My guest today is Claire Taylor, author and creator of FFS Media and co-host of the Sell More Books Podcast Claire wrote ether book Reclaim Your Author Career in which she explains how understanding the Enneagram can be helpful in creating a successful and fun author career. Today we talk bout that and more. Check out Claire’s free author alignment mini course here https://ffs-media.teachable.com/p/5-day-indie-author-alignment
And for more information on the Enneagram check out Claire’s YouTube channel: www.ffs.media/yt
Find Claire’s books here. https://www.hclairetaylor.com/
Find Reclaim Your Author Career here. https://www.ffs.media/
Check out Claire’s writing workshops here. https://www.ffs.media/classes
The book of the Week is Fighting Tragedy by Ashely Kay. Find it on Amazon! https://a.co/d/9OB2Ch5
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TRANSCRIPT BEGINS HERE:
Kat
All right, welcome back, everyone, to Pencils & Lipstick. I’m excited today to have with me Claire Taylor. She is a writer, she is a podcaster, and she helps authors with their career. Is that good? Hi, Claire. How are you?
Claire
Hey, I’m doing fine. Thanks for having me on.
Kat
Yeah, you do so many things. I’m like, Okay, she has the head of FFS Media. She’s the Sell More Books Show co-host. You have a million series. I mean, maybe a little less than a million series. You’ve got the credit behind you. So tell us a little bit more of who you are, before we get into this.
Claire
Well, I think first and foremost, I’m a fiction writer that’s just wanted to do this my whole life. And I’ve wanted to do it the right way. I want to make sure that I have the most on point way of approaching it. And so in doing that, I made a lot of mistakes.
Kat
As we all did.
Claire
Yes, a lot. I have years of mistakes behind me that I’m very grateful in my more enlightened moments and annoyed by in all the other moments. So in creating my own fiction career, I really had to figure out how to do it so that it worked for me. I’ve been called stubborn or she has to do things the way she wants to do them.
Kat
You’re Texan. It’s in you.
Claire
Yes, I’m going to do it the way I think it should be done. Very independent over here. I had to figure it out for myself. And in doing that and building my own career, and I have quite a few pen names because I won’t be contained. You can’t fence me in. But in doing that, I started using the Enneagram, to build my own career, to make sure that I had some criteria for, okay, this works really well for this person, but I can see why this would not work for me. And so I was using that for my own career. And then it slowly became a thing that I found myself helping all of my author friends with. And then it blossomed into this Enneagram consulting and coaching that I do now for authors.
Kat
This side project that you do?
Claire
Yeah, just another side business, just two full-time businesses. So no, I am working. This is the phase of my life where I’m working to do less work.
Kat
I like that.
Claire
I’m still practicing.
Kat
So when you say you wanted to do fiction writing, correct, what did that mean to you? Following rules or going traditional or what did that mean?
Claire
Well, I did go to school for writing and college.
Kat
Your parents let you do that?
Claire
They did. Well, my dad’s a music teacher. He doesn’t have much ground to stand on. My sister did the whole business thing, and so she went to get her MBA and all that. So I got to be the liberal arts letting everyone down. And so I went to school for that. And it made me want to stop writing because it was very much like you can only do the traditional path. And literary fiction is the only real form of writing, and everything else is just playtime. And it’s not true writing and all of that. And I just didn’t have much of a desire to write literary fiction.
Kat
We don’t even know what that is, really, honestly.
Claire
Right. Yeah. It’s whatever your professor says it is, frankly. And so I was put off for a while from the traditional publishing route, but I just couldn’t stop writing. And I write comedy. And that was not super respecable. And so I said, screw it, I’m going to go do this my way. And then I found out about the whole world of indie publishing. And it was like this. This is how I’m going to do it. But this was back in 2014, and there wasn’t really a roadmap. There still isn’t a roadmap, frankly, even though a lot of people pitch there being a very clear roadmap to your dreams. It can be a very profitable thing to pitch. So I was having to figure it out and there are just a million ways to decide. So I was asking myself, well, how do I decide what is right for me? And this process of the Enneagram made it a lot clearer. But before I found that I was really working with the Enneagram. I was stumbling all over the place. You’re never guaranteed success, financial success, whatever that means to you in this industry. So why would you sacrifice what you want to be doing and what works for you to try and get that? Why? Because it’s not guaranteed.
