Welcome back to Alchemy for Authors!
In this week’s episode I chat with international bestseller, award-winning author, and founder of the Alliance of Independent Authors, Orna Ross. Orna shares all about her Go Creative Planning program and how it can bring you closer to your author goals.
Other topics we discuss include:
- The importance and willingness to pivot throughout your author career.
- Why scheduling more Creative Rest and Play is essential for boosting creativity and productivity.
- The magic of Free Writing and meditating to move through resistance and blocks.
- Why it’s so important to pay yourself first even when you’re not making the big bucks.
- Why Orna will be using Kickstarter for all her launches going forward, and why you might want to consider doing the same.
- Why you should always go for the BIG goal!
If you’ve been struggling to achieve the author goals you’ve set for yourself, or you’re feeling overwhelmed and burnt out from doing ALL the things, then this episode might just be the lifeline you’ve been waiting for.
Visit Orna’s website here: https://ornaross.com/
Visit Orna’s Patreon to learn more about her Go Creative Planning and Kickstart With Me programs, here: https://www.patreon.com/ornaross/
Follow Orna on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/ornaross.author/
Learn more about the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) here.
Find out more about Kickstarter here.
Find Russell Nohelty’s book Get Your Book Selling On Kickstarter here.
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Find the full transcript of this episode below.
Episode 74: Go Creative Planning with Orna Ross
Jo: Hello, hello, my friend. Here we are at the end of February already and this is Episode 74 of Alchemy for Authors: Go Creative Planning with Orna Ross. I have been a fan of Orna Ross’s for, I don’t even know how many years. Possibly I first stumbled upon her via Joanna Penn’s Creative Penn Podcast. And I think it was sometime during the pandemic, or maybe even prior to it, that I started bouncing in and out of her Patreon as I was able, and began learning about her Go Creative Planning program. It was something that I flirted with on and off for years, but oh my gosh, was I excited when I learned that Orna was building a Kickstarter around this program in 2023. I was all in.
If you’ve been listening to this podcast for any amount of time, you might know by now that time management, meeting deadlines, and all those good things, can be something that I really struggle with. In part, because like many of you, I’m insanely busy and often take on way more than I should. But also, in part, because my ADHD likes to show itself as a horrible mix of time blindness, (like don’t ever ask me how long something’s going to take because I will always underestimate it), and it shows itself as workaholism followed by burnout. So I always have a planner in hand, usually filled with impossible to-do lists. And even though I innately know that if I would just simplify my life and my to-do list, I’d be able to really start to gain more momentum with the things that are truly important to me. However, I’m human and I don’t always do this.
So maybe this is why I am so enamoured with Orna’s Go Creative Planning program. Because not only are there physical planners, which as a stationery lover alone has me swooning, but her program is this beautiful blend of time management, prioritising, mindset, and tuning into the part of you, whether you call it your higher self or subconscious or whatever, that has just been waiting for you to slow down and listen.
To me, the Go Creative Planning program is really a holistic way of living your life. It’s about tuning into who you really are and what you want from your author career. It imbues some really practical financial principles, because, you know, being a starving artist is so 2023, but it also, also advocates, in fact, for creative rest and play: intentional, scheduled, downtime, and fun time.
Are you intrigued yet?
Well, in today’s episode, Orna is going to be sharing more about her author journey and how she came to create the Go Creative Planning program and the principles behind it, along with what she’s learned from launching her first Kickstarter. So if you’re finding yourself not off to the start that you had imagined for yourself and your author career in 2024, then you’re going to want to stick around and soak up this episode. And then, of course, go check out Orna Ross and her Go Creative Planning program yourself. So when you’re ready, grab a drink, find a comfy chair, sit back and enjoy the show.
Hello my lovelies, welcome to another episode of Alchemy for Authors. Today I’m thrilled to be chatting with the wonderful Orna Ross. Orna is an award-winning Irish novelist and poet whose books explore creative expansion and the rebalance of male and female forces. An international bestseller, her writing awards include the Goethe Grand Prize for Historical Fiction and the Gold Literary Titan Award for Poetry. And she’s been named one of the top 100 people in publishing for her work with ALLi, the Alliance of Independent Authors. Orna was born and raised in Wexford in the Southeast of Ireland, and now lives in St. Leonard’s on Sea in the Southeast of England, within reach of London. Her motto is: “When in doubt, be braver.”
So welcome to the show, Orna. I am just so excited to have you here today.
Orna: I’m so delighted to be here, Jo. Thanks for asking.
Jo: Now, there are so many things that I want to chat with you about today, but one of the primary things is your Go Creative Planning program for which you’ve just finished up a super successful Kickstarter campaign for. First, I was hoping that you could just share a little bit about your author journey and how you got to where you are today.
Orna: Yeah, sure. So, I always read, I think it’s really important when we’re talking about writing that we always reference the fact that we’re readers first. And reading was, like for so many writers, a huge comfort, consolation, window opener, magic thing in my life from a very young age. I escaped into books and I’m still escaping into books, except now I write them as well as read them.
