[00:00:01.200] – Rachel Thompson
You know the post the I have a news one the just signed with my dream agent carousel. The book cover reveal in a specific shade of blue you will somehow remember for the rest of your life. Even if it’s not your favourite blue. You were simply making tea, waiting for the kettle click and scrolling unfortunately, when it landed, thumb hovering over the heart button, tea bag string stuck to your finger and there it was, the little stomach drop. The and the words late behind, not doing enough swam before you.

[00:00:32.720] – Rachel Thompson
Hello unpublished writer. This episode is for you. Welcome back to the Write, Publish and Shine podcast. Today it’s just me. I want you to think of this as a letter to the unpublished writer.

[00:00:45.160] – Rachel Thompson
Part of you, whether you’ve published a little before or not at all. It’s for you if you want to submit to lit mags. But every time you sit down to do it, something pulls you back. Maybe your hands go a little cold when you open the submissions dashboard. Maybe you’ve published before, and it still doesn’t feel like it counts in your body.

[00:01:03.820] – Rachel Thompson
I’ve noticed that, and I think it’s worth saying I’ve watched a writer revise a whole story in two weeks and then spend three hours renaming the file because attaching it felt like stepping into traffic. This is where a lot of creative writers get stuck. Not on the logistics, but on the moment right before they press send. That’s the moment when I think our nervous system tries to talk us out of it, when the compare and despair sets in the way it did for the person I was picturing at the top of this episode. So today we’re going to talk about this together.

[00:01:38.160] – Rachel Thompson
I want to keep it simple and offer you a practice. I’ve been calling, and I’ll admit I have a little trouble with some of these sounds. The soft steadfast submission practice. I cannot say that five times fast or even one time fast. Let’s get into what I actually mean by soft steadfast submission practice.

[00:01:57.430] – Rachel Thompson
What if submitting to lit mags wasn’t a brutal task you only got to when you were feeling bulletproof, which, let’s be honest, is almost never? What if we let it be a small, repeatable way of staying in relationship with our work, even when the inbox isn’t encouraging and our confidence feels thin? Soft steadfast for me is when we let the feelings ride along with us but keep our own hands on the wheel. It’s making room for what’s real and then showing up for the one small submission action. It’s gentle on your heart and in its follow through, it’s showing up in socks and not armour.

[00:02:34.260] – Rachel Thompson
Soft, steadfast means tender and steady, a practice we can come back to even if it stings a little. Because, let’s face it, submitting your art and having it sent back to you. What we try not to call a rejection, what we try to call a decline, but even that still feels like a rejection. That’s an act of real courage. And I want to build something with you that makes that courage a little more available, a little more often.

[00:03:00.660] – Rachel Thompson
So that’s what we’re going to get into here. There are three things that I come back to when submitting starts to feel threatening to our nervous system. And I’m offering them the way I’d offer a glass of water, not a lecture. So I hope it comes across that way. But first, there’s a small permission slip I want to give you.

[00:03:20.580] – Rachel Thompson
If you’re a writer who can draft a whole chapter but can’t bring yourself to attach a file and hit submit, you’re not broken in any way. And this isn’t laziness, the L word that I don’t like to use. You’re just in a very ordinary human standoff with vulnerability. Submitting asks for a kind of courage that’s quiet. So the first anchor that I’d like to introduce to you, the three anchors that I come back to when submitting starts to feel this way, is that rejection is data and.

[00:03:55.350] – Rachel Thompson
And not destiny of some sort. Here’s how it usually goes. You open your inbox. There it is, a subject line that starts with thank you for submitting and ends with no. And suddenly, you’re not there in the present anymore.

[00:04:10.550] – Rachel Thompson
You’re in a story. And in that story, one no equals a grand prophecy about you, a declaration about who you are as a person, not even just a writer, but. And the silence becomes this whole verdict on you and your writing. And, you know, maybe that’s only for a moment, too, and you have the perspective to kind of pass through it. But let me just say that it happens, and let’s talk about it.

