Finally Friday With John & Melissa

And then we don't, we can never work out the statistics on how many people actually turn up. See, that looks good on that one.

Yeah, it looks great.

We always get a fly, right?

When we hit record, we have one too. It's come to me too.

How you doing, Instagrams? How you doing, Dennis? Shyla, good to have you on. How you doing, TikTok? I know you're out there. Facebook, YouTube. We have the pleasure of having a great friend with us today. And the, as you know, I'm John and my wife Melissa and the other—

It's Finally Friday.

So, and we have a great friend with us, a new friend, Jessica Pressler, and we're gonna talk to her in just a little moment. So the aim of Finally Friday is to just have a conversation to celebrate the fact that we're here. You know, people have a tendency to do one of two things. They're really miserable about Mondays, or they spend their whole life waiting for the weekend. And for us, we love them all. We love the fact that Monday's here and we get to go again and have a tremendous week. And we love Fridays because we've, we've been successful. We've, we've seen some tremendous things all week long. And, and so we love to talk about what we did creatively during the week. I love to talk about some of the things that we learned the week. And Jessica's got some exciting news about a project she's been working on for, I'm not sure how long, and we'll find out all about that. So yeah, welcome to Finally Friday and welcome to our friend Jessica.

Thank you and thank you for having me. And I am so honored to be with the two of you.

Well, thank you. So, so what, hey BJ, BJ is one of our author friends. And BJ, you'll love Jessica. And you, BJ, should be talking to Jessica about seeing if you can, you know, hop on a tremendous podcast. BJ's awesome. She's a writer out of Texas, good friend of mine.

And okay, yeah, first up, Jessica, why don't you tell us how everyone can find you? We'll do this at the beginning and before you hop off, but what's the name of your podcast? How do they contact you? All those things.

Okay, great. So my podcast is called Your Trader Within, where people come on and tell their stories about their traitor, as well as other things that are going on in their lives. My website is jessicaannpressler.com, and that connects you to the podcast. It connects you to where you can find my books. I write blogs every week, all mental health. And so I probably have about 200 blogs on there now that people can access. There's resources on the— so everything— jessicaannpressler.com is really the place to go for everything.

That's awesome. So what, what LCSW, what is LCSW?

Licensed clinical social worker. So almost 40 years ago, I graduated with my master's in clinical social work and have been working in the field ever since.

So you've got a really, you've got a very strong niche. You've got an area that you're really focused on in your life. Tell us a little bit about that.

So it's, I've always been a psychotherapist. So I've always been helping people cope And lead healthier lives. For the last 20 years, I've been a hospice social worker. So I'm helping—

Oh, wow.

Cope with dying.

Thank you for that.

It's an awesome part of these families that they let you in and open up to you.

Yeah.

Come in to help them die. I come in to help the families cope. I come in and I stay, stick around after. Yeah. Wow. Cope with their grief. And I've worked with custody and visitation evaluations. The one good thing about social work is that you're not only in one niche, you can really do anything. with it. So I've worked through it, but always with the mindset of helping people improve their lives, helping them become stronger, either be by education or by working through their quote, I'm doing quote marks, stuff.

We've all got some stuff to work through, don't we? So with Finally Friday, we spend a lot of time talking about the value of creativity. And I'm just wondering in your life with the sorts of people that you're dealing with on a day-to-day basis, what is— does create— being creative help you with dealing with some of that?

Oh my goodness. Well, even in my field, there's all sorts of— there's art therapy, music therapy, drama therapy. There's so many ways to cope with what you're feeling, cope with anxiety, cope with depression, cope with, you know, as part of your work. So absolutely. And we, we work with children, you know, you work with children and you, it's still, you can't say to you, tell me about your childhood. Well, there's their childhood, you know, tell me about last week. You, you know, sometimes I've sat with children and we do art and they, and they show things in that artwork that you, um, wouldn't know any other way.

So, yeah.

Very, very interesting. What do you do for creativity in your own life?

Uh, well, uh, Writing. So this most recent project was writing this book. And I want to continue doing that. I don't know if this is creativity, but I do spend time with my puppies walking in the water in the ocean.

Oh, yes.

Get connected.

Yes.

So, so creative in my mind, body, and soul, because I think it's everything.

