it was, it was a, a very busy summer I'm looking forward to a more productive fall.

Kelton:

Yeah, and we gotta talk to people this season, right?

Krisserin:

Yeah. the goal. I know people don't mind listening to us Yap for an hour, but it would be great to have some other people come on and talk about things that we don't know as much about as they do

Kelton:

Yeah, I am like ready. I'm ready to talk to your agent friend. I wanna speculate about my financial future.

Krisserin:

I'll ask her. I'll ask her.

Kelton:

I've never thought about what I wanted to accomplish financially, from a book.

Krisserin:

That's shocking to me. Of all people

Kelton:

Well, I think it's because

Krisserin:

you would've thought about it.

Kelton:

I consider a book, so outside of the realm of realistic possibilities, so to me, dreaming about what a book could, how much money it could make is so unlikely. As to put it in the same category as like, well, if I win this lottery. It's like, it's just in my, in the very back of my mind, it's like, this is not actually going to happen. All of my financial planning and my financial decisions are around things much more in my control. Or at least I have the illusion of control. You know, I'm like, I know I can get a job. I know I can get a client. I don't know yet that I can get an agent. I don't know that I can get a book deal. And so having any kind of financial. Thinking about that. I'll, like we talked about in our financial episode, all I have done is spend money on writing. In that, in the book category, you know, it's like I have found a way for writing to make money outside of books. But you just, I've also had many writer friends of mine who have been in a game longer be like, you are never gonna make money from books. And so, you know, I, I have that. In the back of my mind. And so when I think about publishing a book, I don't think about money. I think about going on podcasts and I think about maybe like speaking at an event or speaking at a conference. I think about like lecturing at my local library. You know, I don't think about there being money. I think about there being like interface with other people and that I am genuinely looking forward to that. If she asked me what I'm, I want outta publishing, I would be like, I wanna be interviewed. I like talking. So, that's, but it's a good goal to think about, like, what would I want to achieve?

Krisserin:

It's exactly the same reaction that I had. I in the back of my mind, like to imagine publishing a book as a fantasy because I feel like if I get my hopes up and I really try to think about this thing that's gonna happen, I'm just gonna break my own heart,

Kelton:

Mm-hmm.

Krisserin:

And answer was very similar to yours. I said, I want. Writing to be my life. I want it to be my career. I want to be able to teach, I wanna be able to have workshops, that that's what I want. I don't want to have to go to a job every day and make money for someone else. I wanna be able to enrich people's lives with what I've learned and commit myself to that. That's my goal, my ultimate goal for my, my writing. So.

Kelton:

host retreats, we have to host retreats. Krisserin, that's, that's the future. That's a goal. Okay.

Krisserin:

goal.

Kelton:

I don't think it helps that it's so hard to know what people are really making from their writing careers. You can see sometimes published like what the book deal was, but nobody is sharing, well, I should say nobody, but I don't often see people sharing numbers on the backend or what they make for speaking at conferences or what they make from a teaching gig. Like maybe at the highest level someone will be like, yeah, I got paid$25,000 to speak at that. Event, but you know, that's not who I'm looking at as my numbers. And so I just, I just don't know what the numbers are.

Krisserin:

The reason why I liked that she asked that question is we are spending our time and investing our talents in this thing that we should get paid for, right? But I feel like writers maybe look at money as a dirty thing. Like that's not why we do it. We do it because we do it for the love of writing, which is true. I mean, I think that's what keeps us going at the end of the day. But to be able to make money from it so you can sustain a career doing it would be ideal.

Kelton:

Yeah, I mean, over a decade ago when I was writing my dating blog date by numbers, one of my friends was like, you should write smut. She didn't call it smut then she was just like, you should write romance novels. She's like, I think you'd be really, really good at it, and it would sell. And I just was, I was so unmotivated by money. What a, fool. But I, that was like, that's not the kind of writing I wanna do. And it's like, you know, five years ago you could have jumped on like the, the fairy train and like tried to, if, if you're trying to make money, that's probably the avenue to go. But if you wanna write the book, you wanna write. I don't know how anyone goes into it thinking about the money.

