Episode 196: Do Something Hard Today

Business For Superheroes Podcast Transcription: Episode One Hundred And Ninety Six:  Do Something Hard Today

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*This is a podcast about one woman's mission to help entrepreneurs and business owners write better business books. Each week, we tackle your writing excuses because they're our excuses too, and help you beat the blank page of doom so that you can write the book that will grow your life and your business. Now here's your host, Vicky Fraser...*  

Vicky:  Hello and welcome to I was gonna say the 8,000 Authors show then.

Joe: Maybe. Give it a year or two.

Vicky: I'm Vicky Fraser, and this is my husband Joe.

Joe: Hello.

Vicky: Hi. Today we are drinking beer.

Joe:Hooray for beer!

Vicky: And neer. Which is, which is not beer. Which I call neer.

Joe: Misery beer.

Vicky: Well, it's really nice. I actually don't like lager anymore if it's got alcohols in it.

Joe: All the more beer for me.

Vicky: Yes, so, what are we reading at the moment?

Joe: Oh god, I'm still reading, and I will be for the, like, next five years, about three lines of N.K. Jemisin's "The Obelisk Gate," before I fall asleep, and then I fall asleep.

Vicky: Okay, well I'm not sure if people need a massive update on that. Except to say that, are you still enjoying it?

Joe: Yeah, it's a good book. I mean, I'm reading it in very, very small slices. But that's just because I'm not reading much at the moment, 'cause I'm knackered.

Vicky: Yeah, same. Oh, speaking of being knackered, what did you do on Sunday, Joe?

Joe:Oh, I was in a competition. I was in a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, South American, Ground Karate competition, in Hereford.

Vicky: Struggle cuddles.

Joe: Struggle cuddles.

Vicky: Extreme cuddling.

Joe: Involuntary yoga.

Vicky: You won gold!

Joe: I won my division.

Vicky: He won gold in his division and he won silver in the youngsters' division.

Joe: Yes.

Vicky: Which is so awesome, yay Joe!

Joe: So I am the most skilled of the unskilled old people, around my weight, who wanted to turn up in Hereford last Sunday.

Vicky: Hang on, did we do this in the last podcast?

Joe: Maybe.

Vicky: It feels familiar. Because it feels like I said, I feel like said, "Where's your bling?" And you were like, "It's in the house," and I said, "Oh, no!" Sorry, if that's not news to you dear podcasters. But I'm still excited, I'm still proud of you. Anyway, back to what we're reading.

Joe: N.K. Jemisin's "Obelisk Gate,"

Vicky: Which is great.

Joe: Three words a day.

Vicky: Yes, and I am reading "Iolo's Revenge" by Diana Ashworth. Which is brilliant, I keep, I keep-- part of the reason Joe is only reading three words at a time is because I keep poking him and saying, "Joe, Joe, this is really funny!" And then reading you out bits of this book, don't I?

Joe: Yeah, that's right. I like that.

Vicky: Especially because, I'm gonna make him read it afterwards, and he's gonna be like, "I already know it now."

Joe: I've read this book.

Vicky: It's great, it's about a retired couple who buy this rambling old farmhouse in mid-Wales, and it's all falling down, like literally, I think it's even worse than The Dingle was.

Joe: Kinda sounds familiar.

Vicky: And then they end up accidentally sheep-farming.

Joe: Also familiar.

Vicky: Except they've actually got a legit small flock, so they start off with 10 ewe lambs, and we've only got our three boys.

Joe: Yeah. Our three boys are going to struggle to, uh, reproduce.

Vicky: Create a flock, yes. 'Cause they don't have, they don't have their nuts anymore.

Joe: No matter how hard they try.

Vicky: Yeah, but yeah, so it's their story of moving to Wales and kind of the locals all going, "What on earth are you doing?" Which, again, is kinda familiar.

Joe: Feels familiar.