[00:04:39.070] – Rachel Thompson
So when I notice myself sliding into that story, I try to come back to the smallest true thing that I know about rejection. It’s just a piece of information, and that’s it. It’s not a measure of talent. It’s not a measure of anyone’s future. It’s just a door, let’s say, that didn’t open for you.

[00:04:57.700] – Rachel Thompson
And we can feel that sting. And we do feel that sting. So the goal here isn’t to go. Okay, now I know rejection is data, and I’m never going to feel the sting again. No, most of the time, we’re probably still going to feel the sting.

[00:05:13.180] – Rachel Thompson
Feel it and keep the practice. So a lit mag “no” is about logistics. They have already possibly accepted something similar. Similar to your piece. The issue theme shifted.

[00:05:25.840] – Rachel Thompson
An editor left and capacity shrank there. You just don’t know what’s happening behind the scenes, which is kind of a theme of a lot of parts of this episode. Sometimes it’s really just math that’s not mathing when it comes to 1200 submissions for 12 spots in a lit mag. So imagine a room, if you will, with a long table, 12 chairs, and a stack of 1200 envelopes. And the editor isn’t reading because they want to reject those 1200 envelopes.

[00:05:58.370] – Rachel Thompson
They’re reading because they’re looking for 12 yeses. And those 12 yeses have to fit together in tone, theme range, with a little bit of je ne sais quoi, the electricity that we feel when pieces start kind of vibing with one another. And it’s just something that’s going to be incredibly subjective. So a no can mean you’re sending us beautiful work, but we already have something like this. Or beautiful work, but it doesn’t match the shape of the issue.

[00:06:28.310] – Rachel Thompson
Or beautiful work, but we ran out of space. I get that none of that feels good, but it is a different story from the story our minds want to tell us at 2 in the morning. You know that voice that says, you were measured and you came up short somehow? I just always try to come back to the fact that data is neutral and we get to decide what to do with the data we actually have, not the story we wrote in our heads, the actual data. And sometimes it means try a different journal.

[00:06:58.100] – Rachel Thompson
Sometimes it means this piece might need a stronger opening. And sometimes it means I just need a little aftercare and a snack and I’ll decide tomorrow. And all of those things are totally valid ways to respond. And sometimes the data is telling us the smallest next action is enough. So make the T, take the walk, Write one line in your tracker, and then you’re done.

[00:07:20.350] – Rachel Thompson
If you need permission to react like a human being, take it. I’m giving out a lot of permission slips today, but I do feel like we know this stuff. But then it also feels nice when someone tells us, no, go for it. You can do this. So, you know, text a writer friend a screenshot and a poop emoji if you need to, or close the computer entirely and just go for that walk.

[00:07:41.170] – Rachel Thompson
What I hope you don’t do is decide on your own that. Okay, that’s the sign I was waiting for. This means I should stop writing. So that’s anchor number one. Rejection is data, not destiny.

[00:07:53.730] – Rachel Thompson
Anchor number two is not right for us. I’m putting air quotes around this. It’s usually a routing problem. It can feel like a very cold sentence from LitMag editors. And I’ve wrote a piece specifically on this phrase on my substack and heard from some people who said, yeah, do better editors give us more feedback.

[00:08:14.790] – Rachel Thompson
The absence of that, it’s not really happening. And it hasn’t been a practice. I guess in the absence of that, think about, again, this is not a judgment of the work. It’s really just a mismatch of where you’ve addressed the work. So it’s a little bit, again, like, we’ve got letters as metaphor here.

[00:08:33.270] – Rachel Thompson
The letters at the table. And think now about sending a letter to the wrong house. The post office is returning. It feels very antiquated to talk about letter mail, but I love it. It doesn’t mean the letter was bad.

[00:08:46.430] – Rachel Thompson
But the question becomes, where does the letter belong? And the question is about craft. It’s not about your qualities as a writer. So one soft, steadfast way to work with this is to look at the first page of your piece, paste it into a blank document, and read it like an editor skimming 40 submissions. And Circle the first line where your attention sharpens.

