Wrangling the Doubt Monster with Amy L. Bernstein

Amy L. Bernstein is a multi-genre novelist, award-winning journalist, speechwriter,
playwright, poet, and nonfiction book coach. Her new book is Wrangling the Doubt
Monster: Fighting Fears, Finding Inspiration. Amy teaches a variety of writing workshops and is a frequent guest on podcasts to discuss writing, publishing, and creativity. Amy joins me to talk about the difference between writing for hire and writing for yourself, the pros and cons of MFA programs, how deadlines can work for or against us, the universality of self-doubt and how it keeps us stuck, and a lot more.

Episode Breakdown:

00:00 Introduction
01:14 Creative childhood and family influence.
02:14 Societal expectations and practicality pressures.
06:13 Navigating challenging career paths and personal fulfillment.
09:44 Shift from writing for others to personal projects.
14:25 Distinction between work and personal writing.
18:29 Importance of passion and creative drive.
21:37 Challenges of balancing work and creative pursuits.
25:43 Creativity hindered by productivity culture.
26:58 Thinking as part of the creative process.
31:09 Using local settings in novels and plays.
33:03 Introduction to Wrangling the Doubt Monster.
36:17 Universal nature of self-doubt in creativity.
44:06 Utilizing deadlines in different contexts.
48:39 Self-criticism and perfectionism in creativity.
50:55 The impact of upbringing on creative work.
54:35 Amy’s current projects and book coaching.

Show Links: Wendi Gordon

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Transcript: Amy L. Bernstein

Please note: This is an unedited transcript, provided as a courtesy, and reflects the actual conversation as closely as possible. Please forgive any typographical or grammatical errors.

Nancy Norbeck [00:00:06]:
Welcome to Follow Your Curiosity. Ordinary people, extraordinary creativity. Here’s how to get unstuck. I’m your host, creativity coach, Nancy Norbeck. Let’s go. Amy L. Bernstein is a multi genre novelist, award winning journalist, speechwriter, playwright, poet, and nonfiction book coach. Her new book is Wrangling the Doubt, Fighting Fears, Finding Inspiration.

Nancy Norbeck [00:00:32]:
Amy teaches a variety of writing workshops and is a frequent guest on podcasts to discuss writing, publishing, and creativity. Amy joins me to talk about the difference between writing for hire and writing for yourself. The pros and cons of MFA programs, how deadlines can work for or against us, the universality of self doubt and how it keeps us stuck, and a lot more. Here’s my conversation with Amy L. Bernstein. Amy, welcome to Follow Your Curiosity.

Amy L Bernstein [00:01:03]:
Thank you, Nancy. I’m really glad to be here with you.

Nancy Norbeck [00:01:05]:
I start everybody with the same question. Were you a creative kid or did you discover your creative side later on?

Amy L Bernstein [00:01:14]:
That’s a wonderful question to start with. I was definitely a creative kid. Mostly I wrote short stories as a kid, but what I really remember is being a drama kid, I, I took, did a lot of theater in my early teens and, and got really hooked on it for a while. I thought I might even do it professionally, although I, I then veered away. But yep, I’d say I was a creative kid, at least to some extent. I also played the piano, took piano lessons, and actually loved it. So yeah, I, I was, I think everybody has that in them. It’s just a question of whether you remember, remember doing it and if you then kind of bury it later on.

Nancy Norbeck [00:01:51]:
I agree, though some, some people don’t really figure it out until later, but, you know, so it’s always, always an interesting question to see who starts out which way. And I’m also always curious to know, like, did, did your family encourage you or did they kind of say you can do this while you’re in high school, but then you have to be serious, you know.

Amy L Bernstein [00:02:14]:
You know, this is something I’ve spent a lot of time because I talk so much about creativity and people’s blockages to being creative and just sort of leaning into their creative identity. So this comes up a lot and I’ve had to wrestle with it looking at my own background and I, I feel that my parents were fine with it, but I wouldn’t say that it was, I mean, they paid for drama camp and drama classes and, and they certainly paid for piano lessons. But even with piano, I, I feel like it was something that cultured young ladies could learn to do not, not, not looking at it as an art form so much as a, a way of being polished person. And that’s very old fashioned, but I think they had that cast of mind, so I didn’t feel especially encouraged. And as I got older I definitely felt pressure to be really practical. You know, I was an English major. It was a long time ago when a lot of us were still English majors. And it’s since developed even more of a stigma than it had back then, which is, you know, a useless thing to use college for.

Amy L Bernstein [00:03:17]:
And I think my parents kind of threw up their hands. They’re like, well, we don’t know what she’s going to do, you know, and.

Nancy Norbeck [00:03:23]:
Neither, neither did I know the feeling as a fellow English major. I know the feeling. It was like, well, I like to read and I like to write, so I guess I’ll major in English. And everybody seemed more or less okay because I was majoring in something. But, but yeah. And you know, I remember, I don’t know if if this was your experience or not, but I remember going to the career center and they were like, no, English is a great major. Look at all of these different things that people have done with an English major. And I kind of sat there and went, yeah, this is a great list.

Nancy Norbeck [00:03:54]:
And I don’t know that any of them are things I want to do, but it’s a great list. Right, right.

Amy L Bernstein [00:04:00]:
Like, like law school, which was not, which was not probably not your plan, right? No.

Nancy Norbeck [00:04:05]:
There were plenty of people who told me I would, I should go to law school. And I was like, I would be bored out of my mind if I went to law school.

Amy L Bernstein [00:04:13]:
Yeah. And I’ve, Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:04:15]:
Have been more and more convinced of that over the years.

Amy L Bernstein [00:04:20]:
Bored. Yeah. Well, I, I’ll just add that I’m, I’m quite a bit older than, than you are. And I will say that back when I came out of college with my English literature degree, frankly for women at that time, and I’m now going to sound really ancient. Ancient, ancient. But it was still often the case, and of course not always often the case that basically you were shunted into secretarial jobs. I mean, that’s what there was for English, for women graduating with an English degree. You became a secretary.

Amy L Bernstein [00:04:48]:
I mean, obviously you could go into teaching, you could do other things, but if you didn’t pursue something specific, you wound up kind of in that, in that thing. And I kind of fell into that very unhappily, I might add, as it was not the best use of my talents. But that’s what was out there for women like me with, you know.

Nancy Norbeck [00:05:05]:
Yeah.

Amy L Bernstein [00:05:05]:
Coming out with that kind of stuff that.

Nancy Norbeck [00:05:06]:
Or probably teaching English and not a whole heck of a lot more. And, you know, the irony is, in recent years, I’ve found myself thinking, you know, there’s nothing I could have done with an English degree that I couldn’t also have done with a theater degree. And I think I probably would have been at least somewhat happier if I’d gotten a theater degree. But I think if I had said to my dad, you know, I think I’m going to major in theater, he’d have been like, not on my dime. And, you know. You know, that would have been the end of that.