I— that was going to be my question was, how do you— how do you flush, you know, all the things you come in contact with every day and all the feelings that you have about it? I would think that would be very helpful. One way is to walk in the ocean is like, it's way up there.

And pets being near, which I look at as my children and my fuzzy, my fuzzy children, just touching them, seeing their happiness, and speaking to people. I think community is very important.

Excellent stuff. So tell us a little bit about your book.

Okay, so it started— I'm not going to give you the whole 20 years, but 20 years ago when I wanted to teach people about abandonment, about abandonment theory. And at that point, I was gonna use little parts of myself to explain why certain issues in my childhood affected my adult. So, but that's taken— that's evolved over these years. And most of the work was done in the last few years. I created a fictional book to teach. So instead of teaching people through the typical self-help, which is fine, it's certainly okay if you— have to— you identify something already. So I'm going to go into a store and look at the millions of self-help books that are out there and pick that one because I already know that's my thing. But for the people out there that don't know necessarily what's going on with them or don't understand that they even need help, I thought fiction was a good way of doing it. So it's a story about a woman going through toxic relationships, but the story is really about herself. It's about how she navigates these relationships. And because of the way that I am a psychotherapist, I believe that many of that starts in childhood. It's your childhood experience. It's the whole basis of Traitor Within that affects how you see the world in your adult lives and how you navigate the world in your adult lives and how you cope. And concept with traitor within is that the traitor within self-sabotages.

Interesting.

So the book is a fictional story of a woman who does this. And my hope is that people will read the book. And you're going to be very emotional through this because from the outside point of view, you're like, stop doing that. Stop. Tell your traitor to be quiet, that you don't know it's your traitor yet. And then you'll see what happens to her. And you may see yourself in it. You may not have her exact story. You may not cope her exact way. But my Assumption is that by the end, by, by reading this story, which I believe is a really good story, you'll also say, hey, wait a second, I may do that. Let me look further into that. How can I help myself? So kind of getting in self-help by the back door.

Excellent. Excellent.

That's great. I love it.

Welcome Smoking Sisters Society on Instagram, which is probably my most favorite thing I've seen ever. Michelle Murphy, there's a bunch of you. If you've got any questions for Jessica, for ourselves, Feel free to drop it, drop it in. Jessica's just been talking about a new book that she's written called The Traitor Within.

I think that's an extreme example of creativity, Jessica, because you, you take all of your clinical experience and personal experience even, and you make it into a story to try to teach something. I, I think that's amazing.

All fiction is based off, you know, real life, I believe, to some level. Um, there's gotta be that. So in your creative process of writing, So you've got this book, you've got this idea. It's a bit, it's a bit wacky and weird. Like, how the heck am I gonna convey this thing? How is it ever possibly gonna get off? So there's all that, like, creative—

Get people to connect with the character enough to even care about what she's doing in her life.

All that creative angst stuff. So, so in your process of writing it out, what did you find yourself doing that was helpful for you in staying creative, outlining a story, all those sorts of things? Give us a little bit of insight.

So I want to say that I started writing with no knowledge of how to write. Didn't take a writing course, went to college and took an English, you know, 101, whatever it is the first year. So I will tell you—

Spelling.

Spelling. Well, thank God for Word does pick up spelling.

Yeah.

But I'm, I'm not a good speller. I'm not. So, so I had to learn how to write. And I did have an editor who taught me. He was my mentor. I wrote the book myself. I showed up with him with the book. But he said, okay, do you know what an arc is? I'm like, no, what's an arc?

No.

Do you know we have to— so the most important thing for me is I wanted people who read, and I hope this is true, to feel. I always do the tissue test. If I read a book, if I watch a movie, how many tissues is it going to take? Now, it could be laughter. It doesn't have to be crying. But I want a person to feel. So my hope is that I— that was important to me. So when I worked with this editor, he worked— he worried about the arcs, the arcs of the characters, the arc of the whole book. He worried about the technical stuff. And I wanted to work— worry about people feel. So, so you have— I agree, you have to connect with the character. And I hope you connect with her. And the people that I've given the book to, to read just before I, uh, put it, gave it to the publisher, they told me they were angry at her. They would get emotionally connected to her so much, like, what are you doing to yourself? So I hope that happens. And I forgot who said this. It may even have been a sports person. I can't remember who said it. But oh, or an author. I want someone, I want it, the character, I want it to bleed. I want—

Yeah, yeah. Yes.