Kat
No, it’s honestly not. And that’s what I feel the worst when people come to me and ask me things. They’re like, well, first of all, you’ll spend a lot of money and you might not make it back. That sounds terrible. Come join us over here in the indie publishing world. But did you feel like you were successful before you found the Enneagram? Was the Enneagram something that you did for your personal life, or did you go straight to it to try to figure out the author life?
Claire
So I had first encountered the Enneagram back in high school. My mom and my sister were really into it, and I couldn’t have cared less about it at the time. And they had me take the test, and I tested as what I now know is not my type. And so I read about it and I was like, well, this is bogus. Because when you get mistyped in any way, at any form of any part of the process of finding your type, you’re like, well, this is obviously not useful. And it’s like, well, of course it’s not useful. That’s not your type. So that was what I experienced. I knew about it and I’d heard about it. And it wasn’t until I got into a mastermind with some other indie authors back in 2015, 2016, somewhere around there, that we started talking about it again. We started going through together and figuring out our types. And then that helped us talk to each other. We do hot seats, we do these sorts of things each week. And so we started to be able to figure out, okay, why is the advice that I’m giving to you not clicking with you? Well, we have different motivation. But then we were able to better tailor our advice to each other and give suggestions and not just waste each other’s time by being like, no, you should do it this way. And the person being like, I don’t want to do it that way.
Kat
That’s very smart. It’s very insightful.
Claire
It was very useful. So then it became this language. And it was my friend, Alyssa Archer, who’s a really good author and an editor as well, a really great editor as well. And she was the one that was into it at the time and brought it into that group. And then I was like, oh, yeah, I’m familiar with this. But as soon as I tested and got my correct type and read about it, it was like light bulbs. It was like, oh, this is my whole life explained. These are all of my problems and why. So then I started using it for just life stuff and business stuff. And then I was like, well, why wouldn’t I be using this for my characters too? And to help me get to know my protagonist, my antagonist. And so then I started using that when I was writing my Jessica Christ series. And it was just very, very helpful. And so then I started doing it more. And then when people would call me because I was an editor. After college, I was an editor for a long time. And so I have a lot of experience with that and with teaching. I taught for a while. But people would call me asking for story advice, and it kept coming back to like, well, your character has mixed motivations here. They’re part you and they’re part this other Enneagram type. So let me tell you about this Enneagram type, and so you can keep that consistent motivation. And so then that’s how it started. And then I realized, oh, I should just make this an offering to everyone so you don’t have to have randomly met me at a conference to get this help.
Kat
So that’s why you started writing the Reclaim Your Author Career book, or did you do something before that?
Claire
Yes, that was years later. That was years later.
Kat
I feel like COVID is a hole. So when you say 2016, I’m like, That’s not that far away because I forget. Right, seven years ago. Yeah, that was a long time ago. All right, so you were already consulting on this, on the side, not being paid as we do.
Claire
Yeah, well, I was getting paid. I was getting paid and I was creating courses and that thing. But thankfully, I have friends who have different Enneagram lenses from me and are a little bit more savvy at this whole business thing. And we’re like, there’s a hole in your funnel. You need to… your sales funnel. And then I was like, oh, yeah, you’re right. I don’t have just a book. And for me, it was like, Well, obviously, I’m going to publish a book. I’m a writer. Why don’t I have a book about this? This is stupid. So I started writing it, and I figured that it was a good way to introduce people because book is much, much cheaper than coming to a workshop or anything like that, so that people can see if it works for them or not. I wanted the book to be something that a person could sit and read from cover to cover and not necessarily need to come do more work with me or pay for the next thing. It needed to be standalone. So it’s not a sales pitch. For me, that was very important because I don’t like it when it’s like, oh, this is a great book and you read it and it kind of shows you the problem. But it’s like, If you want the answers, buy this next course. That irks me.
Kat
It’s like Scienceology all over.
Claire
I don’t want an MLM. I don’t want to start a cult. The idea of starting a cult, it’s like, so many people looking to me and relying on me for answers. No, thanks. Not this child-free writer. So yeah, it was just like, well, this can help a lot more people. I can scale that help for people. And so I started writing it and it was, yeah, it’s the first nonfiction I’ve done, actually, the first nonfiction book.
Kat
Was it easy?
Claire
No.
Kat
Okay. There’s a lot in here. I feel like it’s one of those books when you know a lot about something because you’ve personally gone through it, it would be hard to bring it down to… I mean, it’s not a very… like 220 pages? That must have been difficult to be like, I know all these things. How about we just talk?
Claire
Yeah, I know. It was a very difficult process to go to nonfiction. I think there are probably people who are better at doing that. But for me, I’m like, I want to just give you all that I know about this. I want to give you all of the tools because I can’t be helping everyone, but I want everyone to have the tools.