Amy L Bernstein [00:05:32]:
Yeah, I. I really understand that. And. And I think it’s incredibly unfortunate that. And this is one of. One of the things I talk a lot about, which maybe was going to come up for us anyway. I talk a lot about the way artists and creative people. We’re living.

Amy L Bernstein [00:05:46]:
We’re steeped in a culture that does not want to make it easy for us to practice or pursue our craft or even it doesn’t want to make it easy for us to feel proud of it. We were made to feel somewhat embarrassed and like we’re being impractical and irresponsible and we’re not going to be able to, you know, pay the rent. And, I mean, while some of these things may be literally true, I have. I’ve done theater. I have many friends in theater. Yes, it can be hard to earn enough to pay the rent. That’s not the point. The point is that this is a craft.

Amy L Bernstein [00:06:15]:
It’s a profession. It’s an incredibly interesting, challenging, deep and rich thing to pursue. And we’re in a culture that wants to make it as hard as it can for you to do it and kind of looks down on you when you do. And so I think that’s why it’s so hard for people to really get in touch with, or deep enough touch with the creativity that’s within them, because we’re not particularly rewarded for it. I don’t mean financially. I just mean in terms of acceptance and validation.

Nancy Norbeck [00:06:44]:
I agree completely. And I think there’s. Oh, Lord, there’s so many things to say about it. I mean, it’s. It’s the root of so many people believing that they’re not creative at all because they were told that the ways in which they were creative were not going to make them any money or not socially acceptable or any number of other crazy things that are nonsense. It’s also just ridiculous on its face to say that a theater degree is useless. I mean, yes, it can be hard to make a living as an actor or a director or another theater professional, but those skills can apply in so many other fields in fabulous ways. And people don’t think of a theater degree that way.

Nancy Norbeck [00:07:34]:
You know, I mean, true. I talked to Annie Ruggles a year or two ago, and she was talking about, like, all of her theater friends who have gone on to do great work, like in sales, because theater skills are great for salespeople, you know, and other, you know, similar fields, other different ways that they have taken that theater degree and applied it in ways that actually do make them quite a bit of money. But we don’t think of it that way. We think in these little creative silos. And according to the stereotype of, oh, well, that’ll never make you any money. You can. You know, you can’t major in that because you’ll be poor, end of story.

Nancy Norbeck [00:08:16]:
You have to go out and become a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer or whatever, even if you’re not suited to it, because we’re more worried about you making money, even if it makes you miserable to make the money, in which case you probably won’t be good enough at it to make the money anyway, than to do the thing that you really want to do. I mean, it’s logical and not all at the same time.

Amy L Bernstein [00:08:42]:
Yeah, you know, I was making a lot of money. I stumbled into a series of jobs because I was just really good at what I did, using my writing skills, by the way, and I was making a lot of money, But I was really, really, really, really unhappy and reached a point where I was kind of in my mid, entering midlife, and I had a. I had a pivot. I had to just kind of get the hell out of there and make a lot of changes one step at a time in order to put my creativity to as fullest use. Because I knew there was so much more in me. So that even though I was being well compensated, I mean, it just can’t always be about the money. If you’re. If your soul is dead, you gotta.

Amy L Bernstein [00:09:17]:
You gotta find, you know, gotta find a way to bring that back to life.

Nancy Norbeck [00:09:20]:
Yeah. Yeah. And that’s a tough choice. When all of the voices in your head and outside of your head are saying you can’t do that. It’s a really tough call. Yeah.

Amy L Bernstein [00:09:34]:
Yep.

Nancy Norbeck [00:09:35]:
So how did you end up landing in writing since you spent so Much time in theater. What, what led to the, the switch?

Amy L Bernstein [00:09:44]:
I. Oh, I was never in theater. I was never theater professionally. I mean I’ve written a bunch of plays and had some plays produced. But I, so I had a decades long career in various facets of using my writing skills. I was a journalist in print and public radio. I was an executive speech writer. I was in some pretty high level government communications positions.

Amy L Bernstein [00:10:05]:
I was in, was communications directors in nonprofits. So I was always doing something about communicating, writing information, you know, all these things around things that we do with language and text, like many, many, many different things. And I just got to a point where it just wasn’t enough. It was, it couldn’t be all there was. It just couldn’t. And it had nothing to do with salary. I never expected to make as much as I was making. And it really was about the fact that it wasn’t my own.

Amy L Bernstein [00:10:40]:
I wasn’t, I wasn’t creating something from within me. I was responding to what, you know, an external organization needed me to create. And even though there was a teeny bit of satisfaction in that, I mean that’s, that was my compromise with the working world. Right. Well, I’m a writer and writing is what I do best, so I’ll get paid to do these things for other people. I really needed to pivot. And I remember the first novel that I wrote, which I ended up sort of self publishing and ignoring, but I wrote it mostly on the commuter train going back and forth between I live in Baltimore and I was working in D.C. for the government.

Amy L Bernstein [00:11:11]:
And I wrote a lot of it on the train and I just felt so wonderful, like I know I have to write a novel, I’ve got to do this, this is like a bucket thing for me. And I did. So the first one was to prove to myself that I could do it, that I wasn’t going to quit, that I was really going to do it because I stopped and started much earlier in my 20s and I had abandoned that one was like, no, I got to see this through. And so that then I was off to the races and I went from there to playwriting and then I went to more novel writing and getting some novels published and, and getting, getting other things published. I have this other book coming out in January, Wrangling the Doubt Monster, which maybe we’ll, we’ll chat about later. But it was definitely a step by step journey for me where I took small steps to basically let my creative freak flag fly more than it had been doing. And realizing at each step of the way, yes, this is what I need. This is working for me.

Amy L Bernstein [00:12:04]:
This is feeding me. I need to do more of it. And so I did, did that more and more, little by little, year after year.

Nancy Norbeck [00:12:11]:
And I really, if it’s okay with you, really want to dig into the distinction that you kind of alluded to there between the writing for the job and, and the writing for you, because I don’t think people really get that. And you know, having, having had a job in a writing related field there so many times, people, both, you know, family and friends and also people that I, that I worked with were, you know, have been baffled because I, I, you know, I’m sitting there as a, an editor and proofreader, and they would be like, but don’t you want to write? And I’d say, no, even though, you know, I have an English degree and an MFA and I wrote a novel and all this. And they’d say, why don’t you want to write? And I mean, it became very clear to me within weeks of starting that job that no way did I want to do a lot of writing in that job. And, and you know, it does not compute for people. And I, you know, my response to that generally is because my writing is for me. And they still, I don’t think, they kind of like nod and say, oh, okay, I get it. And I’m like, I don’t think you really do, but nice of you to say so, you know, but it doesn’t, I don’t, I don’t think people really get that. There is a distinction there that, like, writing for other people, even if you enjoy, you know, going out and writing journalism and, and like hearing other people’s stories and telling those stories and whatever, it is a different thing than doing your own writing.