Krisserin:

Yeah, especially'cause the, the book that called you to writing is usually something very personal and feels very singular. You know,

Kelton:

Mm-hmm.

Krisserin:

how many people are gonna relate to this? And is it really gonna be this bestselling thing? Commercial things do sell better. I think you should. I have a romance novel that I wanna write that's kind of like burning in the back of my, my, you know, to be written list, but you could always write under a pseudonym.

Kelton:

I listen when it comes to romance, all I have is scenes. I don't have a plot.

Krisserin:

Yeah, well it is writing like you do have to write a real book and there's so much bad romance out there. I finally finished my 16 book Epic Robin Hobb journey. I finished the last book on June 30th, so it literally took me half a year to read all of the books and I've been in a bit of a reading slump since, and so I've picked up a couple, like short things just to read. And I've, I've had to return or not finish so many bad romance novels, just, you know, if you're reading it just for the smut, that's great, but I need, I need a little bit of foreplay in my novels. And so I felt like there is room for well-written romance still out there, but it, and it is hard to write a good story regardless of what genre it's in. So.

Kelton:

Yeah, absolutely. That's why I'm not doing it.

Krisserin:

Well, in terms of so you want to, you wanna start querying at the end of September and you said you're almost there. How? How did the manuscript proposal process go for you?

Kelton:

The proposal itself, I spent probably a month and a half thinking about it and toying with ideas and themes. And then I wrote, I, one of the pieces I wrote for Shangri Logs, I was kind of testing a premise that I had layered through the proposal. And when I published that essay, a bunch of people were like, this should be a book. Which I cannot tell you how affirming that was. I was like, it's gonna be a book. Yes. And so it, I had a lot of post-it notes flying around. Not a lot of writing, just a lot of like, what are the themes in my life? And it was just like wildlife, different kind of trees, wood, what animals am I seeing in the woods? Like where are the places I have lived? And just like kind of seeing like. Is there a, is there a line? Like a friend of mine was telling me that the book should be called Good Wood because I married a woodworker. I have a kid named Woods. I live in the woods. My house is made of wood and I, I toyed with that for a while and really liked it, but there just wasn't enough a substance for an entire book. I, there's like definitely a key chapter around like, why Wood has been like a centering element in my life, but it, you know, it was like playing with those ideas and seeing where they take you. And the funny thing is it was always gonna be about living here but trying to find how that's enough for a, a novel took me a minute, but the day that it did, I wrote the proposal in three days and was just like, just spitting. And I've been editing it and tweaking it and like thinking about like the chapter structures and which essays from the, newsletter I would like to adapt. And so right now I just am on those first three chapters. I have to update the outline. In the proposal itself, but working on those three chapters. So when someone, an agent reads it, it's the three chapters just have to be so good.'cause with a memoir, you don't have to write the whole thing. Which is so nice to just be like, it's gotta be like this. And they're like, yeah, I get it. Instead of. Having to deliver the entire manuscript because I like the idea of collaborating, you know, on a memoir where someone goes, I actually think you should take it a little more in this direction and this is the way we could sell it.'cause there's a version of the proposal that is less commercial and there's a version in my head that I know is more commercial. And trying to dance that line of like what I actually wanna say and how I wanna say it without telling anyone where I actually live. It's challenging. But, yeah, those first three chapters though, I mean, it's similar to the, the manuscript of a novel. Like you could work on'em forever. And I'm trying to not do that. I'm trying to be like, let's get those done by like September 20th ish. And then look at them and the proposal, do my final tweaks, and then start looking at agents. And in the, the memoir field, I feel like I have a, I have it pretty dialed what books I love, and I just have to figure out who those agents are.

Krisserin:

I will say I was, I've been reading my book now to my friend for a couple weeks, the first chapters the roughest, and those are the chapters that I've edited the most As I got into the meat of the novel into the chapters that I haven't touched as much, they flow so much better and have less errors and less mistakes and I'm just like, damn. I really don't trust myself as an editor.'cause I feel like I really fucked up the beginning of my book. Even my friend was like, if I read these first couple chapters of your book, I would not. But I would not offer a representation. And she's like, but now that I'm like in the middle of it, I'm really excited by the book and it's really moving. So I've just been my own worst enemy when it comes to that. So I do think that over editing is a thing.