Kat
That’s smart, though. Yeah, it’s really smart.
Claire
So yeah, it was really hard. And once I had finished that book and was done with it, I was like, I’m never writing nonfiction again. So obviously, I already have multiple other projects in the works for nonfiction.
Kat
Especially for a writer. You can’t say that. I will never write it again.
Claire
Absolutely amnesia about all of my sworn statements.
Kat
Yes. Good thing nobody’s recording us when we say these things. So I told you before, but I’ll tell the audience, I started reading it because of Troy from Plottr, Troy Lambert, and he was like, you have to get this book. This will just open your eyes as to what is wrong and what’s going wrong in your author career, why you’re frustrated. And there were so many… He was correct, first of all. And I was like, oh, Enneagram. I think it’s because it was such a big deal in 2016. And I was like, people that were talking about it around me, I was like, oh. I know why you’re into that, because you want to tell me what to do. And I don’t want to do that because I’m an achiever and I don’t want anyone to tell me what to do. But I trust Troy and I was like, okay, you know what? I should probably figure out my resistance to something and give it a go before I say no. And I have to say that I now recommend it to everybody.
Claire
Yes. That makes my little Type One Reformer heart so happy.
Kat
You are reforming me as I go. So there’s several things in here, especially, and I think you’ve talked about this with Brian Cohen on the Sell More Books Show. I feel like I hear your voice instead of reading your voice. But especially in the indie author career, I think you’ve said something of like, everyone who goes on stage is a certain Enneagram type, and what they’re doing is working for them. And all the rest of us are frustrated in our seats because we’re like, why is it not working for me? And that was like, That is so true because it takes a certain person to get up there and to get to a certain level and to be just telling everyone what works for them. And then when you’re in the seat and you’re like, I think I tried that and it’s not quite working for me. And it might be because you are completely different personality, right? And that was like the first eye opening thing for me. I was like, why? It’s not bad to listen to them, right? But you have to understand who you are and how it fits with your career. Is that true?
Claire
Yeah.
Kat
Is that in the book? If you put it in the book, it’s true.
Claire
I feel like you said this. Yeah, absolutely. There are certain types that are… Listen, it takes a lot of time and effort to get yourself onto a stage and to prepare for it and to do it. So to do that, you have to be very motivated to be on a stage. And that motivation tends to lean towards Type Threes or Type Eights who like to be up there and say, be in front of a crowd. Threes are very motivational by nature. They love to motivate people to work hard. That’s what they’re good at. That’s a gift. They’re very inspiring. Oprah is an Enneagram Type Three Achiever. Taylor Swift is an Enneagram Type Three Achiever. So that’s a personality that likes to be on stage, but there’s nothing wrong with that. But if you’re not that type, the motivation that they’re trying to give you doesn’t always hit, or it’s fleeting. You can leave feeling very charged up. Like, oh, yeah. If I just work hard, I can do this. And that can work for a little while. But if that’s not your motivation to have the same things that they want to have, it’s not going to motivate you in the same way. And you’re going to leave and you’re going to be like, sometimes that crash afterwards turns into, I’m just a failure, I just don’t work hard enough, I must not want it bad enough, that negative self talk. So that’s the problem that arises from it. But yeah, a lot of the teachers are similar in any of their time. types, like the same Enneagram types. A lot of the leaders, a lot of the people telling you you can be a six-figure author if you just do X, Y, or Z, tend to be type Threes. And the people who are still making money, really in this industry, tend to be type Threes. And at least those are the ones that are highly visible because visibility does tend to matter to that type. There are plenty of other types who are making money and just don’t talk about it or that thing. And this is not to dunk on Type Threes, obviously.
Kat
I’m a Type Three.
Claire
So that’s right. Yeah. So nothing personal here. Yeah, you’re not on the stage. But you do have a podcast.
Kat
This is true. Oh, my gosh.
Claire
Yeah. And my podcast was started by a Type Three as well, and I just jumped on. So yeah, it’s just to say that as an example, not everyone is motivated by the same things. And so there’s no defect in it if someone is motivated by a different thing from you.