Nancy Norbeck [00:14:00]:
And if you, and, and I’ll be curious to hear if, if your take on this is the same, you know, but like, for me, if I’m spending all of my time during the day doing that kind of writing for somebody else, there’s not so much energy to spend on my own writing. At the end of the day, I’m exhausted. I’ve used it all up for somebody else and now I want to do my own. But man, I’m pooped. I’ve been spending all my day looking at words and I don’t really want to do more words when I come home. Does that sound same to you?

Amy L Bernstein [00:14:34]:
Yeah. Yeah. I think you’re bringing up a couple really good, really good points that should be familiar to so many People, I mean, one is the, the bandwidth, the bandwidth problem, right? Which is to say work a full time job and it almost doesn’t matter what it is. You come home and being able to find some other level of mental energy to do something else, I mean, that’s really, really hard because we do, we need to unplug, we need to give our brains a rest. And when I look back at how I managed that, I remember sitting at the dining room table. I still sit at the dining room table, but on weekends working on. Whenever I started working on like a play or working on it, maybe even sometimes at night. And I’m not really a night person, but definitely on weekends when I could.

Amy L Bernstein [00:15:17]:
And I remember thinking how hard it was to force myself to sort of find the discipline and the energy to do this other thing on top of all the things that I had to do. And I think, you know, for me, a lot of what it comes down to is how strong the need and the passion are to some extent. I mean, I think there’s. It winds up being a really driving force. I mean, I just felt like this is going to sound really strongly worded, but it’s partly true. My life wasn’t worth living if I didn’t find a way to do these other creative things. Now, I don’t mean I don’t want anyone to misinterpret that. I was never, I was never someone who was going to contemplate taking my own life.

Amy L Bernstein [00:16:01]:
And I was never in that mindset. But I use those words in a bit of a broader sense, in the sense of that I just had to be who I knew I had to become. And that meant doing more of my own writing. So I had an incredibly deep drive to do it because it’s almost like I was denying who I was by not doing it. And that’s really deep. And that’s the reason why, despite working in a really intense 60 hour a week job with the commute and everything, I would still end up at the dining room table at one point working on a play on, on Saturday. But I do think that it’s hard for people who aren’t in these particular fields to understand the difference between being a pure originator, so being an artist who’s creating something from nothing, as opposed to working for hire, which is, you know, you’re already given, you’re just, you’re already given very specific quote parameters. You are aiming for a very specific outcome.

Amy L Bernstein [00:17:03]:
That’s what work for hire is. But as artistic work need not necessarily have a particular or known outcome. The whole idea is to just create for its own sake, to really get something that’s inside of you, outside of you. And you shouldn’t be tied to kind of productivity, efficiency and outcomes measures that we do in the rest of our lives. That’s a big difference. But it’s very hard to get into that mindset that, that uncoupling from the productivity, you know, output, you know, end product mindset when we’re living that mindset all day long. So I think all these things are contributing factors.

Nancy Norbeck [00:17:39]:
Yeah, and, and you know, as, as we’ve been talking, I’ve been thinking, you know, the, the MFA program that I did was a low residency program. So, you know, you were working your job or, you know, potentially being a stay at home parent or whatever you were normally doing on top of doing your degree. And before I, before I started or shortly after I started, I remember talking to someone else who either was still, you know, just finishing the program or had just finished, who was also a teacher and saying, how did you do this? Like, I had already accepted and was starting and was like kind of saying, hi, I may be in over my head. Help, you know, and, and his, his answer was that he got up at, you know, four o’clock every morning and would write before he went to school. And I immediately was like, yeah, okay, I’m not doing that. That’s crazy talk. And yet, now that I’m thinking about it, the wisdom of that is that you get your time to do your own original stuff before you have to go do everything else so you’re not so exhausted at the end of the day. And it’s funny because it’s been, I started that program in 2007 and it’s taken me until today before it ever occurred to me that that’s, that’s the real wisdom of it.

Nancy Norbeck [00:19:01]:
It’s, it’s that you’re not exhausted when you come home and you’re too tired to do it. You’ve gotten it in right away, you’re still, you’re still fresh or as fresh as you can be at that hour if you’re somebody like me. And, and then, then it’s done and you can go and, and move on to everything else about your day. But you’re, you’re right. I mean, it’s, it’s two totally, totally different processes because when you’re writing for somebody else, they’re looking for something in particular and you need to, you need to meet that, you need to hit their targets for length and Content and style and, and voice and all of those things. Whereas when you’re writing your own stuff, you can do whatever you want, you know, you can play whatever way you want.

Amy L Bernstein [00:19:49]:
Yeah, well, you absolutely can, and you should. And I think the only. What you do have to do is, I mean, that person you were talking about getting up at 4 in the morning, there is, There is certainly some discipline to that, right? I mean, you have to. And I think it gets back to that inner drive. It’s like, this is what I need to do, and this is what I’m going to do and how I’m going to do it. And not every. Many people are very creative, but they don’t necessarily tap into that drive. And so they sort of.

Amy L Bernstein [00:20:18]:
They find other ways in doing things in fits and starts, which is all very fine. I’ve had this thing I’ve talked about with writers about the wave method of writing. The idea being that, no, you don’t have to tie yourself to a chair and write for two hours or produce 40,000 words or whatever. You can observe the circumstances and the days and the times of day when you feel creative and you’re able to get creative work done and try and capture those moments and duplicate moments like that. What’s your best time of day? What’s happening around you at that time? What gets you in that mindset and in that mood. And you want to look for moments like that, and it will come and go, and that’s fine. And so this notion of a wave method of writing is. It will, it will hit you in waves, and they may be irregular.

Amy L Bernstein [00:21:02]:
Learn how to. Learn how to lean into those moments when they come. And don’t worry when you can’t. Don’t feel creative. You don’t have the mental discipline or the energy. I mean, don’t worry about it. Not every writer is sitting there every day pumping out like a machine. That’s an illusion.

Amy L Bernstein [00:21:19]:
That’s an illusion.

Nancy Norbeck [00:21:20]:
I completely agree, and I’m glad that you brought that up, because I. I see so many people, especially like in online writing forums, who will go in and they’ll say, you know, I really want to write, but I’m having a hard time, you know, sitting down and doing it. And almost inevitably someone will come in and say, well, writers write. And if you’re not writing every day, then you’re not really a writer. And I want to reach through my screen and smack these, these people, because it’s like, okay, and you’re better than everybody else because how, you know, I’ll bet you, you actually don’t write every day either. And you’re just saying it to make yourself feel better. And in the meantime, you’re making this other person feel like crap. And, you know, if they’re writing, they’re a writer and get over it.

