Intimacy with place making, the bones of book writing, and trusting the net to catch our leap

Yes Yes is a monthly advice column / mini podcast for paid subscribers of the Monday Monday newsletter. You are welcome to leave comments at the bottom and submit your anonymous questions for next month at the bottom. Enjoy listening above or reading below. You are welcome to share screenshots on social media. Below is the transcription <3

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Hello and welcome to Yes Yes. This is my monthly advice podcast for you, the paid subscribers of the Monday Monday newsletter. It is August here in Northern Michigan. The sun is rising over the bay. It's a beautiful day here up in the meadow. I'd love to paint a picture of what's happening, but first - you can listen to this in the apple podcast's private feed of Yes Yes. That will also give you alerts when there's a new episode, you can download it. You can listen to it in your browser and every month is transcribed. So you can also read it. You can read along while you're listening. You can take screenshots of the transcription and text it to a friend, post it on social media and tag @marleegrace, or include it in your own newsletter. I always appreciate and love to hear what you think of the episode and to see y'all share it with other people in your own community. The comments are always open on Yes Yes. If you'd like to share any of your own thoughts, what's been working for you the past month, anything you're excited about, I'd love to hear.

So, all right, here's the picture we paint. So last month I mentioned in the podcast that I would be getting a radical reduction to my chest and a gender affirming surgery as a non-binary person, I'm happy to report it went well. And that was about two weeks ago. And my home here is really beautiful. But the guest bedroom area is a loft, so it's like an open space. And I started recording today in my bedroom, but my guest, my caretaker, was doing their own thing this morning, as one does in the morning. And I was like, damn, I really don't have a quiet space in the house to record.

And I have really learned that the first bump in a creative practice doesn't mean stop and quit, it means what's the next thing we could try. And I'm happy to report that I'm sitting in the back of my Jeep in the middle of this beautiful meadow, looking at the apple tree, coffee in hand, looking at your beautiful questions on my computer. So I just wanna offer that to all of us who feel the constraints of time and energy and space, to get curious about where else you might go. So it's really comfortable back here, the backseat of a Jeep Renegade, not bad, y'all, not bad.

So grab your coffee, grab your tea, let's talk about what we're gonna talk about and then dive right in. So, ah, we've got three questions today about book writing, taking the leap out of a job we don't like and moving. So kind of three of the classics, for those of you who listened to Friendship Village, the Have Company podcast, whatever it may be. Oh yeah. That was the other thing I wanna mention. I've been recording podcasts since 2014 and… six years. Right? 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22- 8 years!? Oh my god <Laugh> what is time? Okay. For eight years. And I've used my phone the whole time. I've used the voice memo app on my phone. <Laugh> and have I bought a microphone? Yeah, totally. Could I use it and set it up? Yeah, probably would sound really great. And maybe I should get a theme song for the Yes Yes podcast, right? Yes, yes - if I may say yes, yes twice in a row - and I don't.

And I still just show up to this practice of reading your questions, listening to what god wants me to say, saying it out loud into my phone, emailing the voice memo to Hannah, Hannah patiently transcribing it, uploading it to Substack, and here we are. So this is yet again, trying to tell us, less excuses. You wanna make a podcast? Open up your free tool, called voice memos in your phone, sit in the back of your car and record it. And that's the kind of ease we're gonna bring into today's episode. Okay. Let's start.

🌼 QUESTION 1: I have so many ideas in my brain for a book, but no idea how to put them to paper? Where do you even begin to decide what you want to write about, let alone organize it and make it into well … a book?

Okay team. First of all, this question is one of my favorites. I love to talk about writing books. I have written and made four books, two that are self published, two that have been published by major publishers and are in bookstores all over the world. One of which was even translated at least once, maybe twice, How To Not Always Be Working. And I'm going to teach a class about book writing, and all of the info is linked in the transcription. If you would like to look, Yes Yes listeners get 10% off. If you're a past student, you also get 10% off. So look in your emails. That's where it is. I'd love for you to take class. Today is its soft little launch into the world before I tell the whole world next week. But I want to tell you first and now I will answer the question.

Okay, here's how book writing works. Ha just kidding. I don't know. Just kidding. Yes I do. That's that's how I feel. That's how it feels for me to tell anyone anything, I think I walk through the world somewhat baffled that I've begun, worked on and finished anything, whether it's a quilt, a dance, this podcast, a newsletter, a book and this cup of coffee. And I think the thing I'm working on so much in my own life right now is celebrating my accomplishments and I mean - accomplishments, I'm talking like the the dishes being cleaned, or folding my clothes after I do my laundry, I'm not necessarily saying like the accomplishments of my career and I do mean the accomplishments of my career. So I appreciate this question and, and being seen as a writer and an author, which is factually what I am.

Live on Zoom : September 4-18 with guest teachers Tamara Santibañez (they/them), Brandi Cheyenne Harper (she/they), and Jacqueline Suskin (she/her)