So I started, I always wanted to be a writer, but it’s hard possibly for people to recall this now, but when I was young, it wasn’t something a young woman or girl said, I want to be a writer. I grew up in Ireland where there’s a very male Nobel Laureate tradition, you know, WB Yeats. George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde. These are, you know, these were writers and the rest of us were something else entirely. So I wanted to be an English teacher. That was as far as it got for me. And I would be able to read books and get paid for it. So I did that for a while and I did love teaching, but I didn’t like convent schools, which was where I was ending up mostly, and I realised that actually I want to write. I want to write. And so I did a correspondence course, as it was then. There was no email. It’s all, this is all pre-internet. And I went on anyway, maybe two, three years later, I became a freelance features journalist, which was my job for many years. And I loved it, but I always wanted to write a novel, so I had to step away from journalism to write fiction. That was the way it turned out for me.
So in my forties, I started to write my first fiction and in those days there was no self-publishing really. I had self-published a book for a women’s group that I was involved in, a non-fiction book, but you just didn’t self-publish fiction because there were no tools. You would just end up with a load of books under your bed or whatever. So I got, eventually after 54 rejections, got a trade publishing deal with Penguin, Ireland, and that was a two book deal. I thought everything was fantastic. I thought that was it. Now I’ve arrived. End of. All I have to do is write books now. But it wasn’t like that at all. Wasn’t a great experience. And then self-publishing came along and I decided to give it a go very reluctantly. I did not expect to be enamoured with it because I’m not very techie and I’m not a details person. I’m not very details oriented. And I, you know, I know publishing is very details oriented. So I gave it a go. I fell instantly in love with it. And I had run a writing school and I also had a literary agency attached to that school in Dublin. And so I knew about rights and I realized, you know, to be able to get your book to readers and still hold the rights, I understood the value of that, which I think a lot of authors didn’t back then. And so, yeah, I just took all my rights back from everybody straight away, and republished all the books the way I wanted them to be published in the first place, which I hadn’t been overly enamoured with how they had been positioned in the marketplace. I didn’t think they did a good job of that. And yeah, within a very short time, I had sold more than Penguin had, and I have never looked back since.
Jo: That is just so fascinating. And I think it’s so good for my listeners to hear too, that you started off with this idea of being traditionally published, but 54 rejections later, like a lot of people would have given up by then, but you saw it through and then you were willing to pivot as well when it just didn’t really work out how you expected it. And yeah, so I think that’s just so wonderful for people to hear that this, for a lot of us, the author journey is not a linear one. We do need to kind of move and pivot and change things up too.
Orna: Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more because, you know, when I started what I do now wasn’t even possible. The tools didn’t exist. So I could never have been in school saying I want to do that because it literally wasn’t in the imagination because it didn’t exist. And I think as things are speeding up more and more in publishing, as in every other aspect of life, these changes coming faster and faster. So even if you get something that feels great and is working for you, chances are that’s going to go as well. So it’s so important to be able to make the changes and go with what is working in this moment and not be attached to what you were doing or not be, you know, too focused on where you want to go, but just responding to what’s arising, I think is the key to success.
Jo: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And this is why I wanted you on the show today was really to talk about your Go Creative Planning program, because I think it is so important in an industry that changes all the time. And with independent publishing we’re trying to wear all the hats and do all the things, but there is a lot of overwhelm and burnout and stress out there, unfortunately, too, which can hinder a bit of our creativity. And you have created this program to help with planning, whether it’s your day, your week, your month, or your year, to help alleviate some of that for authors and writers. Can you talk a little bit about what your program is about and its main concepts and how it came about?
Orna: Sure. So yeah, creative is the main concept. So just to start there and what that means can be very different things to different people. How it came about is I needed it. It was for me. I didn’t design this for authors. I didn’t set off to design, Oh, I’ve got to design a planning program for authors. Not at all. I just, because I was publishing my own books and within a very short time of starting to do that, I wanted an association to join and I couldn’t find one and then ended up founding the Alliance of Independent Authors. So I quickly went from sort of a relatively not very busy life to a really busy life with a day job and writing books and publishing those books. So I was in chaos a lot of the time, running around, chasing my tail, working very long hours, you know, way too long in ways that affect your creativity. After a while, you can do it for a while, and it was fine for a while but then you come to a point where it doesn’t work. So I knew I needed to kind of go back to creative basics because I had taught at one time at University College Dublin, I lived in Dublin for many years. And while there, I had worked at one of the universities there teaching a program called Creative and Imaginative Practice. And I knew a lot about how creativity works at the level of process and practice, which is not something we talk about much in the author community at all. We talk about money and we talk about, you know, productivity and words and getting them out. But in terms of how you apply the creative process to the act of creating the book, be that writing the book or bringing it together as a, you know, a product. Or how you apply the creative process to marketing a book or how you apply the creative process to growing your money. You know, those kinds of questions were not things that I saw being discussed. And I was very interested in using that sort of approach because I’m a meditator, I do yoga, and I know that when I’m connected at that deeper level, everything is easier. And everything is more joyful. It’s much more pleasurable, but it’s also more productivity also goes up. And, yeah, everything gets better, as I said.
