Writing Hacks & Red Flags: Fast Laps and Pit Lane Problems

This week we’re talking writing hacks ... the real ones, the unhinged ones, and the ones we’ve all been guilt-tripped into trying. We’re joined by Crystal Leigh, author of a sapphic Formula One romance, to break down which techniques actually help you write and which ones you can toss into the pit lane.

From skipping scenes to screenwriting your entire draft, from character letters to emotional recall, we explore the habits that make the writing process deeper, messier, and surprisingly more joyful.

In this episode:

• The myth of “write every day”
• Using big emotions to unlock creativity
• Freewriting and character letters that reveal hidden depth
• Screenwriting as a drafting tool
• Ethical, intentional ways writers use AI
• Why jumping around in your manuscript can break you out of a rut
• How F1 story structure inspires Crystal’s writing process

About Our Guest

Crystal Leigh is a contemporary romance writer, Stanford Novel Writing Certificate candidate, and Romance Writers of the Rockies’ 2025 Volunteer of the Year. Her current project is a sapphic feminist Formula One romance (yes, it’s as amazing as it sounds).

Transcript

Crystal (00:00)
And Jenna, we're going to have to talk about Formula One. Cait told me. Yeah.

Jenna G Judith (00:03)
my god, you have no idea. Like when Cait told me, yes, when Cait told me I'm like,

finally.

Cait (00:09)
I was like, how is it that the two people that I connected with at this conference, like both love, Formula 1 and romance.

Crystal (00:19)
It's, yeah, it's the new hotness. It is the next hockey when, it comes to sports romance. I'm telling you.

Jenna G Judith (00:19)
It's like we're kinda nerds about it, it's fine.

Cait (00:21)
It's over.

Jenna G Judith (00:25)
my god!

Especially because like I'm reading these and I'm like I could do so much better.

Crystal (00:33)
We're gonna talk about that off mic.

mostly I don't want to like talk shit about the other Formula One books. They're all doing something beautiful. They're all doing something great.

I'm just doing things a little in a different way and that's fine because there are readers there for everything. I don't need an alpha hole formula fuckboy. like...

Cait (00:49)
Absolutely.

Jenna G Judith (00:50)
Yes.

Cait (00:56)
Amen!

Jenna G Judith (00:57)
Dreamy.

Cait (00:58)
That

is, getting pulled for.

Jenna G Judith (01:02)
Yes, for

the snippet.

Well, I'm very excited for that book because that sounds absolutely delightful.

Cait (01:09)
Rave.

Crystal (01:09)
I like it. I like it.

Cait (01:16)
also have a guest on today. This is so exciting. It's our first guest. This is Crystal. Crystal Leigh is a tech worker by day and a writer of contemporary romances with social agendas by night. I love that. And weekends. She's on the board of the Romance Writers of the Rockies and is RWR's 2025 Volunteer of the Year. That's awesome.

Jenna G Judith (01:30)
Thanks.

Yay!

Cait (01:41)
He's a member of the 2027 cohort of Stanford's novel writing certificate

program, and she's currently querying, I'm sorry, poor thing, her sapphic feminist Formula One romance. Welcome, Crystal.

Jenna G Judith (01:48)
Thank

Crystal (01:54)
Yes. Hi.

Jenna G Judith (01:55)
Thanks.

Crystal (01:58)
Thank you for having me, Cait and Jenna. I'm excited to be here.

Cait (02:00)
Yes!

This is so exciting.

Jenna G Judith (02:03)
That's like

an epic of an intro. Like you just checked all the boxes of a badass. So... Yep.

Crystal (02:06)
It is.

Great, great hyping, Cait.

Cait (02:12)
A

sapphic, Formula One romance.

Crystal (02:15)
Yes, yes. Between, yeah, you do. Because we need more female representation in Formula One, first of all.

Jenna G Judith (02:17)
Because everyone needs that.

Don't even get me started on that discussion.

Crystal (02:26)
Yes.

So yeah, what's better than the first female driver and a TV presenter who happens to be her ex-girlfriend who broke her heart?

Cait (02:39)
I'm reading that.

Jenna G Judith (02:40)
yeah, I am too

Cait (02:42)
Okay, two F1 fans and one absolute novice.

Jenna G Judith (02:48)
and I'm

ready.

Crystal (02:50)
We'll get you into it.

