Rennie Saunders: Shut Up And Write! Discover This Writer’s Secret For Unleashing Your Creative Powers

I do really believe 100% from every part of me that everyone has the capacity to be able to do the things that they want and not to be held back by the mental baggage that's in our head that we want to push through.

Welcome to the do the Thing podcast. In each episode, we get down and personal with people who go after the things they want to make all their wildest dreams come true. Join us as we unveil and dissect a formula for what it takes to do the thing. Here is your host, Stacy Lauren.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to the do the Thing podcast. This is your host, Stacy Lauren. All right, guys, well, the time is here. Again, we are doing another do the Thing challenge, and this time it's the do the Thing Start a Book challenge. And one of my friends actually is in the middle of writing a book, and she told me about this amazing organization called Shut up and Write, where they connect writers all across the world to give them a space to be able to shut up and write. And I absolutely love the name, and I love the accountability, and I love the connectedness that it provides. And so I had initially emailed the founder of this amazing organization and asked him to be on the expert panel for the do the Thing so Start a Book Challenge. And he said yes. And we just published that episode yesterday, actually, so I'm excited for you guys to hear that. And then I asked him if we could do an individual episode, because you could really tell when someone is just aligned with what they want to do, and then that is able to spread out to other people to help them do what they want to do. And so I love getting the opportunity to connect with people in this way and then also share more about them so you could start to see what feels alive for you to be able to inspire others in that way. So I'm so excited to welcome Rennie Saunders to the show. Hey, Renny.

Hi, Stacy. Thanks for having me again. I mentioned last week when we were talking how much I enjoyed that, and so I'm happy to chat with you some more about do the Thing.

Thank you. Yeah, I'm so. I'm so glad that we connected. It's so cool because I just randomly emailed and I wasn't sure what you would say, and because we never knew each other, and that's always when you just kind of hear something and you're able to say yes. And now it's like all these people are going to be able to benefit from you and Shut up and write. Now that we've been able to connect, which is exciting.

I sure hope so.

Well, I'd love to start off and just have you share more about you and your story.

Well, it's so wide ranging. I would sort of start at the well so let's start at the end and sort of see how that goes. Which is I created Shut up and Write to get my writing done and to build a community around accountability and community. So finding like minded people. Because I considered when I started writing I was like, well I want to write this novel. But really what I discovered in my life is that if I took time to write in a week I was more organized and I never did it often enough. I think this sort of ties into so much of why do the thing is such a great idea is you need accountability buddies. You need people that have at least soft expectations that you're going to come and are sad if you're not there. So I moved to San Francisco in 2006 and did a career change from being a graphic designer and creative director. I was lucky enough sort of in the heyday of the late 90s, early 2000s to work with some big Silicon Valley companies. But in the 2003 downturn, I said, you know, this is a good opportunity. I've been wanting to become a creative writer, find ways to express that part of my creativity more. And so I started working to to see how I could do that. Reading books, going to workshops. One thing I did have going for me, I'll say one of the advantages I went into this with is I've been practicing martial arts for Since I was 13 and there's a certain discipline that gets you to do it past your 20s. When you start going out that that hurt a lot and it takes three days to for it to come back. You go, well I'm still going to go to the gym, I'm still going to go to the school and do my lessons and do my training. So in that way I brought that to shut up and write. The fact that you have to create a structure. And my instance, there was a school with a teacher and you, they have classes and you go show up. And so I said how am I going to get myself to show up to my writing? And so I put it on the calendar. I created a meetup and called it Shut up and write and started showing up at a cafe every week, same time. And before you know it, people like, God, it's so great. Just this hour a week is so amazing. And it's kind of nice when you invent a new way to slice bread. Which is sort of what I consider this. I mean, everybody has a story to tell. Everyone should be doing writing on a daily basis. But if you just look at it that way, then you'll never do it right. But if you're like, my life benefits when I sit down and do everything from journaling to creative thinking to fan fiction, whatever it is, it's writing itself is a worthy endeavor for getting the thoughts out of your head. I started with that idea that I'm just going to start showing up every week. And it grew up its own momentum and luckily I have enough entrepreneurial mindset to go, oh, I'm going to protect how the, the method. We're going to develop this method and make sure that when people open another one in another cafe that they're really always there, that they're getting their own writing done, that they're really nice to the people that show up. There's a thing that I believe in very deeply, which is acknowledgement that we all just want to be seen and heard and on different levels, of course. And so when you acknowledge someone, go, hi, I'm so happy you're here. Here, sit down, shut up, get some writing done. Even just that, hi, I'm so happy you're here. Before you got to the shut up is really affirming for people. They feel there's a safety all of a sudden of like, okay, with like minded people, we're going to cut out the excuses and we're going to do this thing. We're going to be very intentional about doing this writing project and a big part of it here. I'll answer some questions that are already coming up for people. It doesn't matter what you write. And we're not going to give you prompts. You can walk in with your own prompts. Maybe there are, there are special times, like on our website we have prompts that will give you ideas. But basically this is just the one thing that people don't carve out enough of which is time to write. And this fits into, let's say you go to the gym or you do yoga class or you do other things. You've carved out time in your life to do that. And we think that writing is just as worthy in an endeavor as those other things for your health, for your mental health, your intellectual development. Any of these things we can talk about further. Is that, is that a good place to start?

