Pen Pals

Writing Through the Doldrums

• Krisserin Canary and Kelton Wright • Season 2 • Episode 8

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In this candid episode of Pen Pals, Krisserin and Kelton get real about the challenging phases every writer faces—the doldrums. Between sleepless toddler nights, demanding day jobs, and the mental exhaustion of parenting, both hosts grapple with keeping their writing momentum alive. Krisserin wrestles with defining the antagonist in her second novel while navigating the broader scale and complexity her story demands, questioning whether she has what it takes to pull it off. Meanwhile, Kelton evaluates her newsletter's future after four and a half years of free essays, contemplating the balance between creative satisfaction and sustainable output. They discuss the realities of being a parent-writer, the pressure of the holiday season, the importance of taking breaks, and the confidence that comes with age and experience. Despite feeling down in the moment, both writers remain certain they'll emerge on the other side—together—holding hands toward success. A relatable and honest conversation for any creative pushing through the valleys between mountains.

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Music by Golden Hour Oasis Studios

Kelton:

Hi, Krisserin

Krisserin:

Hi, Kelton

Kelton:

how you doing?

Krisserin:

Hi Kelton.

Kelton:

Oh, no. Oh, no. I feel similarly this morning. I feel like, uh, my, my image belies how tenderly fucked I feel today.

Krisserin:

You look beautiful. What's.

Kelton:

Yeah, that's why I'm saying it's lying. I didn't sleep at all last night. had another bad, bad toddler night, and I woke up feeling so nauseated with like a drilling headache this morning and I was like, alright, what, what does a girl need to do to get out of this funk? So I took a long shower, I did a kooky meditation, I lit some Palo Santo. I, I spent at least five minutes this morning looking around for the my bagel. I was like, I know I only ate half the bagel. Where did I put the rest of the bagel? to realize I had eaten it, and I had already put the plate in the dishwasher. I was like, what is wrong with me today? That's where I am.

Krisserin:

Yeah, well, you look beautiful. I couldn't tell there was anything wrong or you didn't get sleep. I'm sorry about that. I read your subscriber only Substack, that comes out on Wednesdays and you talk so lovingly about woods. And, you know, we have kids, they change our lives. For the better mostly. But these in-between times when they are stealing sleep and require a bit extra care can be really hard.

Kelton:

Yeah, I am. I'm feeling quite drained. How are you? You look beautiful.

Krisserin:

Thanks. See similarly when I am feeling. Not at my best clothing and makeup is my armor to like, you know,

Kelton:

Mm-hmm.

Krisserin:

something to make me feel good as I go out into the world. And so I spent a little extra time doing my makeup this morning knowing that I'm gonna be seeing people anyway and talking to you. So that's my meditation, you know, is putting on makeup while watching Gilmore Girls. And, this week is the first week, even though, Boyan has been back from traveling, this is the first week that he's actually taking the kids to school in the morning as he is supposed to be doing. So, I actually got quite a bit of sleep last night I just haven't been writing as much as I wanted to. I think that there's like a lot of stuff that's taking up my mental load at work and, with the kids with school it's been kind of mentally exhausting in that respect. And then I am still just trying to feel my way around in the dark on this novel as I'm trying to finish the second book. And so that's been a bit of a trial and all of it just leaves me feeling like I don't know what I'm doing, which I hate. I hate it.

Kelton:

Yeah. Is this such an uplifting episode for our listeners? Are they feeling jazzed about writing yet?

Krisserin:

I feel like we're in the doldrums. You ever read the Phantom toll booth or see the movie?

Kelton:

Mm-hmm.

Krisserin:

Yeah. I feel like we're in the doldrums.

Kelton:

I did accomplish my goals from last week.

Krisserin:

What were our goals for last week?

Kelton:

Your goal was to figure out what

Krisserin:

I.

Kelton:

your characters need to go through to get to the conclusion. How did, it sounds like you were just in that hell yourself. Have you figured out any turning points for these characters?

Krisserin:

I sat down and I thought to myself, what is each of these characters' worst fears? What would be the absolute worst thing that could happen, for them? And so I did think about that and I wrote a, a decent amount. Maybe like 4,000 words since the last time we chatted.

Kelton:

That's

Krisserin:

Yeah. But it's garbage. It's just like, you know, it's not, it's spaghetti draft writing. It's not anything super great. And then I realized, which is a horrible thing to admit. A couple of things. I realized a couple of things. One, I realized that I don't have a bad guy. I don't have an enemy in this book the way that I had in the first book. So in the first book? Yeah, in the first book, the father, the CEO of this company is the bad guy. The second book, it's much more global in scale and he's not the baddest of the bad guys. You know,

Kelton:

Mm-hmm.