You want them to, you want them to bleed. They live with you in your head, don't they?

Yes.

And then you get to the end of the book and you go, oh bugger, you know, what do they damn do next? You know, I'm, yeah, I'm always writing my characters into my next book.

We are always talking about this, even in books that we buy from other folks and read. Um, you know, I'll sit in bed and read, and if I laugh out loud at something, John will be like, what did you just read? Why did it make you laugh? You know, because we're always talking about this, how to get that emotion.

Yeah, in your writing process. And I think that's very important. And I, I think as a writer, you've gotta be able to feel it yourself. Like, you've gotta be able to feel whatever your characters are feeling. And if not, and I think that's, you know, all these people are worried about AI and stuff at the moment, and I just don't think you need to be because AI can't feel. It can try and copy emotion, but it can't feel an emotion.

Well, you think of it like a sociopath. They could watch other people and they could learn.

You could imitate, right?

Imitate.

AI is a sociopath, a narcissistic sociopath. Or it turns you into a narcissist because everything you've done is awesome. It's like, I'm not that good. I know, I know me.

Don't say that too loudly. Remember the movie, uh, with Hal?

I know if our feed suddenly gets cut, like everybody knows why.

Exactly.

How you doing, Civil 1776? We, Yeah, obviously a Second Amendment person just there. Good to have you here.

Welcome.

MRCN Rap, good to have you here. So we're here with our friend Jessica talking about finally Friday, the end of the week, all the creative things that we do. So as a writer, do you write out, did you write out your whole plot first? You know, working with your editor to outline that whole thing, or did you write out all your character studies behind it? You know, that's called a, you know, a plotter. Or are you more of a plotter? You sort of plotted along and this thing sort of birthed itself. Which way did you go?

So a little— so again, I wasn't trained, so I didn't even know about doing that. This is what I did way back before my editor saw anything, because I came to him with a lot of the book, but all discombobulated. I had a board. I had something where I took index notes and I wrote down the different characters. I wrote down a timeline. I put it up to a board like someone would do as a detective maybe. And so I had the board and somewhere I have a picture of that, but that's so many years ago. And the book took different forms also, as I had mentioned. And when I presented it to the editor, I came with a lot of different stories, a lot of which he cut. You know, it was like—

Yeah, I know. Hemingway says, kill your darlings.

Those little babies, you can't keep them.

Can't keep them. Well, Yeah, because his thing was you want to keep the reader engaged. So if you go off on a tangent, it may— you want them not to put— the whole idea is not for them not to put the book down. You want— ideally, they can't put the book down. So he was afraid that some of— he saw certain things tangent. Then it was the whole concept of traitor within. Everything had to always be about that, because the main character really, although Cassandra is the protagonist kind of, but is the traitor within. You just don't know it yet. She's not named for a while. Spoiler alert.

That's very cool. So where, where do folks find the book? Do they get it through your website or Amazon or where do they go?

So it's on Amazon and Barnes Noble. It will be on a lot of other places. I have some local people who are taking it into their store, which is incredible.

That's right.

But if you, if you preorder it, which is on preorder now, you will get my journal, a PDF form of my journal, which is 365 prompts. to Discover Your Trader Within. And excellent.

Very cool.

So you'll, you'll buy it wherever you buy it. You can go to my website to get to Amazon or Barnes Noble. You'll give, you'll go back on my, on my website, put in the order number, and we will send you in your, in your email, and we'll send you immediately the PDF.

That's a great idea. That's a great idea for other writers as well to have some sort of add-on like that. And I think that's very good in the in the era where Amazon keeps all the, all your readers' information and you've got no way to connect with them. And by being able to do that, so I hope everybody out there who's a writer steals Jessica's idea because that's a great idea.

It is.

I'm stealing your idea. BJ steals everything. She's one of our favorite thieves. She steals every good idea.

Our friend BJ is on my Instagram feed right now. She's a writer as well.

So she's written a whole bunch of books. She wrote Really great at what she does.

I'd love to have her on my, my, uh, Ear Trader with me.

