I’m a year 41 human and a year 23(ish) writer

Russell Nohelty joins Cave of the Heart and answers 6 questions on self-trust

Coming soon to Cave of the Heart, Buddhist teacher and writer, Susan Piver will be diving into the craft of writing, accepting waymaking in life precisely as you are and more. Susan joins other creatives like Substack's No. 1 food writer Caroline Chambers, Jessica DeFino, “the woman the beauty industry fears the most” and humorist Michael Estrin. Don’t miss the chance to chat in the comments every Monday with these and other amazing writers. Sign up today.

Welcome to Cave of the Heart, an interview series where writers trust-fall into the depths of inner-knowing, creativity, and the craft of writing. Are you ready to get curious about the cultivation of self-trust, give a warm nod to our child selves, and celebrate inspiration in all forms? Come with us into the cave of the heart.

Russell Nohelty (www.russellnohelty.com) is a USA Today bestselling fantasy author who has written dozens of novels and graphic novels including The Godsverse Chronicles, The Obsidian Spindle Saga, and Ichabod Jones: Monster Hunter. He is the publisher of Wannabe Press, co-host of the Kickstart Your Book Sales podcast, cofounder of the Writer MBA training academy, and cofounder of The Future of Publishing Mastermind. He also co-created the Author Ecosystem archetype system to help authors thrive. You can take the quiz to find your perfect ecosystem at www.authorecosystem.com or find most of his writing on his Substack at theauthorstack.com. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and dogs.

Describe the setting where you’re answering these questions.

I’ve been working at the same desk for almost 10 years, since my last job moved to Dallas and kept me on as a remote sales manager. Over the years I’ve changed monitors, computers, and added a ton of stuffed animals, along with a lot of other baubles, but the desk has remained the same. 

No, that’s not true. I’ve added close to 100 stickers, so it resembles the old punk club bathrooms from my youth. It’s surprising how different the quality is between stickers. Some, I stuck on years ago and they still look almost brand new, while others I placed later have all but faded to nothing. 

My desk is in the corner of our second bedroom, in a nook surrounded on three sides by paintings, books, and posters I’ve worked on throughout my career. In fact, most of the knick-knacks around my desks are from places I’ve traveled for my work, conferences and research trips. There’s also a folder in my file cabinet that’s filled with letters from fans and gifts from friends I can pull out whenever I’m feeling a bit down. 

I go through phases of listening almost exclusively to audiobooks and listening almost exclusively to music, but when I’m writing, even filling out something like this interview, I’m almost always listening to music. 

I have a playlist I built for my series The Obsidian Spindle Saga which is filled with dark pop from Amy Shark, K. Flay, Sia, Halsey, Kesha, Meg Myers, and dozens of others that I usually default to, but it changes depending on the project. That’s what’s playing in my headphones right now as I do this work, decompressing from a class I taught earlier and negotiating a publishing deal, which is weirdly not an abnormal day for me recently. 

It’s what I normally listen to while writing The Author Stack, too, but I have two other playlists I work to as well. I have one that my wife calls angry girl rock mostly: Dead Sara, The Pretty Reckless, Haim, The Veronicas, Metric, etc., (that is for when I’m writing The Godsverse). It’s much faster paced and aggressive, and it’s easily my most aggressive series. 

Then, the opposite of that is my Whole Mood playlist, which is folk and country, from Taylor Swift to The Wreckers, Your Smith, Fiona Apple, Kacey Musgrave, and others that let me groove on things and take things slower. If I’m reading Substack, and I’m not listening to a podcast or audiobook, then I normally listen to that playlist. Substack is definitely a whole mood. I started that one for a series called Dragon Strife, which was much slower paced and the main character eschewed using violence of any kind. 

I also listen to the Whole Mood playlist when I’m editing, because I want to encourage myself to go slower and absorb it all. I tend to have a big problem with that, so anything I can do to trigger being more thoughtful when I’m editing is really helpful. 

Childhood

Q: Given a choice, were you the child who would run barefoot outside or were you inside reading?

A: I was an inside kid, but playing with Legos. I was a fat kid, and was bullied mercilessly for it, to the point where I thought having bruises all over my body was normal. This didn’t come from my parents, but from neighborhood kids, ones I idolized for the most part, and it led to a very unhealthy idea of how to go through the world. I generally thought existing was about being unnecessarily cruel or, in lieu of that, disconnecting from the world and not caring about what happened to anyone. Media didn’t help foster different attitudes about how boys were supposed to treat people, either.  

It led to a lot of driving around looking for parties, drugs, booze, and trying to keep up with the cool kids, even though really what I wanted to be doing was making movies and writing. I did make it to become the (co)-editor-in-chief of my yearbook and senior year we did write a play that made it to state, which was cool, but yeah, I didn’t run around barefoot. I was inside, trying to avoid people for the most part. 

It’s taken me far too long to shed that stuff and find ways to walk through the world in a more healthy manner. I recently found out about masking, and while I’m not autistic, I definitely think that I developed this different, confident, hard human to protect the gooey center inside. The last decade has been about finding ways to expose my gooey center and still walk through the world with kindness. 