So I kind of set out to clear up my routines and create things, a way of doing things that allowed for the messiness because I tried every planning system going, and I did take a lot of principles from various planning systems, and there are some good, good enough ones out there, but I always found them too linear, too mechanistic, you know, very mechanical sort of mechanistic, I should say, you know, boxy. And, we’re creatives. We want to break the box. We don’t want to jump into the box. So I had this kind of concept of creative containment, which is, yes, you need a container of time and of space and so on. A book itself is a container, but it has to be fluid. It has to be open and it has to respond. As we were saying earlier, you have to be able to respond to what’s arising in the moment and how you’re feeling. Feelings is also something that we don’t talk a lot about in the community. So, yeah, I set out to create a system that worked for me, that’s all. And I found that it did. And then a lot of people would often ask me, you know, how do you do so much? And you never seem to be stressed. You always seem to be, you know, having fun, kind of thing. How do you do that? And I would say Creative Planning. And they’d say, what’s that? And then I’d explain. And then I ended up, of course, sharing some things and then thinking, oh, if I made that little thing, that would be fun to make that, and that would make my life easier if I had that sheet on my desk or whatever. So, eventually I created these planners, and yeah, a Patreon program to go with it on Patreon, and kept it very small for a while until, as you said, last year I decided to do a Kickstarter and see was there interest and if there was take it a bit wider and yeah, there was a lot more than I expected.
So I’m just kind of landing from all of that now, it was super exciting to see, you know, how much people responded to it, really how well people responded to it. Because I did, I really honestly didn’t know how much of this is just, I knew it was useful to some degree otherwise I wouldn’t have bothered sharing it at all, but it really, it either completely resonates with you or it doesn’t resonate with you at all. You know, I think that’s what it is. And I was surprised at how many people it did resonate with.
Jo: I think it’s wonderful. I first heard of you, I think through the Creative Penn Podcast, like quite a few years ago, and then I was in and out of your Patreon, attending some of your workshops and that, a good couple of years ago too. And yeah, so I loved it that you did this Kickstarter and I got the three month with all the planners and everything. And I’m slowly working my way through because it’s more than just a planning program. It’s so juicy. It’s so intuitive and you’ve really got to go deep and be honest with yourself through a lot of the kind of exercises and that, that you have there. So you have something that you call Free Writing, that is where you really kind of connect with that. You know, your inner kind of feelings and emotions and thoughts, and things like that. Can you talk a little bit about this connection with your intuition and Free Writing and that, that you’ve included in this program?
Orna: Yeah. So Free Writing to me is magic, and you know, a lot of writer’s journal, but Free Writing is sort of, again, my own thing that I kind of found my way into, but then used a lot. I mentioned the teaching I did at UCD all those years ago. At that time, I worked in the Women’s Studies Department and I used Free Writing not just for writers or students who were, you know, writing exam papers and things, but for women prisoners and women who were struggling with drug addiction, and women immigrants and, you know, all sorts of different situations, and saw just how magical it is when we use writing to talk to ourselves. And we’ve got so many different aspects to ourselves and so many different parts, and we’re always kind of streamlining ourselves and putting out our social self, our acceptable self out to the world.
But there are all these other parts inside that want expression as well. And when we don’t give them room to express, they act out. And they act out often in the form of blocking us, sabotaging us, because they’re jumping up and down saying, look at me, you know, you’re going to do something you shouldn’t do, or I want to spare you pain there, or, you know, all the parts are always kind of acting in our best overall best interest, but it can be hard to see it that way. And what free writing does is accepts it all and allows you a method whereby you get past the conscious controlling mind that doesn’t want, you know, wants to keep everything linear, and the goal is there and I am here and I proceed nicely towards my goal. Well, no, we don’t. We never do. And it’s not like that. If I’m here and I want to go there, there is going to be resistance. Some part of me is going to resist. And then understanding the nature of that resistance and what it is trying to say to you and listening and allowing and accepting, that kind of dynamic, it was really important to me that any planning method I would use myself and that I would share with others would recognize those dynamics of resistance.
And I don’t like, unlike very many people, I’m not a fan of the War of Art or go to war with your resistance. I think it just strengthens it. In my experience, it never worked for me. If I tried to discipline myself, I run out of the room. I just do not respond well to discipline. You know, you gotta coax me. So I have to coax my different parts out and Free Writing is a really useful tool just to listen to myself at different levels.
And another kind of practice within the planning method is meditation, as a particular form of meditation I call Inspiration Meditation, which is very good for our minds as creatives are often very febrile, full of ideas, you know, racing around the place. This is a form of meditation that centres that and doesn’t try to repress it, which again is something we can be trying to do, which doesn’t work. It just bounces up over there somewhere instead. So yeah, these practices to me are core. If you do these, almost everything else happens automatically. And that might sound really strange in a planning program, but that’s my experience. You know, it’s when people come to this program and they say, well, there’s so much to think about. And I say, no, there’s nothing to think about. Stop thinking, just do something. You can jump in anywhere, you know, with our work as indie authors, doing anything leads you into doing other things and something needs to be done now. When you get a plan, it will shape that for you and it will prioritise what’s most important and, you know, hopefully kind of move to the sidelines of things that are less important. But that doesn’t necessarily happen in a very controlled way.