Yeah, you will. I'll make sure. We're having, um, dinner with them on Tuesday. So I think that's a tremendous idea and I would encourage writers to do that is think about even if it's a QR code in the back of your book that takes people to your website that's got a spot to talk about it. One of the things we do is you can buy from Amazon or you can buy from us. And we'll sign the book for you. And that's another way, personalize it. And I think because I like doing that, because again, we can connect with our readers. And I think it's important for artists to do that. You know, it's a little different probably in painting because they're having to come to you to buy it.

Yes.

Buy it directly.

Yeah, I don't do prints or anything. So yeah, they're coming to me. But Um, when we first released John's, uh, book Deal With It, it was about the first 200 copies, I think, we did. I, I typed a note on the typewriter.

The old Vitriol.

Yeah, we have an old, um, typewriter, and I typed a note and put with each one, and, um, it was really fun to do. I, yeah, I think we probably would not be able to have time to do that now.

I hope we don't.

Too many. There's not enough hours a day.

We're re-releasing Deal With It. So BJ says that she sounds great. She'd love to be on your podcast. She also said personalization is best. So where can people pre-register for your book?

Uh, go to my website, jessicakressler.com is the best place.

Excellent stuff. And if you, if people are out there and they're wanting to pre-register for Deal With It too, go to drjohnaking.com and do that. And we're gonna do something similar. Um, anyone that buys from our website, um, we're going to personalize it for them.

Yeah.

Because we've, we've always done that, a personal mailer. And we, we find that people will— and here's another idea for you, like, if they like it, they go back and they buy one and either give one or buy one and send one to a friend. And, um, we've often done that around Christmas time, etc., to personalize it to family members and stuff. So, yeah. So that's really good. So you're welcome to stay with us and chat. And Mel's gonna talk about some art stuff she did this, this week. So I don't know if you're pressing or if you need to go, but we're gonna talk about some painting stuff.

I actually wanna listen, so I will stay here quietly.

Oh, don't stay quiet.

You don't have to be quiet.

Be noisy. Or everything in our life is a little bit like that. Go on, off you go.

Creative life this week. I, I carrying on from last week, I shared a little bit of my sort of sketchbook process and how I asked myself the question, what if everything took up more space on the available canvas? So if everything was a bit more substantial. So I was making some sketches and on Amazon paper, as you should. Recycling.

Good.

And so this— I was working on a cowgirl. So this is my sketches. I was like, what if everything was just a bit blown out, you know, and just got a bit fatter? So I keep asking myself this question as I was approaching my art this week. And then I made a couple of small pieces on paper with the cowgirl. And the cowboy, like so. And these are mixed media, um, and just having a lot of fun with my different materials this week.

So you made an interesting statement there about how you were, you're talking to yourself about how things need to take up more space. But I think that's an interesting question, not only for painting but for writing too. Because you want your characters to take up the full space. Emotionally, you want the reader fully engaged in, in what is happening on the page.

I think that goes back to a lot of what Jessica was talking about and how, how if you're sitting there with a book reading, those characters can take up the entire room that you're in. You know, they are large to you. And so that's actually a lot of what I was thinking was, how do I— and last week in my sketchbook, it was just flowers. Like, how do I have these flowers come off my sketchbook page at someone and even sort of explode out of the space? And so that's what I've been sort of exploring this week creatively. And It's interesting because I don't get to paint every day because I, you know, have a day job. But it's in my mind all week, in the back of my mind, and I'm thinking about it constantly. And so then by the time I get to a day when I can paint, like Saturday, Sunday, Monday, whenever, I'm ready. It's like it just comes out of me and I'm ready to do some drawings or paintings.

How did you fit writing into your life, Jessica?

Okay, I'm gonna answer that, but I have one question because I can't help it. I was gonna be quiet, but I can't. So how do you hold it in all those days knowing that you can't express it and then finally able to? Is that hard to do?

If I'm feeling like I just gotta get something down on paper, I will sit in bed with my sketchbook some nights and I have some crayons and I just like make something really quick that will remind me So when I do get to a canvas, I can get it out.

And she sometimes does it in the morning too before she starts work. Yeah, she'll just take a little 5 or 10 minutes. And I think it's like writing as well. Like sometimes you just need to put down a couple of paragraphs or you're thinking about that one thing and you make a note of, oh, this character needs to do this in that chapter. I think it's just, it's constantly with you. And, and I think that's, I think that's okay. It's actually joyous.