Oh, it's amazing. Yeah. And I just love this idea of you just showing up at that Cafe and just saying, I'm just gonna do this thing. And then I don't know what that is. Is that not having an attachment to an outcome of whether others joined you, but wanting it, but not like, not that you didn't care if they didn't, but just not being attached to if they didn't come?

Yes, because first and foremost, there is a minor selfishness to that, which is I want to get writing done, right? So I'm going to put it on the calendar. But by putting it on the calendar, on a public calendar where other people would show up, I don't want to disappoint other people. So it made me go, do. Go do the thing, right? I was like, I'm here, I am. Even on, I'd show up some nights in the cafe would have closed without telling us. I would still stand there until everyone ate gum and we're like, okay, let's go to a different cafe or something. And I have a saying that I'd actually forgotten about. I hadn't said it in a while that a friend reminded me of recently, which is they'd say, hey, who was at the writing event tonight? And I'd say, well, me and my love of writing. Because no one else would have come, right? But because I had the. I had set an accountability factor, right, that someone might come. And by doing that consistently, I mean, here's the big sort of the big reveal. We have a hundred thousand members in 52 countries. I think our online events have an average of about 5,000 active users right this moment who are writing. Some people write once a week, some people write three times a day, just join different online events. So from that simple act of I'm just going to do this because it's good for me, I've allowed other people to find that foundation.

Yeah, there's so much about this that I just love because we are so in need of connection and crave to be around people who are doing the same thing as us. And you just having this motivation to be able to get started and do the thing for yourself and then invite others if they wanted to join, has now created the space for people just to connect and get out of that feeling of being alone as they're doing the thing.

I think that every other headline I see on my Apple newsfeed recently has been about the loneliness epidemic coming out of the pandemic. We're already spending a little too much time with our social media and all these worrisome things and then trying to figure out how I'M going to reconnect with any stresses you may have of. Maybe you got Covid, maybe you still don't want to get Covid. How do I get back into a rhythm of society that has a low barrier of entry? Because this is not a political organization. It's not a spiritual or religious organization. It's not a club of any type. There's an intentionality of saying, I'm going to express myself and I'm going to do that with other people. You immediately. And you don't really get to know people that well. We spend five minutes going, hi, my name's Ready, and I'm going to work on my science fiction novel. And you go around the table, you write. But just having the loneliness goes away over time. You keep showing up and you get to know people and then you maybe have a cup of coffee or glass of wine or a beer while you're writing. And then it's an organic. That intentionality to just show up and just be a normal person without expectation goes far beyond the writing.

Yeah. And it's that. That idea of them having a shared experience now because they're doing something they like with another person that likes the same thing. And whether it's a virtual or in person, they're then connected to that person and they can even see them outside of Shut up and write, which is cool too. They've just potentially even made a new friend.

