Make time for creative work with Camille Pagan

Novelist Camille Pagan shares how even busy people can make time to write.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
This is Laura, Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today
is going to be another longer episode as part of
my ongoing series where once a week or so I
talk with somebody fascinating about how they take their days
from great to awesome. So today I am excited to
welcome Camille Pagan to the program.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
Camille is a career novelist and.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
The author of such books as Everything Must Go and
Life and Other Near Death Experiences, and as a highly
productive author of ten novels, she also coaches other writers
on how to achieve their goals.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
So Camille, welcome to the show.

Speaker 3 (00:49):
Thanks Laura, happy to be here.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
Yes, why don't you tell our listeners a little bit
about yourself?

Speaker 3 (00:55):
So, as you said, I am a novelist. I have
written ten works of fifth and about a dozen of
other people's nonfiction books that my name is not on.
So I used to ghost write nonfiction too. I'm a
former health journalist and editor. I've written for The New
York Times, Real Simple, where I was health editor, Oprah,

(01:19):
basically any magazine you can think of, as well as
a bunch of newspapers so I really love health and
psychology research still a big part of my coaching practice.
And then for the second half of my day, I
work with primarily novelists, but some other authors, children's authors,
nonfiction authors, memoirs, that sort of thing.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
So you've got a lot going on at Camille. I
wonder if you know you could tell us a little
bit about your morning routine, because this is a show.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
Called Before Breakfast, so lots of our.

Speaker 2 (01:48):
Listeners have elaborate morning routines. Let's hear about yours.

Speaker 3 (01:53):
Yeah, so full disclosure, I am a morning person. I
work with a lot of people who are like, oh,
I just don't like the morning. It's my favorite time
of day. It's when I can get the most done.
But I am also the parent of two teenagers right now,
so my mornings are a little later than they used
to be because my kids are just up so late.
I'm up usually around six. I am the first person

(02:14):
in my family generally out of bed, and I get up,
make myself some coffee, always go to my computer. Used
to be a notebook, but these days I go directly
to my habit tracker and kind of look at my goals.
What do I need to do today. I mark little
things such as what time did I get up, what's

(02:34):
on the list for the day, and really just get
my priority straight before I then get my kids out
of bed, feed them, get them out the door, and
then I go to the gym. That's really almost every morning.
I do that before I write, and it just sets
the day up for me. Even if it's twenty minute workout.
I feel better doing that. And then I sit down

(02:56):
around nine with another cup of coffee and I begin
writing How to be the Exception to the Rule.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
Yeah, how far is the gym from your house? I'm
curious what that adds into.

Speaker 3 (03:06):
About a ten minute drive, so it's about twenty minutes
round trip. I live in ann Arbor. Everything is about
ten minutes away. It's a beautiful thing compared to when
I was in the city in New York and everything
was forty five minutes away.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
So yeah, so you got the gym, get yourself, your
cup of coffee. You're sitting down to work around nine o'clock.
But you have both writing work and other kinds of
work you do, So how do you organize your days
to make both of those happen?

Speaker 3 (03:32):
Well, I'm pretty I want to say strict about it
in that from nine to noon that is my writing time.
I don't schedule other things in that time unless it's
really an exception. So this podcast would be an exception.
But if there's a doctor's appointment and I can do
it before that period or after that period, it goes there.

(03:52):
And that is something that if you look on my
digital calendar or my paper calendar, you'll see blocked off.
And I've been doing that for about like thirteen years
at this point. It really is something that I still
put down because if it's on the calendar, I will
do it. And it's a reminder to me, like, don't
schedule your dunal cleaning at this time. So I do

(04:13):
that really come rain or come shine. Unless I'm taking
a deliberate break. Then I pause for lunch, and then
I go into the kind of the coaching marketing half
of my day.

Speaker 2 (04:23):
And when you have that nine to noon time blocked
off for writing, I mean, are you actually really writing
for all of it? I mean, I guess you have
written a lot of books, but.

Speaker 3 (04:32):
Well, it's a good question. Yeah, So I don't believe
in you know, powering through for three straight hours. We
you know, the human attention span is about topping out.
It around forty five minutes, So I will write for
about forty five minutes, sometimes twenty five on five off,
take a break, you know, go get some water, use

(04:52):
the bathroom if I need to, and then come back.
So it's broken up, and it really depends on where
I'm at with a project. So sometimes I'm drafting. Sometimes
that writing time is for editing or doing proofreads, a
cold read, all of those kinds of things. And then
I do have breaks between projects, and I will use

(05:12):
that time, usually still for creative work, so to brainstorm
the next project, to let myself just journal on what
I see up ahead, that sort of thing.

