This is it—the season finale!
Creating Will I Ever Finish This F#@king Book? has been a fizzy cocktail of vulnerability and unexpected joy, and we’re going out with a bang. 💥
In this episode, we’re talking about endings: how to know when you’ve reached one, how to stop nudging the finish line farther away, and how to choose the real thing over the shiny, impossible ideal.
I’ll also dish on why I was having a particularly shit day, my secret weapon for a crap mood, and the cringy fear hiding behind my perfectionism.
Thank you so so much for joining me for my first ever podcast! It would’ve been super boring without you, friend.
Listen here:
Want to see how the book turned out, despite all my bitching and moaning?
Hop on my mailing list, and you’ll be the first to know when The Magician and the Labyrinth of Yesterdays releases.
Episode 8 Transcript
[00:00:00] We all know that perfectionism can keep us from ever letting a thing be done. But what if hiding behind the perfectionism is a very specific fear, and that’s what’s really keeping you from the finish line?
[00:00:16] 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.
[00:00:39] Hello friends, and welcome to the final episode of the season. We’ll start like we always do with the element of fire, which asks, what is this week’s craft problem?
[00:00:50]
[00:00:52] Right about when I hit the 70% mark on draft six of my work in progress, The Magician and the Labyrinth of Yesterdays, I simultaneously hit a wall.
[00:01:00] I was revising, and revising, and revising a scene that happens right before the climax sequence, and it just wasn’t working. I considered cutting it, but the scene was too load-bearing, so I used my Tacoma notebook method that I shared in episode four. I had to work through the scene four times before I finally figured out what wasn’t working, and by that point, I’ll be honest, I was starting to get up in my feels about the book as a whole.
[00:01:26] Not only did I desperately wanna drag this draft past the finish line, I also needed to start putting together my launch, and the weekly essays that I send to my mailing list and which I batch write ahead of time, those were about to run out. When I slip into this overwhelmed space, it kinda feels like raccoons are nesting in my brain, and all I wanna do is cry.
[00:01:46] Actually, I did cry, because crying is one of my all-time favorite activities for stress relief. Funny story. Well, it wasn’t at all funny at the time, but it sure is in hindsight. My partner and I were hiking in Maine, and we took a wrong turn, which added, like, four miles onto this already long-ass hike, during which we were being attacked by biting flies the entire time.
[00:02:08] Anyway, when we realized we weren’t actually 30 minutes from the parking lot like we thought, more like three hours, I told my partner, “I don’t wanna alarm you, but I really just need to cry, maybe for a while.” And that’s what I did. We trudged down this dirt road, getting bitten by fucking flies, while I cried for, like, a solid 10 minutes, and then I felt so much better.
[00:02:30] I mean, the hike still sucked, but it no longer felt like soul death, and that’s how I learned how useful a good cry can be. Anyway, fast-forward to the night of absolute book overwhelm. I had a seriously excellent cry, and then I decided to sit down and meditate and journal 30 minutes later, I came to a shockingly obvious realization.
[00:02:52] I needed to dramatically pare down my to-do list, starting with my launch plan. I’m not even gonna tell you what I had as my original plan. There were so many things on that list, you would be like, “Aven, what is wrong with you?” And I would not have an answer to that. The good news, though, is that I chopped a bunch of things off that list.
[00:03:10] I can do them later after the book is released if I want to, but it would be madness to try and do them all this summer. I see this now. I see the error of my ways, hand on heart. What I wasn’t expecting, though, was for another idea to take the place of the weekly essays I’d normally be writing. That idea is the podcast you’re listening to right now.
[00:03:31] The idea immediately had that zingy firecracker feel that I’ve learned to pay attention to. But even so, I didn’t fully trust it, because making a podcast could easily, very easily, become a massive new project. It could become one more thing I needed to perfect, one more thing I needed to overthink, one more thing that would keep me from finishing the book, and that was not what this podcast was supposed to be.
[00:03:55] The podcast was supposed to give me a different type of container, a way to share what’s happening behind the scenes without turning every insight into a polished essay, a way to document the final stretch of the book while I’m still in it, and honestly, a way to keep myself accountable by telling you, dear listener, what I’m working on each week.
[00:04:13] So the craft issue wasn’t, should I make a podcast, exactly. The craft issue was, can I let this podcast be a focused, scrappy, seasonal container for the final stretch of this book, instead of turning it into a rabid perfectionism beast that requires me to spawn, like, an entire media arm for my business?
[00:04:33] Even though the idea felt alive, I was teetering on the fence, because what if this was just me chasing another shiny object? Never mind that in recent years I’ve actually gotten a lot better at sorting ideas into smart to work on right now versus delightful, but please report back in six months. I still have inner parts who don’t entirely trust fun.
[00:04:56] If something feels energizing, they immediately suspect it of being a distracting indulgence.