[00:09:11.220] – Rachel Thompson
Not the line that’s fine, the line that really has some kind of heart or pulse to it. And then ask yourself what happens if the piece starts there? And this is not about you being wrong in a craft sense as well, too. Maybe it’s just like, oh, I just need to give this piece a better doorway. And if you want to go a little further, you might look for the first concrete object in the piece, the first place a reader can really feel like they’re in a space.

[00:09:41.410] – Rachel Thompson
So it might be a kettle, it might be a broken nail, a red earth ground beneath the narrator or the protagonist, a plastic grocery bag. And just see how close to the beginning you can bring that really concrete thing and then look for the first moment of change, the first tilt, the first. And then if it’s buried deep, that might be part of why a journal says not right for us or no, without explanation. So in that case, it’s not a routing problem, it’s more of a problem. And again, in air quotes, problem of just not Getting into things right away.

[00:10:15.310] – Rachel Thompson
If you’re wondering why I1 lit mag editor can say this is because I’ve interviewed so many and they all tell me that that is one of the main things that they see in submissions. It doesn’t start in the right place. There’s some throat clearing at the beginning. So if the piece that you’ve written doesn’t turn until paragraph six, what if paragraph six becomes paragraph one? And again, this is about reading your own work with a little bit of distance, with the mind of an editor and bringing more clarity than you had before about the writing.

[00:10:48.080] – Rachel Thompson
It’s also not to say that sending it out was a mistake too. Sometimes that clarity comes after you’ve sent it out and you’ve heard back that not right for us. And you felt the feels that come with that not right for us. But you’re reading it now with that clarity and perspective. So that’s anchor to not right for us is usually a routing problem, be it a routing problem with sending it to the wrong house or a routing problem with not getting us into the narrative.

[00:11:14.500] – Rachel Thompson
I’m mostly talking about narrative here quickly, but the same is true of poems. A lot of poems maybe can start a few stanzas in Anchor three is fit is learnable. So when a writer says, I got rejected, so I guess the piece isn’t good, what they’re often really saying is, I don’t know what this magazine is actually built to publish, so I can’t tell if this no is about my work or about the address. And that ambiguity is exhausting and is part of why submitting to lit mags and being rejected is really difficult because of the ambiguity. If there was just like absolute clarity, oh, this didn’t make it.

[00:11:51.620] – Rachel Thompson
For these reasons, I think it would be easier if it was really much more, you know, cut and dry, black and white like that. But I also think that ambiguity is fixable because you can learn fit and let it replace the shame spiral of oh, no, I guess it isn’t good, or what’s happening with a practical question. So it just turns process from please like me, please like me into let me understand what this journal is looking for exactly. And that’s just a different posture. It gives us our ground back and we get to follow curiosity path into okay, what is this journal all about?

[00:12:35.120] – Rachel Thompson
It kind of lets us become a little bit more of detectives and. Or sometimes I use experiments and scientists is sort of the metaphor here. But we just get to follow our own lights maybe, rather than just constantly trying to think about Us as the problem, thinking of them as the puzzle to solve. Perhaps I’m trying to land on the right metaphor here. I haven’t quite got it, but I hope you’re picking up what I’m putting down here.

[00:13:00.450] – Rachel Thompson
One way to start is to pick one journal you’re curious about and then make this time limited so you’re not using a lot of your time. So set a timer for 20 minutes and just read a few pieces and a lot of them are available online. And then write down just three things that you think you’ve learned from reading those three pieces. Like what are they hungry for? What do they reward at a sentence level?

[00:13:24.200] – Rachel Thompson
What are sort of like the esthetics that you noticed? How are these pieces echoing together? Or are they not at all similar? And then what risks? Maybe show up again and again?