Kelton:

Yeah.

Krisserin:

does happen, at least to me. Not to say that my experience is universal, but you know, you can over kneed the dough.

Kelton:

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Krisserin:

your instinct is correct to not futs with it too much.

Kelton:

Yeah. I mean, and, and, we'll, we'll see how it goes. Obviously, you know, by November or something, I have like an agent and a six figure book deal. So that'll be, that'll be great material. I got big aspirations.

Krisserin:

As you should. I mean, I feel like we are underselling ourselves. We should come up with some goals for what our writing can do for us because as much as I relate to how you were saying that the idea of publishing a book is just furthest from something that you could actually imagine happening, and I, I feel the same way. I just also feel like it's really sad and defeating and we should stop doing that to ourselves,

Kelton:

I did see, yeah, I, I'm trying to, I'm trying to expand my view of writing by. Putting more writers in my social media space and like, especially writers who are not famous yet, who are successful, but you know, they're not like household names to, to just like, kind of like watch their trajectory and picture myself in it. I talked about this author last season, but Olivia Muenter just, released a new book and she got Liz Moore to, give a blurb. And it was like, I just saw that was so excited for her. I was like, holy shit, that's so cool. People are doing it. They're out there. I read Olivia's newsletter and she's just, she's in the trenches like us working on her book, you know, she's just like, ugh, editing and like, ugh, structure. And it's like, we all feel it. There's no reason that because we're, we're feeling those things now that we can't feel something else later.

Krisserin:

From your lips to God's ears. I, I'm, I'm really. Really optimistic for the fall. I'm, I'm so excited to have these conversations with you again. I do feel like they were very motivating at the beginning of the year. I'm hoping that our listeners also will take this time to kind of reset and get back into it because I, I don't think we're the only ones that feel like summer is a bit of a distraction and it's a good distraction. It's good to be outside and spending time with our loved ones and going to barbecues and things like that, but it's time to get back to work. It is, and I feel that in my spirit, my kids are in school, you know? I have, we have the time. We have to make the time despite my PTA obligations and my job and all of the other stuff, I signed myself up for

Kelton:

Yeah, I mean, same.

Krisserin:

dance classes and things like that. But I'm also looking forward to having some really interesting conversations with our peers and people who are farther along than us, and people who are also in the trenches.

Kelton:

So tell me a little about your schedule for this fall. Like in a day to day look, you know, it's like we were doing the 5:00 AM thing. I think it's interesting, you know, to the people listening. To hear how we fit the writing in or like what our plan for that is. Because the, the reality is like once the week starts moving, if you don't have a plan, at least if I don't have a plan, I struggle to squeeze it in. So I wanna talk about what are your responsibilities this fall and like what does writing fit in with those?

Krisserin:

A great question. I feel like, one thing that I wanna note is I feel like over the last six months I've had a lot of changes in my body, and I don't know if it's hormonal or it's perimenopause or whatever it could be, but I'm just really tired and so did try and I got up actually like one morning on my own at 4:30 and I sat in front of my computer and I was like, Ugh, I don't know what to do right now. Like, I just, I kind of like looked at a scene and things around a little bit. But it was, it was really hard. The, my day to day though, you know. My kids go to school between seven and eight. Boyan, for the most part, takes them to school. He's traveling a ton, so I end up having to do a lot of the before school and after school stuff by myself. Of course, I have help getting the kids outta bed. My mother-in-law makes their lunches and gets their backpacks ready and everything like that. But, the afterschool schedule is killing me. My kids are now at two different schools. I have a middle schooler. Sabine started in middle school. My baby's a tween and I have a second grader and they get outta school an hour apart. So I have to go pick up Ren at two and I go pick up Sabine at 3:15. So it's like from, from 1 45 until three 30 or four, I'm up my kids from

Kelton:

That's bad.

Krisserin:

Right? It's bad. Bad, bad, bad. And so,

Kelton:

The readers forget you also have a job.

