What if the fastest way to save your book is to do this one embarrassing thing?
In this episode, I talk about the genius of Jennifer Lynn Barnes’s Id List and how it can make writing fun again (for you and your readers).
I share how the fanfic-within-my-book became a roiling cauldron of lusty fun and why I spent weeks telling myself it wasn’t allowed. 🚫
I also present my incredibly well-reasoned argument for why the answer, in art and possibly in life, is sometimes (often?): just add ghost sex.
Want to see my Id List in action?
Hop on my mailing list, and you’ll be the first to know when The Magician and the Labyrinth of Yesterdays releases, in all its Id List glory.
Episode 6 Transcript
[00:00:00] What if the fastest way to save your book is to do this one embarrassing thing?
[00:00:09] If you’ve ever devoted yourself to a creative project that ended up consuming your entire fucking life, this one’s for you. I’m Aven Winslow, romance writer and Jungian witch. Join me in the final stretch of writing my second romantasy novel. Craft breakthroughs, perfectionism spirals, and all the eerie little ways that fiction can start bleeding into real life.
[00:00:34] Welcome back, friends. We’re starting, as always, with our fire segment, the element that asks, what’s our craft problem of the week?
[00:00:42]
[00:00:44] Every once in a while, I’m hit with insomnia. I wake up in the middle of the night to go pee, and usually I can coax myself back to Sleepy Town. But there’s one very special circumstance that is useless to try and fight, and that is when a story refuses to shut up, even though it’s three AM.
[00:01:02] During these nocturnal downloads, I’ll get entire scenes complete with dialogue plunked right into my brain, or the overall plot from beginning to end will unfurl like a map in my mind. And so I wrap myself in a blanket and stumble into the next room to scribble it all down before I forget. On nights when a story is feeling especially chatty, this process will repeat sometimes three or four or five times.
[00:01:28] What I’ve noticed, though, is there’s a pattern to these downloads. When I’m nearing the finish line of a book, I’ll start getting midnight transmissions for the next book in the series, which, I mean, that makes sense, right? My brain is just gearing up for the next project. But a few stories in my series arc seem to exert massive gravitational pull, book nine and book seventeen.
[00:01:52] Before we get into why, we need a brief context intermission.
[00:01:55]
[00:01:58] How do I know how many books are in my series, much less what’s happening in book seventeen? Well, my Twin Flame series is based on the Major Arcana of the tarot. This is why the first book, The Fool and the Threads of Time, is denoted book zero, because the fool is card zero.
[00:02:16] I also spent weeks mapping out my entire series, which looked like rows of tarot cards and a million colored index cards covering our entire dining room table. I know exactly how my series is going to end, but that doesn’t mean I have complete plots for every book in between. I do have major plot points mapped out for every single book.
[00:02:36] They’re kind of like locations on a map that I know I have to visit, but how I get there exactly is still flexible. And I like this mixture of structure and freedom. It means that the series isn’t aimless, and I can plant all kinds of foreshadowing nuggets as we go along. But I’ve given my unconscious plenty of wiggle room to fill each book’s vessel with copious amounts of unexpected magic.
[00:02:59] All right, back to those nocturnal transmissions. Why are book nine and book seventeen so magnetic to my psyche? For that, we need to introduce our craft tool of the week, so I’ll meet you in the air segment.
[00:03:13]
[00:03:15] Air asks, “What tools did I bring to help solve this week’s craft problem?” Those of you who have been in my world for a while know that I rarely talk about Freud.
[00:03:25] This is because Carl Jung is my spirit animal. But for today’s craft talk, we need to define the Freudian concept of the id. The id is the instinctive, unconscious part of the psyche. It’s like the raw engine of appetite, impulse, fantasy, aggression, pleasure, and desire. It doesn’t care about morality or social acceptability.
[00:03:45] It just wants what it wants. In Freud’s model, the id operates according to the pleasure principle, meaning it seeks immediate gratification and relief from tension. In 2018, at a Romance Writers of America talk, novelist and professor Dr. Jennifer Lynn Barnes introduced the concept of the id list. Here’s Barnes from a 2023 Writer’s Digest article.
[00:04:09] Quote, “Create a giant, ever-evolving list of all your favorite things in fiction, characters, tropes, settings, tiny little details, all of it. I call mine my id list, and it is enormous, just pages and pages of things that I love in books or movies for no particular reason at all.” End quote. She goes on to list some of the items on her id list, like helicopters, paternity revelations, scenes set on rooftops, characters eating ice cream, fake dating.
[00:04:37] Here’s Barnes again. Quote, “In between projects, I go back to my id list and actively work to identify more and more things that I love. And then, when I begin writing a new project, I’m conscious about using my id list as license and a guide to put so much that I love in my books. It brings me so much joy as a writer and ends up solving a surprising number of craft problems for me as well.” End quote.