Vicky: But it's beautifully written, and because this is a podcast about how to write a book, this is really relevant, it's beautifully written and she has a really great turn of phrase, Diana Ashworth does, or she has a great editor, or both. But, she's very funny. The stories that she tells are very funny, and she writes very engagingly, and it's super easy to read, and it's delightful. I'm really enjoying it. So I can thoroughly recommend "Iolo's Revenge" by Diana Ashworth. Yeah, it's actually our book club book, in our local book club in town. So I will be able to go and talk about it, which is good. Non-fiction, I am still reading "Atomic Habits" by James Clear, and I am still loving it. I'm nearly finished though. I'm gonna be moving on to the next book, which I will talk about hopefully on the next podcast. But this week, we're talking about why you should do something hard. No smut, please. And the idea behind this podcast is, quite often, people will say to me, "Well, why should I write a book? "What's the big deal? Why should I write a book?" And one of the reasons that I give people, one of the reasons--oh hang on. And we're back in the room! Okay, so what's going on is, and the reason that we're about to repeat ourselves a little bit, is 'cause, now I've got no idea where we've got to, I have allowed my MacBook to accumulate crap.

Joe: All of the things.

Vicky: All of the the things, and I've been repeatedly ignoring the "Your disk is full." Because, we've been trying to--well to be fair, I've needed Joe's help and he can't drive a Mac, so, we've been trying to back it all up on my backup drive. Anyway, long story short--

Joe: Halfway through the recording, the Mac just went, "Nope, no space, stop."

Vicky: So, yeah, I had to stop recording the audio. So, we're just recording video now, which I can strip the audio out of. Anyway, that was a really boring explanation. So, why write a book? There are many reasons to write a book, many, many reasons. People often ask me, "Why write a book?" We're gonna cover a bunch of them over the next few podcasts, doing a little miniseries, but this podcast episode, this episode, I want to talk about one of, I think, the really good and underrated reasons to write a book, which is simply because it's really bloody difficult.

Joe: Okay, that's the reason to do something.

Vicky: Yeah.

Joe: Okay.

Vicky: It is. Would you like to know why?

Joe: I would.

Vicky: Okay. So yeah, why is it a good thing to do difficult things? It's a good question. Let's--Joe, what was it like training for your jiu jitsu?

Joe: Unpleasant. Painful.

Vicky: Difficult?

Joe: Difficult.

Vicky: But ultimately rewarding.

Joe: Quite satisfying.

Vicky: Because you won gold.

Joe: Yeah, yeah. That's just a marker of success though. That's just a marker of progress, not--

Vicky: Everybody loves the bling.

Joe:It's quite good bling.

Vicky: I've got a whole trophy up there on top of my bookcase that says that I was the best instructor trapeze person in the UK, in the UK

Joe: The UK...?

Vicky: Aerial Performance Championships. Yeah, and that was really hard. That was one of the hardest things I've ever done. Ugh, do you remember when I was training for the Reflections show?

Joe: Yes.

Vicky: And that was traumatic as well as difficult. Um, and it was just, it was just really really hard, and every, you know, almost every session it's really easy to just go "You know, I'm not gonna go in today. "I'm not gonna go in today, I'll catch up tomorrow." And, you don't do it. And there's a bunch of reasons why you don't do it. But it's really, really good, I think, to do really difficult things. Not just because you've got that reward of winning a competition or whatever at the end, but because it--I kinda don't wanna say character building, because that's really wanky, but it's true. Hard things do shape who we are. Doing hard things.

Joe: They stretch what you're capable of.

Vicky: They really do. They make us realize what we are truly capable of, which is far more than we think. Really, really, really far more than we think. 'Cause there's no way that, when I was training for the trapeze competition in September last year, I was at the studio, pretty much every, six days out of seven, wasn't I?

Joe: Pretty much, yeah.