[00:13:34.600] – Rachel Thompson
Because I do think lit mag editors are looking for pieces that take some kind of risk. And here is what I would refuse to do in those 20 minutes. So doom scrolling their socials, comparing yourself to contributors, or turning it into a referendum on your worth somehow, like, oh well, my piece could never compare to that piece, so therefore I’m not going to submit. You’re really just focused on that detective work, that scientific experiment, like, what is the hypothesis behind this journal? What is it that they’re trying to do with the writing that they published?

[00:14:12.100] – Rachel Thompson
You’re learning the temperature of the room that they’re in. Kind of the funniest metaphor I’ve landed on because of course I am an editor with Room Magazine. So think about again, learning the temperature of the room before you walk in holding your best submission. And this takes reading like an editor and thinking of that as a method that once you start doing, you take the no less personally because you can kind of feel out in your hands what the fit actually is. You’re applying yourself to understand the journal.

[00:14:47.240] – Rachel Thompson
I guess this is the good news, bad news that it does require reading journals to submit to lit mags. But I feel like the good news of it is you get to read journals. You get to read cool pieces and see what you like and what you don’t like. Because sometimes when you’re reading, you find, oh, I don’t like anything that they’re publishing. I don’t feel like this is a place for me at all.

[00:15:08.610] – Rachel Thompson
And so wouldn’t you rather know that before sending out? Especially if you’re finding the declines really difficult to receive? If you don’t care and you just want to submit everywhere and in my view, maybe waste a lot of your Time doing that, then keep doing that. But if it really does impact you to receive the nos, then get to know the journals a bit more. So you can decide if that’s even a place you want to send your work or understand why, oh, maybe this isn’t the right place for this particular piece, but I have this other piece that might fit there.

[00:15:38.890] – Rachel Thompson
So now I’m going to introduce a soft steadfast practice, which is basically a decide once thing. And I think when you work on your submission practice, when you’re tempted maybe to make it more involved than it needs to be, because I do think sometimes we make it way more complicated than it needs to be, we can decide once and then just repeat. So decide once the way you decide where you’re going to keep the kettle in your kitchen and then just stop fixing that every time. I mean, unless you’re like me, maybe moving things around a little bit, but not every week, not all the time. Eventually it goes into one place and we’re not renegotiating every Tuesday about how to proceed.

[00:16:24.710] – Rachel Thompson
So this is four decisions that I’m going to encourage you to make. Before I go into the four decisions, I want to just talk about what is underneath all of them. And it’s about attention. So a soft steadfast practice isn’t about pushing yourself into a submission schedule and the discipline of it. And if only, you know, I just was more organized.

[00:16:47.850] – Rachel Thompson
But it’s really about paying attention to where you go avoidant, where you start quietly negotiating with yourself. Because I think by and large, we don’t need more volume of information. We need some of that close reading attention that I just talked about. But we don’t need a lot more information. We just have to stay in a practice, in a relationship with our work.

[00:17:10.970] – Rachel Thompson
And part of that relationship is, okay, I’m ready to let this go and I’m ready to send it out in the world. So again, this is the soft steadfast practice for decisions. Not a big plan. It’s not 10 steps, it’s a repeatable rhythm. Step one is to decide your pace.

[00:17:29.570] – Rachel Thompson
So I think that’s maybe where people go wrong in a lot of areas. I’ve seen this myself in fitness areas as well too, where you’re like, oh, I can do the maximum possible. And then it’s easy to kind of slip back. So choose a pace that your real life can hold. For some writers, that might be one submission per month.

[00:17:48.050] – Rachel Thompson
For some, it’s one every two weeks. For others, it’s one season of list building. And revision and then a season of submitting. If the pace is too big, especially if you’re listening to this and you’re resonating with all of this, it’s probably too heroic and not doable. You want a pace here that feels almost laughably doable, like, oh yeah, I could do that.

[00:18:13.150] – Rachel Thompson
The point isn’t to do all the things. The point is that you can keep going. So if you want a simple default, and especially if you know, deciding once is even, that feels insurmountable today. It’s like, okay, if you’re in that headspace, then here’s a decision. Try one submission per month for the next three months.