Krisserin:

I do, I have a job and I've been working a lot. A lot of changes have happened at work. Like my boss quit and I took on a lot of responsibility because he left. And then, you know, things are changing I think for the better there. But I have been working, till like eight o'clock at night some nights. You know, I like come back home and then I'm just like right back online and picking up calls with people. Maybe that's why I'm exhausted. I've been, like, last night I was passing out at 9:30, which I'm a night owl by, by, you know, nature. I will stay up very late if you let me. but I've been just like falling asleep and sleeping nine hours because I needed it. I'm

Kelton:

Yeah.

Krisserin:

tired. So, Writing. Where it's fallen in, in terms of when I've been able to focus on it, has been predominantly on the weekends or in the early, early morning if I can drag myself out of bed. But, you know, that's also hard. Ren woke me up at seven o'clock on Saturday. It was her seventh birthday her birthday party is this Saturday. And then I get a little bit of a break. I think, know. I would like to restart my early morning ritual. I think it might be hard, so it might just be a weekend thing for me, for the foreseeable future, but usually when I've been able to sit down on the weekends and have a cup of coffee, I, I can bang out a lot of work, but it's not without interruption. You know, my kids are coming in and I'm hungry and I'm bored, and sister one did this to sister two, and sister two did this to sister one, and we need a referee. And so. Yeah, I think like figuring that out will be important because only that I'm volunteering at the schools, I'm in charge of sponsorships, so I'm doing those meetings and emails and trying to raise money for the school. So it's a lot. It's a

Kelton:

Did you mention that you co-host a podcast?

Krisserin:

I co-host a podcast. I edit that podcast.

Kelton:

Yeah. We need to give a shout out to Krisserin because she does all the editing and social media for this podcast.

Krisserin:

I forgot about that. I'll be doing that on the weekend. Usually I do that on the weekend.'cause, you know, we record at the end of the week and then post to the beginning of the next. So, I think getting ahead of some of the episodes will be helpful, but I, I will figure it out. You should see my calendar. It is organized, color coded. I will, I will find the time. I just have to find the time.

Kelton:

I get it. I get it. While we've been away, W three started daycare. So he's just going Monday, Wednesday for three hours each, because he's having a really hard time transitioning and so he can't nap there yet. Um, he doesn't wanna be there. So that has been hard. And you know, we're trying to make sure we're doing the right thing while we transition him. He, it's getting easier and easier for him. But nap is still not there. So, on Mondays and Wednesdays, I drive to town. I drop him off, I go immediately to the library. I work for three hours straight, and then I go pick him up and then I drive nap him for an hour and a half. And then I go home and I have him the rest of Monday and Wednesday and I can do like a little bit of client work on those days. Tuesdays and Thursdays are dedicated client days for me. I'm still doing that work on Monday and Wednesday, but I can't take meetings those days. I have to jam all my meetings into Tuesdays and Thursdays. I have two core clients and five overall clients. You know, it's like three of those clients just kind of pepper things in every once in a while. And then obviously we're doing the podcast. I'm still writing the newsletter twice a week. I launched the class, which I'll be hosting Thursday nights in October and early November. I gotta finish that memoir. Saturday is what my writing day for the newsletter. And I've been trying to write the newsletter really fast so that I can switch over to per memoir or to class or now to novel. Like I said, novel is gonna wait until October. I'm not gonna worry about it until I get my proposal totally finished. And Sunday we're really trying to have a family day. Ben's been working a carpentry job in town and that'll go through October, and then I don't know what happens with his schedule. I don't know if the kid will increase daycare. Like a lot of things are in flux right now. One of my clients is new to me as of two weeks ago, so I'm still trying to figure out their rhythm and, and how stressful they want that job to be. But it's, it has felt like a lot. I feel like I'm missing something, which is not a good sign, what else am I doing? Uh, more, more. Um, yeah, I, and now, you know, it's started to, it started to turn into the kind of life where like I turn my camera off on Zoom calls so I can like, do squats and stretches'cause I just don't have any time to, to exercise, which is a huge. Not only part of my like life, but part of my identity. So figuring out how I weave that in and it's like seven to 8:00 AM every morning I'm taking woods to the park. So it's just like, it's hard squeeze in writing. I'm doing more and more writing on my phone in bed next to the kid from like nine to 11. And it just, it, you know, I've felt really energized about life in general for the last few months. And I think part of that is because W three is walking, and he's like more independent and he plays more independently and he's having a blast. And so it's so funny. Anyone who is thinking about having children or has someone younger than one, so many people threaten you about the next stage. They're all like, oh wait, just wait till they do this. Wait till they do that. You're really gonna have your hands full, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And every phase has been easier so far. Everyone just was like, so they had so many warnings about when he started walking that we were like, never gonna be able to sit down. And that has not been true. So much easier now that he walks. So if you feel threatened by it, just tell other people to fuck off.