Amy L Bernstein [00:22:03]:
So. So if a doctor doesn’t see patients every day, are they not a doctor?

Nancy Norbeck [00:22:07]:
Excellent point.

Amy L Bernstein [00:22:08]:
If a dentist doesn’t have it. If a dentist doesn’t have a drill in somebody’s mouth every day because they’re doing something else, are they not a dentist? I mean, I really. I so disagree with that mindset. And unfortunately, I think that what’s the problem there is that we’re. We’re poisoned by these, These, These expectations about culture that are not conducive to how art works. And that’s part of the problem here. And this. And that person, the people who think that way and who say that are.

Amy L Bernstein [00:22:33]:
Have, have basically swallowed this notion that art is only good if it’s. If it’s a lie to, like, super productivity. And that’s just not. It just doesn’t work that way. It may work that way for a tiny fraction of people, and that’s fine, good for them. But for I say, most of us, it just doesn’t work that way. And so it’s going to. It’s going to.

Amy L Bernstein [00:22:59]:
You’re going to have periods of intense creativity, and you’re going to have periods when you’re. I don’t even want to say fallow, because I find that when I’m not actively working on, let’s say, fiction, because I’m always writing something because I have a weekly substack that I. That I write. So I’m only writing something. But, I mean, if I’m not working on fiction, that doesn’t mean I’m not thinking about ideas. It doesn’t mean that I’m not thinking about either a short story or a novel, that I’m trying to wait to see if it’s got sticking power. So I am thinking and I’m planning and I’m thinking. I’m envisioning stories of stories and characters.

Amy L Bernstein [00:23:30]:
And just because I’m not writing doesn’t mean I’m not steeped in something related to the craft. And so, yeah, so I. It doesn’t. No, I. I don’t. Yeah, I don’t agree with that adage, and I think NaNoWriMo has contributed to some of that. For people who know what that is, the. No, the annual month of November to try and write an entire Novel, which I, I have strong opinions about that.

Amy L Bernstein [00:23:54]:
But.

Nancy Norbeck [00:23:55]:
Yeah, I mean, you know, you. You say art doesn’t work that way, and I think that’s. That’s not only right, but I would add, you know, human beings don’t work that way. You know, we were not. When we’re not meant to work that way. And, and it’s. It is like, you know, you, you bring up nano and it’s, it is this bizarrely like, industrial revolution view of creativity. You know, like, would anyone have said that before there were machines that just cranked out widgets, you know, that 50 an hour or whatever, whatever rate.

Nancy Norbeck [00:24:29]:
Would anyone have said that about a writer or an artist of any kind before then? I don’t think so. Like, we. And, and I, I have, I have occasionally heard other people say this too. So it’s not just my own harebrained theory that is based solely in. I know what a steam engine was. But, you know, I have often thought, like, I really think that’s what happened. You know, we got steam engines and mechanization, and suddenly somehow, for some stupid reason, we decided that human beings had to act like the machines, which is kind of crazy. Like, we have the machines to do things that human beings can’t do.

Nancy Norbeck [00:25:10]:
So why we think that humans suddenly need to be more like machines is completely backwards. And yet this seems to be where we have landed and it makes no sense. And holding yourself to that impossible standard is just going to make you miserable. It’s not going to make you more creative. It’s going to make you less creative because your expectations are completely out of line with reality.

Amy L Bernstein [00:25:34]:
Yes. And. Right, right. As you say, I mean, artists are not machines and we should not be trying to work and produce like machines.

Nancy Norbeck [00:25:41]:
We, we really.

Amy L Bernstein [00:25:42]:
It’s just. It’s very detrimental.

Nancy Norbeck [00:25:43]:
Yeah.

Amy L Bernstein [00:25:44]:
Yes.

Nancy Norbeck [00:25:44]:
And the other thing that you said that I wanted to just touch on for a second, you know, when you are thinking about stuff and letting things percolate in your head and, and all of that, people do not recognize that when you are thinking about the creative process, you are in it. You are actually doing creative work.

Amy L Bernstein [00:26:01]:
Exactly.

Nancy Norbeck [00:26:02]:
It’s just not happening on a page or a canvas or whatever medium yet. But you’re still in it. It’s still happening. Even when you’re having a conversation with your friend about, ooh, I had this idea, and this is what I’m thinking. You’re back in it right in that moment. You’re generating new ideas as you’re telling that friend about them, because I guarantee you in the middle of that conversation, some new connection is going to pop up in your head. It’s all part of the process. It’s happening.

Nancy Norbeck [00:26:31]:
Even if it’s not in some way that we would recognize in our productivity obsessed culture as productive. It’s there.

Amy L Bernstein [00:26:42]:
Exactly. Exactly. Thinking is also part of creating. No question.

Nancy Norbeck [00:26:47]:
Yes, absolutely. So if you’re listening and you’ve been looking for a reason to stop beating up on yourself unnecessarily, this is it. You, you have our permission. You are not a machine and you don’t need to act like one. And please stop.

Amy L Bernstein [00:27:05]:
Yes. In fact, not only permission, but encouragement to sort of listen to your creative body and, and what you do, what you need to do, when you need to do it. And that’s gonna, that is going to come in fits and starts and there will be ups and downs and there will be leaning in and leaning out periods and that’s absolutely fine. It should be normalized. And, you know, you don’t have to just, you know, a lot of people are afraid to start something because they want. I just don’t think I’m going to get to finish it. It’s like, that’s. Don’t worry about finishing, just worry about enjoying.

Amy L Bernstein [00:27:41]:
Lean into the process and the doing of it and just start it. Don’t, don’t worry about an endpoint. Don’t even think about it. Just lean in and see what happens. Whatever the art form is, just, just get in there and kind of have fun. You know, like a kid with crayons. They’re not thinking about, well, what am I going to draw? And what if it doesn’t look good? It’s like, right, they’re just drawing.

Nancy Norbeck [00:28:00]:
Right.

Amy L Bernstein [00:28:00]:
You know, just get in there and draw just this. The process is the joy. The joy is the process. That’s what, that’s what artistic feel like.

Nancy Norbeck [00:28:11]:
Exactly. It is all about the process, not the products. And when you start to focus on the product instead of the process, that’s when you start to totally, totally lose the plot on how the whole thing’s supposed to work.

Amy L Bernstein [00:28:25]:
Right. Because after all, that’s what work makes you do. I mean, all the years that I was already at work, I had to focus on product for, for somebody else’s purposes, not mine. I made it the best that I could and I was really good at it, but it wasn’t mine.

Nancy Norbeck [00:28:40]:
Yeah, and that actually kind of goes back to what we were talking about before. You know, the difference between work for hire and work for yourself. When you’re working for yourself on your own creative project, you can really focus on the process and how you want to enjoy that process. And it doesn’t work that way when you’re working for somebody else.