Yeah, it is. And I, I think that is how you sort of, uh, fit it in around other things because you can't help it. Like, like you're about to explode, you know, or whatever.

Yeah, I think so. I, I, I, I think so. Very interesting.

So how did you fit in your writing? Did you do it around other things like that?

Late at night, which isn't always the best thing to do, but some, some Like around— I would start maybe at 9 to 2.

Oh no.

And that's when my puppies came in again because they would sit with me and I would work until the wee hours of the morning and then wake up again at 6. So it's not— it wasn't the best as far as length of sleep. Wow.

It's not the most creative time. You know, you've already had your whole day and then you're having to try to go again, you know.

Yeah, for sure.

John sometimes will, if he can't sleep, he'll get up and work.

But I'll get up and I'll primarily do editing first thing in the morning. I find that if I'm going to be creative, I need to have sleep behind me. And late at night is not my best time.

I think everybody's different in that too.

I know some people that just write, they always write late at night.

They're like a night owl.

But a lot of it's to do because the house is quiet and the kids are in bed and, or they're The phone's off from work.

And, um, I think that's what it is for me, which is why I chose late at night. I probably would do better if I was able to do it during the day in the morning. I think I, I would perform better. But, uh, it was really the quiet, the quiet time.

Yeah. I think the best time to write is just whenever, and the best time to paint is whenever.

And, um, whenever you can get to it.

Yeah.

And carve out that little moment. And when I paint, I feel like I'm doing something for myself. It's very like, um, replenishing, you know, for my soul. And so, um, when I'm able to set aside a whole day to do it, I, I, I feel wonderful. And I have no, um, qualms about turning off my phone or totally ignoring my email.

She doesn't ever answer her bloody phone either. Half the time she doesn't know where the thing is.

But even if it's like a technical workday where the rest of the world is still working, I can easily just ignore them all and have my painting time.

I think it's good though. I think that, well, I don't know how you feel. Maybe you don't think it's so good because you can't necessarily reach her, but I wish that I had the ability to turn things off. I don't have it. I have to be able to do that.

No, she's, she's very good at it. I do think it's a skill, but And I understand what you're saying. I've segmented my days so I do get some breaks. So even on the days that I am creative and I've set it aside to write, I understand with the pressure of, you know, Melissa runs— we gave ourselves 5 years to launch my writing career, which means most of the day-to-day business stuff Melissa is responsible for. But still within those days where we have agreed that, you know, this is what I'm gonna go do, I still make time to have to answer some things if she needs things. And if she walks into my shed at 9:30 or 10 o'clock in the middle of a creative thing, I get pissed, man, because I'm in the middle of trying to—

I know.

I'm in a totally different world. And so part of what our communication has been is like, how does that work then? Um, you know, I've got beforehand, I've got afterwards, I've got, you can send me, you know, send an email, we'll have a conversation, we'll do it.

Unless the house is burning down, please don't disrupt me until lunchtime. I will come over. I mean, and, and it's learning those little, it's a boundary that will help him, you know, but then help us, you know.

Right. And so, and not taking it personally. So when he does that, he's not doing it to hurt you. He's not doing it to, you know, reject you. So sometimes it's working with like what's going, if you, you know, how you feel about it and able to express it, you know, put a little sign on the door, you know, in session, writer at work. Writer at work.

That's why I'm in the backyard, right in the back corner of the backyard.

You know, and it is, uh, rare that I need to come over here.

But I think it's important if you are creating, And everyone should create, is that, that pulling in and out of yourself, in and out of that zone. I think, I think it's best if you can stay in that zone while you need to be in there. And I find I need to be in that zone for about 3 hours. I can get up and start writing at, you know, 8 o'clock. By 12 o'clock, I'm just about exhausted.

Right.

And I need to take an hour. But then in the afternoon, I've probably only got about 2 more hours left. I can't seem to get more than 6 to more than 4 to 6 hours of very focused creative writing. I'm so mentally drained from it, you know.

So I can speak to that too because I could tell you a lot of hours have wasted, I've wasted by not doing that, doing it correctly. Um, it probably would have taken me many Last years, actually, of doing it at a time where I was interrupted or my mind was going elsewhere, not knowing when, if I'm not— if, you know, trying to rewrite a paragraph over and over again. And when I just didn't have it, I should have said, okay, I'm gonna get up and walk away, I'll come back later. And I didn't. So it's really— it's learning. I know for my next book, and I do want to write another book, and I would like it to be fiction, I'm going to learn from that. I'm going to do it differently.