[00:18:33.460] – Rachel Thompson
Just because that is a very, I think, mostly doable practice. Although check in with yourself if it is or it’s not. And that kind of really doableness is how practices get built. So that’s number one, decide your pace. And if you’re already submitting monthly, of course, and you wish to submit more and you’re reading other people’s publications and want to have more publications, then of course maybe it would be more frequent, like weekly.

[00:19:02.860] – Rachel Thompson
But I think especially if you’re starting from the ground up, once per month is great. And the next is to decide your container. So a container is just where and how submitting happens. So can be what day, what time is it, a 30 minute appointment, a real calendar block that is in your calendar. Because the problem with the someday kind of vagueness is that, you know, someday can be any day, can be tomorrow, all the time.

[00:19:33.480] – Rachel Thompson
So this matters because the idea of I’ll do it when I feel ready just becomes again tomorrow, tomorrow. Your container doesn’t need to be heroic either. It just needs to be really repeatable. So finding a very specific time and practice. And also in this, there might be some strategies you want to use around what specific things trigger you to start the submission process.

[00:20:04.230] – Rachel Thompson
Like maybe you’re going to pair it with another activity. I know a lot of writers, we’re already doing this where we’re co writing together to help with that kind of body doubling energy around writing. I know a lot of writers who are now doing that for submissions too, because they’re like, that’s the point. When I need that steady, quiet support. I don’t need someone to get involved.

[00:20:24.330] – Rachel Thompson
I don’t need someone to look specifically at the submissions. I can do the research, I can find the journals, I can send the work out, but I need someone to be beside me so that I can do it. So number two is decide on your Container number three is deciding your list size. So it’s not about building a list of 50 journals when you’re trying to build a practice. Again, there are levels to this.

[00:20:48.530] – Rachel Thompson
So maybe you already have a list of 50 journals and you have been submitting quite a bit and you’re trying to kind of move up a step in your practice, then by all means you know your practice and you know where you can move up to because you’ve already picked a pace that you can hold in your real life and you’ve also picked a container, sort of like just the specifics of how subjective submission happens. So knowing all this, and especially if you are building a practice from the ground up, a list of 50 journals becomes more of a research as avoidance practice. So I would say if you’re doing what I’m calling the default here or the I’m going to help you decide. So you’re going to submit every month. You are going to put it on the calendar in some way and find, you know, pair it with something or maybe work beside someone.

[00:21:37.350] – Rachel Thompson
And then your list could be three places for the next month and then three places for the month after that. A simple filter you could use is one place that feels like a strong fit, that doesn’t feel overreaching, it just feels like a reach in a way that excites you but isn’t just so beyond. And one that feels like just a very right sized yes journal. Place that tends to be warm and responsive, that feels very much in your tier, whatever that means. I kind of don’t like to use that term tier, but just defining it yourself right now, maybe it’s a place where you’ve seen people who you’ve shared writing with publish and you think, okay, well that’s kind of where I’m at.

[00:22:21.930] – Rachel Thompson
So I give you that criteria. The place that feels like a strong fit, not a reach. The place that feels like a reach in a way that excites you. And then the one that feels just really right sized. Oh yeah, a place that tends to be warm and responsive.

[00:22:35.070] – Rachel Thompson
This keeps you from only submitting to fantasy versions of your writing life, or only submitting somewhere that feels safe, that doesn’t really want the kind of work you’re making. So I think there can be some kind of variety between these places. For writers who have taken my lit mag Love course, they might know that these rules that I’ve set out here for these three items on your list, if you need help you decide about the list, are a little bit different than what I Teach in the course. And in the course we do send out to a lot more journals. But I think that this is a great way for you to start in this three-month plan of submitting once a month to three journals.