Cait (02:51)
So in the vein of writing an F1 romance,

do have like a lot of episodes where we need to have you back on because we do need to talk more about hacks specific to writing romances and maybe you will today. ⁓ I need to know. First of all, I want to talk about the hacks that you see or the ones that people tell you about that are like, ⁓ just do this. This and like you'll just get right into it. You'll get super motivated.

Crystal (03:06)
Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Mmm.

Jenna G Judith (03:21)
video.

Cait (03:21)
Who has

those? are those ones?

Crystal (03:24)
I hate the write every day. Like if you don't have a day job, great, great. But yeah, yeah, I have a day job and a husband and a dog and chronic my, like a chronic illness. No, I can't write every day, sorry, no.

Cait (03:28)
No, no thank you.

Jenna G Judith (03:33)
Right. If you don't have a family, wonderful.

Cait (03:46)
I'm doing it.

No. Nor do I believe that it makes you a better writer.

Jenna G Judith (03:50)
Not happening.

Cait (03:54)
I just don't think it does. And that, I know that's the big magic of it. I know she talks a lot about that and big magic about how she just, she needs the routine of getting up and writing every day to get into it. And I'm just, that is propaganda I do not fall for. I love that feeling with Gilbert.

Jenna G Judith (03:54)
No.

Crystal (04:11)
Yes, yes. And if that works,

if that works for her, great. But you know what works for Lauren Graf, which is wild? She writes her first draft.

Cait (04:16)
Yeah.

Crystal (04:24)
erases it all or like throws it in the trash, writes her second draft from memory. Yes.

Cait (04:28)
my gosh.

Jenna G Judith (04:31)
What?

Cait (04:33)
That is a heart. That is a heart.

Jenna G Judith (04:33)
Whoa, I've never heard of that technique.

Crystal (04:35)
unhinged.

And I mean, she's great, like, but no one else should try that.

Cait (04:45)
That is

a completely... I've never heard that one before. I'm not a big fan of ⁓ writing sprints.

Crystal (04:50)
Yeah.

Jenna G Judith (04:56)
Mm-mm.

Cait (04:57)
Anybody else? Does it work for you?

Jenna G Judith (04:58)
Do if I have a problem to solve. it needs to be like a very intentional reason why I'm doing it. It's not just a repetition situation. It's very focused on I need to figure out the flow from this... like this part of the plot to the next one. Then that makes sense for me and my brain. Like otherwise I'm just like meh.

Cait (05:07)
Yeah.

Yeah. I say it because I can get it. just don't. It doesn't do a lot for me. I'm somebody who, like, every when I'm typing it out, I feel like every word needs to be perfect when I really just need to let it go and just throw up on the page. Like, I just need to vomit it out first and not think so much because I'm too thinking. ⁓

Jenna G Judith (05:48)
It's visceral, but yes.

Crystal (05:54)
I

was never a fan of that until I started doing my Stanford course and this is like my first semester in it. And for some of our writing exercises, she was like, free write, just set a timer for 15 minutes and free write. And I was like, I'm not gonna like this, I'm not gonna like this. It was kind of freeing.

Cait (06:15)
What?

Crystal (06:22)
to just be like, you know what, I'm just gonna type and I don't care if it like makes sense and is coherent. And one of the prompts was, ⁓ this is for a different, like this is for the project I'm working on for the course, which is my reverse Mamma Mia that I was talking to you about at WFWA. ⁓ And one of the prompts was write a letter from your character to you.

that starts with, dear author, here's what you don't know about me, has to start exactly like that.

And I was like, you know what? I know nothing about my love interest right now. So was like, I'm going to do it. So was like, here's what you don't know about me. Really, you don't know anything about me because you haven't bothered to put any thought into me yet. Isn't that interesting? Let's put a pin in that and discuss it later. And then just like from that, I was like, put a pin in it. That sounds very corporate.

Cait (07:03)
Okay.

You bitch!

Crystal (07:27)
So I guess I have a corporate background and ⁓ my voice is sounding very English in your head. So I guess I'm English. And I just free wrote like for 15 minutes to think what was it.

250, either 250 or 600 words, one of those. ⁓ This letter from my love interest and I came up with this like background that just came out of nowhere. And I was like, yeah. And I was like, you know, I would have agonized over this. I'm like, what should he be? Why is he in Italy? Why is he doing this? Like, how does he feel about it? I would have agonized over them for like,

Cait (07:55)
Yeah.