Jo: way. Yeah, I absolutely love it. I found the Free Writing is so good for getting clear on the blocks that you’ve put up for yourself. And it’s a nice kind of way of releasing them as well. A couple of times in a couple of different workshops of yours, I’ve done the writing the letter to money activity, which really is interesting to see. So you’re writing from the perspective of money, writing the letter to you talking about its needs and its relationship with you or vice versa. And it’s really interesting to see sometimes it brings up things that we’re actually not aware of and allows us to make changes. So I feel like the Go Creative Planning system is very much in some respects, slowing down and listening to yourself and what’s around you, which is, I think the reason I find it so fascinating is.
My very few years in this industry, but I know for myself, it feels like you’ve got to do a lot. It’s like, well, you’re kind of like working all the time and you’re not always listening to that inner voice and everything. And so I really appreciate that about the system is that slowing down and paying attention.
Orna: Yeah, definitely. And you know, you’re wiser than you know, you are. And when you slow down, you have access to that wisdom, but if you’re rushing ahead with a pre-conceived set of things that have to be done and you’re experiencing them as a burden and you know, I’ll be okay when I get the next book done or when I have three books done or when I’ve got certain books done, you know, then I’ll relax, or then I’ll make money. If you’re operating from that forward dynamic, it’s kind of the reverse of the person who’s always living in the past and looking back and regretting. I don’t think we get many indie authors who operate from that energy, but being too much in the future is a very common thing in the community. And to that degree, how do you know? Well, you know, because it doesn’t feel great. You feel harassed, you feel horrible, stressed. You feel anxious, you know? You’re going around with anxiety in your gut, or a horrible feeling in your heart, or a headache, or migraine, or you’re pushing through, you’re not eating properly, maybe you’re, you know, you’re working all the hours. If you’re working all the hours, if your family are complaining that they’re not seeing you, if you haven’t seen your friends, these are all signs that something’s not right. You don’t have to do all that. To succeed as an indie author, you don’t have to do all that to make a good book, to write well. In fact, it’s the opposite. You’re actually not drawing on the richest part of your own being. And also, what you became a writer to do. I mean, I really do think we are writers because we want to touch into that part of ourselves. We want to be in flow. We want to, otherwise we might as well go and do another job that will pay us a lot better.
Jo: 100 percent and I’m kind of like, I’m smiling all the way through this because one of the things that I absolutely, like, probably the thing I love the most about your program is your focus on creative rest and play. And I absolutely love it. And it is also the thing that I struggle the absolute most with because I’m definitely lean more towards the being a bit of a workaholic really. So can you talk about why Creative Rest and Play, you’ve touched on it, but why it’s so important within this process and program?
Orna: Yeah, it is. It is so important because it is the process. As authors, as busy indie authors, we tend to think of rest and play as breaks from our work, but actually it is our work. So, you know, we’re all familiar with the experience of the best ideas coming when we’re at rest in the shower, waking up, going to sleep, you know, when we switch off the conscious mind. This is not just, you know, woo-woo or writer’s lore. This is actually, you know, there’s a complete scientific explanation as to why this happens. So consciously planning your rest and consciously planning your play gets you into flow more often and deeper. The more you consciously do it and doing it consciously is the important part, I think, and that I’d like to touch on here, because when you factor your rest and your play in, and when you’re intentional about rest and play and the intention is that you’re resting for your work and you’re playing for your work and you’re, you know, and you’re working when you’re at work, you can also bring in playful moments and restful moments. When you get it in that integrated sort of way, everything flows better. And you know, if I tell authors that means they’ll be more productive, they’re more likely to go for it for that reason. I would love us to go for it for the reason that we live a better life, you know. We just have a better time and it is a more self-loving thing to do and it is a healthier thing to do and it means we’ll live longer and be better company and, you know, better people in the world, less snappy with our kids or whatever it might be, you know, all of the above.
So yeah, I really have to remind myself, this is where this came from. I have to remind my, not so much now, now I’m, you know, I’m in a rhythm, I know when I, and I do often fall off, but I know I’m never off for very long and I know how to get myself back. But when you’re a bad case, as I would have been years ago, you know, you don’t even know you’re off. You don’t, you’re not even aware of it, or if you are, you’ve no idea how to get back into a place where you’re afraid if you stop working so hard, it’s all going to fall apart. It’s not, you’re not going to get anywhere. And the fear is not rational and it’s driving behaviours that are not serving you as well as, you know, if you stop and you reconnect with that wiser part of yourself.
Jo: I think so many of us need to hear that repeatedly, definitely myself. I am the worst for this. But logically I know how important it is and how beneficial and how it can make for a sustainable career and everything. Absolutely. And this might sound like a little bit of a silly question, but I’m going to ask it anyway. But what does rest look like? Because I think people hold different definitions of what rest looks like. How would you define it?
Orna: Yeah, no, it’s a brilliant question. I’m talking about Creative Rest and Creative Play, and they are a very specific kind of rest and play. So I’m really glad you asked that.