Krisserin:

I feel like I'm guilty of threatening that, but you're much, I think you're much more active as parents probably than my lazy ass, which was just like watching the kid on her tummy over there, in my tiny apartment, you know when they start walking around and they're gonna like pull something on top of them and kill themselves. That's kind of like the, that's the fear. The fear is that like, now you really have to watch what they're doing because they can't be trusted to be in their like little safe area that you constructed for them right.

Kelton:

Yeah, I mean there is a lot of me being like, do you know what happens when you pull on that? Do you have a plan? You know, and like, you know, woods pulls stuff onto his face all the time and he's learning. Nothing's hurt of me yet. But I think in terms of that schedule, where do I fit this writing in? Plausibly is, those three hours where he's at daycare will extend into five hours, six hours. That'll, those three hours will unlock for me in the next like two weeks probably. And I'm gonna. I'm going to jam out this memoir. And then the reality of pitching people is that like that will probably give me a couple months where I'm just sending emails, and like tracking. And that's a relatively quick task compared to the in-depth work that goes into writing. So that's the plan. That is the plan people. Did I mention I'm also trying to, I'm trying to do TikTok.

Krisserin:

You're doing TikTok. What do you mean you're trying to do TikTok? I've seen your tiktoks.

Kelton:

Yeah. You've seen them. Because I started posting on TikTok. I was like, we're committing, Instagram is dead for me. I'm committing to TikTok. And so I've been posting every day, and that has felt like a full-time job.

Krisserin:

lot.

Kelton:

It's horrible.

Krisserin:

lot. I feel exhausted just listening to us, but say like, similarly, I I, you know, before summer I had a pretty good schedule of exercise and I just have not been doing that at all. It's really hard to work that in. And then I didn't, you know, spending time with family is important, not just like the two hours of commuting to and from school every day, but I, I have been trying to spend more time with my kids because I'm seeing it now. My youngest just turned seven and it does go by fast. I think that is one warning that parents give that is true. It, it, it goes by really fast. And so I am trying to you know, have as much quality time with them as possible, that's a pressure, being a good mom

Kelton:

Yeah.

Krisserin:

added pressure on top of everything else. I wanted to ask you, because it feels like for the purposes of this podcast, you are finding it really important to work on your novel, right? That's how I'm interpreting it, but all the stuff you're doing is writing, if it's not novel focused. It is writing and it is furthering your writing career. I don't want you to feel like, because I am, that's all I do is work on books that never get published that that is what you have to do in order for us to have a conversation every week.

Kelton:

No, I don't feel that way at all. I, because I also think that like, look, if you're here, if you're here to see Krisserin, and I publish books, like my book just might be a memoir. Like it might just not be the novel, we still are talking about.

Krisserin:

long time.

Kelton:

Yeah, it might, you might wait, you might be waiting, but I, no, I, it's all writing, it all ladders up to stuff for me. And you know, two of the directions I'm working on are books. And that's not to say that like, you know, maybe if the class is a huge success, and like the subsequent classes I'm hosting, maybe those are a book. I think that our listeners are here because they're writers and they wanna write a book and we are writers who want to write books and like that's the through line. And every week when I show up that it's not the novel that's in the back of my mind, it's author. You know, that's what I'm here for. I'm here for author. I mean, technically I already am an author. I, I try not to do that to myself. I did write a book. It is published. You can buy it, but it, it's not my, my, my pride and joy, so don't buy that. Sign up for the rewilding.