Speaker 2 (05:23):
What does that brainstorming look like? I mean, you know,
I think a lot of people think, well, I should
carve out time for brainstorming and thinking and deep work,
But I mean, what are you actually doing when you're
trying to come up with the next novel idea?

Speaker 1 (05:35):
If that's like an entry on your to do list?

Speaker 3 (05:38):
Well, I work with one hundreds, probably close to one
thousand writers at this point, primarily fiction writers, and I
know that the process is really different for everyone, but
I do some of the things that research shows us
fuels the creative fires. So sometimes it's walking right the
thing where you can kind of just think you're on autopilot.

(05:59):
For me, it's a lot of I have this big
notebook and I just write stuff down in a very
messy way. And then my little trick. And this is
where a lot of people are like, I would never
do this. I write the pitch for the book that
I'm interested in writing, next to see if there's a
there there. Yeah. So it's lots of different pieces.

Speaker 1 (06:19):
Lots of different pieces.

Speaker 2 (06:20):
Yeah, And then tell me a little bit about the
coaching part of your business.

Speaker 1 (06:24):
What does that look like?

Speaker 3 (06:27):
I love that. I love that piece. People are like,
how can you do two things? Well, kind of like
what you implied, I could not write for eight hours
a day. My brain just kind of turns off at
a certain point. And then I turn on the more social,
kind of collaborative part. And I will usually meet with
clients on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Monday and Friday. Afternoons

(06:51):
are more for putting lessons together, looking at the curriculum,
doing some marketing, that sort of thing. Yeah, And so
I'll meet with clients and there's little breaks in between.
I send them notes, we come up with plans together,
and it's just a nice way to be connected because
writing is really a very solitary endeavor.

Speaker 1 (07:11):
Absolutely. Yeah, when you say lesson plans, are you teaching classes?

Speaker 3 (07:14):
Now? I do. I have a couple of groups, so
I have a mastermind that I run and a membership
and we'll have like a monthly lesson that we go over.
So there is a pretty heavy teaching component to it. Yeah, excellent, All.

Speaker 2 (07:30):
Right, We're going to take a quick ad break and
then we'll be back with more of Camille's productivity tips
for writers and others. I am back talking with novelist
Camille Pagan about all the ways that she does her
creative time that she runs her business. So Camille, maybe

(07:53):
you can talk a little bit about some of the
productivity tips you share with the creative people who work
with you, things that you have found to be effective
as people are trying to organize their lives and get
more done.

Speaker 3 (08:05):
So one of the big things I work on with
clients when they first come to me is getting over
this idea that so many of us have. The creativity
is just when the muse appears on your shoulder, right that,
especially with fiction, there's this thought that you should be inspired,
But what research really shows us is that the work
brings inspiration. So a big part of it is creating

(08:27):
a routine, which goes against what a lot of people
are thinking when they're approaching their fiction career. So some
of the things I've already mentioned having that set time,
so I really encourage people to do the same thing
at the same time every day. Not only are you
more likely to get it done, it really decreases the

(08:47):
transition time because your brain is like, this is just
what we do at this time. There's no oh, I'm
going to go look on email or browse Reddit. No,
it's nine o'clock. This is what we do. And it
takes a while to establish that no surprise time. Anyone
who knows habit research, you know, it can be a
good six weeks before you're like, and this is just
what I do at this time. But it's really important

(09:09):
to do that.

Speaker 2 (09:10):
Yeah, and what about for people who are maybe beginning
their writing careers and might be doing something else as
a day job.

Speaker 1 (09:17):
How did they create that routine for writing?

Speaker 3 (09:19):
So this was me right, I was a journalist. I
needed to make money as a journalist. When I first
started writing fiction, I had a newborn and I just
wrote for an hour every night, even though I'm not
a night person. It was the same sort of Okay,
I just need to do this at this time, and
that's how I got a book done, and it was
about four months for that first draft. It kicked off

(09:42):
my fiction career, and so now I'm like, you don't
need to have three hours. If you don't have three hours,
if you have half an hour, that can be enough
to get started. It's more about what do you do
eighty percent of the time. So that's the other piece
that I work on a lot with clients. The particular
writer who would hire a coach tends to be very ambitious, right.