Amy L Bernstein [00:28:59]:
Yes.

Nancy Norbeck [00:28:59]:
Yeah, very true. So you mentioned that you’re in Baltimore, and I’m intrigued by that, in part because I grew up an hour north of you in York and in part because Baltimore has such a great literary history. And I’m just curious to know, have you, has that had an influence on your writing?

Amy L Bernstein [00:29:22]:
No, but. No, no, but I’ve worked Baltimore into all of my novels, but Baltimore and other parts of Maryland, including imaginary parts of Maryland, I’ve worked into all of my novels because it’s really fun to take your home turf that you know really well and be able to use that, twist it as settings and backdrops of various things. And so in one of my, I have a, in my, my paranormal fantasy, I was able to. I have all kinds of creatures sort of flying through the air out over the harbor. And I, I live kind of at, at the Inner Harbor. And so it was incredibly fun to imagine this alternate fantasy universe, but right in my actual, like, reality space. And that was really fun. And then I also wrote a mystery thriller that again, I, I, I used Baltimore in a kind of a dystopian near future.

Amy L Bernstein [00:30:14]:
And there were some really bad things going on, but it was really fun. Like it was. There were inside jokes because Trader Joe’s will not come into the city proper. Then we have Trader Joe’s out in the surrounding counties, and we don’t know exactly why that is, although there are many theories. So in the, in the novel, in the novel, I put a Trader Joe’s downtown, like, sort of like a little dig. It’s like, well, in my world, in my book, there’s going to be a Trader Joe’s here. Which had nothing to do with the plot.

Amy L Bernstein [00:30:42]:
Actually, it didn’t have anything to do with the plot, but it also did. There was also a pivotal scene that had to do with a street scene with groceries being spilled on the ground. But I love doing things like that. So I will say Baltimore is the home of not just Edgar Allan Poe, but John Waters. And I don’t mind saying this out loud, like, on a recorded device. I am probably the only person in the entire state of Maryland who does not care for John Waters. I don’t care for his art. I don’t care for his films.

Amy L Bernstein [00:31:14]:
I don’t care. I just don’t care for his sensibility it just doesn’t resonate with me. And he is, you know, he. I know he’s a. He is a local and national treasure. I understand that, but that’s fair for me.

Nancy Norbeck [00:31:25]:
That’s fair. Nobody’s. For everybody. That’s totally okay.

Amy L Bernstein [00:31:28]:
Sorry. Sorry, John. I’m sure I just ruined your day. Sorry. But, you know, John Waters, if you’re listening to Nancy Norbeck’s podcast, I’m. You know, listen, man, I just got to tell it like it is.

Nancy Norbeck [00:31:38]:
That’s fair. It’s funny, when you. When you were talking about the Trader Joe’s thing, I was like, oh, she’s going to, like, have some paranormal explanation for why the Trader Joe’s won’t come to, you know, won’t be in the middle of Baltimore.

Amy L Bernstein [00:31:50]:
It couldn’t be that important. It couldn’t get that much important.

Nancy Norbeck [00:31:53]:
That’s funny. Yeah, that’s really funny. But, yeah, I think of people like, you know, Edgar Allan Poe And I think H.L. mencken and, you know, all of those folks.

Amy L Bernstein [00:32:02]:
Yes, yes. Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:32:03]:
Yeah. Baltimore is such a cool and quirky place.

Amy L Bernstein [00:32:09]:
It is indeed. It is indeed. It doesn’t get the. It doesn’t get a great rep, but it deserves a great rap. It’s phenomenal city to live in. It really, really is. Especially on the East Coast, which is so expensive. It’s a great, great place to live.

Amy L Bernstein [00:32:22]:
I will always give it a commercial.

Nancy Norbeck [00:32:23]:
Yeah.

Amy L Bernstein [00:32:24]:
Yeah. And there’s a tremendous creative class of people here. Just incredible creativity here in. In the arts. Incredible.

Nancy Norbeck [00:32:30]:
Yeah. And you have the advantage of being so close to D.C. that, you know, you can kind of bounce off of each other that way, too.

Amy L Bernstein [00:32:37]:
Yes.

Nancy Norbeck [00:32:38]:
Yeah.

Amy L Bernstein [00:32:39]:
Yeah. Yes.

Nancy Norbeck [00:32:39]:
Very cool. So it’s just a little. A little plug for Charm City, which doesn’t get a plug nearly. Nearly often enough.

Amy L Bernstein [00:32:49]:
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more.

Nancy Norbeck [00:32:52]:
So you mentioned your book, and, you know, I think we definitely want to talk about Wrangling the Debt—Doubt Monster. Debt monster. Oh, my God.

Amy L Bernstein [00:33:03]:
That’s a good book, too. That’s not my book. Maybe that’s the one that should be written next, but that wouldn’t be written by me.

Nancy Norbeck [00:33:11]:
But I’m curious to know how you got interested in the topic in the first place. I mean, not that it’s not a universal thing, but most people just kind of. Most people just suffer in silence with it. And you’ve definitely taken it to a new level.

Amy L Bernstein [00:33:28]:
This is part of the points. Let me explain a little bit about what the book is and who it’s for and definitely answer your question. So Wrangling the Doubt Monster. The full title is Wrangling the Doubt Monster. Fighting Fears, Finding Inspiration. I call it the. The little book that every self doubting creative needs now. And that’s because it’s really a source of encouragement and inspiration for artists of all stripes who are really wondering whether they’re good enough to make any kind of art, whether they should commit themselves, you know, whether they can really manifest the kind of artistic life they dream about.

Amy L Bernstein [00:34:01]:
And all creative people, all people, all human beings, but certainly all creative people harbor lots of doubts. And you know, we have that voice of doubt in us every day about so many different things and things that are trivial and things that are really serious and we don’t. Doubting is a. Is a state of vulnerability and we tend not to share a lot about our vulnerabilities, particularly in today’s age of social media where we’re given false images of people with perfect lives and extraordinary success and we think we can’t measure up and so we keep our doubts to ourselves. But what I have found again and again and again, not growing out of both my own experience, but also in community with so many other artists and writers that I talk to actually around the world, is that especially in communities of artists, we need to recognize that we’re not alone in thinking, feeling these doubts about our talent or our ability or I don’t know what I’m doing and maybe I shouldn’t even try. And this is absolutely a universal thing, again, not just to human beings generally, but to artists and creative people in particular. So I really wrote this book as a way of making artists feel seen and heard with their doubts. And my main premise is that you can’t banish doubt, but you absolutely can manage it and you can continue to create even by acknowledging that you have doubts.