Yes, we've. We've got people that then become co editors or we've. We've supported. We don't at the moment, but we have supported and we plan on hopefully doing this again. Critique groups where people will get together and actually then share their writing outside of those writing. It's still within the Shut up and write. But it's not those moments. You have to really divide those moments up. But I actually have two members who we ran into again just recently at one of the local cafes here in San Francisco. They co ran a group for many years, had to shut it down because of the pandemic. And now they just travel around the city as a duo, just showing up to writing groups and writing this furiously.

So amazing. How did you get through the time when you were going. You put it on this public calendar and then no one showing up or even just maybe one person is showing up. How did you sort of keep moving during that time?

For one, it didn't last long. I think within a month I had 12 people coming. Wow. There's a simplicity to it because I. I made a commitment. I'd done a lot of work. Writing workshops. I'd been to some. A retreat. I'd read all the biggest and many of the smaller books on writing and organizing yourself. Again, reorienting myself to think of myself as a writer and not necessarily a creative director. So. And I said, this is. This is my class. I'm. This. I'm going to go do this thing. And it creates its own energy. When you walk in and there's someone sitting there and they've invited you to come, you say, hey, this is great. And I'm not going to make you tell your life story right off. I'm just going to be like, here, this is simple. Have a cup of coffee. Let's write for an hour. It creates its own energy. It is like a creative meditation. And I won't say your barriers come down, but your ability to trust goes up. You're like, oh, okay, I'm safe here. But to address your question, how did I do it on my own? I mean, maybe I'm a strange person, but I used to just go to movies by myself. No one else wanted to see it. So I'm not as afraid to go off and wander in the woods or go to a movie or something. And maybe that made me well suited at times. Sit there by myself and just put a thousand words on the page. At least I was in public. I guess that's a good way to put it. I was doing it in a cafe, so at least I wasn't in my house doing it. And it always sort of recharged me to go back when I was in my writing place at home.

Yeah. Yeah, I like that. And it's like you got different energy depending on where you were at, too.

Mm.

I'd love to hear more about. So number one, where did you put it when you said public calendar? Is that just like on Eventbrite or something?

No, no, it was. It was a meetup. So meetup.com, it's a great thing. And actually, meetup started after 9, 11, when everyone was standing around on the street corners charging their phones off of anybody that had power. And he started saying, wow, look, I can't remember the guy who founded it. I can't remember his name anymore. But he was just like, look, we're all getting to know our neighbors. I have to create something that lets people meet their neighbors again. Because we don't stand around in our front yards as much. We certainly don't in San Francisco because we don't have front yards. We just have front stairs on the street, right. And all our houses lean on each other. So it was well suited. And so just you put it on the meetup calendar and people see, hey, I'm interested in writing. They'll go, well, here, go try this one. And then people would show off. And we did that for, for about a year until someone in our group, one of my regulars, said, hey, we should do this in another cafe. We should do this another day a week. I said, yes, we should. Which day of the week at which cafe are you going to do it?

Oh, yes.

And that sounds start to spread. And again, like I mentioned earlier, we had by that time sort of worked out what the shut up and write method was, which is when you show up, you don't use prompts, you. Because if. And if I'm telling you what to write or we're going to read it at the end, which is all fine stuff to do. It's good practice. But if you do that, it fundamentally changes what you write and how you write because you put up filters. Oh, I'm going to have to read this in an hour. I'm going to sit and edit every word in every sentence, where the whole point of shut up and write is just to get the words on the page. Because as you get those words on the page, new words become available and you get better at the craft of writing by putting thousands and thousands of words on the page. So some of those things are fundamental to it. Also not to read back. When I sit down to read, I'll read a paragraph back and then just start writing because again, I don't want to edit, I want to write. So I'm sorry, I forgot the original question.

But yeah, no, that was great. I'm trying to remember.

I got you. You didn't remember the question either.

I know, I totally forgot the question. Oh, yeah, that's what it was. I asked you how it grew and you pretty much said you started. All of a sudden someone else was basically able to like, take it over. So that's really. I love that idea. And actually I'm starting that would do the thing where people are taking over and then running a challenge that fuels them. Actually, that's where the Start a Book challenge came from. One of the community members said, hey, I'm an author and I. I write and edit books. Can I run this do the Thing book challenge? And we're doing it together because it's still new. But that idea is really, it's really fun because then you get to see someone add value. They're Adding value too well.