Krisserin:

is, a power more powerful than him that is, threatening him I just haven't figured out how to define that.'cause I don't know how I'm supposed to be. Like, it's all the governments of every country in the world that wants this technology, but then the second realization that I had, which is just my insecurity talking, is that I've created a story that requires the ability to write conflict at a greater scale than I've ever done before. And it's something that I admire the heck out of fantasy writers, speculative writers, that, all of those that came before me. And I'm just like, do I have it? Can I do this? Am I, can I pull this off? I don't know. So that's, that's how I've been feeling. But I've just been kind of, like I said, feeling my way around in the dark while still writing. But, I think I got up. You know, two of the four days this week and wrote. It's hard when I don't know what I'm gonna wake up to write. Like I kind of need to know what I'm gonna be doing the next morning to get myself out of bed. And I've just been prioritizing sleep a little bit because I've equally been pretty tired.

Kelton:

Yeah. I just had like a, a vision of a potential enemy in your book where it was like a, a Dolores Umbridge type character, but it's just like a very charismatic, senator. That everybody likes and is actually super nefarious. You can find it within the many government structures. There are so many horrible

Krisserin:

I know, but it's not one person. Right? It's like multiple people. And is it the investors of the company? You know, Dolores Umbridge was one bad actor, but she wasn't the biggest. Enemy. She was just a, an arm of Voltdemort and all of, I can't remember Harry Potter right now, but you know what I'm talking about. So that's it. It's the, the, like, the ultimate evil that I need to define without it feeling hokey, because I wanna be like, hmm. It's,

Kelton:

hard.

Krisserin:

the governments of all the worlds. Okay, Krisserin All right.

Kelton:

Ah, well I'm excited to see how it pans out. I mean, that, that, that is hard. Are you reading any books that kind of. Do that to help inspire you. Like you could read some spy thrillers and really get some bad actors.

Krisserin:

I'm not. I am not reading at all. I feel like I'm just in the, in a weird mental space. I did stay up on Friday night until four 15 watching the new season of The Diplomat with Keri Russell and Rufuss Sewell and, the man who, I don't know if you've ever seen Poldark, but the man who is Poldark, I forget his name. I wanna say it's like Anthony Quinn or something. He's in the season and he's so dreamy and she is the, ambassador to the United States and England, and she's in direct line with the president and it's just crazy. Like that show is so intriguing and well written. My husband hates it, but I love it. And, so that, that helped a little bit. But again, I feel like my brain is just fried. I don't know how, and I'm getting an okay amount of sleep except for when I do choose to get up and write. But I don't know how you, you do it. How are you doing with your writing?

Kelton:

goals my goals for last week were to synthesize the feedback around the memoir proposal and kind of create a plan. So I created a document just of the feedback and of the things I know I wanna change and organized them by category, and then turned them into tasks essentially. And the woman that I'm consulting with on the memoir proposal was like, all of this is really good. It's just too short. And so she was like a typical memoir proposal for this type of a memoir is 40 to 45 pages and mine is 24 right now. And so she was just like, your bio is two paragraphs. It should be an entire page. You know, it was like all these things, it was just like, have to be so much longer and so, so much more detailed. And all of the marketing stuff has to like amplify by essentially 50 to 60%. One major area that I have to focus on for the memoir is actually outlining every chapter that's gonna be in it, which is what she recommended. And I was like, you know, that's a little bit like pre-writing the book. And she was like, yeah, that's the good part is that once someone says yes, you can just.

Krisserin:

So,

Kelton:

Act on

Krisserin:

you know.

Kelton:

Yeah. And she was like, and obviously like once someone says yes, things can change. So don't feel like you're like, I really don't wanna be beholden to this'cause you won't necessarily be but I'm really, really grateful now that I change, the plan to have November and December be dedicated to working on the proposal. because to come up with what each of the individual chapters is, I will need that time. In terms of writing, you know, I had given myself one week off the newsletter because I was like, I just, I'm cooked. I need it. We've been sick and tired and blah, blah, blah. And I came back with a banger. and that was really. I'm creatively satisfying.'cause I didn't really know how I was going to weave together, going through the previous owner's books and my cat peeing all over the house, but it just, came together. I made people cry. I know. And I was just like, yes, she's still got it. and I have, you know, recently been thinking more and more about the novel while I'm going to bed. Seasonally that's been creeping back in my brain and like a fool I also, I think we have talked about this before, but I tell Woods, a continuing fairytale as he's falling asleep. One that I'm like making up and I'm starting to have little plot points come together, you know, in the dark where I'm like, oh, I gotta write that down when he falls asleep. And I'm like, you are not working on this project. Okay, stop it. Stop, like leaning into this little fairytale that you have no, no room for. So of course I did start a note in my phone so I could write down little ideas that came together for that. But, writing itself has been, in the background and I've really needed it to be, I've really needed a little bit of recovery and slow down. for me, tonight will be the second to last session of the Rewilding autumn practice. And so that will end on November 6th. And then that really oh, really opens up some time for me for three straight months. I'm looking forward to that. God, I want it to be winter. Krisserin. I want it to be winter so bad.