Jenna G Judith (07:56)
That is incredible.

Crystal (08:11)
days, if not weeks.

Jenna G Judith (08:13)
came pouring out of your fingers.

Crystal (08:15)
pouring

out of my fingers.

Cait (08:17)
I think with stuff like that too, it's that you have to be committed to knowing that this is going to be a process and that this is going to take a while. And you need to be, and I don't think when we talk about writing hacks, I don't think we're necessarily talking about things that are going to save you time. These are things that are going to take longer. This is going to make the process take longer, but it's going to make it better. It's going to make your writing better.

Crystal (08:35)
Good point.

Jenna G Judith (08:35)
No.

Cait (08:46)
You're not trying to cut corners. You're not trying to cut down on time. You are just really trying to get as deep as you can. And it sounds like that type of hack gets you so much specificity in what you're writing that it would really help for that. And the way that you look at it too, I think is really special that you looked at it in that way, saying, all right, I need to take these cues and truly listen to what's happening here. That's super cool.

Jenna G Judith (08:52)
No.

Crystal (09:15)
Yeah.

And it sounds like that very like author wanky thing of like, my characters are speaking to me. But like, you know, it's, do. They do.

Jenna G Judith (09:16)
Yeah.

It's like this shit happens, okay? Like,

we're all a little crazy. Like, we're not gonna try to deny these happenings.

Crystal (09:29)
Yeah.

No.

We have people in our head.

Jenna G Judith (09:38)
It's a little crowded up there.

Crystal (09:39)
Yeah.

Cait (09:40)
I never really looked at it like that until I read some characters that I were like, I wasn't sure if it wasn't a real person. It was almost like, I just did a post on social media about Ann Patchett because I think she is the best at this, but she writes things so specifically that I thought Tom Blake was about her.

Jenna G Judith (09:59)
Yeah.

Cait (10:02)
It was just the characters had so much specificity. was insane. And so I think that the hack is you need to do stuff like that to discover those things. They don't just show up one day on the page. ⁓

Jenna G Judith (10:14)
Yeah,

Crystal (10:16)
No, as

Jenna G Judith (10:16)
exactly.

do we need to like, just briefly talk about that audiobook of Tom Lake?

Cait (10:23)
I think I got it all out there on that post. It was really, really emotional.

Jenna G Judith (10:28)
Okay.

It was.

Crystal (10:30)
I

was looking up and Meryl Streep has been nominated at least twice for that Grammy, for the audiobook Grammy. She lost both times, I think once to like Michelle Obama and once to like Jimmy Carter. He's won four times.

Cait (10:37)
you

That doesn't

count. If you read your own story, it shouldn't count. It shouldn't count.

Crystal (10:48)
Right.

Agree.

Agree.

Jenna G Judith (10:53)
If you are the author reading your own work, no. That's a different

Cait (10:58)
Jenna, what's your ultimate hack?

Jenna G Judith (11:00)
I think my ultimate writing hack to dig deep and write better

I jump around. Like if I'm like feeling in a rut, I just jump to something that I'm passionate about within the story. Either like rewriting something or working on a new scene. if I'm getting stuck and my writing is like... ⁓ within where I'm at in this story, because I generally I write very like linearly. Like I don't... I don't jump around unless I am just feeling like...

garbage about what I'm So then I'll jump over to like the climax or I'll jump over to like how is this going to end because most of the time I don't figure out my endings until like they arrive and

If I write that new scene and it's standalone and it's nice, then I feel comfortable going back, solving the problem that I'm working on. Because for fun reference, I write Romantic-y. So it's very structured in the world building. And like the rules that I'm setting and making sure like

loopholes and plot holes and all that don't happen. So that's like, get hyper fixated on plot holes. I'm like, there will be no holes, zero. It will be a goddamn dam of concrete. Anyways. So yes, I will jump around because that goes against my nature of creativity.

Crystal (12:29)
Hahaha

Jenna G Judith (12:37)
I think that's the point of all of the writing hacks is that if it makes you uncomfortable in your own creativity, it's probably working.

Crystal (12:48)
I like that. that very I do something similar and I'll like skip around as well, especially if like for some reason when I'm driving, I do like the best ideas. I'll turn up. Yes. I don't know why. So I've started doing like, I'll turn on, I'll open up like a note and I'll turn on the voice to text and just it out. Cause you know, typing while driving is not a great thing.

Jenna G Judith (12:59)
Really?