(10:02):
It's not a casual lookie loot, someone who's like, let's go,
and there's often a lot of perfectionism built in, so
they're thinking, well, if I don't show up from let's
just say nine to ten every single day, five days
a week, maybe I'm just going to go for the
extra a plus and do it on Saturday too. Then

(10:23):
they fall right off the wagon. And so one of
the things that we really work on is aiming for
eighty percent, which really that client is actually looking for ninety,
but I'll say eighty just to get them down a
little bit of like, Okay, life is going to happen.
So I once heard I think it was Brian Tracy
who said this. He said, every two to three months,
just anticipate that something's going to fall apart. There's going

(10:45):
to be some emergency. Unfortunately, most of those emergencies are minor.
Sometimes they're major, but mostly minor stuff, but they'll do
rail you. So I'm really thinking about if I can
just show up even four days a week. If I've
said aside five, I'm going to get much farther than
I would if I was like, oh, it's got to
be perfect.

Speaker 2 (11:04):
It's so funny that you said that though about perfect,
because in that example of the person who wants to
be perfect, they're still doing it only five days a week.
Like people talk about their daily habits and they're not
aiming for seven and well that's not daily. I mean,
I mean, if you want to do something every single days,
but you know, for whatever reason, we have this idea
that we only do things on weekdays that count.

Speaker 1 (11:26):
I'm very curious. Do you do you write on.

Speaker 2 (11:27):
Weekends as well, or as that do you generally try
to take those off.

Speaker 3 (11:30):
I recommend that people take at least one day a
week off. I don't really care what it is, but
this is the beauty of having done this. So I've
been coaching for about five years and was doing like
light consulting before that, and over time. This is not
true data, but it's a pretty big subset. I have
noticed that when people don't take breaks, their body takes
a break for them, that person often is heading toward burnout.

(11:54):
There's not a lot of time to have the space
to think through the creative project. And for me personally,
I will write on a Sunday sometimes I usually take
Saturday off. Saturday is off and when i have the
breakthrough for the book where I'm not actively working on it,
I'm huntering in the yard, I'm hanging out with my kids,
and I'll be like, oh, okay, I see how to
fix it. So I am a fan of some time

(12:17):
off in there.

Speaker 1 (12:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:18):
Well, it's just an envisioning somebody who might have a
job in a family and was trying to get started writing.
I mean, even if they had thirty forty five minutes
early in the morning, right, that could be part of
their morning routine Monday through Friday. Maybe you know, their
spouse could cover for them for two hours on a
Saturday that they could go work in a coffee shop
and then they take Sunday off. But that would still
be creating, you know, six hours a week, yes, to

(12:40):
work on fiction without it being or whatever other creative
endever you're doing. But that would give them a reasonable
amount of time.

Speaker 3 (12:48):
Yeah. I think it's all about the planning too. So
I have one client who commutes two hours each way
in La just has a very demanding job and weekends
are when she writes, and so she's just looking at
two to three hours Saturday, two to three hours Sunday.
That's really a respite for her and she is getting
it done. So you know, there, if you have the desire,

(13:10):
there's a way to plan for it.

Speaker 1 (13:12):
Excellent.

Speaker 2 (13:12):
Well, I'm curious what is the timeline of a book.
Let's say that you came up with an idea, I mean,
what would happen then?

Speaker 3 (13:20):
Well, so there are lots of different ways to do it.
And I don't teach a ton of craft, but I
am a fan of pitching, so I have a resource
on my coaching website, which is even beetter dot co.
That's called pitch pro tells you how to do this
all the way through. It's free, just writing kind of
your quick pitch for the idea so you can see
if there's something there. But some people are more like,

(13:41):
I want to outline it. That's fine. I think that's
an okay step too. But the big thing is just beginning.
I cannot tell you how many people have come to
me and they're like, I've been thinking about this idea
for fourteen years, and I'm like, okay, let's start writing it. Like,
let's start right now, super imperfectly. You're not going to
know how to begin a boo. You're not going to
know what to do with the messy middle, and that's okay.

(14:03):
That's how you learn to do it.