Krisserin:

It's interesting considering where you live because it is, a time that you pull within, right? You it's gonna snow. You guys are gonna be huddled in the cabin for warmth and not really going out as much. Whereas in LA I'm like, what does that mean? Winter?

Kelton:

Yeah, I mean, for the listeners that don't know, I lived in LA for eight years before moving to Colorado again for the second time. I, I, moving to Colorado, especially at this altitude where the seasons are so present, has been so therapeutic for my brain. Like time felt surreal in la like it just never moved. I didn't age. was no pressure, no deadline for me. That was how I reacted to the lack of seasons. and here I just work within them so much better. It is so much better for my brain, to be in like a seasonal transition place. And, but right now it's been, you know, global warming. It's been too hot. It's just been too hot. I mean, for us that means it's been 57 degrees every day. But like, when you go outside, that feels like 75 the altitude. And it, we normally have our huge snowstorm already, and I'm like, where is it? Where is the snow? Where is the cold? I'm ready to get locked inside. Ugh.

Krisserin:

See, for me it's the opposite because I work in e-commerce, speeding toward the end of the year, and then starting in Q1 is my busiest time of the year for work. And so we have, you know, it's gonna be November on Saturday, and then it's a whole month of Black Friday, cyber Monday, because there's no Black Friday Cyber Monday anymore. It is the entire month of November going into December now. And then we have a launch happening in December, a promotion in January and a whole year of planning that we're doing right now, potentially a trip to New York for work. My kids are, going to have, parent teacher conferences and then they're off of school for a week for Thanksgiving. I cook for Thanksgiving and then it has like the presents, and I don't know about your home, but in my home I am Santa Claus. I pick the tree, decorate the tree, decorate the house, buy all the presents, wrap all the presents. It is exhausting. So I fucking hate Christmas.

Kelton:

Oh no.

Krisserin:

I mean, I love gift giving. It is one of my love languages. I enjoy giving gifts and picking gifts. But, and I would say that over the almost 20 years I've been married to my husband, it's gotten better. But, it pisses me off every year. I'm not looking forward to the winter because I won't, I won't be able to come up for breath until probably, may

Kelton:

I can like already hear the panic in your voice.

Krisserin:

and by the way, I had like it in my head that I was going to apply for an MFA program in February. Which I kind of still wanna do, but I'm also like, well, if I'm going out on submission for a book in January, which by the way, my whole December, I'm supposed to be reading my second book to my agent and getting that ready to go on submission. So I've, I feel an immense amount of pressure and stress coming down the back. Whereas we've talked about this in life, in world, in Nature, winter is about, it's the end of the cycle. It's about rest. It's about death, it's about regeneration and I don't get to do that.

Kelton:

Ugh. Ugh.

Krisserin:

Come back to L.A. Kelton. It is great.

Kelton:

I listen, I am a little Christmas self. I love decorating. I love, I'm like, I already am working on the invitation to have some friends over to decorate cookies. Like I love Christmas so much. And similar to you, I am Santa. Ben is very good at getting gifts for me, but this is the first Christmas that, woods is really gonna be online. And so I don't know if Ben is thinking about that at all, but the grandparents are already like, Kelton, what should we get Woods? And I'm like, why don't you just fucking Google gifts for a 2-year-old? Just kidding. I mean, I appreciate that. They wanna know what I want. to have, because, you know, it's like we already get so many hand-me-downs. It's like, we just don't need a lot of

Krisserin:

That's the thing. We don't need anything.

Kelton:

yeah. I'm like, we don't need anything. Like, I'm like, just pick like a couple books. Pick a couple books. That's what I say every

Krisserin:

Yeah.

Kelton:

But, you know, I, I have my, I have my qualms about managing everything. Um, and like being the magic maker. But I like the magic so much that I'm like, I will do it.

Krisserin:

After 10 years. I'll tell you.

Kelton:

I'm sure, I'm sure it does.

Krisserin:

love it too. I love Christmas. I love the lights. I love the flavors. I love, we do cookies every year, but I'm just, I don't wanna be a Grinch about it.