So what rest looks like, it’s very simple. Creative Rest is when the mind, the gap, when the thoughts open up, when there is a rest in your mind, and you know, again, there is a clear scientific observation, neuroscience has really taught us so much about creativity that the ancients knew anyway, in their own way. But now we have, we’re able to layer a scientific explanation in there and we can see how the brain operates differently once we allow that sort of gap in the stream of thought. And it is from that, from the silence that the words rise, you know, it really is that simple. So Creative Rest is any activity that opens that gap between your thoughts or slows your thoughts down. So you’re actively seeking to rest your brain. And there are very effective ways of doing that, that have been developed over thousands of years, like, you know, certain forms of meditation and yoga. In particular, these are very ancient technologies for the brain, which really do have that Creative Rest effect. So, you know, on a daily basis, it’s just a moment of mindfulness is Creative Rest. It can be literally 30 seconds and it can make all the difference. Taking your breaks, having a break between work, you know, periods of work. And then intentional periods of rest where you’re stepping away from the work and actively relaxing. So it’s the relaxation response, is really connected to flow and relaxation happens. If you relax your body, your brain relaxes. If you relax your brain, your body relaxes. They’re completely connected. So you can go at it either way and arrive. But the place you want to arrive in is that you are more relaxed than you were. And that’s what Creative Rest is.
Creative Play then is specific forms of activity which are playful and joyful and all of that. That restock your well, for want of a better word. So they are things that actually make you feel nourished at that deep level of where it goes beyond just, you know, I like doing this. You’re actually feeling this activity is really nurturing me and I should do it more often. So for some people, it might be going to the movies, you know, or it’s not reading a book because that’s very connected to your working. It’s rarely going to be that. It could be playing with kids, playing with pets. It could be, you know, childish things like colouring, uh, you know, that colouring craze that we had there for some years. That is totally about that. Yeah. You know, so that kind of play that just nourishes. You might be visiting a shop full of gorgeous fabrics or something and spending half an hour in there. It could be book browsing rather than book reading, if you know what I mean. There are so many things that these things could be. It could be mountaineering, it can be anything, but it has to fill the well. I think that’s the defining characteristic of Creative Play.
Jo: Yeah, I love that. The Creative Play is no, well, not that it’s no problem because making that intentional time for it can be problematic, but there are so many things that bring me joy and that fill that creative well for me. So that’s easy, but it’s the rest that is probably more of a struggle. And I do meditate, but I usually, do that right before I go to sleep, and it’s with somebody kind of talking me through a meditation and that. But it really can be, I like how you said it really can be as simple as just taking a moment and just that being in the now mindfulness. So yeah.
Orna: Yeah. And even being aware of the fact that you are writing, which is sometimes, you know, sometimes you’re lost in it, but sometimes just taking that moment to go, Oh, look at me. I’m okay. And just breathing into that, you know, and out from there, can be enough. So yeah, as I have gone on in life and in work, I find that bringing shorter periods more often is more effective than the great big. It’s great to do a retreat, say, or go on a, you know, a holiday that feeds Creative Play thing. Oh, gosh. The small moments every day matter more, I think.
Jo: There is so much in the Go Creative concept that, yeah, it’s just so juicy because you really do take us in all directions. So we’re looking at that mindfulness and that wellbeing and really releasing mindset blocks and things like that. You talk about the concept of dividing your actual, like writing work and that into three primary hats and things like that. The Marketeer, the, oh, they’ve gone from my brain right now—
Orna: The Maker and the Manager and the Marketeer, yeah.
Jo: Yeah. So you talk about that. There is another concept I just want to touch on because honestly, I could talk to you about this stuff forever, but something else that I just want to bring the listeners awareness to because I think it’s so fantastic that you include it, and that is that as part of this planning process, and planning process just really doesn’t do it justice, but you talk a lot about the money side of it and the pay yourself first and the importance of that, which I think is something that, particularly for those authors who are just starting out, is something that we push aside because the big bucks may not necessarily be rolling in right now, and there’s more expenses going out. But you have some very key ideas around this. Can you just talk a little bit about that?
Orna: Yeah, definitely. So it too is part, just like Creative Rest and Creative Play, it too is part of valuing yourself. I think that’s, that’s the core thing. And as writers, we’re givers, you know. To write is a giving act. You want to share and express and for other people, you know, either to entertain or to amuse or to educate or whatever. And that’s great. But if you’re giving to the extent that you’re losing out, if you’re giving yourself away, that’s not great. And that it’s also not sustainable. It won’t last. If you, again, you can do that for a while, but you can’t do it continually. And so I came to a point in my life where I had worked hard all my life. I had talents, I had skills that I had developed. I had, you know, loads of people telling me I was great at all sorts. I had no money at all. Really. I mean, I had some money. I’m exaggerating. But I definitely was not paid anything like the people around me were paid. And to some degree, that was fine because I didn’t become a writer for that. But it’s not right either. I knew it wasn’t and I knew that it was much more about me and how I did things and my relationship with money than it was actually about what is necessarily happening to a writer, to put it that way.