Speaker 2 (14:05):
Yeah, I would say, well, people probably get discouraged. I mean,
I've started various books myself that don't go anywhere. Oh so,
so I mean what would you say for people who
are like, I'm carving out the time and all that,
but then it's just it's not happening. It's you know,
you're writing stuff, but it's not going anywhere.

Speaker 3 (14:22):
I mean sometimes The true answer is to try a
different project, you know something. I don't think you need
a complicated structure, but I will recommend doing literally one
line for the middle, one line for the end, one
line for the beginning, right, like just to react what
is going to happen in the book? You can even
break that into three other pieces. But the reason why

(14:42):
people often get stuck it's either something that they don't
really care about. A lot of people come to me
they're like, I'm trying to write a romance stuff. I'm like,
do you read romance? No? I hear it sells. I'm like, okay,
let's work on something different. But the other piece is
not knowing where to go. And if if you just
take you know, half an hour to figure out where

(15:03):
you are going first, that gets rid of that pressure
of like, oh crap, what do I do now?

Speaker 2 (15:08):
Well, and you mentioned, you know what do people read like?
They write what they like to read. I'm very curious
how do you build reading into your life?

Speaker 3 (15:16):
So, Laura, as you know, because you've written a bunch
of books too, I have a lot of blurb requests,
so there's a lot of reading for work. And that's
tricky because I'm getting better at saying no, but it's
one of the ways that I support authors is blurbing
for them. So I'm saying no a little more so
that I can find more time for pleasure reading. And

(15:36):
that is usually the evenings for me, and of course vacation,
I bring a big stack of books.

Speaker 2 (15:41):
Well, you mentioned you were going to bed later with
your older kids. Now, I mean, what does an evening
look like for you?

Speaker 3 (15:47):
That is, oh gosh, that's a little more variable than
my morning, which is something that I'm getting used to.
It's like a type a person. I like everything kind
of planned out, and with teenagers there's no planning. So
one night we're up because you know, the sixteen year
old has taken the car out to a volleyball game
and we want to make sure she's home safe. But
I do really believe in downtime, and one of the

(16:08):
big changes I've made it really had clinical burnout earlier
this year, just had some personal challenges, lost some very
close to me, and so I know about like life
kind of throwing stuff at you. And one of my
big improvements talk about taking your day from good to amazing,
was having a real off switch. I had just casually

(16:31):
slid into work, going into my evening. Just check an
email here, look over these pages, read a blurb book,
and both my therapist and my coach were like, okay,
let's stop at five. And so these days I stop
work at five no matter what, even when I have something.
Do you know the work gets done if you know

(16:51):
that there's a stop on your day. If you know
there's no stop, then it just slides into eleven o'clock.

Speaker 1 (16:56):
Well, what do you like to do in the evening?

Speaker 2 (16:58):
I mean, if you were going to say, a pleasant
evening at home, you know what would that be?

Speaker 3 (17:03):
Yeah, great question. A lot of socializing. So I really
love to go out for a drink with my husband
or see our friends, or get together with other writers
in the area. But that's maybe two or three days
a week at most. And then the other evenings are reading,
of course, hanging out with my kids, watching a show.
I'm a big fan of TV. People are like, oh,

(17:24):
you should only be reading no story, you can find
it anywhere film TV, Like, there's excellent storytelling there. Yeah,
And sometimes exercise, like more exercise if I've had a
really rough day, doing some yoga, going for a run,
like that is just the thing.

Speaker 1 (17:40):
All right.

Speaker 2 (17:40):
Well, we're going to take one more quick ad break
and we'll be more back with more of Camille's tips.

Speaker 1 (17:51):
Well, we are back.

Speaker 2 (17:52):
This is Before Breakfast, the longer interview series I am doing,
and today we're talking with Camille Pagan, who is a
career novel list and it has been sharing lots of
tips for creative people on how to get things done
and avoid burnout.

Speaker 1 (18:09):
So, Camille, I'm curious.

Speaker 2 (18:10):
You said you've made a couple of big changes recently,
and that's great, But what's your current biggest time management challenge.