Kat
Yeah. I think that’s just really important to keep in mind. You also have your Type Three, and you talk about your motivation and your whys and getting into your background, taking time to figure out what you want. Because like we said in the beginning, a few minutes ago, success isn’t guaranteed in this business, like any business. And it’s a hard business to find success. So it’s well, depending on what success means to you. And to be honest with yourself and to really… It’s for your author career, but it’s a bit of a soul searching, as far as books go. But I think because the career is so difficult and it’s a lot of times just yourself, it’s really necessary to do this and to understand yourself. Otherwise, you’re going to burn out or you’re going to feel like a failure because you’re not like whoever. Like whoever you’re looking up to. They might be a great writer, but they’re not your type. And you might not be trying to achieve JK Rowling status. You’re just trying to sell your book.
Claire
Right. There’s a big middle ground between books not selling and JKR. There’s a big middle ground where you can make a very robust living, or you can make a little bit of a side pot off of this. And maybe you have a nine-to-five. Some types prefer to have a nine-to-five because it creates that security. It allows them to have the money they need for the freedom they’re looking for and so on and so forth. So yeah, there’s just a big range of ways to do this. And you can also do this in the full… There’s the full range. You could do it at any point in the full range and still be miserable doing it. So it’s really not about how much money you’re making, how many books you’re selling. It’s about learning how to be happy. And with whatever it is and not fearing that if you are happy or satisfied in the moment, you will lose all of your drive because that’s just not how it happens. And I think that’s a fear that people are like, well, if I’m not dissatisfied, if I’m not a little bit miserable the whole time, if I’m not struggling, then I don’t know what will be motivating me. There’s that fear that nothing will be motivating you, that you’ll just say, well, if I’m not afraid of failure, then I’m never going to try for more. Or if I don’t care about the details, then I’m just going to give up and produce the sloppiest work ever, and I’m going to tank my career and blah, blah, blah. People are often motivating themselves with this fear, this core fear that is the definition of each type. And in doing so, they’re making themselves miserable rather than trusting that if they confront that fear and think it all the way through and dismantle it and deconstruct it a little bit, that there’s still something that is bringing you to writing, and you will still want to write. You may want to write in a different way, and it may just feel a whole lot better when you do it.
Kat
Yeah. And to really understand those fears and what you actually want from success. I don’t know about you, but I tried all the personal motivations when I hit 30, it was like, Oh, my gosh, I have to reevaluate my life. I’m going to do all these things. Maybe it was a big deal then. I don’t know. But this is really focusing mostly on your author career. Of course, you can bring it into other things in your life, right? But to really take the time to understand what motivates you, what success means to you, why would you keep writing, at what point would you keep writing? And I think that it then helps you in this author space to be comfortable with what you’ve decided to be comfortable with. Because the idea it, people have different motivations and different success levels. And are you actually going to be okay with seeing your series consistently sell and making an extra X amount of money? If that’s true, and then to be comfortable with it and to be like, you know what? It’s okay if your motivation is different than mine. But I think if you understand it, then you are less likely to change your motivations and your idea of success just because somebody else at a conference said something different.
Claire
Yeah. And there’s a lot of good information at any conference, right? It’s a little bit like a fire hose. So once you know your motivation and know what you’re trying to achieve and what your strategy is based on your motivation, you are able to easily filter out anything that’s not relevant and find stuff that could be relevant and asking yourself, how do I change this so that it’s relevant to me? How do I do this in a way that’s going to support what I’m trying to achieve here? So it may not just be a hard yes or hard no to different techniques and tactics, but it could be a, I like that, but I have to figure out how to do that in my way.
Kat
Yeah. And to know that that’s an option.
Claire
Right. Yeah. That’s a lot of it. It’s just people don’t feel like they’re allowed to do things the way they deep down would love to do them.
Kat
Right. So you not only wrote the book, which I, once again, the links will be in the show notes, but I think everyone should read because I think it definitely helps with this overwhelm that can come sometimes with this job. Summer is about to hit, probably by the time this is out, everyone’s kids are out. That is a ridiculous time of year. If you have kids and you’re a writer, you’re just going crazy. Learning to know who you are and what your author career should, what you want it to look like, whatever. But then you have other workshops and retreats. Is that to go deeper or is that… What is that difference there?