[00:05:01] What I realized is that book nine and book 17 were jam-packed with stuff from my id list, which includes, in no particular order, summer camp for adults, lush, mossy forests, people coming together, nerdy guys who are secretly good in bed, exploring lost ruins, forced proximity in remote locales, gender fluidity, ancient books with tortured histories, characters realizing they had what they needed inside them all along, having sex with a ghost, artists seeking inspiration in foreign places, creepy fairy tales, and literally anything to do with psyche and eros.
[00:05:37] All the way back in episode one, I mentioned that I’d never read a romance before I started writing one. Maybe not the ideal author pathway, but here we are. I did, however, read a romance-adjacent book in my late teens, one that I go back and reread every few years around Samhain. That book is called The Heart of a Witch by Judith Hawkes, and it is chock-full of my personal id list material.
[00:05:59]
[00:06:01] Since I don’t wanna give you hella spoilers for later books in my series, let me share a little tidbit from my current work in progress, The Magician and the Labyrinth of Yesterdays, that ended up being an idlist supernova. So, quick context recap in case you’re just joining us. In The Magician and the Labyrinth of Yesterdays, my main character, Ev, falls for Matt Byrne, the internet’s smoking hot boyfriend who happens to be starring in the film adaptation of her debut novel.
[00:06:27] The story takes place in their month of forced proximity while filming at a haunted castle. Yes, please. Without giving away too much, one of the things I explore in the book is the nature of parasocial relationships, and a big part of Ev and Matt’s romance arc is Ev stripping away all the layers of fantasy and fame bubble wrap so she can see Matt for the very real guy that he is.
[00:06:50] Early in their relationship arc, I have Ev really grappling with the contrast between Matt the person and Matt the celebrity, and in one scene, she stumbles on a fan page that leads her to an entire universe of fanfic, some of it quite steamy. There’s one fanfic in particular called Never Answer After Dark, or NAAD for short, and it becomes so popular it spawns its own sub-universe of increasingly raunchy spinoffs.
[00:07:16] So, one night, alone in her bed with only two walls separating her room from Matt’s, Ev tumbles down the NAAD rabbit hole. For this scene, I had to actually write parts of that fanfic story, and oh, my God, was it ever fun. And I realized this was in large part because I’d given myself a free pass to pour on all of my favorite tropes, like only one bed, fever nest, cabin in the woods, until that scene was overflowing with idlist material.
[00:07:43] This realization led to another realization, that wait a minute, I could have this much fun with the rest of my writing, too, not just this fanfic within a story scene. And in fact, the only person stopping me from doing that was me.
[00:07:58]
[00:08:00] Water asks, “What does this craft discovery reveal about me personally?”
[00:08:04] Well, it introduced me to an inner part within my psyche who wholeheartedly believes that if I find something enjoyable, there must be something wrong with it. Uh, what? Actually, this wasn’t surprising at all. Not after I thought about it for all of two seconds in the context of how I was raised, specifically with a deep, primal terror of my own inner life.
[00:08:26] My uncensored thoughts, my unfiltered feelings, my needs, my desires, all of that was bad. There was a chunk of time where this badness was specifically sinful. This was the phase when one of my parents was an evangelical Christian I remember a book, I think it was called The Bondage Breaker. I distinctly remember an illustration of this thick chain being shattered on the cover.
[00:08:50] But in the back of the book was a list of all the demonic things I needed to be scared of. And what’s hilarious is, if memory serves, most of the things on that list are now, like, my favorite stuff. Tarot cards, smutty books, witchcraft, you name it. Check, check, and check. I can laugh about it now because it genuinely is funny that the list of things that will destroy your soul turned out to be more or less my brand.
[00:09:16] But the residue of that kind of upbringing is less hilarious when it crops up in my creative process in unconscious ways. When you’ve been taught to distrust your own pleasure, your own fascination, this distrust often doesn’t announce itself in neon lights. It can feel much more sophisticated than that.
[00:09:35] It can feel like taste or discernment. It might sound like, “Well, I don’t wanna be self-indulgent,” or, “That trope is too obvious,” or, “Sure, I like that, but is it any good?” And listen, sometimes that’s a totally valid craft question. Not everything we love belongs in every story. If I tried to cram ghost sex, ancient ruins, fever nests, and adult summer camp into every book…
[00:10:00] Actually, that sounds amazing. I should totally write that book. But the point is, I think there’s a difference between making a craft choice and preemptively sanding the fingerprints off your own work because you’re afraid the thing you love is embarrassing. And that’s the part I’m really trying to pay attention to, because the it list, it isn’t just a writing exercise.
[00:10:20] It’s a permission slip. It asks, “What do you love before you start explaining yourself?” For me, this also connects to something I’ve wrestled with as a romance writer, which is that I can be weirdly picky about romance novels. I love romance as a structure. I love longing and angst and sexual tension all day long.
[00:10:41] I love the holy shit of two people finally seeing each other for who they are and loving the hot mess that stands before them. But I read way less romances than it feels like I, quote-unquote, should. And for a while, I really beat myself up about that. I mean, if I’m writing romance, shouldn’t I be reading it constantly?