Vicky: And I was training for hours as well, at a time, It wasn't just like go in and do a quick saunter, it was go in and do a quick run-through. But other days, it was like really intensive, I'm gonna work on this bit, over and over and over and over again until I just wanted to explode the world. Because it was really hard. And sometimes it wasn't even a little bit fun, and sometimes it was really boring. Because, I think one of the things, I can't even remember where I read it, but one of the things I read recently was if you wanna become super good at something, if you wanna become really successful at something, you've gotta be comfortable with being bored.

Joe: Right.

Vicky: Because a lot of being good at something is just doing the same thing over and over and over again. So if you look at professional athletes, they will drill the same trainings and the same movements, you know what I mean? They'll do it over and over again. And it's boring. It is boring. Because your brain craves stimulation, and if you're doing the same things repeatedly, you're not getting any of that stimulation. So it's much easier to kind of, reach for Netflix, or reach for your phone and mess around with Facebook or whatever. So yeah, it does, doing hard things I think really teaches you what you're capable of. Which is a lot more than you think

Joe: Sure.

Vicky:Would you agree?

Joe: I totally agree with that.

Vicky: What other hard things have you done that have kinda made you realize that you're capable of a lot more than you thought?

Joe: Oof, all kinds of things. The thing is, I enjoy doing difficult things. I enjoy doing difficult things with people.

Vicky: Being married to me, for instance.

Joe: Being married to Vicky, always a challenge, very difficult. Rock-climbing--

Vicky: Oh, rock-climbing's a really good example.

Joe: Yeah, you get to go out with your mates and eat cake in the countryside, which is nice. But you also get to be in really strange places in quite stressful situations, in fear of your life. That's kinda challenging.

Vicky: Hi Jamie! Jamie does rock-climbing. He does trad climbing, because he too is a lunatic.

Joe: Trad climbing is ace. That's the best bit.

Vicky: It's not. Okay, so here is, again, here is a hard thing. So we were trad climbing a few years ago. And it is a few years ago now, I haven't climbed for ages, and this is partly why. We were out at Stanage Edge, which is a beautiful, beautiful, very famous rock-climbing place.

Joe:Even if you're not climbing, go and see Stanage Edge, it's lovely.

Vicky: It's good walks along there, it's fantastic. It's in Derbyshire. Yorkshire? No, Derbyshire.

Joe: Peak's.

Vicky: Peak's, yeah. Chesterfield? Anyway.

Joe: North of here.

Vicky: North of here. Yeah, and we'd gone out there to do some trad climbing. And trad climbing is, so if you've ever been rock climbing indoors, everything's bolted, it's really safe, even when you're leading, which means you're clipping the rope as you go, even when you're doing that it is quite difficult to die. You have to try quite hard.

Joe: You might crack an ankle, or bust an elbow or something, but you're probably not gonna die.

Vicky: No. But trad climbing means that you are going up, putting your rope up, and you are putting your gear in, there's no bolts, there's nothing to hang on to, and you probably will die. Okay, you probably won't.

Joe: So, you're putting little aluminum wedges into cracks, and then attaching your rope to that, and little spring-loaded things into holes.

Vicky: And occasionally your head. Into a big crack.

Joe: It's a slightly, it's a sketchier kind of experience than sport climbing. Because in sport climbing, the safety kit is not gonna pop out of the wall. But in trad climbing, who the hell knows. Maybe.

Vicky: And that, my friends, is what makes it so horrifying. Because I'd done a couple of really easy climbs, and I'd lead up, and they were super easy, and I was like, "Ah this is great, I'm feeling really confident," gonna, you know, blah blah blah, and I was like, "Right, "what's the next one up?" And I just went on to another climb that was a level of difficulty harder. The other thing I didn't realize is that, unlike indoor climbing, trad climbing difficulty goes up exponentially and not linearly. So I'd kinda gone up to the next level, and it was considerably harder. And when I say harder, the climbing itself isn't the problem. If I'd had a rope up to the top, I would've run up it. It would've been fine.

Joe: No rope on the top.