Cait (13:00)
Yeah, I'm the same in

Crystal (13:15)
Um, I'll like skip around like, oh, this snippet of dialogue came to me or, like the scene that came to me and then right to that. But I also started doing, um, cause I will, I have ADHD I get bogged down in the details. I I'm going to set.

Jenna G Judith (13:15)
frowned upon in some states.

Crystal (13:34)
this like work I'm working on right now in Italy. I could spend Italy and trying to like pinpoint exactly where in Italy it's gonna be. And just

fall down a rabbit hole. And what I started allowing myself to do was just put like, brackets, name here, brackets, look up this detail later, brackets, figure out the technical detail later, and just move on.

Jenna G Judith (14:03)
See, that would make me really uncomfortable and I think it would actually work.

Because I like to solve as I go. But that would probably help me just like, just get it out. Just like...

Crystal (14:16)
And then that saves like the time that I'm sitting at the computer and I actually feel like writing and words are coming good and the time that I'm sitting at the computer and like, no words today, brain bad. Okay, let me go look up real estate in Italy. haha

Jenna G Judith (14:33)
Let me try to find my next dream of when I semi-retire and I can move there.

Crystal (14:38)
Yeah,

basically.

Jenna G Judith (14:39)
I like how you took that almost niche part of my own personality of like, love looking at real estate in other countries, and you just made it a very important part of your writing process.

Crystal (14:52)
It is!

Cait (14:53)
Yeah, I feel like you need to find the fun in it because it starts to get not fun so fast.

Jenna G Judith (14:58)
Yes, and I don't think a lot of people realize how the not fun makes the fun just you are elated when it occurs. And it's not that we're we like pun it. OK, we do kind of like punishing ourselves, but not in like a bad way, but more of we're seeking payoff in very grand manners. And without the garbage that we have to like trudge through, it doesn't happen.

Cait (15:27)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I think each hack is like, what are you trying to accomplish with this? like, are you trying to get the most detailed, the most realistic view of your character in Italy? You need to do the research and make it fun for yourself if that's what you enjoy doing.

for what I'm writing. like to visualize it very like a movie playing in my head while I'm writing it. I also really like writing dialogue and that's all I really like writing. So I spent, again, not a hack that's gonna save you a lot of time, but completely transformed the manuscript was that I wrote the entire thing as a screenplay.

Jenna G Judith (16:02)
Thank you. ⁓

Cait (16:13)
downloaded screenplay software and wrote it.

Crystal (16:17)
Final draft, what what?

Jenna G Judith (16:18)
Yay!

Cait (16:20)
Yep, yep, I just wrote it as if I was writing a screenplay and I didn't even think about it being a novel. just was like, what if this was a movie? I would literally write, cut to Cait, cut to Jake, you know, like, and be like daytime interior and just write in like, it made you focus on the dialogue way more in the character arcs than internalizations or

descriptions that much or like you are literally just focusing on like the beginning the middle of the end of the scenes whether the actions are in there whether things are getting accomplished whether the dialogue is real or not and it made me write so much faster though because i was like good dialogue i can do that that's like the best part internalizations i hate them

Jenna G Judith (17:02)
We can ⁓

Thank

Crystal (17:08)
I

think did we bond over this at WFWA as well? Cause I did the same. Like I used to primarily do like screenplay format and yeah. And then I switched to prose and I was like, God, I have to like write their thoughts. Ew.

Cait (17:11)
I'm sorry.

It's that word.

Jenna G Judith (17:26)
I love that stuff.

Cait (17:27)
I didn't know how much thought you had

to actually write to until people were like in critique groups, they were like, I need more internalization. And I was like, I have to write a thought after every dialogue tag. Like, this is so many thoughts. You guys are just picking this up.

Jenna G Judith (17:32)
So much thought.

Crystal (17:43)
No.

Like

I don't have that many thoughts.

Cait (17:47)
I just say shit.

Crystal (17:51)
Yeah!

Jenna G Judith (17:52)
way too many say shit moments that should be inside thoughts

Cait (17:57)
I feel like internalizations too when you have so many of it's like how much are we actually in real life thinking that much before we say anything? So for me it just felt so unnatural to write all of this and then I was like okay this might have been like a year sidetrack project that took me away from the actual manuscript but I was like maybe at the end of this I have a screenplay.

that probably wasn't very little. I'm not sending out my screen really, but I was like, at least I have a product. I have something to show for it. But I feel like hopefully if you read the book, maybe feel like it's a little bit cinematic. I hope that's what came across from that whole year.