Claire
Yeah, these are to go deeper. So the book can only be so individualized, right? Because we’re only talking about nine types, but within each type, there are subtypes that I don’t get into in the book because that’s like, let’s not make everyone’s head explode just yet. There’s all kinds of different ways of expressing it. And of course, Enneagram isn’t the end all be all. It’s the base level of the person upon which there’s these overlays from other people and other values put on them and background and past trauma and all these other layers. So when we do stuff like the workshops or the masterclasses or the retreats, we’re really… It’s a smaller group so we can get more individualized. So the two that I have coming up are masterclasses this summer. And these are just fun story nerd stuff. So we’re doing Enneagram and fiction, so how you use it for your fiction, for creating protagonist, antagonists, developing your themes, all that stuff. And then the next one is the hero’s journey of the Enneagram. So for those big story nerds, we’re going to talk about how the Enneagram type of your protagonist actually determines what the supreme ordeal will look like for them. What the elixir will be for your hero or heroine. And so those are the two. It’s very fiction-based. But yeah, there’s retreats. I have a new course coming up that’s going way deep into it, but we can talk about that later.
Kat
So I like how you use this for fiction because I do think this is… There’s a lot of information out there. There’s a lot of great books on writing fiction. But this is interesting because it’s going really deep into understanding your characters in a way that is different than what I have seen. And I have developmental editing quite a few manuscripts by now. And there’s always… Before I read this book, I was like, There’s something off, your character wouldn’t do this. The way that you’ve set them up, now all of a sudden they’re doing something completely different. And when I read the book, I was like, yes, we should have some psychology and personality information in our brains as writers, because that is one of the issues, I think, with when you put a book down because you’re like, what? Why is this character suddenly so different? And why did they do that? I have thrown a couple of books across the room in my lifetime of like, no, I don’t know why, but no, now I know why.
Claire
Yeah, exactly. So the different types are defined by a core fear and core desire. And so that is really what helps you determine what your character is going to do in stress points. And so what I found, and through my developmental editing and looking at just reading a lot, is that the problem seems to be when the author is writing a protagonist who is a different Enneagram type from themselves. So then they’re writing this protagonist, and the Enneagram types are very intuitive. We’ve all met these types. We’ve seen these clusters of patterns that arise from the core motivations. And so it’s familiar to us even if we don’t have the language for it. The Enneagram is just the language for it. And so once we start to understand how these correlate to the behaviors tend to arise from the feelings and the beliefs that arise from this motivation, once we understand that, we can deconstruct why that character would not do that thing. So what happens is the author is, let’s say a Type Two, and she’s writing a protagonist who’s a Type Seven, and something stresses out the Type Seven protagonist, and you’re like, Why would it stress them out?
Claire
Well, it wouldn’t. It would stress out a Type Two. And so the author has gotten to the point of thinking, Well, what would I do in this situation? And it’s a different thing because the stressors are different for different types. What’s going to freak out a Type Seven is not going to freak out a Type Two necessarily, and vice versa. So it’s that mixing when we’re not clear on the different types and we haven’t really sorted that in our brain and attached the language to it, we tend to mix these. And sometimes it can be a product of, I need to get this character to the next scene. So I’m just going to make them do this thing to get them there. Once you know their type, there’s always a way to get them to do exactly what you need to do because you know the stick and you know the carrot. You know the fear and you know the desire. So if you need to get your Type Six, the Loyalist, whose core fear is to be unsupported and without guidance, and if you need to get them to move from Seattle to New York, well, you know how to get them there. You scare the crap out of them in Seattle and you promise them safety in New York. So that is going to motivate that character. If you do that to a Type Eight, it’s just the Challenger. Theirs is very different. They’re looking at how can I be strong? So if you scare a Type Eight, they tend to want to fight you. They’re not going to move from Seattle to New York. They’re going to be like, oh, you think you can scare me? You think you can hurt me? Well, I’m going to show you. Don’t try and exert power over me. So the different motivations are going to be there. But once you know it, it’s like, I can get them to go and do whatever I want.
Kat
Right. And we talk about fear and desire a lot in the indie world. And I feel like there’s a lot of information out there that will just make you feel like you’re insane. You have to have a fear. You have to have it. And it’s true. But this makes it very easy to figure out those fears and those desires. And then what’s interesting is I think a lot of writers are scared that that’s going to become formulaic, which is interesting. No, it actually just helps you then not freak out about if you’re writing your character correctly. Then you have the freedom to be very creative in the plot because you’re secure in how your character is going to get there because you understand them. You don’t have to write a first draft just to get to know the character now.