What would you do differently?

Well, first of all, if I get stuck, I'm going to get up and go for a walk on the beach. And I'm not going to stay there for 3 more hours and pull my hair out. When it's not happening, it's not happening. For example, I may— I will definitely do it earlier or early in the morning again because I definitely do not work my best. But I— and be able, which I wasn't good at, to say to the world, I'm turning off my phone.

Yeah.

I'm not going to check social media.

Yes.

Yeah.

Turn it off. And I was not good at that, which I really think it was years in addition to.

Yeah.

Have to.

Well, social media is that. I think that, that pulling in and out. The other thing I'd encourage you, I've written 32 nonfiction books and 7 fiction books, novels, or 5. I can't remember.

Whatever.

One thing I have, I have learned, and I actually only learned it in the last 18 months, is the first draft is for me, that then, and it can just be sloppy. And in fact, it needs to be sloppy. It needs to be full of all the crap paragraphs that you're gonna be embarrassed about in about 3 months' time. And just getting the story down is very important. And I've seen that in 2 different novels. I was writing 2 novels simultaneously, and which, you know, you should never do.

I don't recommend it.

And, but what I found is going back, the first one, I just wrote it for me and then I went back and edited it and it went smoothly. The second one, I was a perfectionist on every chapter all the way through. But then by the time I got to the end of it, all my characters had died or lived or the whole story had changed and I had to go back and write the whole thing again.

Right.

And then the whole thing again instead of just getting it out there and going, no, roughly these things need to be around here. And so I think the first one, you write for yourself. And then the second one, you write for your audience. It's like, what is going to connect with people and what are those paragraphs or sentences I need to just cut out? And then the third one, I find I write for my agent and my editor. So what is my agent or my editor going to need to see in this book? I've satisfied myself. I've satisfied my reader. What are the skills I now need to bring to the table in order to get my agent, my editor, my publisher alive with this?

So, excellent advice. I'm gonna take your advice when I write my next book.

Yeah, I might take my advice when I write my next book too.

I think it is true that first draft is kind of you getting to know your new friends who are your characters, like you're finding out about them and you sort of, you know, and then by the time you get to that second draft, you're like, when you're at the end of the book and you're like, that person would never say that. Why, why did I write that? You know, and then you can—

All of my characters cuss all the way through about everything. And then I get to the end and think, well, they're not all bloody Australians. So maybe some of them need to be a bit like, maybe they just need to calm the fuck down.

Great.

So, you know, yeah, especially your southern grandmas. So, hey, listen, great to have you. Have you got a co— have you got a copy of your book there so people can see it? So they know what they're looking for? Because you do.

Of course. All right.

Congratulations. So they can go to jessicalannpressler.com for a preorder and that would be wonderful. And if they preorder, they explain to them what they get again.

So when I wrote the book, I figured people can learn about the traitor within through this fictional story. But then what? How can I help them, you know, do the, do the work they need to do? And then I created the journal. It's just that the journal came out a year before 'cause it was much easier for me to create. So they get journal prompts, 365. That's this book, 365 journal prompts. So if you preorder, the novel, you'll get a PDF form of what's in here. So all the different prompts.

Excellent.

Great. I love that.

Hey, well, great to have you on. And, um, I'm gonna encourage BJ and Melissa to reach out to you and get on your podcast.

Perfect.

And I, I would encourage you to listen. So go to her website and tune into Jessica's podcast as well. She does a great job and it's been wonderful. So TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram. Good to have you there, or here.

Yeah, and happy Friday, and happy Friday, and thank you so much for coming on, Jessica. Yeah, we hope you have a wonderful weekend.

Yeah, and when you go to my—if you do go to my podcast, Dr. King is on it.

Oh yeah, you are. You're up.

I am on there.

So check out his episode. He's so famous.

So yeah, and look, don't forget to DM us during the week for next Friday. Like if you've got questions. about creativity, you wanna bring something up or talk about something, let us know. If you're an author out there and you're trying to get your feet under you, got a new book released, let us know. And yeah, so anyway, peace, friend.

Thank you.

Have a tremendous weekend.