[00:11:00] Shouldn’t I have encyclopedic knowledge of the market? To be clear, I do think reading in your genre is useful. I’ve encouraged myself to read more romance in particular, and more fiction in general in recent years, and I’m enjoying the hell out of it. But I’ve also stopped forcing myself to finish romances that aren’t grabbing me just because I think that’s what a real romance writer would do, even if that means I put aside the majority of the books I try to read.
[00:11:27] I’ve always read more nonfiction than fiction. I will probably always read a lot of Jungian psychology and occult history and weird little books on random sociology topics. But maybe that doesn’t make me deficient as a romance writer. Maybe my particular brain flavor isn’t a liability I have to compensate for.
[00:11:47] The more I work with the id list, the more the question shifts from, “How do I make myself want the correct things?” to, “What happens if I trust the things I already want?” Because if I’m bored by my own restraint, there’s a decent chance the reader is too. And if some strange, mossy, ghost sex-loving part of me is clawing at the walls trying to get into the story, maybe my job isn’t to lock the door and call that craft.
[00:12:14] Maybe my job is to ask what it wants. And maybe sometimes the answer is throw that ghost in a cabin in the woods with only one bed.
[00:12:23]
[00:12:25] Earth asks, “How did the fix go? And what does this ask of me in real life?” Well, on the book level, this fix was the bee’s knees. Once I saw the fanfic within the book scene as an id list supernova, I understood why it felt so alive, and I could just slather more of that joy jam on the rest of the book. And side note, you better believe the next book in my series is going to be front-loaded with so many id list ingredients.
[00:12:53] But the deeper question isn’t really about the book, right? The deeper question is, can I trust that what I want matters? Can I trust that my needs are valid, even if other people find them inconvenient, confusing, excessive, or even offensive sometimes? And to be clear, saying, “My needs are valid,” does not mean everyone else is duty-bound to cater to them.
[00:13:15] Other people get to have needs, too. Other people get to have boundaries. But I am allowed to need what I need. I’m allowed to want what I want. I’m allowed to make choices that are right for my life, even if those choices rock the proverbial boat. If you’ve been in my world for a while, you already know that I’m estranged by choice from my entire family, and that wasn’t some dramatic one fell swoop situation.
[00:13:41] It was a series of painful decisions made over a number of years. And every step of the way, I was deeply aware that other people did not agree with me. In some cases, they downright despise my decision. And if their words are anything to go by, some of them downright despise me as a result. There is a very particular pain in disappointing people you love.
[00:14:06] That’s part of what makes it so hard. Estrangement doesn’t necessarily mean the love disappears or that it was never there in the first place. No, the love, it’s still there. It’s just living side by side with the knowledge that love is not always enough to make a relationship livable. For a long time, I tried to make relationships work that simply did not work for me.
[00:14:31] I tried to be more accommodating, more understanding, more understandable, more endlessly available. I tried to make my needs small enough that they wouldn’t cause any trouble. But that was far more painful in the end than being disliked. It was soul-draining and corrosive, and it drilled in the lie over and over again that the price of belonging is self-abandonment.
[00:14:55] But it’s not, really. It just depends on what you’re trying to belong to. For some relationships, the cost of admission is selfhood, and that’s a price tag that’s no longer in my budget. When I think about letting myself write from the id list, I think of it as part of a much bigger practice, the practice of not betraying myself in advance, because that’s the temptation, right?
[00:15:19] To pre-reject yourself before anyone else gets the chance. To sand off the wonky edges, to make the book smoother, safer, more marketable, more whatever you think will protect you. But of course, it won’t protect you. This is where years of being disliked for my choices have unintentionally become excellent training for being an artist.
[00:15:40] Because if I make something with any real charge in it, some people are going to hate it. Actually, scratch that. If I make something, full stop, some people are going to hate it. That’s not a possibility. That’s a guarantee. I hope there will also be people who love it as deeply and obsessively as I do, but no artwork since the dawn of time has been universally loved.
[00:16:02] Two examples from Reddit, in case you don’t believe me. “Mona Lisa is an overrated piece of shit.” That’s a direct quote, by the way. To which someone added, “She’s worse than the pyramids.” So that’s Da Vinci and, you know, one of the defining monuments of human civilization knocked off their stupid little pedestals in one fell swoop.
[00:16:22] Here’s one more, just for fun. This is an Amazon review for Pride and Prejudice. “Just a bunch of people going to each other’s houses.” Brilliant.
[00:16:35] Thanks for listening to Will I Ever Finish This Fucking Book? If you want to see how my ID list experiment turned out, hop on my mailing list and you’ll be the first to know when my book releases. You can do that over at twinflames.life/freebies. No matter which freebie you choose, and I’ve got some pretty fun stuff for you over there, you’ll be added to my list and you won’t miss a thing.[00:16:59] Next week, we’re gonna take a peek at a curious little writing experiment I didn’t realize my unconscious had set up for me until the changes I’d made to my book led to very real changes in my life.