Claire
Right. It’s absolutely not formulaic because humans don’t appear formulaic to us when we go out. Humans are complex beings, and yet these Enneagram frameworks are still at play. So any type can look a lot of different ways. They’re going to be similarities, but they can change based on culture, how those fears and desires play out. What is a good person in one culture? So if you’re a Type One, the Reformer, you’re worried about being good and not evil. And so that decides what you do. If you think that that’s the right thing to do, you will do it. But what is the right thing to do? That’s going to look different in different situations. It’s going to look different in different cultures. It’s going to look different for men versus women, a lot of the times. Women have doing the right thing looks very different for a woman, or it’s expected to look very different for a woman. So there’s so many other factors that it is just this easy thing. I know it’s going to seem overwhelming, but the Enneagram has been developed from thousands of years of wisdom. It’s been developed intensely in the last 100 years by people with PhDs and MDs. They’ve done the work for you. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel now. You can just work from this because it’s used by clinicians. My therapist uses it. It’s a thing that just has been proven true. So you don’t have to worry about it. It’s just a useful… It’s the closest thing to a character hack that you can find, really.
Kat
Right. And like you said, we know it intuitively, so your readers are going to know. So you might as well just I just find it helpful, and I would encourage people to do it. And if you understand personalities and why people react the way that they do, you are going to be able to write your characters and your books better. Just like, I don’t know how else to say that.
Claire
You do need to know people to write people. It’s the unfortunate.
Kat
Even personified animals.
Claire
Yes. Oh, yeah. I have a cozy, paranormal, normal, cozy mystery series. All my familiars have types as well.
Kat
Yeah, you got to do that. And it actually makes it really rich. Your story is very rich instead of having the characters that are all Type Two, all Type Three, all type… A lot of times, I think at one point you say you usually marry or date, or your partner is the opposite. And that’s why me and my husband do it. And I was like, look at that. This is why we don’t understand each other.
Claire
Yeah. And it’s so fun because every pairing of types, you’re going to have some overlaps where you’re 100% agree, couldn’t agree more. And then you’re going to have some differences where you’re like, I think you might be from a different planet. And so it’s like every pairing of characters you can throw at each other is going to have those differences and those similarities. And so you can play on that with your protagonist’s antagonist, with romantic partners. And it’s just good fun because you know what to bring out when you need conflict and you know, okay, I need these enemies to become allies. That’s one of my favorite troops. You know where they’re going to overlap and have a shared action based on what their motivations are.
Kat
It’s going to be believable. And to know how to team them up. It’s going to be believable. It’s not going to be like, what?
Claire
When they need to break apart again, you just put them in different directions by motivating them in two different directions.
Kat
Right. Because they’re not going to change. That’s the thing, too, that people don’t change 180 degrees by the end of a book. We learn. We don’t change.
Claire
And that’s the thing that’s important with the Enneagram is that there’s nine levels of development for each type. So you don’t have static characters just because you’re using the Enneagram. They’re going to move up and down just as humans do. We move up and down these levels of health, and it’s based on self-awareness and self-knowledge, where you are in that moment. And so you can have a character that starts in these low average levels of health that they’re not very aware of their patterns of behavior and thought and speech and everything. And then because of that, something happens that jolts them in your inciting incident. And then you have them have to search for answers for the rest of it. And by the end, maybe they’re at more of a high average developmental level or a healthy level. Or if it’s if it’s a tragedy, then they’re probably starting at or they’re ending at a lower health level than what they started at. So yeah, it just gives you a lot to work with. And there’s all kinds of resources. So if you’re like, how am I supposed to remember the nine developmental levels for nine types? Well, you don’t. There are lots of books on this, lots of research.
Kat
And there’s workshops.
Claire
And there’s workshops, yeah. And I’ll show you how to use the tools, and then you can go get your references for it.
Kat
Yes. And you even touched on writing series because you write series, right? Yes. So how to keep consistent with the series and whether you’re planning it now, you go into that or whether you’re stuck because you didn’t plan it before and now you have to keep going. But that’s what I find really interesting about the Enneagram, because I had studied the big top five personality types, which I think is somewhat helpful. Because by the end of book one, a lot of times we have our character really high, they’re writing a high, they’re so healthy, they’re doing great. And you’re like, oh, no, I have eight more books. And I love how you don’t shy away from that and how you go through a series, especially if you are not yet stuck in it, but then how to get out of it if you’re slightly stuck.
Claire
Yeah. I mean, the great thing about writing these characters is that they are just people and people have to learn the same lessons over and over again. And in new ways, it’s like, I may have learned a lesson in one small part of my life. That doesn’t mean my brain has applied it to every other part of my life. And it doesn’t mean that I necessarily learned the full lesson. And it doesn’t mean that I’m going to remember the lesson. And then there’s a bagillion lessons that we need to learn. I get that question a lot when I’m presenting on this thing, like, well, if you have them learn, what they need to learn by the end, what do you do in the next book? You teach them something else. We’re done in a lot of ways. Your protagonist can learn a lot of things. They could learn 100 books worth of things and still have more to learn. You might likely get sick of writing them at that point or before that point, but if you were really into it, you could just keep going.