And so again, I thought about, well, what if you approached money from a creative perspective, you know, and you apply the process, the creative process that you applied to creating words, if you apply that to creating money. And I kind of did a great experiment around that and I loved it. And it was great. And it got me places that I never have been before. And I found that very interesting. And along the way, then, you know, picking up these various principles, we’re magpies, aren’t we, as indie authors, we go there for a bit of the things that we find are useful. And I had heard of pay yourself first as a concept and profit first is a whole program by some American guy whose name escapes me right now. And you know, I had looked around at all these various things. I started to do it, but I couldn’t do what they were recommending because they were accountancy type people, and it was all way too complicated for me. But I knew I needed to break things down. And so that’s where it started.
So paying yourself first seemed to me to be important, even when you weren’t making a lot of money. Because I know I come from a small business family and, you know, I have lots of small business people around me over the years and when they start a business, they invest. You know, the first thing they do is work out how much it’s going to cost them to get through the first two years and, you know, how much the tables and chairs are going to cost for a cafe or whatever it might be, but indie authors don’t do that. We don’t say, okay, it would take me two years and I should pay myself X amount for those two years so that I’m looked after myself, my family or whatever it might be, uh, plus the cost of editors, plus the cost of seeing if I do three books in that time, I’ll make blah blah. We don’t do anything like that. We just jump in and go, Oh my God, the cost of this. Oh my God, the cost of that. And so we’re starting off from a position of everything, no matter how small the cost is, is too much. And so, again, it’s like the work, everything doesn’t feel good. And there’s a kind of an anxiety that builds up. So Pay Yourself First is a way of recognizing the realities of forcing yourself, of making yourself sit down and look at the money movements and look at what actually is needed. Because too many indie authors equate the amount of money coming into the business with the amount of money that they’ve made. But they haven’t made that because there’s loans to go out and there’s taxes and all of that. So yes, as part of the Go Creative Planning Program, you plan your money and creatively plan that and you pay yourself first. So you estimate a percentage of what you will be able to or you have a target percentage, and then you have a set percentage that you do right now and you begin to allocate it. And honestly, it doesn’t matter what you allocate really. It’s the act of doing it changes everything. And something happens in that shift. It’s not a zero sum game. That’s the thing that we have to realize. Money is not one and one makes two actually, really. There’s so much that, it’s shaped so much by how we think about it, never-mind the actions that we take. So as soon as you begin to value yourself enough to pay yourself first, things happen that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.
Jo: Yeah. See, I just absolutely love that because it takes it to, like it’s a very practical level, but it’s also on that energetic kind of mindset level and everything too. So it really spans across both of them, which I think is fantastic. And so, I’m really hoping from this episode that my listeners are intrigued to learn more about your program. Some of them might be scratching their head as to why this will be releasing sometime in February, but why isn’t this releasing in December or January? Because everybody knows that you start your planning for the year in January. And I don’t feel that that that’s a requisite that you need to do at all with this program, but can you talk about your thoughts around when you can start planning your author future here?
Orna: Yeah, absolutely. Cause I have a bit of a thing about the January because I see it’s like the gym, you know, everybody floods in to do their plans in January, but by, are you there by mid-February? Never mind mid-April. And so, you know, the way I think, you know, the way they say a pet is for life, not for Christmas. Well, that’s how I feel about Creative Planning. It’s not just for January. It doesn’t matter when you start. It definitely doesn’t matter where you start either. You know, you can jump into this program all over the place and you can come in through the money lens. You can come in through the Creative Rest lens. You can come in through marketing is my weak spot. I need to plan more around that. There’s so many different ways that you can enter and you can’t do it wrong is the other thing. So it’s definitely not about starting in January, getting very, you know, making your list about you’re going to do this in January and this in February and this in March and this in April. Because things shift and change anyway. What you plan, we use quarters as business does. And I think it’s, a quarter is a very good time period to, you know, you can see it, you can hold it, but there’s enough time in it to get something significant done. So the program does recommend that you choose a quarterly project timed to be achieved within the quarter, allowing for Creative Rest and building in the money asks, the money moves and the money relationship stuff.
So as well as charting the moves, there’s also a page for each week, just how you’re feeling about all of that. And all of these things help it to grow because once you’re paying attention to these things, they cannot help but expand. They will flower under your loving attention, but they will shrivel if you’re ignoring them and hoping they’ll just somehow someday miraculously appear out of nowhere.
So, yeah, it’s for any time of the year and start now, you know. And you will fall away. That’s the other thing I always say when I’m giving these planners out, hey, you’re going to fall away. And the, the Patreon program that I’ve set up, it’s designed so you can opt out for a while if you’re not doing it, you know. You will come back, know you’ll come back. It’s like meditation, you know, thoughts will arise, but you go back to whatever the object of your focus is, whether it’s the breath or whatever it might be. And it’s the same with Creative Planning. You will stop, you will fall away. And that’s absolutely fine. It’s part of the process. And then you come back and you, all the tools are there to help you assess why that happened, what it has done for you. It will have given you something. And pick up again and pick up the flow again.
Jo: Yeah. And I love that. And I think that’s really important too, is to not just wait for some arbitrary time. Like, I’m sure there’s some people like, Ooh, okay, well if it’s, uh, maybe I’ll just start at the beginning of the next quarter. No, because you’re doing yourself a disservice because there’s so much that you can do from starting right now and taking action right now. So, yeah.
