Video Transcript (computer generated - may contain errors)

Sara Gentry: Hello, writers, I have got a real treat for you. In this conversation I have the privilege of talking with Josee Smith. Welcome, Josee.

Josee Smith: Hey, Sara, thank you so much for having me.

Sara Gentry: And we're going to have a really important conversation that maybe doesn't happen often enough in the writing world, because we are going to talk about a category of writer who is often very busy juggling all the things. And that's something I'm pretty passionate about myself, because we are gonna be talking about busy mom writers. But writers, let me introduce you to Josee just a little bit before we dive in. So Josee is an Indie author and a book coach for working moms who want to finish the novel of their dreams. She achieved her childhood dream of finishing a novel and publishing it in 2021, congratulations.

Josee Smith: Thank you.

Sara Gentry: And now she supports other writers with the same dream as a new mom with a busy job. She understands the challenges of managing it all, and she also believes strongly that writing and creativity can help women feel like themselves again after the chaos of motherhood. Amen. To that, and she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, young son, anxious dog, and semi feral cat. Sounds busy.

Josee Smith: Yes, yes.

Sara Gentry: Okay, so let's just cut right to the heart of it. Here. What? What do you think is so challenging about being a mom writer. Perhaps it's just challenging to be a writer period. So why is it extra hard to be a mom writer?

Josee Smith: Yeah, cause, I think it's also hard to be a mom, right? Like, so you're combining 2 very challenging identities and trying to somehow remain as a whole person. I think it's you know. My son just turned one so last year I went through, you know, pregnancy giving birth to him, the you know, trials and tribulations of the newborn stage. All of that. And you just your body isn't your own, you know, when you're pregnant. When you have a baby, it's you. Now have this thing outside of you that you're responsible for. And you know, maybe hopefully, you have some extra support around you that can help. But it, there's just something about yeah, this. You're now kind of outside of yourself in a very different way, and I think there are a lot of messages in society as well about how moms should act. There's messages about how women should act in general, but especially moms, the sacrifices we should be making, the the sacrifices that just happen naturally from having a child from being pregnant, you know, giving birth all of that, the things that we have to give up during that experience. And there's all these messages that we hear about. You know how much we should pour into our children, how much we should, you know, support them and give them, you know, opportunities to go on and do great things. There's all this, you know, late night, Googling, you're gonna do in those early days of being a mom of like, am I doing it right? Am I messing my kid up for the rest of their life like how do I? How do I manage this completely new world that you've now entered? And so to then also have this passion, this interest in writing, and having to figure out like, how how do I actually maintain these 2 things? Is it even possible to maintain these 2 identity identities feeling like you maybe have to sacrifice that part of you because you now have this child, maybe multiple kids that you're so passionate about. And you really want to put your attention there. I think it's just. It's it's a balancing act that can feel really difficult and challenging, and the world tells us so much how much we should be giving to our kids, which, like, obviously, yes, but you are still like the individual. The mom is still a worthy person is still a person who deserves to have you know, all sorts of great things, and so it's coming up against those messages that we receive, and having to work on the sort of like inner work of accepting that. And and, you know, agreeing with that but then also the logistical details of like, how do you actually get the work done when you have that newborn who's screaming at you? For you know, the next, like nursing session. So yeah, it's it's it's a challenging, a challenging space to be in but it's definitely something that I think it's possible to kind of figure out how to make it work for you. It's something that I've had to figure out in the last year of being with my son. And so it's something that I'm really passionate about helping other moms see? Like, if this is, if you're drawn to writing novels. I truly believe that that means that you're meant to do it. And so it's just a matter of, you know, figuring out how can you make this work for yourself.

Sara Gentry: Yeah. Yeah. And you know the physical toll as you had mentioned, you know, you're not necessarily in charge of your body anymore. But I can't speak to your experience. But my children were not great sleepers, so you know the like the advice that you would hear in the writing circles of like, just Wake up before the baby does and like no, you don't understand, like I have been waking up every 2 hours for like a year now. So I am not going to wake up voluntarily at 5 Am. I'm going to sleep whenever I possibly can. So I would get frustrated sometimes hearing advice like that.