Kat
Right. Yes. I have learned a lot from this. I know that for fiction, it’s really great. So I would highly recommend people go and check out the masterclasses. I might have to check out one, honestly, just to see what I can do because, as you talk about people not learning all their lessons, sometimes for the next book, I’ll probably have to start at square one. Okay, let’s take an Enneagram test and just figure this out again. But I also thought, once you’re done with your book, for any listener out there that’s like, Okay, great, I can figure out my fiction characters better. Maybe it will help me write faster, whatever they’re dreaming about right now. What’s also interesting is that you talk about how to market. And that was one of the biggest points for my Enneagram type that I was like, oh, my gosh, I feel so much better now. I don’t have to market to everyone, which yeah, you know that. Your book isn’t for everyone. But when you break it down with the Enneagram, it’s like, all I have to do is find my people. I don’t know why it took me this long, but it did.
Claire
Well, I mean, it probably didn’t take you as long to figure out as it took me to figure out. So we’re all figuring it out together. And that is a big thing because you just want people to read your book so bad. It’s not abnormal for an author to become a little bit thirsty, in that way. But the truth is that there’s that 1000 true fans that we need. And if we got 1000 true fans, that’d be great. You’d be off to a fantastic start in your author career. And you can find 1,000 people that are into anything, frankly. If the internet has taught me anything, right? If the depths of the internet have taught me anything, it’s that you can find 1,000 people that are into anything. So it’s really about starting from what you’re into, what you want to produce, figuring out the words for it, who it is for, which the Enneagram helps us with, and then blasting that out, in whatever way is comfortable to you. You don’t have to do all the things. You don’t have to even do social media, frankly. There are plenty of authors who don’t really do social media but have found a way that works for them to make the book sales that feel good.
Kat
Right. Yeah, you can get off the hamster wheel. And I think David Gochran even says this, but he doesn’t quite go into how to do it. But he talks about how you can get 60,000 people in your author newsletter. Fine, you’re on your list, you’re sending out all these emails. If they are not the people who are going to read your book, it’s worthless. And that was one of the points that I really resonated with, with finding my Enneagram and then finding what types of stories I tend to write. And then, okay, now I’m going to go and find the people who tend to like those types of stories and get off the hamster wheel of going to try to convince all the other types that they’re going to like my book because why spend the money and time doing that?
Claire
Well, and it’s a very human impulse to try to find metrics to show that we are progressing. Those metrics, a lot of the times are like, how many Instagram followers do I have? How many subscribers do I have? Those are easy low hanging metrics that can help us chart progress. And it could be useful if it’s one of the metrics and not the only metric, or that all of our metrics are these sorts of follower count metrics or subscribers because we know that those don’t necessarily convert. And a lot of the people who we look at and we go, oh, my gosh, they have so many followers. They must be so famous. Wow, I’m so impressed. I just want to do whatever they tell me. You can buy followers. We don’t want to judge other people’s success on these because they can be fraudulent. And we also don’t want to judge our own success on this because it can be fickle. And there are a lot of authors who are making what they need to write full-time, and you wouldn’t know it based on how many subscribers they have or how many followers they have. Because that’s just not where they’re finding the people or the people who are following them are so rabbit. They’re like, yes, whatever you have, just tell me where to put my credit card number. I think it’s about really evaluating what metrics are going to make us happy and what metrics are going to keep us writing day after day when this is a difficult and often lonely job. And that could just be a metric of, did I write a scene that made me laugh today? That’s a perfectly good metric, and that’s the thing that’s going to keep you writing.
Kat
Yes. And not going after people who aren’t going to resonate with your books will probably keep you from not writing. I think it will help you in your mental health in the long run to just have this full circle of how you can sit down and write. You understand your characters better because of it, you understand yourself. And then when you go out into market, I cringe at any marketing because most of us just want to write and then pass the book off and have somebody else market it. But we’re all alone. You won’t just drive yourself crazy. And you won’t… I tell people you won’t get those crazy reviews because you marketed it to the wrong person. And if you understand yourself and your books and your marketing, come back full circle, you won’t get this, I don’t understand this book, and now it’s a review on Amazon forever.