Vicky: But the problem is, that it gets harder and harder to place the gear, as well as the climb. My hands are sweat--look at my hands! This is my sensory memory. If you can't see, I'm holding my hands up to the camera, and showing you just how-- I know, I know. That is my fear response and that is me remembering what happened on that cliff face. Because I had got halfway up, and--it was about halfway up, wasn't it?

Joe: It was a little more than halfway up, which was the problem, really.

Vicky: Yeah, yeah. I'd placed some slightly dodgy gear on the way up, and then I had gotten to a point, where I was like, I don't know what happened, but I think it was a bit slippery, a bit greasy, the really overly-climbed routes tend to get a bit greasy.

Joe: People all over them.

Vicky: Yeah, people all over them. Didn't help that I think there was a woman, on a couple of climbs over, absolutely shrieking, like a banshee, I fucking wanted to punch her. Which doesn't help, because it's really hard to stay calm in the face of other people's panic, like, wafting over you. And I couldn't get my gear in.

Joe: So you've got an aluminum wedge, you're holding on with one hand, there's a crack somewhere nearby, and you're trying to make this thing stick in the crack so that you can put your rope through it.

Vicky: Yeah.

Joe: And provide yourself with some modicum of safety, should you fall off.

Vicky: And one thing that you do, when you place gear, is you give it a bit of a tug. The problem with giving it a bit of a tug is, if it falls out, and you haven't got a good grip on the rock, you're gonna just fall off backwards. And bear in mind, I didn't trust anything at this point, because I was not thinking--

Joe: Yeah, the rational bit of your brain, the calm bit of your brain, has just--

Vicky: Shut down.

Joe: Dribbled off over there somewhere.

Vicky: It was screaming in the corner, it was quite literally rocking and screaming in a corner. And the thing about, the problem with that is, I'm kind of laughing about it now, but if I had fallen off, I would've decked out on the floor.

Joe: You would've smashed into the ground.

Vicky: I would've smashed into the ground and I might well have died.

Joe: From 40 feet up or something.

Vicky: Yeah, so my fear wasn't entirely unjustified, but panic is never helpful. So what happened next was, that I had decided that, fuck it, I'm gonna die anyway, so I might as well just abandon all my gear and run for the top. And I basically free climbed.

Joe:So, what Vicky then did was, this wedge that she failed to put into the crack, she just went, "Fuck it," nailed it into the crack, didn't put her rope through the clip, and just legged it for the top, basically.

Vicky: I climbed in a panic, I think I--

Joe: And everyone on the ground, who's trying not to freak Vicky out, because Vicky's clearly freaked, everyone on the ground was looking at each other in horror, thinking, "What on earth is she doing, "why didn't she clip that, why is she doing this?" And just like, "Okay, if she falls off at this point, "it's a trip to the hospital, if we're lucky."

Vicky: Yeah, and the problem with all of this is that, when you're in that position, it's really difficult to think. Like, you can't, you can't think. It's really difficult. So those guys were all on the ground going, "What is she doing, why is she doing that?" And all that's happening is that my lizard brain is screaming at me to get out of this situation, whatever way. And you know the other weird thing that happens, is that your brain is like, "Just don't go. "Just don't go, just jump off." And, I don't know if that's ever happened to you, but it's only happened to me a couple of times. That was one of them. I had to fight the urge to just let go and jump off.

Joe: Just abandon ship.

Vicky:Yeah, because it's like, I don't know, it was weird. But anyway, I made it to the top. Didn't die, obviously. Still here to tell the tale. Made it to the top and just cried.

 Joe: Just sobbed at the top.

Vicky: Just cried. And then Joe came up afterwards, and was like, "That piece of gear that you placed was absolutely bombproof. You could've hung a house off it." And I didn't even clip my rope to it! So, that was fun. Anyway, the whole point of telling that story--

Joe: Character building!

Vicky: But yeah, it is. Because you know what? Even though I didn't deal with it very well, I did deal with it.

Joe: Didn't die.

Vicky: Didn't die. The lesson I took away from that is that Vicky doesn't do trad climbing. Did someone just walk past our window?