And I think. I think this is where. Do the thing and shut up and write, really, where there is a lot of synergy between what we're doing, which is the response. You realize that people just need support to go do the energy of. And one of my team members knows this term better than I do. I think it's actually a physics term, but it has to do with the energy of starting. It takes a lot more energy to start a thing. So if there's someone there to help push you, it does make a difference. But people want to start. I'm telling your audience that something they already know, which is, you want to do things in your life, you want to be effective, you want to account for something. How do you get started?

Yeah, I like that. Because sometimes you just need to put a push a little button and then all of a sudden you go. And then as it feels alive, then you're able to continue on with the momentum and let it take you from there.

The. Oh, gosh, I'm going to remember this as soon as we get off our conversation, I'll remember the term. But there are. And it's. It's a. It goes again. We. We get caught up. Everyone wants to think that we're black and white, and we are not black and white beings, Right? There are multiple influences happening on us at any time. And one of the things that I do with Shut up and write. And again, I said, I recognize it and do the thing is we're going to get rid of excuses first. There's no excuses. We're going to put a thing on the calendar and we're going to show up for that. Right? And in doing that, you've just created a success. And then you go, oh, I wanted to do the thing. I showed up, I did the thing. Look, I did the thing. Now it becomes so much easier to do it next time. And if you do it with a group of people, the loneliness factor went down. Your fear of new things or new groups. I think we've all become introverts through the pandemic, right? It's like, how do I. How do I. I've forgotten how to talk to people. Not on Zoom, right? So all of these things were very complex creatures. And. And so whatever, we can reduce to a simple, hey, show up here. We're going to do this. We're going to write for a little while, and it's going to be freeing to you because you will actually be able to look at the page and go, wow, that wrote something. Down. I think the, the other part of this, the shut up and write methodology, which we hit on last week in the other conversation on the expert panel, was we really expect you to write crap. We really do. And if you come in with the expectation that it's not supposed to be good yet, that that's when you sit down and edit and rewrite again, it frees you up. Releasing expectations is what we'd call that.

And then I'd love to just talk a little bit more about you growing this organization, because I think there's so many people that have an idea and they just. They can't even imagine the expansiveness that that idea can grow to when it's such a seedling. And I think that's the idea is have a rough draft goal of what you want. You didn't say, I want this organization to be a hundred thousand members all over the world. You said, I want to learn. I want to be able to create a space for myself to write.

Right.

And I think people get caught up in this idea of it having to be this huge goal when you start. And it could be just a simple goal, but I'd love to talk through more about how it grew. So pretty much, you started writing, you put it on meetup, you scheduled a date, then all of a sudden people started coming. You got up to 12 people. One of the members in the group said, hey, this is cool. Let's do it. Another coffee shop. And you said, go do it.

Right.

And then he then did it himself. And then from there. How did it spread from there? Was it all just based on people or did you actually have a system set up?

I actually got to. I think the figure was somewhere around 14,000 members in six cities through neglect. That's. That's what I would say is we. Which is how we knew we had something really that people really derive value from. It has an incredible derived value from participating. And so I'm lucky in that some of the first people to show up were other marketing people, obviously writers. And so we would take time after our sessions and talk through the things that were the most important to this. And I would bring up things that I'd read from Stephen King's book or from the first five pages. We would talk about what's important in the writing process, the writing craft, the ideas. And from that we drafted the quote, unquote, shut up and write method so that when they would start at a new cafe, I would say, here's the document. Give this to all your members. Here's a table sign so people can see you. And it says shut up on the right. And they walk in and go, oh, there you are. Hi, how's it going? And. And so I certainly didn't expect it to grow big, but I wanted it within my own time limits at the time, Wanted it to be available to whoever could find it, right? So once we were in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Sacramento, San Diego, Los Angeles, and New York City. And we got to New York City because one of my members went to Columbia to go to get his master's in creative writing and started it there. And they quickly became. Because it's New York quickly became one of our largest chapters. The same thing. One of my other members had to move back to LA and started it down there again, became an extremely large chapter. So it was a little bit of intentionality around keeping it really simple at all times and also just sort of allowing to see where it would go and what people. What feedback people gave. And then at a certain point, we said, this is amazing. We have to be a little more intentional about how we grow this. And that's when we. In. In one year, I think this was in 2017 or 2018, we said, let's see how much we can grow it. And we hit 200 chapters, up from six. We had 200 chapters in under a year all over the world. Japan, South America, Mexico City, France, England, Africa. Because people recognize it and go, oh, this is really simple and really powerful. And from there, then we have gone through some other things to get people to support us so we can create an adjunct to our meetup that gives us a little more communication with our members.