Speaker 3 (18:15):
Oh, that's a good question. So I think my biggest
time management challenge right now is scope creep. Really being
careful about not checking email on the weekend to catch
up when you work closely with writers. So I only
take about five one on one clients at a time,

(18:36):
and they can email me at any point, but I
have made it very clear with them that I'm only
going to email them back in the afternoons Monday through Friday.
So that's been one of the changes of like really
addressing that scope creep. When you care deeply about your clients,
you want to answer them right away. But that's not
necessarily healthy for you. So that is one of the

(18:57):
things I'm working on. And then just kind of like
what I said earlier, the variability of my family schedule
right now, when your kids are younger, you can kind
of like lay everything out. You're like, Okay, we've got
soccer on this night, we've got volleyball this night, We're
going to have a picnic on this day. Teenagers are
not like that. It's like, oh no, I'm going to
go do this thing. I've got to do this thing.
Can you bring me hair stuff? I need a homecoming dress.

(19:20):
Like It's just quite a different schedule. So that has
been interesting.

Speaker 2 (19:26):
Yeah, hopefully you get a little bit of notice on
the homecoming dress.

Speaker 3 (19:29):
Yes, my children know me well enough to know that
I need a little heads up, little.

Speaker 1 (19:36):
Heads up on that one. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (19:38):
So, Kamill, what is something you have done recently to
take a day from great to awesome?

Speaker 3 (19:46):
Oh? So, one of the things that I have really
been enjoying lately is opening up my fridays for things
like this some self care. I do therapy on Fridays,
So I really love that I actually looked for to it.
I will often do like a UI class, like just
opening up this work day for all of the stuff

(20:06):
that hadn't been happening. And part of my initial instinct
was to think, oh, that's so indulgent, but it has
made me look forward to the entire week. It's really
been amazing to have this day. And I do do
some work in the day, but just having all of
those other things where you're like, I don't know where
this is going to go, it's lovely. Of course this

(20:28):
is available to us as people who are self employed.
I know it's trickier to do when you're working for someone,
but it's been great.

Speaker 2 (20:35):
Well, I generally do recommend that people try to leave
fridays fairly open and not necessarily for things that are
for you. But it's just that stuff comes up right
and you need a place to put it. And if
all your life is completely packed, then you're going to
have to bump something else or keep showing things forward,
and next week is going to have crises of its own,

(20:55):
so you kind of don't want to borrow too much time.

Speaker 1 (20:58):
From the future. It's good to leave some open space.

Speaker 3 (21:02):
Yeah, well said I like that idea of like a
place to put it. That's exactly what Friday is for
me right now.

Speaker 1 (21:07):
Yeah, I'm curious.

Speaker 2 (21:08):
When do you plan your time? I mean, are you
more of a daily planner a weekly planner? I mean
do you have a set time you do this?

Speaker 3 (21:14):
I do it on Sundays, so I sit down on
Sundays sometimes Saturday because I'm just like, oh, let's go,
and I do plan out the entire week. My appointments
are fairly regular. I know that I see certain clients
on certain days. I have a mastermind on a certain day.
Those things are set, you know, months ahead usually, But
the other pieces of like when are the kids doing

(21:37):
certain things? When am I going to read the book
that I have to blurb this week. I do all
of that planning on Sunday so that I don't read Monday.
On Monday, I have a sense of Okay, this is
what I have to do, this is how it's going
to get done. So that has really helped a lot
of just getting rid of the Sunday skaries. Well.

Speaker 1 (21:53):
Also because you need to sit down Monday at nine
am and write correct.

Speaker 3 (21:56):
That's right, it is not a time for planning. My
Mondays are usually open too, and I love that that
is not the place where I put things. It's the
day where often I'm doing a deeper dive into a book,
So if I want to read it first before I
kind of add to it, I can have more of
the day to do that.

Speaker 1 (22:14):
Awesome.

Speaker 2 (22:14):
Yeah, well this all sounds very good, Camille. Maybe you
can let our listeners know where they can find you.

Speaker 3 (22:21):
So I am at Camille Pagan dot com. My coaching
site is evenbetter dot co. That's dot co and I'm
most active on Instagram, which is just at Camille Pagan.

Speaker 1 (22:31):
Awesome.

Speaker 2 (22:32):
Well, Camille, thank you so much for joining us and
to my Before Breakfast listeners. Thank you so much for
listening to this new interview series where we talk with
fascinating people about how they take their days from great
to awesome. Appreciate your sticking with me as I experiment
with this and I welcome your feedback at Laura at
Laura vandercam dot com. And in the meantime, this is Laura.

(22:55):
Thanks for listening, and here's to making the most of
our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've
got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach me at
Laura at Laura vandercam dot com Before.

Speaker 1 (23:21):
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