Amy L Bernstein [00:35:31]:
It doesn’t need to block you or stop you. You can walk. The way I put it is you can walk with it. You don’t have to stop. And this book, there are a lot of books out there that are sort of how to books and that are maybe kind of get very deep and very, very philosophical or their workbooks or whatever. This really is inspiration and encouragement. I’m not really telling you how or what to do something, but you’re going to feel very, very, very seen and heard by reading this book. And it’s got illustrations in it too, which are just phenomenally whimsical and fun and interesting and they kind of lighten your load a little bit.

Amy L Bernstein [00:36:09]:
As a struggling artist for the pictures that, that accompany it. So that’s, that’s the long and the.

Nancy Norbeck [00:36:16]:
Short of it, I think. You know, when you were getting into the tagline, my first thought was, there’s. There’s not a single. There’s not a single creative who does not self doubt there. There’s. There’s not a single one.

Amy L Bernstein [00:36:28]:
Right.

Nancy Norbeck [00:36:29]:
So the idea that, you know, oh, it’s just for the ones that do. Nah, no, it’s for all of them. It’s for every single one. And I think it’s great that you are normalizing that idea, because you’re right. Every. Everybody sits there and goes, oh, I’m the only one who’s afraid that I’m.

Nancy Norbeck [00:36:46]:
That I’m not doing this right. And whatever. And it’s just not true. Everybody does.

Amy L Bernstein [00:36:51]:
It’s absolutely true. And I’ve been writing. I’ve been running a series of creativity workshops specifically for multimedia artists that I’ve developed. And the workshops are extraordinary because, you know, people enter the room and they’re strangers. And by the time we’re done, like three hours later this commute, we have a community of artists who see each other and feel seen because we work through a whole lot of material about what your blockages are as an artist, what your sort of framework origins are as a creative person. We do a lot of exploring, so you’re better in touch with your own motivations and also what’s holding you back. And by the end of the workshop, I think people feel encouraged to really step forward and really embrace their identity as creative people. That’s why it’s called manifest your creative life.

Amy L Bernstein [00:37:39]:
And it’s absolutely true that very often people in the room will end up admitting, I didn’t know that there were other people who felt this way. And so it’s just phenomenally powerful to share that and realize that you’re in a community of artists who are doubting like you are, and everybody could use some support and encouragement to go forward.

Nancy Norbeck [00:37:57]:
Yeah, I mean, I’ll bet that there are people who are listening to this going, really? Because I could have sworn I was the only one. It’s like, no, no, no, you’re not the only one. You are definitely not the only one. And it’s. It’s that. That old quote about, you know, comparing your behind the scenes to other people’s highlight reel. You don’t know because you don’t see it. Especially if you’re looking at something like Instagram or other social Media where, you know, you’re not gonna, most people are not going to post.

Nancy Norbeck [00:38:25]:
Gee, today I sat down to try to write something and I couldn’t do it because I was so busy, you know, worrying about whether my character was good enough or, you know, arguing with myself about this sentence that I wrote that I never got past it or whatever. But that stuff happens to people every sing day. It’s not just you. You just don’t see it because they’re not broadcasting it on social media. But I guarantee you it’s happening to people every single day. It is not just you.

Amy L Bernstein [00:38:52]:
That is so true. And you don’t see it on social media. We just see sort of the fake end result of this unbelievably successful person who, you know, some TikTok influencer boosted their book and they’ve sold, you know, 10,000 copies. I mean, this stuff, I mean, this is unicorn stuff. This hardly ever happened. I mean, you could go out and buy a lottery ticket tomorrow and I will tell you, will not win. Right? And so don’t, don’t those people who do win. You can’t, you know, we, we just can’t be concerned about that.

Amy L Bernstein [00:39:18]:
And you know, with writing in particular, writing is incredibly hard and I, I think we tend to forget or underestimate. Was like, wow, you know, why, you know, my draft isn’t, still isn’t good enough. And I’ve been working on this for two years. It’s just not, it’s hard, it’s hard to write well. It’s really hard to write well. And we need a lot of support and encouragement and we need to be in community with others who are acknowledging that this is difficult and that doubt goes with that. And the whole idea is persevere, keep going, keep going. Because if that’s who you are, this is what you need to do.

Nancy Norbeck [00:39:59]:
Right? And as you’re saying that, I’m thinking back to my MFA program, which was a two year program, but you know, some people needed to do extra semesters and it wasn’t because they weren’t good enough to get through it in two years. It was that they just needed the extra time to get that particular book done, you know, And I remember my first advisor in that program looking at us, you know, kind of in awe and saying, there’s no way I could write a book in two years. Which is a heck of a thing to hear from your first advisor in your first semester or two. You like, oh God, what have I done right?

Amy L Bernstein [00:40:38]:
Well, you know, Nancy, I mean, I can ask you a question. You can tell me if you agree because I don’t have an MFA and you do. But I think that, you know, part of my struggle with MFAs in general is that does. It does some of the, some of the worst of both of two things. Meaning it takes this incredibly, usually pretty insecure creative person who wants to be in this, you know, field and create literary work and then, and then change them. Change them to a clock, which is what we’re. Some of these we’re talking about. So you are supposed to be productive.

Amy L Bernstein [00:41:09]:
You are supposed to have output. You are deadline limited. You know, you are, you are on the assembly line, so to speak. And it seems to me that that’s a really, really, really very difficult place to be, particularly if you haven’t written a lot long form before. If you’re so, you’re so you’re using, you’re working in a new art form for you, you’re working on a new craft, a new set of skills, and you’re time limited and you’re. You have peers competing with you. So you got comparisonitis. It’s.

Amy L Bernstein [00:41:41]:
To me, all these things are like recipes for both emotional breakdowns and burnouts. And I think there is some of that.

Nancy Norbeck [00:41:48]:
Right.

Amy L Bernstein [00:41:48]:
But it’s a really, it’s a really hard. That’s a hard set of things to.

Nancy Norbeck [00:41:53]:
Be up against, I think it certainly can be. And I, I need to. To say first of all that, like, MFAs are, are such. What’s the right word for this? They’re. If you, if you are thinking about doing an mfa, because people ask me this and like, if, if you’re thinking about doing an mfa, the first thing I always tell people is you have to know exactly why you want to do an mfa. Like, if you, if you think that you’re going to do an MFA because it’s going to guarantee that you get published, you shouldn’t do an MFA because it’s not going to guarantee that you get published. If you, if you think that you want to do an MFA because it’s going to guarantee that it’s going to turn you into an amazing writer, you shouldn’t do an mfa. If, like, the reasons to do an MFA are.

Nancy Norbeck [00:42:40]:
Well, it used to be that, you know, you wanted to teach, but now it’s not even necessarily recognized as a terminal degree because there are PhDs in creative writing. So it may not even get you anything more than an adjunct position, which is not going to be enough for you to live on. Really. The reason to do an MFA is that you want to meet other writers and gain a better writing network, and that you want to develop your skills in a way that you don’t think you can do beyond, like, local writers groups or finding a professional writer to hire and work with, which can cost you a lot less money. You just need to know who you’re hiring and why and what you want to get out of it. But.