And I just love how you're connecting people all over the world to do something that they love to do. We talked about it on the expert panel where it's my people, it's doing the same thing as others. That's something that they all want to do together.

There's two things that I would comment on that real quick. One is I run a session for our team. There's seven of us. And every other week, I run a shut up and write session for us. Just so we, as I say, eat your own soup, right? So we sort of remember why we're doing all this because we're all artists and writers of different varieties. But then every now and then, I'll run an online session for our organizer, our hosts around the world. And being on an event with someone from Japan, particular one I had someone from Kenya, someone from Mexico City, someone from Japan, in Georgia, And New York City, I think it was a small group, but that just let me know that it was like, wow, this is universal. This need to sit down and organize your thoughts and get them on paper is universal.

And I'd love to now go to the people that are thinking of maybe joining the do the Thing, Start a Book challenge, which starts March 6th. It's only 14 days. And I love the idea of supporting it with Shut up and Write and being able to then get people started on something. And who knows? There was one person on the panel that had written her book in seven days, so you just never know. And plus, you never know. Yeah, some people are in the middle of writing books, and maybe they just need some motivation to finish. But I love the idea of after the challenge is over, they can continue on with your organization and be around other people. And so, number one, let's kind of just talk about the benefits for writing a book, because I think some people think it's this big skill, scary thing that could be this kind of what we were saying about Shut up and write and how it grew. Right. It's this big thing of, if you would have told Rennie five years ago that this organization would be a hundred thousand members, there's no way, no, you could have imagined it. And so that could be the same way someone's feeling about writing a book. It's just this monstrous goal. And so my encouragement. And that's why I was originally going to call it Write a Book, but I changed it to Start a Book because I wanted to minimize the goal, to get people to just get started and see how it feels. So I was just wondering, just with your experience, what are some things they can get out of just doing this process?

There's so many things. I think one of the sayings that rattles around my head is there's many ways to skin a cat, which just brings up the wrong images, of course. Gosh, I'm sort of stumbling over myself. There's so many benefits to just starting. And the reason you want to say I'm going to write a book is it allows you to put a target out there, and then you'll create some kind of structure, some kind of outline that will say whether it's a memoir and you're the hero of the memoir, or it's a fantasy novel and it's some heroine has to go from point A to point B. You sort of map that out, and in two weeks, all you have to do is know that you can show up, get some words on the page and begin that process. Because it is a multi layered thing. I frequently, I actually not to go against what you're doing with this. I frequently tell people write short stories first because it's one scene, one character, one thing happens to them. And then because in science fiction, which is what I write, that's what authors used to do. They would write a short story, publish it in Amazing Stories or Asimov's Science Fiction and Fantasy. And after three or four of those, they stitch them all together into their book. You can still do that by saying, I'm just going to write one scene. That's all I'm doing today is I'm writing one scene and I'm going to learn something about this character. I'm going to take that moment when I got my first bicycle and I'm going to write that as though I got it. And then the next time you sit down, the right. I think I mentioned this before is I'm going to write it from a completely different perspective. I didn't get the bicycle. My friend got the bicycle. And I'm watching them and I'm feeling jealousy or am I feeling happiness? Right? You, you just write little scenes and you keep them all together and eventually the story will start coalescing. And then there are the other people. Oh, I lost her name. Who's with us on the, on the expert panel, know what she wanted to write, sat down and wrote it. Right. I'm not that person. I've been working on my novel off and on for the entire time I've been doing Shut up and write. I keep going, oh, I want to add this to it. And I'm fine with that because I'm not really trying to publish it. I'm trying to tell a story and someday I'll share it with people. Right? So I think doing it just because you need to do it and because you want to learn the process, there's so much you can do in that two week challenge to find the different aspects of the writing, craft the writing mindset. So much of this is about mindset. Giving yourself permission, finding a group of friends that, that are going to support you sort of unconditionally. Just write. We don't care if you write a novel, but if you do, we'll be there for the book signing.