Orna: Exactly. And the next quarter never arrives in some kind of weird way, you know. You think it’s going to be the perfect moment then, but it’s never the perfect moment to do it. So you might as well just do it now.
Jo: Yeah, absolutely. So this was your first Kickstarter back in the end of last year. It’s still weird to me to say last year, but back in the end of 2023, this was your first Kickstarter, correct?
Orna: Yes.
Jo: And so how did you find it? Because from my point of view from the other end, it looked incredibly successful and you were just throwing rewards at us here, there, and everywhere. And it was, it was amazing. Can you talk a little bit about how you found the Kickstarter process and what you might do differently next time?
Orna: Yeah. So it was incredible. And I did. I was like a child. I was there. Oh my God, I can’t believe it. I’ll have to give them something else. I can’t just, you know, I can’t just give them a, you know. So I got very excited by it all because, you know, I put out to $2000 as my goal kind of thing. And it was, you know, it was 1000 and something percent. It reached it. The goal before lunchtime of the first day and that was just, it was incredible and it just went on and on from there and I was delighted, as I said. You know, I thought it was just something for myself and that kickstart really showed me that it wasn’t.
Other things I loved about the Kickstarter though was that I had to really get clear about it all, you know, because I’ve been teaching this stuff for a very long time, but I really needed to, in order to explain what I was trying to offer, I really had to get very clear with marketing stuff, which often I don’t do until after. The book is done, you know, so it was really good from that point of view. I will definitely kickstart all my books going forward, I think, just because, yeah, it does give them a kickstart. Who knew?
But I learned lots. I learned a lot about the program, or sorry, the platform itself, which takes a bit of getting used to. At first, you’re going, Kickstarter, let me do this, you know, and then you’re there. Why won’t it let me do it? And then you realize, ah, that’s why they don’t let you do it. So it’s a very, very clever platform, but it definitely takes time to wrap your head around. You’ve got your base rewards and then you’ve got your add ons and you’ve got your, you know, different ways in which you can use it.
I’d like to give a shout out here to Russell Nohelty who’s, he’s just so great on this whole thing and he has a great book and I, you know, I used the book and adopted his method and his method is very transferable and very teachable and he’s now ALLi’s crowdfunding advisor. Yes, the book was really, was really useful to me.
And so I think I also am very excited about the potential of crowdfunding in this way for authors, for all kinds of books, because it doesn’t have to be complex. Mine was really quite complex. And in fact, that’s the big lesson for me. Make it simpler next time. That was too much complexity. People didn’t even know what they were getting yet at certain points, you know, or I definitely would make it simpler. But I think for all authors, it’s a really great way. It, combined with some kind of direct selling or patron program or membership subscription or something, the two together. I really see a lot of potential there for authors and it’s not being used. Most publishing projects on Kickstarter fail completely. They don’t take off at all and authors are not doing it right, you know, so I can definitely see that. So. Yeah, read Russell’s book, and I’m also going to do now going forward, a Kickstarter With Me. I’m going to just open the doors so people can see what’s going on. And, again, run it in a very similar way to the way I run the Creative Planning Program, which is, you know, come in for a month or two and have a look, go off, integrate it, you know, drop away and come back rather than a set program, start here, finish there. Because I think a lot of these things, they take a long time to, if you’re going to do them properly, if you’re going to genuinely engage with them, it takes a little bit of time. But, I’m hoping a few people will join me and I’m going to do another one in July and for the first six months of this year, we’ll work on our Kickstarter’s together and yeah, support each other and have a bit of fun with it.
Jo: That is so exciting. So that’s on your Patreon, which I think is, yeah, just so great. You have got some really exciting projects on the go this year with the Kickstart With Me on Patreon. There was something else that I just thought was just so fantastic, and that was with your last Kickstarter, one of the tiers was your Facilitators for the Go Creative Planning Program. So you’re training people up to be able to teach this to other people, correct? Is that kind of the basis?
Orna: Yeah, again, that was a response. Two people said to me, you know, I’ve been doing your planning program for a long time. Do you have a, you know, train the trainers kind of thing? And I thought, oh, no, I don’t. And I never would want to because in my mind that was always something like, you know, it’s sort of proprietary thing and you have to have a, you know, a set syllabus and, you know, franchise and I just didn’t want all that machinery and stuff. I’ve got books to write and I like to run so there was no room for that. In another life I thought maybe there could be that kind of thing. But then as it kind of went on, I thought, you know, because of the nature of the program and the practices, free writing and inspiration, meditation and mindful movement, these practices that are contained within it and the act of planning itself, it’s so self-directed. And so, it takes care of you in a way that, you know, and I have no interest in franchising it, but I would like to work with some people who have been doing it for a very long time who would like to take it to other people. I don’t want to stand in the way of that. I would like that to happen. And so, yeah, I worked out a facilitators program. Which is, I would call lightweight, and just put it out there on the Kickstarter just to see again, is anybody else interested besides the two people who had come forward, you know, before that saying, do it, please do it. And then there were a few people, so I probably will, not I probably will, I’m committed to going ahead with that later on in the year. And drawing up now I have to really get serious about the program, really understand the mechanics of it because, you know, it’s one thing to kind of offer the program itself. But if you’re offering it then to other people to teach it, then you really have to understand what’s going on. So that’s kind of where I am at the moment.