Claire
Right. And usually those decisions that lead to that not ideal reader are results of either a need for instant gratification or you’ve been triggered in some way. And so it’s like, I’ve been triggered. My core fear has been triggered. This is something feels like a threat to my identity and my sense of self. And so now I’ve got to go, okay, yeah, sure. I’ll take this promotion for my Jessica Christ series that puts it in the religious and spirituality. Yeah, okay, that’ll get me some reads because I’m just like, I need more book sales. And then I go and it’s somehow under Christian literature and everyone’s mad at me now because it really splits a room. It really splits a room that series.
Kat
It’s a great idea, though. I think it’s a wonderful idea.
Claire
Well, it would get me some sales, but it would get me the wrong sales. And it would get me a lot of one star reviews. With the out of context Bible quotes.
Kat
Yes. you might not want to get there.
Claire
Yes. I mean, if that’s your thing, that’s fine. But that’s just not what that series is for.
Kat
Exactly. And that’s the thing is understanding that and understanding yourself and your books better and then your market better, right so having that full circle so that you always talk about just being happy and content in your author career. We don’t have to be the miserable artists.
Claire
Oh, no, don’t do that. Definitely don’t do that. There are all kinds of ways to be miserable in this world. Don’t make your writing one of them.
Kat
We don’t want to romanticize that. So you have more information about this. You have a YouTube channel all about writing with the Enneagram as well. What is that called?
Claire
That’s the I don’t know what the channel is even called, but if you go to ffs.media/yt, for YouTube, not because I’m white. But if that helps you remember it, go for it. That has all of my basic videos. And these are just introductory videos. So if you’re just trying to figure out what is the Enneagram, this is my free resources because it’s like, I don’t need to… Here it is. You can learn it on your own time, see if it’s something for you. My motivation is not to make a ton of money off of this. My motivation is to just reach as many people as I can. And so that’s how I start, especially because I get these same questions over and over again. And it’s like, hey, here’s a great place to explore in your own time and come back if you think that anything that I’m doing is useful and you want more of it. I have a free course, actually, I just remembered. This is the five-day author alignment, in the author alignment course. If you go to www.ffs.media/5day, and that’s like the number five in day. Basically, it’s laid out the same way as my book. So we talk about creative values, persona, themes, and protagonist, and then bringing it all together. And that’s for free. That’s for anyone who wants to get acquainted with it and have some resources and understand the process that I work on with authors. That is there. That’s available.
Kat
So that’s a great place to start. And then if you want to get the book or if you want to check out the master classes, where would they go for that?
Claire
ffs.media/classes. Those are the summer classes.
Kat
You’re so organized, Claire. And I would highly recommend everyone get onto Claire’s newsletter. You always talk about the things that are coming up and talk a little bit more about the Enneagram. And yeah, I encourage anyone to check it out, all the resources that she has, that Claire has both on YouTube and in the free course, see if it is something that will help you, honestly, just have more fun writing and in your author career, right? We want more happy authors out there.
Claire
And life is short. Life is short, you all. And do it enjoying the thing you want to enjoy. But also, if you are one of those people and you’re listening and you’re like, oh, the Enneagram. I get it. I get it. I can’t tell you how many people have been like, I was rejecting the Enneagram, because all my friends talked about it and they made it sound like a cult, right? Yeah, you know, Kat. Or I had some friends who are really into it, and they maybe used it dismissively, like, you’re such an 8. That thing. That ain’t what it’s about. So give myself a try. It’s not dismissive. It’s not just like, we’re not sorting you into Hogwarts houses. It’s useful. It’s useful information that can help you get to know yourself better and not only get to know yourself better, but get to enjoy yourself more. That is my disclaimer. If someone treated it like a cult, they didn’t understand it because it’s a liberation, not a control mechanism.
Kat
As some good Americans will always do, they will find a way.
Claire
I know. Yeah life finds it.
Kat
If you’re the head Enneagram person, you must do as I say. But I do have to say, yeah, that is one reason that I rejected it for a while. But you’re very good about not calling any one particular type out. It’s just like, this is how we are and it’s okay. Let’s just get to know ourselves and each other and our characters. And honestly, I, as somebody who tried to reject it a long time, I was telling you earlier, like today with my daughter, I’m like, listen, you are a type. I haven’t had her do that. You’re a certain type and you need to not expect the same things from your friends because they’re different. It really does help you both in your own author career and with writing. So thank you so much, Claire, for coming on and telling us. I know there’s a lot to talk about in just 40 minutes so that we didn’t even cover everything. But I will have the links in the show notes below for people to get to know you even better.
Claire
Awesome. Thanks for having me on, Kat. This was fun.