Joe: No.

Vicky: Okay, I think they did, and now I'm really properly freaked out. Our Dingle is quite creepy at night, and I need curtains. This is gonna push up my curtain buying, and making. Anyway, so hard things. It makes us realize what we're truly capable of, which is far more than we think, and sometimes a little bit less than we think. And it also makes us realize, makes us appreciate what things are worth doing well. One of the things that's worth doing well is placing gear and then clipping your rope to it.

Joe: Maybe, doing 20 climbs at a level before moving on to the next level.

Vicky: Yeah.

Joe: Perhaps.

Vicky: Yeah. Ugh, I've stopped sweating now. Oh my god, that memory. Totally freaked out. Anyway, so yeah. Do something hard, because, write a book because it's hard, and it will make you realize that you are capable of writing actually really well. Because if you practice, practice practice, you will get better at writing. It will make you realize what's important. Because as you write, and as you're doing this really difficult job, you'll realize what's important to you in your business and in how you serve your clients and customers, and where you want to go next and what you wanna do. You'll learn a lot about yourself while you're writing a book.

Joe: It's a huge learning experience, isn't it?

Vicky: It is. It's so much. But you will get out of it so much more than just a published book at the end of it. You really will. And another reason is because, you do realize what's important, and I think that's important in itself. That's too many importants.

Joe: Too many importants.

Vicky: Because, the stuff that matters in life is difficult. Nothing that comes easily, really, is kind of long-term worth having.

Joe: It's not particularly valuable. If it just drops out the sky into your lap. That's great, that's very nice.

Vicky: But you don't value it. It's like, I think, I dunno, there's got to be a lot of research done into what happens to lottery winners and stuff, but I think that's probably why quite a lot of them don't really do very well, in life, after they've won an enormous sum of money. They haven't earned it. They've done nothing for that money. It's just landed on their laps. And I would imagine that's a bit of a weird place to be. 'Cause I've often thought, I don't think I would like to win the lottery. I worry what it would do to me.

Joe: Oh, I kinda would.

Vicky: Really?

Joe: Yeah, because I think I would be able to put loads of it, just put it, well, be able to finish The Dingle--

Vicky: Again though, I dunno. It would be too easy.

Joe: We'd still do it. We'd still do it, it just wouldn't be slow.

Vicky: That's true. I dunno. I dunno.

Joe: And then put money in the bank, and have a really nice pension.

Vicky: That's a good example as well, of something that's really hard, and we knew that it would be hard, to take on a house that needed this much work. We knew that. We didn't realize how hard it would be sometimes. Because I think, the other day, after the great olive oil incident, I think you had had enough of the place, hadn't you, for a couple of hours? And I've had a couple of moments where I've let you know I'm done, I'm done with this.

Joe: Dear listener, do not ever drop a litre bottle of olive oil onto a work counter. Onto a kitchen counter. 'Cause that's horrific. Glass bottle broke, and a litre of oil went everywhere.

Vicky: And you had to clean it all up, because I can't, I have this thing where, I can't even have a massage because I can't stand the feeling of oil on my skin. And so there was no way I was going in that kitchen. And I kinda felt a little bit guilty, but also I didn't break it. I'm really sorry about that.

Joe: Thanks.

Vicky: But that was a hard thing that you did.

Joe: It was horrendous. It was absolutely horrendous. Don't do that.

Vicky: So, anyway, back to the important things in life being difficult, this Dingle is really hard work, it's really expensive, and it's incredibly rewarding.

Joe: We are learning things, and we're doing as much of it as we can ourselves.

Vicky: Yeah, and when it's finished, it's gonna be magnificent. It's gonna be magnificent.

Joe: I hope so.