Yeah, it's so cool. And I love the fact that you're still writing your book because it's really the purpose of what I'm doing. It's the process and it's the due part of do the thing. Right. It's falling in love with the process of what you're doing and you're getting the benefits of it just from the writing. And at one point when you're ready to publish it, then you'll go there. But for now, that's where all this is. Literally this entire community has been. Your community has been stemmed from, is you writing this story.

Right. I keep, I keep joking and this is a joke, but it's, it's sort of a joke. Sort of like, let's don't get ahead of ourselves. Is that next? Now that we've got Shut up and Write really solid and we're launching our new platform which will mesh and get people meeting together more and more and we'll have communication with them. Now I'm going to start working on Shut up and Publish so that I can get my book published. Right. So. But no, there's, there's so much. There are what I call the writing industry, which helps you be a better writer, understand writing, how to promote your work, all of that. And then there's the publishing industry, which is the people we think of like Harcourt Brace and Random House and Penguin and all of those, the big publishers. And both of them are very hard to navigate. And I do think that having people, you sort of create a mastermind group as you meet on the regular basis with your do the thing people at your Shut up and Write events who can go, oh, well, let's hear. Here's a thing I read. Here's this person I saw on YouTube who was explaining how to do this part of the process. Right. It is, it is overwhelming. But I think having a community to work with helps us navigate that and detaching it from like we're. Don't, don't expect it. Even if you wrote the book, it would take you another year to publish the book. And then you have to figure out how. How do you. How to promote. Right. There's a lot of steps to it and you want it to take enough time for you to figure those steps out and for you, Stacy, to have do the Thing, Publish that book now event. Right next year.

Exactly. I'll time it with your. With you wanting to publishers.

Exactly. Well, we'll, we will. We'll make this an event.

I love it. It's so exciting to me. And as you know, I'm doing this challenge in the singles community. And the reason why I decided to do it that way was because the majority of the people that are in that group either been divorced or they're widowed and this is their. Their reset in life. Having now they're. They've lived for everyone else, and now they're ready to live for themselves. And through these personal growth challenges that we're doing inside this community, they're getting to know themselves. And I think that's what I'm so excited about with Start a book. Whether you write fiction or nonfiction or you're writing your own personal story, whatever it is, you're learning more about yourself. You're learning what frees your mind. You're learning what gets you excited and passionate and ignites your fire. It opens up all these new portals that you didn't even know. And so that's the other thing that I'm really excited about with them being able to get exposed to this idea of writing a book.

Yes. And I just want to reiterate the. Wherever you are in your life, it's finding ways to be authentic to yourself within whatever confines you have for that. But to. To try and go, let me make sure that I'm leaving my legacy here. Right. I'm going to write this down. So I just think that's so important. I want people to tell their stories so good.

Okay, so let's see where we want to go. What do you think's the hardest thing for someone when they're going to start a book or write a book?

I think beyond actually getting your butt in chair for a set amount of time is where to start. And because we all have a thousand ideas kind of buzzing around in our heads.

But.

And like I said, if you start writing them down, they clarify. And you'll realize 15 of those ideas are just different variations of one. So again, the clarification of your thinking, the clarification of your what you're thinking about, where you're putting that. So the hardest part can be that first thousand words. And that's why I say don't try and finish the book the first day. Try and go, what am I talking about here? And let it be messy. Let it be as messy as possible, because if you can get all the messy stuff out, then the story will clarify itself. I think we have an internal editor, an internal critic, and all of these will kind of shut you down as you go. So again, this is why you just go, I'm going to pick a time and a place to be. I'm going to pick a time and a place in my story to start talking about it. And you can write that. And then go, no. Nope, that wasn't where I wanted to start, I'm going to do it again and just leave that alone and just do it again. Be okay doing it again. I think again, there's a fear that, well, I've got to get it right. You don't take it from me. From. I've been doing Shut up and write for 15 years. We've had over a million pages written, and I swear that 999,000 of them were just that first little blurt. And all the ones, the hundreds of thousands after that are the ones that were really good. So just find that place to start and just trust yourself. Just go.