Amy L Bernstein [00:43:18]:
Right.

Nancy Norbeck [00:43:18]:
But MFA, you gotta know your program, and you gotta know what, exactly what you’re getting into. Like the program at Goddard College, where I went, which, alas, is now gone, just closed this past year, a couple months ago, was not a super cutthroat competitive program. And that, I think, is why we all remember it so fondly and why I survived. Because if it had been a super cutthroat program, I mean, when I first started thinking about going, my initial reaction was no, because I did not want that. I did not want to be in that kill or be killed environment, because that is so incredibly psychologically destructive. So if you are not up for that, you should not apply for an MFA. There are other better options that will cost you less money and be a whole lot less stressed.

Nancy Norbeck [00:44:11]:
But. But, yeah, I mean, what I did learn there, though, was that deadlines are my best friend. Like, I got stuff done.

Amy L Bernstein [00:44:19]:
It does give me. It imposes discipline on you. Yeah, yeah, well. And it.

Nancy Norbeck [00:44:23]:
Like, I got stuff done that I couldn’t figure out how I got done because there was a deadline. I mean, I would sit there and our. Our packet periods were three weeks long. And I would sit there with, you know, halfway through that period and look at all the things that I still had to get done and think, I have absolutely no idea how it’s even going to be physically possible to get all this done. And I would get it done because I swore to myself when I started that I was never going to send in a packet late. And I don’t know how it happened, but deadlines are magic. And somehow they always got done. And I know that there are people for whom deadlines.

Nancy Norbeck [00:44:58]:
You know, Douglas Adams was famous for saying, “I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they fly by.” But, you know, if you take a deadline seriously, a deadline can absolutely be your best friend. And that’s where I learned that. But, yeah, it’s. It did not come with that huge I’m gonna walk into this workshop and everybody’s going to shred me to pieces part. And I think that’s what really made the difference for me.

Nancy Norbeck [00:45:25]:
So it was very supportive and not super competitive.

Amy L Bernstein [00:45:29]:
Yeah. And I think, and I think I agree. I mean I, I’ve lived my whole life with deadlines too. So I didn’t mean to sound like they shouldn’t exist, but. No, and I agree that in that. Right. No, no. And in that context I can, that is incredibly helpful.

Amy L Bernstein [00:45:41]:
I think where, where people run into trouble is adults back out, back out in the, in the regular working world, not in this, not in a, not in a academic program feel they start imposing artificial deadlines on themselves in ways that just truncate the ability to even explore a project. Like, well, you know, I, I’m going to do this thing and I really, I feel like I’ve got a two week holiday coming up where I’m just going to do this thing. And I mean that can work for you, but it can also completely work against you if you don’t know how to manage with those strictures. And too often people feel like if they haven’t figured something out in an hour or a day or a weekend or a vacation, well, this is never going to happen. And so in that sense deadlines and things like that are artificial and are constraining. And I think a lot of it, a lot of folks out at who out in the world tend to let them be defeated by that. So I’m always going to advocate for that. You know, sink yourself into the project, into the joy of the process and the creating and don’t at all worry about, don’t impose timelines on it.

Amy L Bernstein [00:46:50]:
Now that’s obviously separate from being in a school program.

Nancy Norbeck [00:46:52]:
Right.

Amy L Bernstein [00:46:53]:
There’s a utility to it, but you know, so I mean, I guess it’s all, it’s all about the right time and the right place for these things. Right? There’s a context.

Nancy Norbeck [00:47:00]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And with MFAs, I think you really, really do have to have a long hard think about what you want out of it before you decide to do it. But and with your example, like, like with me, self imposed deadlines don’t work. It’s gotta be, I need to give it to somebody else. But what you’re describing to me is like, sounds more like super high expectations of yourself. And those never work. Those. Well, they’re just like.

Amy L Bernstein [00:47:28]:
Right. And so that’s one of the things that, that’s right. That inner voice is one of the things that stops people from, from being creative is because they critique themselves. That critical voice is so loud and sort of sitting on their shoulder. And so what you have to do is, and this is a longer conversation. But, you know, there’s a lot to be said for learning ways to change your mindset so that, that just as the, just as you can walk with doubt, you can walk with those inner sensors because those voices are there. But what you have to say to yourself is, I hear you. And you know, I don’t know whether this is good or not, but you know what? I’m just going to go ahead and do it because it feels good to do it.

Amy L Bernstein [00:48:09]:
And it doesn’t matter right now how it’s how I’m judging it or how anyone else would judge it. That’s not what matters now. What matters now is that I enjoy the process of making and doing and I’m going to let the rest of that sort of sit there. And so, you know, it’s the proverbial, you know, you write a paragraph and then you erase it, start over and you erase it, start over. And there’s a point at which you have to let yourself explore and experience and experiment and, and let it, just let it go. You have to walk with, you have to walk with the inner sensor and not let the sensor, you know, erase the words on the page, so to speak. And so it’s, it is really is a mindset. It’s just a way of thinking about it that led to let you let yourself go forward.

Amy L Bernstein [00:48:50]:
And that’s important because we do censor ourselves far too, far too much.

Nancy Norbeck [00:48:54]:
Absolutely, absolutely. And you know, I’m teaching this course called Make Bad Art right now. And that’s, you know, all of, all of this stuff is kind of, you know, worked in there. But one of the things that I talk about is how do you want to feel in the process? And you know, most people do not want to feel harshly judged in the process. They don’t want to feel censored and criticized and all of that in the process. And when you realize that, you know, I want to feel joy, I want to have fun, I want to explore and be curious and see what happens, then it’s like, okay, so if that’s how I want to feel, do I really want to be criticizing myself the whole time? You know, it invites that question of then maybe this self criticism doesn’t actually have a place here. And you know, we talk about noticing how you judge yourself. So if you’re noticing how you judge yourself, then you can sit there and say, yeah, I don’t, I don’t need this today because this is how I want to feel while I’m doing This thing.

Amy L Bernstein [00:49:59]:
Exactly.

Nancy Norbeck [00:50:00]:
And then start to let that go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it’s a hard. It’s a hard sell in this culture because we are so trained to be so perfectionistic with ourselves.

Amy L Bernstein [00:50:13]:
Extremely. When you’re sitting at that. When you’re sitting, you know, with a. With a creative project of your own, you are not at the office. But we bring the office to that. To that environment. And that is a cardinal mistake that begins with recognizing the distinction that we have to approach these things differently. There are just.

Amy L Bernstein [00:50:35]:
To the extent that there are rules at all in making art, they’re very different from the rules. Let’s call it the office, for want of a better term. Right. Than the rules at work. And so it’s very hard. And people don’t. They don’t make that transition consciously enough.

Nancy Norbeck [00:50:52]:
Right.