Jenna G Judith (18:23)
Yeah?

Crystal (18:23)
Yeah.

I think

you should pitch it to agents as a two for one. Be like, I've got the book, I've already also got the screenplay for you.

Cait (18:47)
I said-

You know

when I finished like the first chapter, actually I when I finished like all of part one, I had my friends come over and they read it as a play. We just all sat in a circle and did like a read through of it and I got to hear everybody speak the dialogue out loud and stuff and so and then I could get like instant feedback.

Yeah.

Crystal (19:12)
That's

so cool.

Jenna G Judith (19:13)
Okay, first of all, that's like

so brave of you. And second of all, incredible friends for doing that.

Cait (19:16)
It was so fun.

They're all actors, but they I mean yeah It was so fun to just like have a party like we all had drinks and we just sat around and it was like a blast I don't know. I mean I have one but

Jenna G Judith (19:23)
I'm sorry.

Crystal (19:33)
I want to do this now. Because what a great proofreading past year. Because they're always like, read your book out loud to tell if you're missing words. It's like, I don't want to do that.

Cait (19:34)
Right?

Yeah, and like, it was more

just like hearing a play. was more like I would just read the stage direction. Anyway, so I like that hack for that book specifically, and it served this book.

Crystal (19:47)
Yeah. Love it.

Jenna G Judith (19:47)
Yeah.

So I really enjoy like painting the scene, like in like the words of like inserting your brain into scene around you and like depicting it all. what everyone's like, ew, chatty BT, ew, AI. So I like literally, I write it all out in like my nice like prose style of like what the scene is and then I put it

into Mid Journey or like some AI platform and see if it actually like checks out. And sometimes it's like way off. like, oh yeah, you know, robots can't get it all right. But most of the time I'm like, yeah, that's like, that's the vibe. That's the vibe I'm going for. And yeah.

Cait (20:43)
Wait, do you help us literally make a picture? Oh, that's interesting.

Jenna G Judith (20:49)
It may be frowned upon in some circles, but I really don't care because you have to feel the scene around you in so many parts of the book in order for it... like this scene is also a character in my head. ⁓

Cait (21:04)
Yeah,

if you're world building, yeah. I totally get that, you're making your own world. What the heck?

Crystal (21:05)
especially in Romantasy

Jenna G Judith (21:07)
Yeah!

Yeah.

Crystal (21:12)
you're not using that as like, this is going to be the book cover. Like, it's just a tool. It's just a resource for help propel your writing. very conflicted on AI, because I work in tech, so obviously, to work with AI during the yes, there's no ethical use of AI, because it's stealing other people's work.

Jenna G Judith (21:17)
hell no.

Crystal (21:36)
I acknowledge that, and it's like destroying the environment. I acknowledge that. It's also not going away.

Jenna G Judith (21:43)
No.

Cait (21:44)
And it's a tool that we have at our disposal to, it's supposed to make us all better. And if we're using it to say, like create this world for like, I don't know, you can use it to have a talk with your characters. Like you could, don't know, you can, I haven't really explored those type of hacks as in what type of exercises you could use to like stimulate your own writing and your own thoughts.

Jenna G Judith (22:00)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Cait (22:13)
with

Jenna G Judith (22:14)
So I use Enneagrams for my characters and when I am stuck on how they would react to something using like Claude or ChatGPT as almost like a hey how would an Enneagram 6 react to this type of like frustration point?

I'm like, well, that really wouldn't frustrate them because of X, Y, and Z, because I am not an Enneagram 6. I am a 1, and 1s are very different than 6s. So it's like a peek behind the curtain, like a little character assessment, helping craft the bullet points of the characters I find really helpful.

Cait (22:44)
So, right now.

Jenna G Judith (23:05)
I use it a lot in my regular jobs, in analyzing data and planning things. So I'm very comfortable with it. So I kind of know when it's a tool versus a piece of creativity. I'm like, I can't use you to write my book, but I can use you to help me plan some organized thoughts.

Cait (23:33)
Organizations

Jenna G Judith (23:34)
Because I will...

Cait (23:34)
are huge part of it. think like a hack

there is something to say too about how it could help you organize yourself because I am not an outliner.

Jenna G Judith (23:44)
spreadsheets.