Kelton:

me. My clients, my client work is gonna change a little in December. I mean, being freelance, one of the problems is that I'm gonna make less money in like the most expensive month of the year, just because they won't, they don't wanna work as much. And I know that in advance, so I plan for that. But, so one of my clients will be essentially like silent for the last three weeks of December. and then. My other client has a huge launch, January 1st. Um, and so, you know, it's like I, I have some wiggle room there that I'm a freelancer and I can just be like, I'm not working those days. Sorry. Um, but uh, I do get, I get a breath, I get less money, but I get a.

Krisserin:

It's also your 40th birthday.

Kelton:

It is gonna be my 40th birthday, which I'm like, I'm dreading not because of turning 40. I'm really looking forward to being 40. I think it's a beautiful

Krisserin:

Mm-hmm.

Kelton:

like genuinely, I think it is such a beautiful number. So you like care about angel numbers for me, like the transition from 39.

Krisserin:

Yeah.

Kelton:

To 40. It's just like breathy and beautiful. But my birthday is December 31st, which was amazing when I was young and is a burden now because everything is expensive. You can't afford hotels, like everybody's going to these like parties. I don't want to go to, like, I, so I'm, planning to just have like a dinner party sometime in January with. Some girlfriends and, you know, just call it good and then like, celebrate being 40 the whole year. Um, that is my plan. I, I struggle with birthdays because I really desperately want to feel special on my birthday.

Krisserin:

Same.

Kelton:

And it's very, very, it's very hard to feel as special as I want to. Ben is pretty good. But he, you know, he's up against the realities of scheduling things on that day. It's like, you know, if I wanted to go on a sleigh ride or something that day, Ben would've had to book it last year, and that's just, that's not fair to anybody. So Ben usually turns to the kitchen. Ben has made me funnel cake and homemade chicken tenders and like all kinds of like strange treats over the years as a. express his love, and that's really sweet. But yeah, so for my birthday, just more five star reviews.

Krisserin:

Kelton texted me, she's like, oh my God, we have 25 star reviews on Apple podcasts. She was very happy about that, so definitely. That's one way to,

Kelton:

22 of you.

Krisserin:

we have 21 on Spotify too, so 40, 43 people. Yeah. Yes. I'm sorry to be such a, like a grump this week. I feel really bad. It's been a hard, it's been hard. And Al also, I've been dealing with like, stuff with my youngest daughter at school and so it's,

Kelton:

Ugh.

Krisserin:

yeah, I, I try to tell myself, at the end of the day, it's all gonna come out in the wash. So, you know, it's, it's been rough being a writer and being a parent and I didn't wanna scare Olivia too much, but I do think that, you know, if I were to, I was thinking about writing an essay because we talked about it last week. And I thought, well, this is a bummer of a topic. But I do think that if I were to go back in time and talk to myself before I had kids. I mean, and I'm not even talking about my writing career, but just about all the things that I wanted to do, I would tell myself like, listen, things are gonna change. You are not gonna be able to do everything that you thought you could do, but it's gonna be great either way. It's gonna be great, but you are going to have to take a beat on some things and some things are gonna be different than what you thought they were gonna be, you know?'Cause I feel like. women have come around to understanding we can't have it all because this is not the way that our capitalist society is built. There's no community built in for women who wanna have children, et cetera.

Kelton:

Yeah.

Krisserin:

But, it, I think, would've taken a bit of the sting away from beating myself up about not being able to do the things that I wanted to do.

Kelton:

I mean, I haven't had a child long enough to have anything to say to myself prior to, I think often about this reel or TikTok that I saw. You know, there's that whole trend where people are like, these are the things no one tells you about motherhood. And it's like things you've like absolutely heard before. One real I saw was like no one tells you, before you're a parent how much you're gonna have to get up from where you're sitting.

Krisserin:

Oh yeah,

Kelton:

that, for me, I think about that all the time that is something that truly no one articulated fully. That like every time you sit down, you have to get back up every time immediately.

Krisserin:

it's true.

Kelton:

There is so much getting back up.

Krisserin:

Yeah. And it's not, it's not for things that are important. It's like, mommy, mommy, come here. I wanna show you something. Look at my drawing. I mean, I guess that's important for to her, but I'm like,

Kelton:

and it's hard, you know,

Krisserin:

I just sat down.