So good. I actually, I have a couple dares from the ones that you gave on the expert panel. I just finished them this morning. One was the right crap dare. It literally says, I dare you to write crap. And then the other one was right from a different perspective. And then the other one is, of course, to go to a shut up and write event, whether it's virtual or in person. So.

So happy to have inspired you. Great.

Yeah, you totally did.

It was.

It was awesome. I would love to hear your number one piece of advice for the listeners on Doing the Thing.

Oh, boy. I have to pick one. I have a list of about 20 things, and they're all number one. It's that you're writing for yourself. And even if you're writing a YA modern fantasy novel, write it for yourself. You need to hear your own voice outside of your head. Right. So the. The number one advice is just start writing because it will clarify everything else. I guarantee very few things, but this is one of the things I will guarantee, is that people that are professional writers who I've spent time with and tried to glean information from, they all tend to be fairly clear thinkers. And I'm like, I want to be like that. Right? So just trust that your story will resolve itself. You don't have to know what you're doing going in. I think I managed to get three in there. Three number ones. But the. The basic idea is to just start and don't worry about it. It's fine. It's great. Yeah.

And I love. I. I love that advice because I encourage that with starting a podcast. So I have a start a podcast challenge coming up April 17th. That one I'm doing for everyone, not just singles, but a lot of people get so stuck on what am I gonna say? And is it gonna be good? And I'm like, once you start talking, the clarity happens.

You know, I. I completely agree. I've noticed this in the podcasts I listen to and the. I watch a Fair amount of YouTube commentators about different things, and without exception, they all get better at it by doing it. It's the one. One guarantee. That's the other guarantee you can make, is if you just do it, you'll get better at it and you'll find your niche and you'll find the people that want to read your story. Right. Humans are storytellers. We don't trust ourselves sometimes. And I think if you just do it, you will see the rewards, even if no one else ever does. Like I say, every time I do a rewrite on my book, I'm like, this is really good. I should share with other people. But I want to add this one more thing. And it's like, this is the painting I'll never finish, maybe, but I really enjoy it. And I'm mainly trying to finish it so other people can enjoy it. And I'm. I'm not tied to the fact that they will.

So it seems like you're really good at releasing that attachment to an outcome. I'm just curious, how do you do that? Where did that come from? Because I think that's really hard for people.

I don't know. That's a good question. Maybe it's just years of practicing martial arts with people that are better than me, and you develop a certain level of humility. I think another thing I didn't touch on, but I love playing games, board games. We're all playing games. And I'll play games with someone and they'll go like, wow, I beat you. I'm like, I didn't say I was good. I just said I enjoyed it.

It's so good.

I love. Right. I enjoy the process. I'm very much enamored of the process of challenging myself, learning new things about myself, experiencing particularly. I mean, this particularly with board games, because it's such a mutual thing. You're all kind of competing against each other and. And I'm over in my own little world. And it's so. I think. I think the outcome. We as a society have tied ourselves to outcomes. If you don't make a million dollars at it, you're not a success. Well, you know, this goes back to one of the questions you first asked. I just wanted to help the people that showed up at the cafe at Crossroads Cafe with me back in 2007. I wanted them to find the space to write and start clarifying their own thinking and their own writing, and it's so powerful. But I never got away from that. Basic core idea, which is writing is a worthy endeavor in and of itself and what you do with it. I mean, it's a whole nother level of effort. Right? We're talking about effort. I haven't had the time to put into publishing it because I've been building Shut up and Write. And so I'm completely content just writing. I mean, I've now written three novels, five novellas, two short stories I've published if everyone wants to look on Amazon. I have one novella published just to say I could do it. I'm very happy with it and maybe we'll see in this next year. Maybe I'll. I'll have a little time as we grow even more to finish some of my writing.