Cait (23:45)
Not my hack.

Crystal (23:46)
I only am because I needed a Formula One season. So I was like, I need to make a season. Okay, what happens? That's the only book I've ever...

Cait (23:52)
we go.

Jenna G Judith (23:51)
⁓ yes!

if I use AI to quickly reference something that I could find in a book from the library or on Wikipedia.

It's simply a means of transcribing other information in a faster way.

Crystal (24:16)
Yeah, I feel very much the same way.

Jenna G Judith (24:17)
If

I would love to get like an agent or like a publisher someone's point of view on this are parts of it we can't control, which is really scary to think of like technology that we can't control. But you also can't control someone picking up another book and

like blatantly copying from it.

Crystal (24:44)
I'm writing a Formula One romance. I've been watching Formula One for 20 years. I don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of every Formula One race and every Formula One track. And so I came up with my own season. I looked at like the last three seasons and I was like, want this race. I want this race. I need this race to happen here. But then I was like, okay.

Cait (24:55)
Yeah.

Crystal (25:11)
Give me ideas for dramatic events that can happen at these races.

Jenna G Judith (25:16)
That's a helpful tool or a helpful moment for AI to step in.

Crystal (25:18)
Yeah.

Yeah. And it brought up like three different suggestions. It repeated a lot of suggestions. A lot of them I was like, I don't want to write that. But it was useful for just kind of being like, OK, yeah. So for the things I, the races I don't know, this could be helpful here. This could be a good story here. And then here we go. I'll go a level deeper. I've never been in a 54G crash.

Cait (25:44)
Yeah.

Crystal (25:46)
I don't know what that feels like.

Jenna G Judith (25:48)
No, and nor should you know what it feels.

Crystal (25:52)
Yeah,

I can't just like, call Colapinto. Yeah, I can't just like call colapinto and be like, yo, what did your accident feel like? You know? ⁓

Jenna G Judith (25:55)
if someone says you haven't written that accurately.

Right. Or like,

what does it feel like to be burned alive? Who knows? Sorry, I have very dark sense of humor.

Crystal (26:10)
⁓ gross.

No, ⁓ no, I mentioned Grosjean's crash multiple times in my book because it was wild.

Jenna G Judith (26:17)
Woo!

saw Grosjean and Kevin Magnussen drive at an Indy at Road America the year after Grosjean crashed when they were like both out of Haas. Yeah, it was great.

Crystal (26:34)
my god.

tell me what it might feel like to be a Formula 1 driver in a rollover accident. Tell me what it might look like to the audience, to the spectators. Did I take those word for word descriptions and put them in my book? Absolutely not.

Jenna G Judith (26:58)
Doop.

Crystal (26:59)
Did it help me build up the experience of my character going through a crash and did it help me dramatize that? Absolutely.

Jenna G Judith (27:08)
Yes.

is a perfect use case of why I think it shouldn't be, not frowned upon, but it shouldn't be like this hidden dirty little secret that some of us have.

Crystal (27:24)
Yeah, but it's,

it does. feels like I'm going to get canceled for admitting that. Yeah.

Jenna G Judith (27:30)
Yes! And especially

as like a day, like a new novelist, you're terrified of that, of like having someone cancel you before you've even gotten started.

Crystal (27:34)
Yep. Terrified.

Cait (27:41)
Yeah, it's quick. then like, if these are things that you could Google and do a deep dive of research into, or you could have it in three seconds, just tell you what it feels like to be in a crash or like what scientifically happens in a crash and all the things that are so helpful to, but that you could find out if you wanted to actually spend hours of time.

Crystal (27:41)
Yeah. Yeah.

Cait (28:06)
I'm so glad that none of our hacks today were like, I give myself one ⁓ and every time I hit 250 words.

Jenna G Judith (28:17)
I need a frickin' pint of ice cream to hit 250 words, are you kidding me? Some of these days lately I'm like, I have nothing. Nothing to give.

Cait (28:25)
Yeah, that was not enough. Yep.

Absolutely. If I'm not feeling it too, like I don't know about you and I think that this is, when people were asking Taylor Swift this question, I thought it was so legitimate, but it was like, when you're not sad, were you worried that you're so happy you're not gonna be able to create good music? Which we all know she's fine.

I personally think I do better when I feel like I need to express something. And so if I'm not feeling particularly emotional about something or I'm not going through something, I feel like I'm not really honest in whatever I'm writing or that it's not coming out in the most...