Kelton:

wish I know. I wish I had had the A reason to be more disciplined and focused before having children. I had a lot of time on my hands, but because there was so much time, it was, it was very hard for me to use it wisely. And now I have so many constraints and so much motivation that I get way more done now having a kid than I did before. And the, you know, the, I just, the village part of it is like, so, oh, I cannot emphasize enough. If you are thinking about having children, how much you need to be friends with your neighbors, more neighbors than you ever imagined. You need to be exchanging numbers immediately. You need to be sending cookies around the block. You need to start a recipe club, a podcast club, a book club. Like you need to know so many people. So that those people can show up for you and obviously so you can show up for them. It's, it's, that has been one of the most magical parts about living in the town that I do is that because it is so small and because it is difficult to live here for, I, I think most people in the world would consider difficult to live here, we rely on each other a lot and that has meant that we can call in the village for certain things. I should be calling in that village more. It's tough when the child is in such a only phase. mom. Loves mom. Oh my God. Does he love

Krisserin:

I don't think that's a phase.

Kelton:

I know. I'm like, when's, when is this one over? I mean, I love it, but it is, it's difficult to. It is difficult to hand over a child when they're crying, but you know, I'm, I feel like I'm a better writer since having him, it definitely a better worker like I am. I am driven.

Krisserin:

Saw a graph on Facebook, which who knows if it's real or not these days, but it was a, it was like a chart of authors in their most productive years. And, men were like. Already so much more productive than women. I wonder why. But it was 46 was the age where people published the most amount of books and got their most work done. So I do think as you get older, you have energy. If your kids are a little bit older, you have resources. You just have figured it out how to. Be driven. You're also inching toward death. So there's that sort of like, why do you write like you're running out of time feeling but yeah, this has been a really uplifting conversation. Kelton, I'm so glad Kelton was like, what are we talking about tomorrow? And.

Kelton:

I did wa i I I had wanted to ask you about your reading life right now, and so you, like earlier you kind of spoiled it, that you're not reading. Because I am. I, I have been struggling to read lately, finding the time to read. And I, it's not that I don't have that time, it's using that time for reading. I have wanted to use that time for work every time. and what has helped me a little bit is just having guests on the podcast'cause I'm like, well, I gotta read that book. And that has been really rewarding. But also I, I don't have like a long of our guests. I don't have a long like books list that I'm looking forward to and I, that I'm really missing. I haven't felt that like, oh, I can't wait to read that feeling in, in like a year. And, I just, is there anything, I know you were so absorbed in the Robin Hobb world for so long that it's like, is there anything that you're like, I, I want to want to read that.

Krisserin:

I am waiting for the second book in the Becky Chambers sci-fi Space opera series. It's on hold for like ever. And so I'm waiting for that book to come through. Literally my Kindle has been sitting dead in my drawer. I have not picked it up. And for me, I think it's more about time. And the fact that I just don't have a, a long list of books that I'm looking forward to, but I have, I kind of need to go to bed between like right when my kids go to bed in order for me to get enough sleep so I can get up in the morning and write. And so I just haven't really had time. I'm literally, dropping my kids off at school, working, picking my kids up from school, ferreting them to their afterschool activities, coming home, making them dinner, making sure they don't stink, putting them to bed and going to bed. And so the only time I have for myself is in the morning when I'm writing and some exercise and movement a couple times a week, but that's really it. And so I just haven't had time to read. I'm still reading Lake Song, the nice thing about it is it's a novel and story, so I can read it. Read a chapter and then put it down and go to bed because they're not super long stories.

Kelton:

Yeah.

Krisserin:

It's not a long book, but I'm kind of making my way slowly through that. I don't have, I was reading another book that I just returned to the library because I got bored halfway through, you know? So it's been,

Kelton:

need,

Krisserin:

uninspired. Help me.

Kelton:

need our listeners to go listen to Olivia's podcast, bad on paper and hear what it sounds like to not have kids.

Krisserin:

please. I'm getting depressed just listening to us. I'm so sorry.

Kelton:

I mean, I'm like, listen, I'm really excited for the months to come in regards to the work that I'm doing, but in the, in like the, just today, today as a one entity, one moment in time, I'm, I'm tired and I also just haven't. You know you are, you are very good at quietly in the background toward your dreams, and I am very good at working publicly, my work at people, and when I am throwing my work at people and not receiving the amount of validation that I need for fuel start to get a little bratty about it. I start to just be like, oh, this isn't good enough. Why am I even doing this? What is the point of this practice? I was talking with Anne Helen Peterson the other day who just moved her substack over from Substack to Patreon, for myriad reasons I told her in that conversation, you know, I was like, well, I'm, I'm a much smaller writer than her. And Substack is probably the, the right place for me to be right now as I'm like moving toward querying and I want like a steady audience. But I just was like, what am, what am I doing with Shangri Logs? Like, what am I doing with this project? You know, it's been closing in on four and a half years of me writing all these free essays I sent out an email to free subscribers this past week, encouraging them to upgrade if they liked it. And a few people did upgrade, but like 30 people unsubscribed from the newsletter in general. And I was like, oh my God. Like, what would it make me feel terrible?