Josee Smith: Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, it's, I think the the biggest thing that I've had to learn because I spent a lot of time comparing my writing with my son to what I was able to do before having a baby. Because I you know, I've always been a writer my whole life, but got serious about it in 2020, and, you know, did a lot of work to kind of build up the habit, be able to publish books. I have, you know, bunch of books out under a pen name and I'm really proud of that work. And then having my son everything shifted, and my expectations for myself had to shift. It was a wonderful experience in that I was able to kind of find myself again through my writing after having him so when I was pregnant, I kind of put my writing on pause for a little bit, just because it was hard to sort of manage like I was working, and I had. I was pregnant, dealing with like that whole experience, and just like creatively, I felt kind of spent. So it was on pause for a little bit, and then the first, st you know, like 6 weeks or so of his life, we were just like figuring out, how do we care for this tiny screaming thing? And so, you know, that's really what my focus was on. But then I kind of got to a point. I was lucky to have a break from work. During those early weeks. Early months. And I got to a point where we had a routine like my husband and I had a routine with our son. You know I had like mostly figured out breastfeeding at that point I kind of understood what we needed to do.Fortunately, my son is a pretty good sleeper, so he was in like a good routine, with naps and stuff still waking up at all hours of the night and everything but you know we had a routine going, and I found myself like starting to feel sort of adrift when I wasn't taking care of him, like I knew what to do when he was awake. He needed to be fed. He needed his diaper to be changed, and we would do like 30 seconds of tummy time, because that's all he wanted to do when he was like 6 weeks old. He just wanted a little bit of tummy tummy time, and then he would go back to sleep, and so I would have, you know, like a a reasonable amount of time where he didn't need me, and I just sort of was like wandering through our house trying to figure out like what to do with myself in that in that downtime and I really appreciate the journaling practice that I had established before having him, because once I realized that I like didn't quite feel like myself. I was able to sit down with my journal and just like write out what was going on, what I was feeling and try to figure out like, Okay, is there something I can do about this? And I realized that, you know, I had a clear job with him, but I didn't know what to do. And the rest of my like, you know, marginally free time and even things as basic like, I wrote down like, watch TV, read a book I just like, didn't remember that those are things I could do when I did not take care of him. And then, after a certain point, I wrote down, oh, I should get back into the novel that I was writing, and maybe write something else. You know that that is exciting to me. And so I think it, having that realization of like, I'm still a writer, even though I am also still not now. A mom was really helpful for me to help to kind of establish like, I guess, the non negotiable of writing as part of my identity, like I am a mom. But I'm also gonna find ways to make my writing fit into my lifestyle. So I I appreciate that that was something I was able to discover fairly early into his life. And so now they, those 2 things, just kind of work, hand in hand for me like I am his mom. But I also make space in my day to write I have had to do some grieving of like the amount of time I have to write these days is very different than what I had previously. So that's taken a lot of continuous journaling, of trying to like, you know, be okay with that reality. And that's what you know. We could talk about some tips, and that's like one of the big tips is just like your reality. But I think you can do that. Then it's like that opens up the ability, the possibility to just continue forward with what you're doing, and then actually make progress. But it's it's such a big adjustment that it just takes time to work through those feelings and get to a place where you remember that you still have an identity separate from being a mom, and that identity, your passions, your interests, they still matter even with, you know this little baby that just he's reached the age now where he just like really, really wants to be held by me, which I love. But also I know that. Yeah, your free time changes very much when they like really attached.

Sara Gentry: Yeah, no, it's true. My, my first especially. She would not nap, but would nap if I held her. So then I did, which for a while like sometimes I would nap too. But that is actually what brought me back to doing more extensive reading because it was a quiet activity that I could do while holding her. And then with my second, I I just think it's so interesting that you mention like the creativity helping moms feel more like themselves again, because it was after my second. So I'm also a musician, and that's a noisier activity. And so there just wasn't as much opportunity for me to have that outlet when they were young, and I was like, Oh, we should shift that towards writing, because I always loved books and story and things like that. And so I just think it's so interesting that you know the brain, the creative juices. They need a place to go. So you mentioned some tips here, because I'm sure all the busy moms are going to be like, yes, please tell me the tips.