[00:05:01] P.S. For more on trusting things that feel good, check out episode six, where I talk about inviting the joy back into your writing process using ghost sex. But seriously, how do you tell the difference between a shiny object that’s pulling you away from the work versus a fairy godmother in disguise that’s genuinely trying to help you finish?
[00:05:19]
[00:05:21] Air asks, “What tools am I bringing to help solve this week’s craft problem?” Well, it’s pretty simple, really. The tool is focus. Now, I don’t mean focus in a grind set, productivity bro kind of way, where you wake up at 4:30 AM to drink a glass of raw eggs before you deadlift your car. I mean, focus that you can feel on a cellular level.
[00:05:43] A shiny object distraction tends to multiply. You so much as glance in its direction, and suddenly it has 12 sub-projects, a branding strategy, a merch line, a five-year growth plan, and a private Facebook group you never wanted to moderate. But really, this makes sense if deep down your inner parts are presenting this idea for the specific purpose of distracting you so you don’t do something scary, like actually release your book into the world.
[00:06:10] A useful container does the opposite. It gathers your scattered energy and gives it somewhere to go, and for that reason, it often lands differently in your nervous system. Actually, let me speak from the eye. When this podcast idea floated into my meditation, it felt exciting, yes, but it also felt grounding.
[00:06:29] Instead of my energy feeling tugged in a million directions, it kept orbiting the same core, and the more it did, the calmer I felt. So when I asked, “Does this podcast make my summer more complicated, or does it help me pare things down?” And the answer was, it pares things down if I let it be what it wants to be.
[00:06:50] This podcast does not need to be a forever podcast. It does not need to become my primary new business identity. It does not need to launch with a video component and a monetization funnel. It just needs to be a container where I can speak into a microphone and document the final stretch of finishing this book.
[00:07:08] That’s it.
[00:07:08]
[00:07:11] A few days after my pare my life down meditation, I experienced a synchronicity. I was still dragging my heels on the podcast, worrying that I’d turn it into a capital T thing that would end up consuming my entire life. Being totally new to podcasting, I’d cracked open a book I’d bought years ago but never read called Make Noise, which is all about podcasting and audio storytelling.
[00:07:34] And in this book was a diagram from one of my favorite mindset books of all time, which is Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. So here’s the diagram. Imagine a black circle with all these short, stubby little arrows radiating outward like a sun. And then imagine an identical black circle beside it, only this time, all those little arrows have been combined into one long arrow pointing in a single direction.
[00:08:03] The arrows represent the same amount of energy, but in the first scenario, you’re scattering that shit in a dozen directions, and in the other, you’re picking one goal and funneling all your energy toward that aim. The first time I read Essentialism, this was instantly my favorite diagram because it reminded me of spell casting.
[00:08:21] You can scatter your energy with a bunch of piddly little spell intentions that you don’t really care about, or you can choose a carefully crafted, laser-focused intention and put everything you’ve got behind it. Guess which type of spell works better?
[00:08:38] The day after seeing my favorite essentialism diagram pop up in a book on podcasting, I got together with my friend Vivian. And because Vivian is also a witch, the conversation turned, as it often does, to magic. In bitching about how slow the revisions were going and whining about whether or not I should start a podcast, Vivian reflected back how all of my complaints seemed to be tied to a lack of focus.
[00:09:01] Keep in mind, I hadn’t told her anything about that little essentialism diagram yet, but you better believe I whipped out that book right then and there. What I realized is that not only was I craving more focus in my writing and in my author business as a whole, I was craving more focus in my magical practice.
[00:09:19] And just like that, a super clear spellcasting intention dropped into my brain, one that made my toes curl with excitement. I’m not gonna share the wording here, sorry friends, because I’m a firm believer in keeping the specifics of active magic under wraps. But the important part is that the spellcasting intention was singular.
[00:09:38] Not a new spell every time I panic, not a fresh petition for every little subproblem, not one magical working for the book, one for the launch, another for sales, and a separate one for my nervous system. Just one overarching intention that I can return to again and again until it feels complete. The relief of this honestly surprised me.
[00:10:01] If you were my spirit guides and you presented this idea to me, I’d probably think it sounded super boring. The same old spell over and over again? No, thank you. But no, I just felt relief. Relief and joy. I’d forgotten how satisfying focus is for me. If I do an hour-long writing sprint, and in that time, I stay completely focused on the writing, even if I only get 100 words written, this is infinitely more satisfying to me than an hour spent writing, dipping in to check my email, popping over to read something on Substack, cleaning out the produce drawer in the fridge just real quick.
[00:10:37] Even if at the end of that hour, I manage to get 1,000 words written, it just doesn’t feel the same. This is something I have to remind myself of often. It’s not just about the output, it’s about the experience. And the experience I needed was, “You are totally allowed to make a scrappy little podcast that helps you finish your book.”
[00:10:57]
[00:10:59] Water asks, what did this reveal about me personally? I initially thought my resistance to making this podcast was, duh, perfectionism strikes again. And it was about perfectionism, only with a twist. One that once I spotted it, made so many things in my life make a whole lotta sense. But to understand this, we need to back up a few years to a lazy summer afternoon when my parents sent me a 14-page letter detailing literally from my birth all the shit that’s supposedly wrong with me.