Vicky: We're gonna love it. It's really tempting to give up when things get tough. Like I said earlier, we've both had days in The Dingle where we're like, "I'm just done. "Let's sell it and buy something that doesn't need any work." That would be easier. That would be easier, to sell this place than to carry on doing it. But I love it. Not going to do that. It's easy to just decide that you're done with writing your book, and that you'd rather go and watch Netflix, y'know? We are wired, it's human nature to give up when things get tough. We are wired to be lazy and take the easy route, because we developed, we evolved in a time when food was scarce, resources were scarce, you have to eat--

Joe: Save your calories.

Vicky: Save your calories. We are wired to be lazy. The human brain doesn't wanna expend energy working it's way through difficult problems, when it could just sit and watch Netflix. And it's easy to sit and watch Netflix, but it's not important.

Joe: Other online streaming services are available.

Vicky: Amazon Prime for example. I mean, it's not important though. The sitting and watching Netflix. Sometimes it's great. It's really enjoyable to spend an evening just taking your brain out and watching--

Joe: But how much better is it after you've achieved your thing?

Vicky: Yeah, much better.

- [Joe] Best bit of my week is Friday night, after training at the club, we come home, we have a pizza, and we have a beer and we watch Netflix. It's beautiful, the cat on my knee. It's amazing.

Vicky: Even then, it's like, what we're watching on Netflix is not important, but the experience of just chilling out, that's our treat for the week.

Joe: It's after a long, difficult week. It's after a good bit of physical exercise. I've probably been duffed up by a whole bunch of people.

Vicky: Covered in other men's sweat.

Joe: Covered in other men's sweat. I mean, I've had a shower, but.

Vicky: It's easy to sit and do that kind of thing. I'm talking not as a treat though. It's much easier to do what I think the majority of people do, which is just turn their brains off, sit on the sofa and veg for the evening, and they do that most evenings.

Joe: I don't think our listeners are normal people.

Vicky:  I don't think our listeners are normal people, no, but I think that normal people do that. Because it's easier. Because it's the easier thing to do than to learn a new language, or learn an instrument, or run a business, or any of the other things that we're all doing that normal people don't do. And I don't blame them for it, because we're wired that way. But it's not important. If you write a book, or learn to play a musical instrument, or learn a new language, that's difficult. It's difficult, but ultimately, it's really rewarding. And you learn what you can do. Also, writing a book also makes you see yourself in a different way as well. You will get to know yourself better. The way you write, the way you look at the world, your weird way of expressing ideas if you're me, talking about tiny beetle steps, stuff you just didn't notice before. I think it teaches you how to think as well, and we're gonna go into a bit more detail about that next week, on next week's episode. I sometimes don't even know what I think about something until I've written about it. Because, writing is thinking.

Joe: Writing is slowed-down, serious thinking.

Vicky: Yeah, and having to articulate.

Joe: You learn your subject better, you research around it, you become the experts, you articulate it clearly, you edit it, you sort it out, you do it well. I think it's a seriously developing behavior.

Vicky: Yeah, so when are you gonna write your book? Anyway, moving swiftly on.

Joe: Now I feel bad.

Vicky: Summing up, we never, I don't think anybody ever really achieves great things if we just take the easy route the whole time. The people who are super successful, if success was easy, everybody would be successful and everybody is not. Very few people are, really. And however you measure success by, it doesn't matter whether you measure it with how much money you've got in the bank, or, well, I don't care what you measure it by, but I don't think most people would-- you know, if you wanna achieve greatness, if it was easy, everybody would do it.

Joe: Everybody would do it, yeah. You're probably not gonna achieve all of your goals by taking the easy route.

Vicky: No, no, no. So if you want to be at the absolute top of your mountain, as I want to be at the absolute top of my mountain, then you've gotta do the hard things. We gotta figure out how we get there, and then do what we need to do. And that's the difficult part, 'cause you gotta do it every single day. I write every single day. And even if it's only 100 words of gibberish, I still write every single day. Because that is what I do. I'm a writer. So if you want to, if you want to be at the top of your tree, if you wanna be the person that everybody goes to in your industry, you've gotta figure out how to get there and then you've gotta figure out what step you need to take. And then again, and then again--

Joe: One of those steps might be training, it might be qualifications, it might be writing a book, it might be being in the trenches, it might be taking on the big, optimistic projects that you're really not sure about and they terrify you. It might be all kinds of stuff. Maybe all of those things.