Jo: I thought it was amazing when I saw that tier, my eyes just lit up and went, oh my gosh, this is the direction that it’s going in. That is fantastic. Because I think you might’ve hinted that, because you wrote it out as part of the Kickstarter, but this might be something that you also encouraged down the line as well is, or roll out down the line is, training more facilitators up. Is that correct? Something you’re thinking?
Orna: Yeah, well, I’m going to do this one, so we’ll probably start in September. If we don’t start in September, it’ll be following January. So in order to be a facilitator, you have to have done the program for a year. And that would mean that people who have been in the program for a long time are eligible, but if somebody else says, you know, I’d like to do it or whatever, well, you know, they need to have that base understanding and also to have demonstrated its effects in their life, you know, that it has actually worked for them and so on.
So yeah, it’ll either start in September or January and then depending on how that cohort get on and you know, how successful it is and by which I mean, how well it works for them and for their people, it, you know. The first one’s always the hardest. If it works and it goes well, then we’d probably run it again at some point after that.
Jo: It’s just so exciting. It’s so exciting. Everything that you’ve got just on the go. Are there other amazing things that you’ve got happening this year that you’ve got planned?
Orna: Well, the thing I’m most excited about from the literary point of view, as opposed to the author education or ALLi or whatever is, is this Kickstarter for, because I’ve been working on a historical true life fiction story for years and it’s seven years since I published a novel. I’ve been writing, you know, I don’t give up, basically, I’ve been writing, I’ve been wrestling with this very challenging, ambitious project for years now. The next Kickstarter is the launch of that, the first book of that seven-book series. And I’m also working with my son who’s a story producer and he’s creating scripts and story Bibles and things at the same time. So we’re having great fun doing that.
Jo: Amazing. That’s so exciting. Oh, I love that. I absolutely love it. Well, just to wrap up, I just want to ask you one kind of final question. And that is, if you could offer my audience one piece of advice for making this 2024, the best year for writing and creativity and their author careers, what would it be?
Orna: Rest and play.
Jo: That’s what I need to hear.
Orna: Seriously. Rest and play and, you know, go for the big goal. Go for the big one, go for the big one. Because it’s as easy to score the big one as the smaller one. And it’s more fun. It’s scarier, but it’s more fun.
Jo: Yeah. Wonderful. Oh, I love that. Finally, how can people connect with you? How can they find out about all the amazing things you’ve got going on?
Orna: Yeah. So if you’re interested in the Creative Planning, it’s best through Patreon. So that’s patreon.com/ornaross, and that’s also where I’ll be housing the Kickstart With Me. And then if you’re just in the Alliance of Independent Authors, that’s Alliance of Independent Authors, it’s a nonprofit, for those who might not know, it’s a nonprofit association for self-publishing authors. My own stuff is at ornaross.com.
Jo: Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for sharing all that. I have just had a ball chatting with you today, so thank you so much, Orna.
Orna: It’s been lovely. Thanks for having me. Take care, Jo.
Jo: Here are some takeaways from today’s show:
1. Be willing to change as the publishing industry changes. Don’t be too attached to only doing things one way.
2. Consider Free Writing as a way to allow your subconscious a voice, to clear blocks and move through resistance.
3. Include a meditation practice such as Inspiration Meditation in conjunction with Free Writing to give your inner self a voice and allow for more creativity.
4. Don’t wait for an arbitrary day or time to start planning or taking action on your author career. Jump in now, wherever you’re at.
5. Pay attention to the signs – physical, mental, and emotional – that are telling you you’re too much in the future and not enough in the moment. You don’t need to be stressed and working all the time to succeed as an indie author.
6. Creative Rest and Play aren’t breaks from our work. They are our work.
7. As little as 30 seconds of Creative Rest can make a big difference to your creativity and productivity.
8. Treat your author career as a business and value yourself enough to pay yourself first right from the get go.
9. You will fall away and get off track from implementing your plan, and that’s okay. You can always come back and get back on track
10. Consider tapping into the potential of using Kickstarter as a crowdfunder for your next project and joining Orna in her Kickstart with Me program.
So I think you can see why I’m so enamoured with Orna and her Go Creative system and why I couldn’t wait to share this episode with you. Maybe, like me, this has got you excited to dive in and craft and plan for yourself an author career that is truly in alignment with who you are. The reminder about the importance of Creative Rest and Play has been incredibly timely for me.
If you’ve enjoyed this show, there is lots of ways you can show your support. A simple rating or review or tag on Instagram goes a long way to bringing more listeners to this show. If you’re feeling really generous, you can support the show for the cost of a coffee by going to https://buymeacoffee.com/jobuer. This helps with the cost of recording, editing, and transcribing each episode, as well as helps pay for my time. As indie authors, we know that a little can go a long way.
But on that note, I hope I’ve left you inspired and motivated to continue working towards the author life of your dreams. So happy writing, my friend. I’m wishing you a wonderful week. Bye for now.
ALLi, Creative Play, Creative Rest, Go Creative Planning, indie author, Kickstarter, Mindset, Orna Ross, Pay Yourself First, Planning