Influences

Q: If you had to choose one person from your past that most influenced who you are today, who would that be and why? This can be a person from history, an animal, a fictitious character in a book, TV or movie.

A: I don’t really watch his movies anymore, and haven’t for decades now, but the person most responsible for what I became is director Kevin Smith. I used to watch all his movies, and I must have listened to hundreds of hours of him talking about his career. Clerks isn’t a great movie, but he didn’t care. He put it all on credit cards and figured the worst case scenario was that he would be broke, which he already was. So, he left school and just made it. 

I didn’t know you could just do that. I didn’t know you could just make things, and nobody will stop you. That’s for all the good and bad reasons, but “you can just do things” was a magical realization that I still can’t get over. It might blow up in your face, or you might get to Sundance and have a long, storied career. It doesn’t really matter, because at least you’ll know. If you don’t know it, you might never know, you know? I meet people all the time who regret not doing the thing and I am so thankful I have no regrets in that department. I did all the things and I know exactly where I flamed out, and where I stood out. That kind of thing is priceless. Not having that as a weight dragging you down every day of your life. 

Creative Spark

Q: When you get an idea for a new essay or project, what does your first instinct look, sound or feel like?

A: I have a very boring process for developing ideas. It involves opening a folder on my computer that is filled with all the things I’m developing, and making a new folder for it along with a document that just says “stuff.” Some things I build into epic worlds while others I never come back to, and how often I do that tells me everything I need to know about whether to sink time into it. 

What I learned in my career is that the things you make end up becoming part of your life, so you should be ready to talk about them for 10+ years. If you told me my first comic, Ichabod Jones: Monster Hunter, would become the seminal comic work of my life, I wouldn’t have believed you. Sure, some things have fallen off, but every project I’ve ever worked on through to a launch was at least two years of my life. I probably only talk about 10-20% of those things, but the creative spark is a burden as often as it is a sail. 

I don’t put much stock in the creative spark. It’s fleeting. Sparks flash for a second and disappear. Ideas have to suffer to prove they are worth working on, especially now that I’ve been at this for over two decades. For years, my rule was that something has to be better than what I’m working on now for me to spend time on it. It was easy to jump that bar for a while, but now everything I’m working on is such high quality that it takes a lot to make it over that bar. So, most things have to wait, and they languish there, festering, but sometimes they grow wings and fly. There’s probably 1-2 things a year that really capture my attention that way, because I know just how much it takes to bring that into the world now. Maybe that’s baggage weighing me down, but I think it sets me free more often than not.

Not to get down about it. I think you should spend time, a lot of time, capturing that spark and seeing what ignites, but I’ve been doing this a long time now. I know exactly what types of things capture that spark, and what resonate with me. It’s a luxury. 

That said, I think writers should write a broad range of topics when they’re learning the trade, and give themselves every chance to explore…as long as they finish things. It doesn’t matter if you love a piece, hate it, or are indifferent to it. If you take it on, you have to finish it. So often writers abandon projects halfway through, and while you sometimes have no choice but to do that, you don’t learn anything by abandoning something halfway through the process.

We are craftsmen. When we talk about our writing as “craft,” I think that craft comes from how you finish and mold something—not in how you begin it. How you get over hurdles and cover up imperfections is what becomes your style. Your voice comes as much from what you don’t like as from what you adore.

Lots of writers get into the habit of constantly abandoning things for years and nothing ever gets done. You learn almost nothing from writing a project. You learn everything from finishing it and crafting it into something cogent that makes sense as a complete work. The goal of writing is to move people in some way, and nobody is moved from a garbage draft. 

Additionally, part of being a writer is finding the joy in things you hate. Maybe it’s a story, or a character, or a scene, but as a writer you’ll likely, at some point, hate everything you ever do— at least until you find a voice. Making a career out of writing means finding ways to mold those stories into ones you’ll love anyway. 

Also, finishing things you hate teaches you never to do those things again, but more so it will teach you why you hate it. I’m not saying everything you want to abandon takes the same form as when you set out to write it, but you should work toward buttoning up everything you do so that it becomes a piece. Maybe that novel becomes a short story, or that movie becomes a one act play, but for goodness sake, finish the things you start. That is how you build a name for yourself. 

The craft of writing is almost all in the revision of a thing, not the writing of it. If you aren’t getting to the revision phase, you have really learned nothing about writing, except how to get words on a page. That is important, but the craft of writing is in revising something into a fine point to get your message across, even if you don’t love the vehicle. 

On top of that, even once you find your voice, you only grow it by working outside of your comfort zone. I’m mainly a fantasy writer, and I mainly write action-thrillers, but throughout my career I’ve forced myself to take on big projects in different genres, focused on different pacing and motivations outside my main series. 

All of that stuff is how you really grow beyond where you are now, and then you bring that all back to the bits you love, and it grows stronger, too. Plus, you learn what makes your work special. Yes, I can write anything, because I have, but I know exactly what makes a Russell Nohelty book special, and where I should focus my efforts, because I’ve done so many different types of projects. 

Writing Process

Q: What one thing do writers most often do that erodes self-trust and they don’t even know it?