Krisserin:

Gosh.

Kelton:

I just looking at that project, with your, with any kind of work, like sometimes you have to step back for a moment and be like, what are we doing here? Is this making me happy? Is this doing what it needs to do? Does my energy need to go somewhere else? If I tried something entirely new, would it restructure my whole life? Listening to you describe your days. Part of me is like, you should go freelance girl, but I understand why you don't, you know, it's like being freelance offers me a lot of freedom, but a lot of risk. and I, I don't know. I feel like I'm at just a, like a true end of October, early November vibe where you're starting to get that kind of end of year cumulative curiosity where you're like, where are we at? am I at as a person? How are things looking?

Krisserin:

As you were describing the week off that you had from the newsletter, I started to think about that for you as well because you came back with a spark of creativity that I think you described as, a banger.

Kelton:

Mm-hmm.

Krisserin:

and listening to Olivia last week, she did talk about how. First of all, she's like, I don't know how you do it. I also don't know how you do it. I think that the way that you put yourself out there every week is really remarkable. And yes, I'm good at writing in my dark cave and quietly chipp away at my work, but it takes a lot of courage to do what you do and a lot of effort and a lot of stamina, and you have been doing it for four and a half years and maybe considering the fact that taking a little bit of time in between essays made the work better, it could be time for you to consider, is this still serving you the way that you have it set up? You know, I think that it feels, probably a feeling of like, oh, well I have these subscribers that are paying for this, and so like, what is the agreement that I've made with them? I can understand stand that pressure too. But, as you go into your 40th year, it might be worthwhile to think about the things that serve you and the things to leave behind.

Kelton:

I am also leaving open sort of this idea for myself that when I query in January, it will be successful. And I will have more work and that will drive the change. I do kind of need something to help me, have a reason to restructure rather than general ennui or malaise, you know, like whatever it is, like I do need a driving force to make it. Give me a reason. So I'm, I'm very, I'm very hopeful that the query will be successful and someone will be like, you have to write this book. And then I'll be like, I need time write this book. And so that will punt some of the essays, off of the calendar. But you know, obviously I'm, I'm waiting until that happens. There has to be a reason for me because right now it is, it is what keeps my writing practice going, the newsletter. But it is, you know, it is time to look at it holistically and be like, okay, there was a lot of work for free. I really would love to get to 10,000 subscribers by the end of the year. I don't think that's gonna happen. I'm at 8,700, I lost 30 this week. You sue assholes. But, trying to figure out how to close that gap on a platform that has a lot of bloat, where I'm, a small fish is, an uphill battle, but. I'm trying to think creatively toward the end of the year, like where could I, could I get on any, like lists of newsletters you should subscribe to, or like a gift list or something like that. But it's just, it's very hard right now to think that creatively because that kind of idea, requires a lot of outreach I'm, not an expert in that. I'm not a PR girl. I'm not a marketing girl. I'm a content girl. I'm a brand girl. I don't do the outreach.

Krisserin:

I can understand that. I don't think you need to wait until some momentous event, because then if you get to, I mean, querying is going to be successful for you. I know it is, but, maybe it's worthwhile to consider. I get, oh, I don't wanna give you advice. About this because I know nothing about Substack. I think if you wanna get to your 10,000 subscribers, continuing at the, at the pace you're going is probably the right thing to do. Because you wanna be able to say that in your query letter that you have 10,000 subscribers. Right. Fair enough. But I do wonder if the cadence'cause your paid newsletter, is once a week. Maybe the free one can be every other week.

Kelton:

Yeah.

Krisserin:

You are giving a lot away for free. I think that it's a very,

Kelton:

about

Krisserin:

very fair thing to consider. Your time is expensive, very expensive. I would say actually you probably are undercharging, even the people who are paying you on your hourly rate, you know? And it is finite. So it's a worthwhile thing to think about.

Kelton:

One of my higher paying clients asked me if I had, any other writers, that might be able to work, on that broader project and I don't know a lot of writers in business and tech, so I had to kind of like reach out to my network and see who knew who, and I was referred to this, this one writer, and just looking at his portfolio and his LinkedIn, I was like, he's gonna ask for more money than I asked for. I could just see it looking at him. I just knew, I was like, he's gonna ask for more money. He, and he is gonna get it. He's gonna get it. And I was just like, oh boy. I mean, I have started to turn down clients'cause I'm like, you can't pay me what I get paid. I don't know. It's, it'll be interesting to see if, if I, if I can successfully sell this book, how much it could sell for. I think I'm in for a rude awakening for how much time I'm gonna have to put on it. But these things are a labor of love.