Vicky: But you gotta do it, that's the point. Especially if it's hard. It's really rewarding. It's not immediately rewarding. Immediately it's often really horrible. But you do it anyway. We're not wired for future rewards, we are wired for instant gratification, which is why Facebook is so successful, why processed foods foods do so well, you get that hit of salt and sugar. You wanna find a way to reward yourself, immediately, by doing the hard things now. Which is quite a tricky feat, I think. What's this week's takeaway, Joe?

Joe: Takeaway would be, find out what you're capable of. Stretch what you're capable of. Go beyond what you think you're capable of. Make a decision. Write a book. Do something else. Do something hard, do it scary. Get on with it.

Vicky: Yeah, cool. Right, that's that, then. Sorry that was a bit rambly and disjointed, but there was a whole technology fail in the middle of it, and then a ghost of some kind outside. And then very sweaty hands, which are fine now. Now I'm not talking about dying on a cliff. Next week, we are going to be talking about learning how to think. Because writing is thinking, and that is another reason to write a book.

Joe: Cool.

Vicky: Yeah. And what's going on in my world? Well, I am planning a big book launch for January. There's gonna be loads of cool swag, available for people who are gonna order my book. And I'm gonna be launching a new course, which is called the "Moxie Book Kickstarter," which is gonna be an interactive thing that I'm going to be running alongside with you, I'm gonna be helping you along, because the idea is to build your writing habit and get everything you need ready so that you can sit down and start writing your book. So by the end of the "Moxie Book Kickstarter," you will have a writing habit, you will have the confidence to know that you can write your damn book, and then use it, and you will have a really detailed outline so you can just sit down and start.

Joe: Sit down and do the thing. And you won't be faced with your blank piece of paper.

Vicky: No. Oh, and you'll also have, I will help you schedule yourself as well, so that you are not scrabbling around to find 10 minutes here and there, because you will never write a book if that's how you're gonna try and do it.

Joe: Cool.

Vicky: Yeah. And that will be perfectly placed to prepare people for the writing retreat that I'm planning in Fuerteventura in late February. Right at the end of February. So if you've got all of your outline and everything, what better than to come to sunny Fuerteventura as opposed to, minus three degrees wet UK, and write the shitty first draft of your book?

Joe: Sounds nice.

Vicky:Doesn't it. I'm really looking forward to it. It's gonna be great. I've already got--I'm only taking six people, I've already four people say that they wanna go. So, I haven't had their cash yet, so I don't know if all of them are gonna go, but four people are already expressing interest.

Joe: If you want in, you better get on with it.

Vicky: Yeah, if you want in, drop me an email, vicky@vickyfraser.com, and tell me, and you'll be the first person that I let know when I'm opening up for booking. All right, what else is there to say?

Joe: If you liked the podcast, go to iTunes and subscribe.

Vicky: Five stars.

Joe: Five stars, helps us climb the rankings, helps us help people like you. Or go to Stitcher, or wherever it is that you subscribe.

Vicky: Yes, and if you've listened to every single episode of this podcast, can't imagine--

Joe: You are already used to doing difficult things.

Vicky:Yes, how very dare you. Email me with your postal address, and I will send you a special silly gift, to say thank you for listening to every single episode of this. Everybody who's had the gift thinks it's delightful, which makes me happy.

Joe: Marvelous.

Vicky: So that's really cool. And we'll be back same time next week.

Joe: Bye.

Vicky: Bye.

* Thanks for listening! You can find links and show notes on the website at www.moxiebooks.co.uk/podcast, where you can also sign up for the best daily emails in the multiverse and find loads of free resources to help you write your book. We'll be back the same time next week with more tales from the book writing trenches, and the latest on what our tiny sheeps have been up to. *