Amy L Bernstein [00:50:53]:
And I. And I think that’s a big. That’s a big issue.

Nancy Norbeck [00:50:55]:
Yeah. And it’s. And it’s not just the office. It’s mom and dad, too, you know, and all the adults, all your teachers, all those people who ever told you what you could and couldn’t.

Amy L Bernstein [00:51:05]:
Absolutely. It’s. That’s. That’s the culture. That’s the environment we’re in. And no wonder it’s hard for people to fulfill them. Fulfill themselves as artists and feel stuck all the time. Because it’s all these things.

Amy L Bernstein [00:51:15]:
It’s all these reasons.

Nancy Norbeck [00:51:16]:
Yeah. The. The perfectionism. I’ve come to think of perfectionism as like an octopus, but with way more than eight legs that’s sitting on your back and it’s working its tentacles into you in ways that you haven’t even noticed. And you gotta find them and yank them out in order to get it off your back, which is not the most pleasant image. But that’s. That’s kind of how it.

Nancy Norbeck [00:51:41]:
It starts to seem when you start to look and notice all of these little pieces and how it’s worked its way into your brain. It’s like, good grief.

Amy L Bernstein [00:51:50]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:51:52]:
It’s an ugly, nasty thing, and it’s been in there for a long time.

Amy L Bernstein [00:51:56]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

Nancy Norbeck [00:51:58]:
Yeah. Yeah. Wow.

Amy L Bernstein [00:52:04]:
Well, now let’s go fix everybody.

Nancy Norbeck [00:52:06]:
I know, right? I’ve got the octopus of perfectionism, and you have the Doubt Monster. Right between us.

Amy L Bernstein [00:52:14]:
We’ll terrorize the world.

Nancy Norbeck [00:52:15]:
Yeah.

Amy L Bernstein [00:52:16]:
Make our own super Super. Our own marvel.

Nancy Norbeck [00:52:18]:
I was just gonna say that we have our own weird superhero movie between the two of us.

Amy L Bernstein [00:52:22]:
Exactly.

Nancy Norbeck [00:52:23]:
Exactly. So what are you working on next?

Amy L Bernstein [00:52:29]:
I am always in the middle of so many different things. I’m a real mix right now. I’m very devoted to Doubt Monster on Substack, which Doubt Monster is actually the name of my Substack. You could call it a blog or weekly essay, call it what you will, which is something. Since I have a self imposed weekly deadline, I’m constantly thinking about what to write for the next week. So that’s a constant for me. I’m also, I do a lot of teaching. I teach a lot of writing craft courses online and some in person.

Amy L Bernstein [00:52:59]:
And I’ve been running these creativity workshops in person. And I’m also a book coach. So I’m certified through program called Author Accelerator, which is absolutely wonderful and brilliant community of folks who are. Who become book coaches. So I have a number of clients who I’m helping on their journey to write a book and get published. I’m working in nonfiction, but there are many book coaches also working in fiction and I do some selective memoir and there are many coaches who specialize in that as well. So that’s also a big part of what I’m involved in. And I will be doing quite a bit of speaking at some writers conferences in the coming year.

Amy L Bernstein [00:53:38]:
So as I say, it’s definitely a mixed bag for me on any given day.

Nancy Norbeck [00:53:44]:
That’s actually a really cool mix. It must be interesting to watch other writers as a book coach and see what’s going on with their work. Does that give you an interesting lens on your own?

Amy L Bernstein [00:53:57]:
Absolutely. It’s an incredible experience to help a writer who might just have an idea and help them really nurture and develop it into something that is structured with recognizable story and recognizable sort of foundation and ark and arc trajectory. And you could see what this book really is and what the point is. I mean, this is a long process when a writer is just starting from, you know, from, from zero. But it is an incredibly profoundly enjoyable and rewarding thing to help a writer go through that maturation process of a book project. And you know, when a client of mine gets a, gets a book deal, it’s just incredibly rewarding to know that I helped them, you know, on that, on that journey. So. And yes, you’re constantly seeing ways in which your own process is reflected.

Amy L Bernstein [00:54:53]:
Reflected in this. I mean we, we joke in the book coaching community about some of us feeling we love to coach, but we may be uncoachable ourselves because we, we do know, we do know it’s involved. But then, no, but then also seriously, many book coaches also get coached for their own work because a coach is an accountability partner and a champion and someone who will really help you put guardrails on your project and ask you all the really hard, hard, informed questions about what’s going on in the work. And a book coach can do things that another casual support in your writing community can’t necessarily do, and they’re really going to be there with you every step of the way. It’s a very profound relationship that book coaches and writers go through together.

Nancy Norbeck [00:55:35]:
Yeah. And when you’re a coach, you know, people assume that you have all the answers and you can see everything. And, well, the hardest thing to do is see your own stuff. It’s very hard to turn that lens on yourself.

Amy L Bernstein [00:55:49]:
That’s right. Which is why a lot of book coaches hire book coaches for their own books. But. But, yeah. And also, I mean, you know, as a coach, you can’t, you can’t see around every corner either. I mean, many times I, I can offer, I offer, I can offer an editorial, detailed editorial letter based on somebody’s pages, and I could very, I think, very accurately diagnose what’s working and what’s not working and why. But you, you can’t see, you can’t always see everything when, especially when a writer is trying to figure out an idea and how to flesh it out. You can’t necessarily see it, see it clearly for them.

Amy L Bernstein [00:56:20]:
It’s. It is definitely a process.

Nancy Norbeck [00:56:22]:
Right. Right. Well, that’s very cool. That’s an interesting mix you have going there once. Keep you, keep you busy. Keep you from getting bored with any one of them, which is great, that’s for sure. Yeah. Well, this has been a great conversation.

Nancy Norbeck [00:56:36]:
I’m so glad that you came and spent some time with me today. Thanks so much.

Amy L Bernstein [00:56:41]:
I really appreciate it. Nancy. I thought we had a lot of fun talking about these things.

Nancy Norbeck [00:56:45]:
Me too. That’s this week’s episode. Thanks so much to Amy L. Bernstein and thanks to you for listening. Please leave a review for this episode. There’s a link in your podcast app and it is super easy and really helps me find new listeners. If you enjoyed our conversation, please share it with a friend. Thanks so much.

Nancy Norbeck [00:57:07]:
If this episode resonated with you or if you’re feeling a little bit less than confident in your creative process right now, join me at the Spark on Substack as we form a community that supports and celebrates each other’s creative courage. It’s free and it’s also where I’ll be adding programs for subscribers and listeners. The link is in your podcast, so sign up today. See you there and see you next week. Follow Your Curiosity is produced by me, Nancy Norbeck, with music by Joseph McDade. If you like Follow Your Curiosity, please subscribe, rate and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And don’t forget to tell your friends. It really helps me reach new listeners.