Krisserin:

they are, and we do them because they fulfill us, not because we are chasing some, hypothetical paycheck at the end of it.

Kelton:

Yeah.

Krisserin:

It's the mark that we leave behind on the world that we're chasing after more than anything, or at least I am.

Kelton:

mark today has been pretty depressing,

Krisserin:

so, yeah, I know. Well, let's talk about like what we have to look forward to, because I do think that there's a lot of exciting things on the horizon for both of us. I am inching closer to finishing the second book, which, to be fair to myself, and to be honest with the listeners, this is a book that I stopped writing. Because I did not successfully query the first one, and so I was like, I wanna go work on this other book right now. It was the thing that was calling to me. And so I put it down and I picked up something else, and now I'm returning to it. And, it's been hard because it's something that I, for better or worse, for, for lack of better words, I abandoned it. So,

Kelton:

Yeah.

Krisserin:

But I think, you know, I, I hope that we both have really exciting news in, in the first quarter of next year, and I think that we will, and we're sowing the seeds of that now. And yeah, I think, you know, I was, I will say one thing that I am super proud of both of us for is the fact that as I was going through our youTube, we have a YouTube. If you didn't know, if you wanna watch these conversations, you can watch them on YouTube. We have had, I mean, I think this is like almost our 26th episode of this podcast.

Kelton:

Ooh.

Krisserin:

It's a, it's a lot of of work that we put even into this, you know?

Kelton:

Mm-hmm.

Krisserin:

We do this for the love of it more than we're not get, like I said, we, we are not getting paid. We have no advertisers. We're doing it because we like to talk to each other and encourage each other. And because we do on occasion, get a very nice note from our listeners telling us how much they appreciate listening to us kvetch about how hard it's to get this work done. But I just, I do think that like. Right now we might be in the, the doldrums, but there is, that is part of the process. There's always a, a slump. There's always a valley in between the mountains. Insert metaphor here.

Kelton:

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's true. I today in life feel down, but I do not feel down about my writing. I just feel

Krisserin:

Mm.

Kelton:

And that's, you know, that that will happen when you're not sleeping. But I try to embrace my lack of sleep, like a drunk, high. I try to think of it as like the giddiness in the morning of when you've stayed up all night studying and kind of use that frenetic, loose energy in my writing as like a you know write drunk at a sober kind of vibe. Because it's like, it does, it does change my brain chemistry a little, and I like to take advantage of that. Even though it, it, it feels, it doesn't feel like it did when I was 20.

Krisserin:

I will say, that even though I'm tired and, and feeling a little bit burnt out, I've also never felt more mental clarity, stronger, more capable than I have in my life. I think that there is something about that graph of people being their most productive in their mid forties. It's true. I do feel more self-assured. There's a bit of confidence that I feel when I sit down, even though right now I am feeling my way around in the dark. I know that I'm gonna find the exit. I know that I am, I'm very confident in that feeling. So, all's that to say, we might sound like downers right now, but I know we're gonna get out of it. I'm not in any way, shape or form feeling fatalistic about our efforts. I know both you and I are going to come out on the other side of it, holding hands

Kelton:

Yes.

Krisserin:

on the other side. Successful. So, and it, it is.

Kelton:

And when all our new fans read our books, they'll have like 45 podcast episodes to listen to.

Krisserin:

It's true.

Kelton:

They'll be like, I'm gonna start from the beginning.

Krisserin:

That's right. And it does happen. I see the numbers in our episodes and people do start at the beginning, which is nice. Follow along.

Kelton:

Oh, that's so cool. I love that so much. All right, well, we gotta talk about our goals for the week ahead.

Krisserin:

Mm-hmm. Let's talk about goals. I would like to keep writing. It would be great. I honestly feel like I have maybe four to six chapters until the end of this book. I'm close. Yeah, I'm close. But it's the big thing, it's the battle, it's the storming of the, of whatever, you know? And so. I need to get, I need to get it together. That is my goal, it's a lofty one, but I want to write to the end of this book, at least to the end of the conflict. The resolution shit is gonna take some time. Frodo's gonna go back to the Shire and it's gonna, you know, all of that happy horse shit. But I do want to like get to the, to the climax of the action and figure out these like big toothy problems that I have in the book.

Kelton:

Mm-hmm.

Krisserin:

That's me. It's a bit, it's,

Kelton:

That's,

Krisserin:

only thing I have on my, on my docket. That's the only thing I'm struggling with, so that's what I'm gonna try and do.

Kelton:

Yeah.

Krisserin:

Yeah.

Kelton:

I, I think it's ambitious to finish that in a week, but knowing you'll working on it in a week is,

Krisserin:

Yeah.