[00:23:16.750] – Rachel Thompson
When you get submitting to a larger volume of places, especially if you’re sending the same piece out, you actually generally want to submit to places that are equal in tier. Again, I use that term for you to use in your own way because it’s about you to tier the journals and so sending one piece only out to places you’d be equally excited to publish with. But for now, that’s just an aside a little bit more advanced, the advanced version of this practice. But for now, if you are working with the pace of just building from the ground up, one submission per month for the next three months in the container that works for you, pick three places that feel different in these senses. And again, this is especially for the person who is just starting out in a submissions practice.

[00:24:09.960] – Rachel Thompson
This fourth decision here is to decide your aftercare. This is the part that a lot of practices don’t include and it’s often the reason why a practice might not hold up or keep going. I think if you skip aftercare, this is where your nervous system learns is that submitting is dangerous, full stop. And oh my goodness, why would I ever do that again? I’m feeling so out there and vulnerable.

[00:24:36.660] – Rachel Thompson
Submitting is an emotional event, and you’re asking your nervous system to do two things at once. One is to risk being judged, and then the second is to keep sharing your personal, heartfelt creative writing anyway. And that’s a lot. And I think it deserves a signal afterward to yourself that says you’re okay, we’re okay. Maybe you don’t need that, but maybe you do need that.

[00:25:00.420] – Rachel Thompson
And that’s why the submission practice has been difficult. You know, I’m not an analyst. I’m using a little bit of psychological language here with nervous system kind of things, but this is based on my experience and the experience of writers that I’ve worked with. And what is the harm anyway in doing something to care for yourself? So care for yourself.

[00:25:19.060] – Rachel Thompson
After submitting, pick something small, and that also is automatic. So it might be making tea theme of this particular episode might be stepping outside. It might be texting a friend to say I sent it and just let it be the signal to your body that this practice always includes some kind of care. It could be anything. It can be a bath, it can be something that helps you feel grounded after.

[00:25:42.840] – Rachel Thompson
And the idea is that it’s putting a warm hand on your own shoulder after you do the brave thing. So soft steadfast means we don’t punish ourselves for being human, but it also means we keep going anyway. So we’ve talked about what soft steadfast submissions practice means. I love the very nature of all the sibilance and the S’s, and that makes me have to slow down to say those words. Even so, we’ve talked about what that means.

[00:26:09.570] – Rachel Thompson
I’ve given you the three anchors around rejection being data, what not right for us means in terms of routing, that fit is learnable. I’ve given you the four things to build into your practice. Now I want to get a little bit under what I call the quiet timeline as well. So under so many publishing questions is the same old ache of am I late? And if you’re listening to this and thinking, yes, that’s the ache, I want to say one thing before we go any further.

[00:26:46.100] – Rachel Thompson
A writing life is not a single ladder. It’s not a long shoreline even. Sometimes you’re walking, sometimes you’re sitting down, sometimes you’re staring at the same patch of water because that’s where the next thing is going to come from. And I feel like the Internet will try to convince you that everyone else is on a faster escalator that compare and despair again that I illustrated in the opening. But most of the writers you admire have years of quiet behind them, years of pages that nobody clapped for.

[00:27:17.850] – Rachel Thompson
Work that looked from the outside may be like nothing. Writing lives are seasonal, I believe, not linear, not deadline shaped. Most of them move through periods of learning, experimenting, redrafting, submitting and sharing and resting and repeat learning, experimenting, redrafting, submitting, sharing, resting. So you might be in one season while some of the writers you follow are in another. And the thing with social media is it just makes it look like the difference is talent.

[00:27:48.520] – Rachel Thompson
And it really often is just season. So I’ve had seasons myself where I could only draft seasons where sending work felt like touching a bruise. I’ve been in years where nothing looked like momentum from the outside, and it was still the year the work got really real for me. And I’ve never seen a writing life that leaps straight to harvest without quiet growing. A lot of quiet growing beforehand.

[00:28:12.780] – Rachel Thompson
So if you’re in a quiet season right now, that counts. That’s the work too. And maybe I’ll just flash back to where you decide in your soft, steadfast practice. When you decide your pace, you really have to look at what season you’re into. So what I want to leave you with this week is really just do the first two steps of that soft steadfast decision.