Krisserin:

I am really excited, for your class. how does this relate to a person who's living in a concrete jungle like me? You live in this incredible place where you can just go outside and you're in nature. So how does that relate to someone who has to work a little bit harder, I guess, to be in touch with.

Kelton:

The class is for the people in the concrete jungle. I've told my friends locally, the class is not for you. Your life here is centered around the realities of nature. Whether they want them to be or not. You know, like in the winter, I'm looking at snowpack to consider whether or not there's gonna be an avalanche for when I go out into the woods or even drive to town. So like my life is driven and centered around those forces. The class that I wrote is for people who don't have that'cause I. I wish I had reconnected to that part of myself so much sooner than I did, and I think that I would have better been able to follow my intuition and trust myself and feel more in tune with myself had I had those practices earlier. So the class is how to. Develop that connection with nature when you, when it's not your house, when it's not like I, you know, the people who are listening to this can't see my backdrop, but literally every material behind me is a natural material. All you can see is plants and stone and woods and yarn. So it's like, I feel very connected very easily. But this class is to help people who don't.

Krisserin:

When does the class start? You said it starts October 2nd.

Kelton:

October second.

Krisserin:

Sign up.

Kelton:

People can sign up on kelton wright.com/rewilding. You can also check it out on my Instagram. I have it linked there. And I would love to see people, I put a lot of work into it and I know for some people it can be really expensive. So just email me if, if you want, if you want a different way. Think about it in terms of like a retreat or therapy, or especially coaching. Um, like the idea is to get a lot out of this in six weeks and cram it in and head into the depths of fall and the beginnings of winter. Just feeling more like yourself and, and more like you're, you're, you're in tune with what you want to happen next in your life. You're, gonna learn a little bit of writing, gonna learn a little bit of magic. I think walk away with you're, personal compass recalibrated.

Krisserin:

Well, congrats on how many people are on the wait list now.

Kelton:

There's 150 people on the wait list.

Krisserin:

Is it gonna be on Zoom? You're gonna be interactive and people, that's so exciting. That's

Kelton:

Zoom, interactive, you know, weekly integrations, meditations, and stuff like that. I've, I've built a lot of stuff for this, so I'm really, I'm excited. And then of course, you know, then there will be winter and spring, which will focus on the themes are kind of always the same, but like I said, like I can't write a novel about fall in the summer. I can't teach a class about fall in the winter. So the practices and the exercises change every course.

Krisserin:

That's so cool. All right, Kelton, what is your goal for next week?

Kelton:

I would like for next week to have, my first chapter of the proposal locked. Right now, chapters one through three years, sort of this amorphous mess. And I just wanna segment out, this is how the book starts. What about you? What's your goal?

Krisserin:

Hmm. What's my goal? I was, when I asked you the question, I forgot that you were gonna ask me the same question. Glutton for, for pain over here. Um, let's see. I think that for me I have a couple more of these manuscript. Consultations happening. I do wanna keep thinking about the Gustafson novel, and so would love to work on one chapter between now and the next time we meet. And hopefully, yeah, I'm changing like a pretty big plot item, so maybe try to figure out how that's gonna work. Will be my goal for next week.

Kelton:

Did we write these goals down?

Krisserin:

That's your job. That's the thing you do.

Kelton:

I'm gonna write that down. I'm gonna write it down. Thank you guys for coming back and tuning in to season two. Got some fun things ahead for us and we would love to hear from you what you wanna hear about this season, especially if there's someone you would like to have us on this season. And yea, please say hi. It's, you know, we can tell we're not shouting into the void based on the numbers,

Krisserin:

and when you do, it's really nice. We really appreciate getting your emails and getting dms and when you share our clips, it makes us really happy. A little dopamine rush to help us through and remind us that what we're doing is worthwhile. So

Kelton:

Yeah, tell,

Krisserin:

for everyone who's, who's

Kelton:

tell your writer friends to listen to Pen Pals. Um, podcasts are the best.

Krisserin:

Everyone, have a great week and happy writing.

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Kelton Wright

Co-host
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Krisserin Canary

Co-host