Kelton:

I think that is worthwhile. I can't ever remember how much I have revealed about my memoir or not on this podcast. So I will just say that it is separated into five sections. And what I wanna do this week is start thinking about which anecdotes from my writing and from my life fit into those individual sections. And just'cause that what I really need most work on in the proposal is the chapters outline. And so I need to be thinking about where do the stories I wanna tell fit within the framework of five for the book. So I have a, I do have a note in my phone going that has those five sections that I've started to put just like. Things that pop into my mind where I'm like, oh, the having the radios on for the avalanches, you know, the front of the house flooding, like a waterfall when it rains. Like, you know, like these like little things that I'm like, where do they fit in? What is the emotional feeling behind them? So that when I really do sit down to work on the proposal itself, I have something to refer to and I'm not just like, I don't know what the chapters are. So that, that's going for this week. And then, I am, tying up the end of the class so that I do have a little bit of work I have to do for that. I need to capture testimonials and I'm just like getting ducks in a row to do that. But it's still, it's still kind of quiet over here. Obviously I have to write, the newsletter, but maybe, maybe I'll do some thinking on like, what is like a splash effort to get to that 10,000 mark. That'll be tough.

Krisserin:

Can I just say, our number one listener, my mother,

Kelton:

Yeah.

Krisserin:

she, I asked her, I was like, what'd you think of, the last episode? And she, you know, when I gave Kelton feedback on her memoir and she was like, Ugh. She's like, Krisserin, I think you are a little harsh. She was very concerned.

Kelton:

I.

Krisserin:

but I'm so glad that you have someone to work with that could give you very concrete things to improve your proposal. And the part that she said that I know tie this all ties back to promoting. Shangri logs, but that the marketing had to be amplified so much. it feels almost like you have to think about the marketing first

Kelton:

First.

Krisserin:

and then, and then everything else will follow. But it, it is the icky part. It is the part that doesn't feel like it's in service of the actual writing, but it is the whole reason that people will buy your book.

Kelton:

Yeah, It's interesting'cause I do feel like I like doing the marketing in the proposal. I like thinking about how and why the book ends up in people's hands, but for some reason, translating that to the newsletter. Feels really different and really challenging. And maybe that's because, the proposals in its nascent and it's like all of these ideas are swirling together. And where the newsletter, it's like, I've been writing it for many years. I've written many incredible essays. I've been published in big places, and it's like I and I, I, nothing, nothing.

Krisserin:

I.

Kelton:

So, um. But you know, at that said, 9,000 is a good number. It's just not as good as 10,000. So I'm gonna keep, keep chugging away.

Krisserin:

I think we could reverse engineer how you get there. I think we, I'll help you. Yeah.

Kelton:

Okay. Okay.

Krisserin:

I'll, I'll put my marketing hat on. For good.

Kelton:

We're, Krisserin and I are gonna start running paid ads.

Krisserin:

Hey.

Kelton:

Listen, if you told me how I would do it.

Krisserin:

Uh, every time I post a TikTok it's like, for$20, you could get 20,000 views on this, on this TikTok.

Kelton:

I

Krisserin:

And then my,

Kelton:

is such a,

Krisserin:

my thumbs like hovering over the button. I'm like, do I wanna do it?

Kelton:

They're like, you're so close to jackpot. Just play one more time.

Krisserin:

God. Anyhow, okay, so I'm gonna try and figure out the big climax of my novel, and you are going to do everything.

Kelton:

Oh, hold on writing that down. Krisserin, big climax, Kelton, Cool.

Krisserin:

Awesome. Alright. Well everybody, you know where to find us. You can send us an email at officialpenpalspod@gmail.com. Pen. Yeah.

Kelton:

you should send us an email obvious. We're lonely.

Krisserin:

You should, guys should reach out. We'd love to hear from you. Send us an email. Follow us@penpalspod on all the, social networks. If you love us and wanna support the podcast, please leave a review. Five stars only. I know Kelton likes to be like, whatever, one star is fine. No, please.

Kelton:

Listen, I, I think like a four star in the bunch makes it feel realistic.

Krisserin:

All right. Fair.

Kelton:

No one stars. Nobody should be listening to this hand giving one

Krisserin:

I hate listening.

Kelton:

but

Krisserin:

it

Kelton:

wanna celebrate yeah, my 40th birthday in advance, five stars will do.

Krisserin:

and yeah, we just, we're so happy you're here and listening to us. Yap. Sorry for this very depressing episode, but we'll see you next week. All right. Happy writing.

Kelton:

Happy writing.

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Kelton Wright

Co-host
Head Shot

Krisserin Canary

Co-host