[00:28:37.200] – Rachel Thompson
Decide once kind of practice. So name your season. Honestly, not the season you wish you were in, the one you’re actually in. And then choose a 20 minute action that matches it. If you’re in a learning season, do the journal read.

[00:28:51.240] – Rachel Thompson
If you’re in a redrafting season, do the first page sharpen. If you’re in a submitting season, send one submission and if you’re in a resting season, rest and let that count and put it on the calendar this week. A real time a small container that’s soft, steadfast, tender and steady. If you’re listening to this right when the episode has come out, then the Lit Mag Love course that I offer is open. So I want to offer you a simple invitation if you’re listening a little later.

[00:29:19.980] – Rachel Thompson
It does open once per year, so it may be open. You can check it out on my website rachelthompson.co so if you’re in that submitting and sharing season, or you want to be litmag Love is where we practice this together with deadlines, personalized feedback from me and there are other creative writers right beside you. That co-working idea. We’re working on our own thing, but beside each other, and it gives us that momentum. So in the course you learn to submit.

[00:29:48.800] – Rachel Thompson
You get feedback on the cover letter and pages of your writing and you come back to the thread and someone says I sent it. And you say I sent mine too. So it is open right now. And again you can learn more of RachelThompson.co. And finally, I’m going to read you a letter I wrote for you, Dear Unpublished Writer. You’re doing something that can look like nothing from the outside.

[00:30:14.260] – Rachel Thompson
Drafting, revising, sending work you care about into someone else’s inbox and then waiting in the long hallway of maybe. And while you do that, the Internet keeps offering you other people’s announcements. The shiny part, the caption that makes it look like it happened in a week. Here’s what I you are not behind. I think you’re in the middle.

[00:30:33.180] – Rachel Thompson
The middle is a hard place to be because it feels messy, like you’re carrying your work in both hands. And someone keeps asking for proof that it matters, like you’re staring at a folder of drafts named FINAL_final2, trying to convince yourself that this counts as a writing life. But the middle is also the most powerful place to work your way through as a creative writer. It’s full of all your writerly potential. It is where writers are made.

[00:30:59.010] – Rachel Thompson
So I’m here with you. I’m cheering for you, and I want you to have something you can hold onto in there with care, Rachel. So in closing, let’s go back to that kettle that I keep bringing up. Maybe the kettle with the phone in your hand, the blue cover, the stomach drop. If that moment happens again this week, try thinking instead.

[00:31:21.200] – Rachel Thompson
I’m not late. I’m in a season. I’ll choose one move that matches it. I’ll put it on the calendar, and after I press send, I’ll do my aftercare. I’ll make the tea.

[00:31:32.240] – Rachel Thompson
I’ll step outside. I’ll let my body learn that I can do brave things and stay soft. I can do one brave thing in 20 minutes and then I’m done with care for your writing life exactly as it is thank you for listening to the Write, Publish and Shine podcast. If this episode resonated with you in any way, if you have a moment, I encourage you to subscribe and leave a review in whatever places you’re supposed to be leaving reviews this day because it really does help other creative writers find the show, and it’s just one of the simplest ways to support my work here. This podcast is hosted by me, Rachel Thompson, with sound editing by Adam Linder.

[00:32:10.600] – Rachel Thompson
To learn more about my work, supporting writers and the Lit Mag Love course, you can visit RachelTompson Co and sign up for my weekly writerly Love Letters. And if you want to share this episode with a friend, you can send them to RachelThompson.co/podcast or tell them to search for Write, Publish and Shine wherever they get their podcasts. I acknowledge the El Muzina Bedouin lands in South Sinai, Egypt, where I recorded this episode. When I acknowledge the lands that I’m on, I want to also acknowledge that I stand in solidarity with occupied peoples and with those enduring ongoing occupation and siege and with a commitment to justice and care.