[00:11:31] I wish I was joking. This letter described how as a baby, like an actual infant, I thought I was a demigod, and as it cataloged my many faults from diaperhood to the present day, I noticed a theme. It was never just my parent who thought these things. No, it was apparently also my high school therapist, every single member in my family, teachers, neighbors, the family cat And this was a common refrain in my childhood.
[00:11:59] This parent rarely framed potentially heightened statements as, “I think this.” Instead, things were stated as being universally true. And I get it. It’s tempting to borrow authority instead of owning your opinions. I mean, I feel like 95% of social media is basically that, which is one of the many reasons I’m glad I’m not on it.
[00:12:19] But point being, I grew up on the refrain, “There’s something wrong with you, and everyone else is fully aware. Oh, goodness, did you not already know that? Because, like I said, everyone else does.” So it’s not so much that I’m afraid of putting out something imperfect. I mean, that’s a little part of the fear, but I’d say that has, I don’t know, maybe 10% of an emotional charge.
[00:12:41] The other 90% is I’m afraid to put out something imperfect, and then other people see this imperfect thing, and here’s the 90%. They think I don’t know how imperfect it is. Finishing a book, finishing any creative project involves moving through this process. I can see that this could be better, and I might even know how to make it better, but at a certain point, I’m choosing not to do that because I need to move on.
[00:13:07] Ugh, intentional imperfection, deliberate incompletion. The decision to say, “This is good enough for what it needs to be, even though I can still see the slightly fraying hem.” That is why this podcast felt so dangerous. Not because I thought it was a bad idea. It felt alive. It felt like the container for what I needed.
[00:13:28] But I have easily activated inner parts who are extremely invested in making sure I am never, ever caught in public with my drawers down. And honestly, I don’t hate those parts. They’re trying to protect me from humiliation. They’re trying to ensure no one can ever say, “Wow, how embarrassing that you didn’t know this wasn’t good enough.”
[00:13:47] But if those parts are in charge of my creative life, I will never finish anything. So the water lesson here is that perfectionism for me is not really about having impossibly high standards, or at least it’s not only that. Perfectionism is a protection spell. It says, “If you make the work perfect enough, no one can shame you.
[00:14:09] If you spot every flaw before anyone else does, no one can ambush you with your own inadequacy. If you keep polishing forever, you never have to experience the vulnerability of putting something real into the world.” The problem, though, is that this isn’t really a protection spell. It’s a family curse. But as any devoted fantasy reader knows, curses, they can be broken.
[00:14:34]
[00:14:36] Earth asks, “How did the fix go? And what does this ask of me in real life?” The fix was to let this podcast be useful, not perfect. The podcast needed to help me stay connected to the book during the final stretch. It needed to let me share the behind-the-scenes process with you without requiring me to write polished essays while I’m trying to finish revisions.
[00:14:58] That’s the job it was hired for, and I must say, now that we’ve reached the season finale, I am giving this podcast a stellar performance review and a raise. It injected so much fun into what was starting to feel like revision hell. And hey, I hope it’s been fun for you, too. The ideal podcast is infinite potential.
[00:15:18] It has perfect sound quality, perfect branding, perfect pacing disguised as effortless, off-the-cuff intimacy. The real podcast is this: a focused container where I talk through what the book is teaching me while I finish the damn thing. The ideal book is also infinite. It’s the version I could keep tinkering with forever, the version where every scene is honed to a fine point, every emotional beat deepened, every metaphor polished until it gleams.
[00:15:47] The ideal book is amazing. It also doesn’t exist. The real book is the one I can actually finish. The real book is the one that you can actually read, someday soon, I hope. So that’s what this week’s Craft Insight asks of me in real life. Choose the real over the ideal. Let it be small. Let it be scrappy.
[00:16:09] Let there be typos or the neighbor’s dog barking in the background. And then, let it be done.
[00:16:15]
[00:16:20] Thanks for listening to Will I Ever Finish This Fucking Book? This was the final episode of the season, and if you’ve been here for the entire ride, the bossy spirit guides, the perfectionism spirals, the ghost sex, and the almighty cat god, thank you. Truly. This journey wouldn’t have been half as much fun without you.
[00:16:42] Of course, the natural question now is, did I finish the fucking book? If you want the answer, and if you want to see how all of these craft experiments actually turned out on the page, hop on my mailing list. You’ll be the first to know when The Magician and the Labyrinth of Yesterdays releases, and you can do that over at twinflames.life/freebies.
[00:17:02] No matter which freebie you choose, and I’ve got some pretty fun stuff waiting for you there, you’ll be added to my list, which means you won’t miss the release, the behind-the-scenes extras, or whatever weird little spells I decide to cast next.
[00:17:16] Thank you, friend, for coming on this quest with me. And now, I have a fucking book to go finish.