I don't know, truthful way.

Jenna G Judith (29:07)
gonna piggy

back on that for just a second because there needs to be big emotions for me. Like not... I don't need to be sad to write sad. If I'm really freaking sad, I can write anything. If I'm really freaking happy, I can write anything. I need to like...

Cait (29:15)
Yeah, exactly.

Mm-hmm.

Jenna G Judith (29:31)
If you think about like an emotional sphere, it needs to be like the outer loudness that needs to be present somewhere. I can't just be like calm, cool, collected. Have my shit together. I feel like pretty okay. It needs to be large. And then the largeness like kind of busts out and just like, you know, burst the button or burst the seam and then all the creativity comes pouring out.

Cait (29:59)
Exactly. Crystal, did you have something on that too?

Crystal (30:02)
I was just going to add my most productive writing day ever, which I think I got close to like 10K words, was Inauguration Day.

Jenna G Judith (30:12)
⁓ no!

Cait (30:13)
Yes.

Crystal (30:14)
because

I was writing the scene where a sexist recording is leaked about my main character. And I was like, ⁓ words are coming. Yeah.

Cait (30:20)
Very good.

Jenna G Judith (30:22)
Fired up man.

Cait (30:27)
Yeah,

that'll do it. That'll do it.

Jenna G Judith (30:29)
Ooh, that like gave me chills.

Crystal (30:31)
Yeah.

Cait (30:34)
Yeah, I think if you're not feeling that motivation of like, I gotta get something on the page, it's really hard to sit down and do it and I think these are the things that might, they might help you. ⁓

Jenna G Judith (30:49)
So are you telling me I have to like back off on the Zoloft? Maybe?

Cait (30:52)
Do not stop taking the antidepressants.

Maybe just go listen to some Bon Iver.

Listen to Bon Ivera, get in the zone. Do what you have to do to get back to, I think that in acting there's like this thing called emotional recall where you just try to get into a zone that you have been in before. Not necessarily that you are in now. I think I do use that a lot to try to get back into there. like music will help that. Yeah, you're just recalling.

Jenna G Judith (31:14)
Ooh.

Cait (31:28)
Yeah, you just try to bring yourself back to that point As painful as that might be but I'm curious if anybody else has ever tried that so if you have like please leave a comment ⁓ on this video also What are your really unhinged hacks? We want to know please

Jenna G Judith (31:27)
to try that.

Cait (31:47)
We will try them. We will try anything at points, I think, to get the words on the page. So please let us know your very unhinged hacks that you use. Please don't let them be &Ms as ⁓ a treat and reward for yourself, but anything else we are willing to try.

Jenna G Judith (32:05)
And please share your thoughts on the write everyday advice because I feel like there's two very distinct camps of like hell no versus it works for me.

I would love to know what those people are like. Maybe they're like ridiculous optimists and... ⁓ shit, yeah. ⁓

Cait (32:21)
I'm

Crystal (32:25)
independently wealthy.

Cait (32:28)
Katherine Matthews, I know you're out there and I know that you, you are going to come and tell this.

Jenna G Judith (32:28)
Yeah. huh.

Cait (32:34)
a 5 a.m. writing club every day and what she produces is incredible. So it's working Catherine. Please keep doing it.

Jenna G Judith (32:40)
This is true.

Maybe when my kids stop waking up at 5 AM.

Cait (32:46)
Yeah, exactly. Or interrupting every single thing that we do.

Jenna G Judith (32:52)
This is

Crystal, you are welcome back anytime.

Cait (32:55)
Thank you so much, Crystal, for being here today and for bringing the F1... And for Judith, ⁓ Janet, for Judith. my God, I'm... Thank you. Thank you so much, Crystal, for being here today and bringing all that F1 stuff in for Jenna because this is a hole that I could not fill for her.

Jenna G Judith (32:59)
Such a joy.

It's okay. It's okay.

Cait (33:22)
and preparing your hacks. Again, please let us know what your hacks are because I am now realizing there are way more out there than I even thought there were. ⁓ So let's share some more. Let's do another episode of hacks because I feel like we could keep talking about this forever. yeah, thanks again for coming on. Cheers.

Jenna G Judith (33:36)
Mm-hmm.

Crystal (33:38)
so many.

So many, so many hacks.

Thank you.

Jenna G Judith (33:48)
Cheers! Cheers! End

of our drinks.