Josee Smith: Yes, so I think a big thing is just accepting the reality of your circumstances. Just, you know, getting to a place where you can be okay with it. I don't think that is necessarily an easy journey, like it's probably gonna take some time to get to that place of acceptance. So I'd like I'm saying it. But don't expect that, you know you should have it accepted immediately. I journaling is like the thing that I do all the time to work through all of my thoughts and feelings. And so that was really important for me to accept the fact that. Yeah, I can't have 2 h, or even 1 h on a weekend to write, because I think I want to be with my son like that's I want to be with him during that time. He goes to daycare during the week, so I want to have the weekends with him. Weekends used to be the time when I wrote all the time previously. But things have had to shift. And I've gotten to a place of yeah being okay with the fact that I don't have weekends in the same way that I used to, and as a result, my writing does go. It's going slower than it has previously, but I know that for me, as long as I'm showing up and doing a little bit of work every single day. I will make progress. I will, you know, get to a point where I feel good about what I've written, where I'm finishing things. I was able to finish the 1st draft in just a few months earlier earlier this year, like slower than I had previously, but faster than if I'd spent all my time dreading the fact, or like bemoaning the fact that I didn't have the time to write. So I just sat down and wrote in like these little chunks, and I made some progress on it. So yeah, I think just working on accepting your reality and not trying to change it, not like getting frustrated, because it can't be different. I was actually just talking to a writer recently who said that she had the realization that summers are just not a time that she can write, because she has, you know, a daughter who is home from school, and there's all the school things that go on. So I feel like that's a very big probably parent thing is like, summers are just completely different. And that's okay, like, there are other times of the year that you can write, but better to accept it, and you know, move on and make progress than dread every summer and try. But you get mad and like frustrated because your kids are wanting you, and like, I would rather feel like good about the progress that I do make versus upset, because I'm not making some extra progress that doesn't actually work for me. I've got maybe a total of 3 tips. The second tip is also kind of a mindset one, I think, owning the identity of being a writer is really important. Luckily for me, I had, you know I got into my writing, got really serious about it before having my son, and had a pretty strong identity as a writer, I will say in 2020, when I started to take my writing seriously and tried to make progress on a novel. I had to do a lot of like work on that identity. I had to do a lot of journaling. On coming to accept the fact that I was a writer. I tended to describe myself as someone who likes to write, or someone who had written in high school or whatever, but it was hard to say, like I am a writer. So I had to do a lot of work of just kind of accepting that, embracing that identity, and that has now made it easier for me to get back into my writing after pregnancy and having my son, because I always knew in the back of my head. Oh, yeah, I'm a writer. I'm gonna virtual like I'm not. I'm pausing it right now I'm not giving it up. I know I'm gonna come back to it, and that it's something that I'm really excited about. So working on that identity and trying to find a way to balance that identity with both like you could be a mom and also be a writer. You can be a mom, and I don't know an athlete. You can do all sorts of things, and like, still be a mom. There's still ways to, you know, have those multiple identities. And so just trying to get to a place where you embrace and accept the fact that you are a writer, I think, makes it easier to like, feel motivated and excited about writing, because it's like, Oh, yes, this is just this is what I do. This is, you know, something that I'm passionate about and excited about and that you deserve to do that too. As I said, you know, if you're drawn to writing, you're meant to write, and you deserve to like. Have that writer identity and work on your novel work on your nonfiction whatever? But I think that that identity shift can be really important, for you know, if you're just looking at like your day to day, if you don't have that identity, that writer identity, it can be hard to think about, you know. Oh, where can I put in my writing? Because all the other identities get piled on top of it? Whereas if the writer identity is there for you. You just like you figure out, okay, what? What would I do if you know, I really felt like I were a writer. When would I find the time to write? How would I fit it into my lifestyle? Maybe that means like dictation where you can't sit down and you know, type something out. But you can speak into your phone and get the word saved that way. Maybe it's like writing on your phone while you're I don't know sitting at like soccer practice in the parking lot or something. My son's in one. So I don't actually know too much about like as he gets older. What sorts of things I'll be doing like carpeling him around. But yeah, just finding different ways to fit in the writing, because as a writer, of course, you're gonna make the time to write, you're gonna figure out how to do it and fit it into your lifestyle so that identity, I think, is really important to to work on and try to hold on to and the last tip is more like tactical. Just give yourself a tiny, tiny, tiny little goal. Lower your expectations to the ground like underneath the ground, so far down, so far down that it feels ridiculous or like silly. It's like this is not like 5 min is not a goal that can't possibly be an actual writing goal. But what happens when you set a really small goal for yourself is that you make it easy to actually achieve that goal. If you have a 5 min goal like that. Okay, yeah, I can do that 5 min, 10 min. That seems reasonable. Okay, I can like step away for a few minutes and get some writing done, and you make it easy for you to do that consistently, to do it day over day, and or the days that you know. Have that 10 min. There probably will be some days when you don't have 10 min, but you make it easy to show up more days than you don't show up versus thinking that. Oh, I need an hour or 2 h to really get into my story to really, you know, focus and start writing. If you have that high of an expectation for yourself, you're just setting yourself up for failure because it's going to be impossible to actually write that much when you have all sorts of other things going on. So setting, this tiny goal allows you to. Yeah, show up for it, do it consistently. And it helps to build that identity as a writer, because, you know, after a month you'll have written, for, you know, potentially 30 days in a row, and you'll feel it's little tiny bits, but you'll feel good about the fact that you made some progress. And honestly, I think over the course of a month, 6 months a year like you will have something to show for those tiny little amounts that you've written every single day. When I went back to work. In January of this year I set a goal, for I think it was like maybe 10 min a day. That's what I felt good about being able to do and being able to show up for I've now increased it to 20 min a day. And that's weekdays as well because weekends are for my son. So it's it's so. It's like, even like I wrote earlier today. And you know, I had my 20 min timer going. I was like, man, this is I have. I'm editing right now. It's like, I have a lot of this book. I have a lot to go, but I have gotten frustrated about that like it's taking. It's taking time. It's not going as fast as it used to. But it's gonna get done at some point like I will get to the end of it. I will get through these edits. I will make progress. It's, you know, not gonna be as fast as it was before, but by setting such a tiny goal for myself and a a goal that I feel good about. I make it easy for me to fit in those 20 min and make it easy to, you know. Check it off my to do list and I  just am constantly in my story, and I build that trust with myself that I can show up and do the work regardless of the 1 million other things that are going on in my life.