A: It’s a combination of thinking their work has to be good and trying to make their dream project first. Most people want to make something equal to or better than the thing they loved most growing up, but they just can’t do that without years of practice. I think writers should avoid writing in their favorite genre until they at least have a handle on their voice. There’s such an emphasis on “monetization” that people forget that we spend 12+ years in school learning craft, and then go on to specialize in a craft in college, trade school, or the workforce. All that time allows for us to suck at first. That’s the #1 thing school does, it gives us a safe space to fail, and then we go out and try to fail in public without a net. It breaks people.  

By the time you get to high school, you’re a year 15 human, but you might have never written anything very creative before. I know people who are 50 and have never written more than a book report. They are a year 50 human, but a year 1 writer. They compare themselves to their idol and they beat themselves up. That’s why when I talk about being a “young” writer, it has nothing to do with age and everything to do with how long they have been intentionally practicing their craft. 

I’ve been doing this a long time, and I’m still a year 41 human and only a year 23(ish) writer. It wasn’t until I was in my 30s, after doing this stuff for over a decade, that I felt like I had a good handle on it. And only in the last couple of years have I felt like I understood every aspect of it. 

Plus, after all that, they look at their first draft and beat themselves up that it isn’t as good as somebody else’s final product. There’s so much comparison that makes people feel unloved and unwanted, but really they should give themselves the chance to suck at first. It’s okay to suck really hard at first. It’s okay to be doing this for a decade and still make stuff that sucks. I read books by authors that I love that I think suck, and these are people who have made great things. That is a scary proposition: to be still be able to suck even after decades doing that, but who really cares if it sucks? I still buy their other books, and I just don’t think about that one. 

I just read all of Jane Austen. My business partner loves Jane Austen and talks about it often. And since I try to take interest in things people I care about take interest in, I decided to give it a go. 

I severely loved Pride and Prejudice and adored Emma. The others, except that really weird one written all in letters, I could give or take. They weren’t memorable, but they are some people’s everything. Even if I was the arbiter of taste and only two of her books rose to exceptional, how many memorable things do you need to make in your life? Even one makes you immortal. Isaac Asimov wrote something like 400 books and I can only name six of them, and yet, he is a legend. 

On top of that, most of my favorite things I’ve ever written have never sold more than a handful of copies. So, I know better than anyone that sales is rarely a good predictor of much more than the mass market appeal of a piece, not its true quality. 

Resources

Q: What’s one surprising or unlikely resource that you turn to again and again to bolster your writing life?

A: I think business books are a great resource for writers, especially copywriting books that talk about things like psychological triggers and hooking readers. We’re trying to make something highly addictive in our writing, and copywriters have cracked the how and the why people resonate with words in a deep, meaningful way. If we’re trying to make something that resonates, I’m not saying it’s like selling shampoo, but I’m not not saying that either. I used to read Copyblogger a lot when I was learning this stuff. 

Then, there are foundational books that help writers understand how to run a business and survive in the capitalist dystopia we find ourselves in. I recommend The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan and Deep Work by Cal Newport all the time. I read just about anything from Russell Brunson because he’s got a brilliant marketing mind. Chokepoint Capitalism by Cory Doctorow is probably the definitive book for creators to understand what they are up against right now and the headwinds working against them.

I find unlikely resources everywhere, though. I am generally fascinated by just about everything these days. Even if I hate it, I want to know why it works for people. Usually, it’s for a basic, banal reason that is easy to distinguish, but I’m very interested in why things resonate and how it works with people. I love that kind of thing.

Why does romance work on such a deep level for so many people, and how can I bring that into my own writing? Why do thrillers sell so well, and what base desires do the thrillers that sell well fulfill with people? Which books do people still find today that people connect with across generations and why? It’s all so interesting. We are really students of the human condition, and all a bit like psychologists in our way. We’re trying to incept this idea deep down into the core of a person and connect with the very essence of their soul, and I think we should spend more time looking at how that happens in any way we can.  

Neurodiversity 

Q: Did being diagnosed neurodivergent affect how you see or interact with your writing life?

A: It made things so much easier. Not just getting the diagnosis, but getting on medication for depression allowed me to stop fighting every day to get to neutral. I spent 30 years stuck in reverse struggling to just get to neutral where I didn’t want to kill myself constantly.

I still think everything is so easy compared to how it used to be for me. I remember when I finally got on meds and stopped hearing voices telling me to kill myself every minute of every day. Like…I had no idea people didn’t have to fight that all the time. It was revelatory. I still think about it all the time. 

I still find writing is more a compulsion than a joy, but at least I don’t feel the need to write in order to get the bad thoughts out of my brain every day, and that’s a real, real beautiful thing. 

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Russell uses music as a way to harness and focus his energy when he’s writing and editing—he even shifts the energy of music to reflect the types of books or stories he’s working on. Share your best writing/editing playlists in the comments below and also tell us what kind of music it helps you write.

Russell spoke in depth about how the craft of writing is found in the finishing of the work, not just writing the first draft. How did this land for you? Do you find “craft” is cultivated in additional places?