I think that's the amazing part, is because you don't have the attachment to the outcome. That's how. Because you're still working on this thing that's so close to your heart. That's how everyone else is benefiting. Because if you had published this book into when it was at 2018, you wouldn't have had that motivation to create this. I just think it's cool when you think of that idea of. Because you were able to release the attachment to the outcome, you weren't hard on yourself. You're just finding a way to write this book. Now. Everyone's benefiting because you really care. This is so close to your heart.

I mean, I'll admit I had. I had that attachment, but I think it was the people around me that said, rennie, you sitting there, if you had finished that and then walked away, we wouldn't be here doing this amazing thing. So keep writing. Keep writing.

Well, I'd love you to share how people can go to a Shut up and write event, whether it be online or in person, and then also maybe speak to the people that are going to be participating in the challenge as well.

Sure. The easiest way is to go to shutupright.com you can put the and in there or not. It'll get you to shutupright.com sign up, become a member, and then look at both online. Online we have many events happening all day long because they're not geographically centered. You can join ones that are being hosted from Europe or wherever it happens to be. I think almost all of them are in English. I will say I don't remember what day it is, but there are some folks running one out of Glasgow, Scotland, that tends to be one of our favorites because they're such good hosts. I'm sorry, I can't Tell you what day that is and also look at local events, see if there's anyone active in your town. I think for this challenge, we encourage people. If there isn't one in your town and you want to do this, become a host. To sign up to become a host. I think for the, for this, just find an online event, you sign up for it, it immediately signs you up to come every week. You don't have to RSVP and then just show up and start writing. It's that simple. You will see once you've signed up, that it also enables you. We have challenges, we have prompts. There are a few other little things like that that are on our new web platform. So it's fairly straightforward. There are some points where you'll still be pushed through to also sign up on meetup, but I don't think that's for the inline in person.

And then if they want to become a host, how does that work?

You just click on the little button that says I'd like to become a host, and we walk you through the process, find out where you are. Is there someone already in town doing one? And it's just a little process sort of teaching you how to do it, making sure that you're going to be nice to people, that there are a few steps we put people through because we want everyone to be safe, that you run it at a time and place that has good lighting, good access, be it in good parking or good public transit. You know, there are a few things like that that we make sure because we, we want people to go and have a good experience. But other than that, it's. It's quite simple. It's so simple that we have somewhere around. I lose count sometimes because I'm working on other parts of the project. Somewhere between 6 and 800 hosts around the world.

So cool. I love that, man. I am just so excited to have met you. It's so cool. And then the other thing that's coming to my mind is when you surround yourself with people that are doing the same thing as you, that want the same thing, you get even more ideas. You get to be exposed to poetry reading or like this group or that group, and you just don't know where this one meetup where it's going to end. It's just a starting point is what I think.

Yes, it's emergent. One of my favorite terms is it's. It's an emergent experience. I think that's one thing about not being tied to outcomes, is if you build A good solid foundation that's based on simplicity and then bring in people of good faith and good who want to do good with it. Amazing things will emerge. We just can't know what it's going to be. But good things will emerge. Yeah.

And that's where the excitement comes because you have no idea. It just is going to envelope from there. Well, thank you so much for joining, Rani. It's been quite a pleasure getting a chance to get to know you. I'm excited to partner with you on this challenge and I'm excited to get people to shut up and write.

Absolutely. I really appreciate it. I'm very excited to see how people do with it. Of course, as they get into it, it's real easy to ask for help on our website if you're having any questions. We've got a wonderful, small but wonderful hard working group of people to help you make a success of it. So it's really been wonderful talking with you. Stacy and I look forward to working with you more as we go forward.

So cool. And thank you to the listeners. We are encouraging you to achieve your dreams and create lasting change and do the thing.

Thanks for listening to the do the Thing podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. But even more, we hope you'll be inspired to do the Thing. Do you have a burning question on Doing the Thing that you'd like answered? How about an inspiring do the Thing story of your own that you'd like to share? We'd love to hear all about it. Just leave us a voice message at dothething callcast co or email us hello at do the Thing call podcast. Com.