Sara Gentry: Yeah.

Josee Smith: And that's my tips. That's what's worked for me.

Sara Gentry: You talk about the tiny goal. There was a time in which my goal was merely to open the document after lunch. There was no expectation of time or word out. It was merely to just, you know, click on the thing and open it up, and that that was all that. That was yeah. So for the writers who might be going through a phase with older children, I can probably chime in just a little there since my kids are further along. But, we have an outlook in our family that we respect the activities that others love and enjoy, and it may or may not be the thing I love and enjoy. But if we respect that of each other, then I find that it's more respected when we want to take the time to do thing that we want to do. So that would be one thing, and then I also think that it can be really healthy for kids to see their moms and dads working after something that takes a long time and requires dedication and persistence. I mean your little one will not recognize this now, but as they get older they will. And I feel like it's setting an example as long as it's done in a healthy way, I suppose if we take it too far, kids will be like, I never want to do something like that, because my parents are never here but, you know, when done in a in a healthy way, I think it can be a beautiful modeling thing for parents to do as well. So absolutely, it's important. And if it's important to you, then it's important to do. Yeah. I also know that you have a heart for working with underrepresented writers. So I wondered if you might just take a minute to talk about that as well.

Josee Smith: Yeah, definitely. So I am a black woman, and growing up, I you know, avid reader, my love of writing starts from my love of reading and growing up. I, you know, didn't read books that had characters that looked like me. So it wasn't ever something that like was super impactful to me when I was younger. But it was just like a fact of like, Okay, this, you know, I'm not necessarily relating to these characters in this particular way. And so when I you know, started taking my writing seriously in 2020 and you know, started putting books out into the world. I was intentional about writing characters, writing a world that reflected my lived experience. So you know, a protagonist who looks like me has curly hair, you know, darker skin and also was surrounded by characters who looked like a variety of, you know, different types of people.: I also try to weave in. You know, Lgbtq representation. And just for for me, it's it's always just about, you know, wanting my books to reflect a certain world. It's not like my world. It's not to like push any sort of, you know. I'm writing about a certain kind of thing, but just you know, I so I write cozy mystery. And my protagonist, just, you know, lives her life a certain way, and looks a certain way, and has friends who are certain ways, and that's just the way that it is.

And so I'm also very passionate about helping other writers who maybe feel like they haven't been able to see themselves on the pages of books, especially as kids help them figure out, okay, how can I put more of myself and my lived experience into the book that I'm writing and get it out into the world. Last summer I worked with a writer who she's Nigerian, and she'd written a romance novel that was set in Nigeria, and she, you know, was really excited about the book, and one of the things that she was asking for feedback on, because she'd written like a draft and wanted some feedback on it. And she wanted to know, you know, did she put too much of the Nigeria in it. Was it going to be like relatable to people? Could she do more? She was just like wanting to get some feedback on, on my perspective, on that. And it was really interesting reading it and seeing the places where I could tell that she was like intentional about weaving it in. And also some places where she was kind of maybe holding back a little bit. Food was a really important part of the story, and I think it was probably her culture in general. There was a the part of the story that, like me, cute was set at a food festival and you know there was a lot of the family like cooking for each other, and as I was reading it, I found myself, you know, getting pulled in by the food by the descriptions of you know this town in Nigeria, but wanting more of what she was describing what she was writing, and so I got to have a conversation with her. I was like, Hey, this is great. Let's get more of this. Let's put in more sights and sounds and smells, especially with the food like you can really amp that up. Let's describe more of like, where are they actually walking like? What does the world look like around them as they're walking, because, you know, if she gets to the one where she's publishing, most likely the audience will be more, you know, from the United States. And so that here's an opportunity to really emphasize this culture that's so important to you and make it a really like evocative experience for a reader, and she was so thrilled to hear that, because I think she was kind of not afraid to put her full self on the page. But just wondering like, How's this gonna land? What are people gonna think about it? Does it come across as too much? And I, yeah, it was exciting to have that conversation with her, and kind of show her like. How can she do more of this to really emphasize this part of her? That's so important, I think, especially with setting, because setting can be such a character in our in our books. And so there's really this great opportunity to emphasize that. And and, you know, kind of make an important part of the story. But for anyone who yeah has felt like, maybe they haven't seen a version of themselves on the page, or hasn't seen a representation that they feel good about on the page. You know, if that's something that they want to incorporate into their story. I think it can be really valuable to have that open space to do it like honestly, when you're writing. You have full freedom in what you're writing like at that, that in that creative space you can do whatever you want. There's always the sort of selling and publishing that can come later. I think the great thing about the times that we live in now is that there are so many different ways to get your book out into the world, even if you go if you like, initially kind of go the more traditional route, and are feeling that people aren't getting interest, because maybe it's written in a certain way that's not as appealing to agents, or whatever there are other ways to get your work out to the world, and share your vision of the world with other people, and to make it so that you feel like your experience. Your way of living can be represented on the page and shared with other readers. And it's something that I, yeah. And I, I just think we all have a story to tell that matters, and we all can come up with such interesting and important. You know stories that we want to tell. And so I really try to encourage the writers that I work with, who are kind of leaning in that way, but are hesitating or not so sure, or, you know, afraid to kind of lean into that side of them. I think it's so important to really emphasize that in a way that you know you're comfortable with, but that in a way that it reflects like your actual passion and and experiences in the world.

Sara Gentry: Yeah, I think sometimes we underestimate how our perspective or our what we would consider like the mundaneness of our life might be very interesting to somebody else. You know, we might not think it's interesting enough to put in a book, and other people are like like, you give me more. That's fantastic. Okay, so, Josee, I know that we're going to have writers here who would love to connect with you. Where is the best place for people to find you?

Josee Smith: Yeah, so you can come check out my website. It's a joseesmithbookcoach.com and that's Josee spelled JOSEE. I'm also very active on Instagram. It's the same handle. Josee Smith, book coach on Instagram. Give a lot of tips and tricks. Especially I. Honestly, it's a lot of me coaching myself as a writer like the things that I share. It's like, what have I been going through recently. Let me tell people about it. But yeah, I'm very active and would love to talk to any writers who might be interested in, you know, working with me, or just learning more about how my coaching works and how you can, you know, actually show up for your writing dreams and make them come true.

Sara Gentry: Awesome writers. We will have links to all that stuff in the show notes. And, Josee, I just wanna thank you again for your time, and for this conversation.

Josee Smith: Thank you so much. It was great.

Sara Gentry: Alright writers. Thanks for joining us. We will catch you next time. Bye, bye.