Your Transformation Station - 7. Writing Tips & Creative Transformation with Gary Wrenn

Episode Date: March 5, 2020

Join Greg Favazza and author Gary Wrenn as they discuss more than just his metamorphosis and the methods of storywriting. This episode dives into the emotional, creative, and psychological layers behind writing — and what it takes to evolve as both a storyteller and a human being. Episode Description: Writing isn’t just technique. It’s transformation. In this episode, Greg Favazza sits down with author Gary Wrenn to explore the deeper side of creativity — the identity shifts, the discipline, and the internal battles that shape a writer’s voice. Gary shares his best insights on: – How personal transformation fuels creative work – The habits that make writing consistent and sustainable – Why storytelling is more psychology than mechanics – How to overcome fear, doubt, and the blank page – The difference between writing for yourself and writing for others – What metamorphosis really looks like in a writer’s life This conversation blends humor, honesty, and practical advice for anyone who wants to write — or anyone who’s in the middle of their own transformation. Connect with Gregory: Website: https://www.ytsthepodcast.com Apple Podcasts: https://www.ytsthepodcast.com/apple Spotify: https://www.ytsthepodcast.com/spotify YouTube: https://www.ytsthepodcast.com/youtube RSS: https://www.ytsthepodcast.com/rss Follow on Social: Facebook: https://www.ytsthepodcast.com/facebook Instagram: https://www.ytsthepodcast.com/instagram TikTok: https://www.ytsthepodcast.com/tiktok Twitter/X: https://www.ytsthepodcast.com/x Pinterest: https://www.ytsthepodcast.com/pinterest LinkedIn: https://www.ytsthepodcast.com/linkedin Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to your transformation station. Socrates once wrote, The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new. It's time to rediscover your true identity and purpose on this planet. Together, we can transform our community one topic at a time. From groundbreaking performers, making their elixir your dose of reality. your transformation arc.

This is your transformation station. And this is your host, Greg Favaza. Something of my mom told me a long time ago, she said, there's only two things. And I took it for granted when I was younger. And because, you know, when I was growing up, it was all about working and getting girls and party in my asses off. And she always said, you know, no matter what you do,

find someone to love and live each day like it's your last. I know that sounds like country lyrics or something. But going back to that, I mean, one thing I've learned after all this, the writing and the traveling and living in different cities and you can love what you do and love yourself. So I always tell people if you don't love it, no matter what it is, a material good, a person, or some aspect about you. If you don't love it, get rid of it. It's that simple. Even if you start this writing journey, you know, it's difficult. Like I said, people don't realize how much time and effort it takes.

and that writing is only 10% of the actual journey of getting a book out, if even 10%. If you don't love it, you know, get rid of it. There is something else out there that will make you happy. That was today's guest. Welcome back. This is your transformation podcast. And I am your host, Greg Favaza. Today is episode five.

This episode covers a roller coaster of emotions. as Gary and I talk about not only his transformation process, but also his transformation and his writing process and the inspiration behind the cover. What happens after the publishing phase? I just would like to say thank you for joining me again this week. If you have any feedback, share a note in the comments section below. Please leave an honest review for your transformation podcast.

Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and kindly appreciated. If you are new to the show, hit the subscribe button. Your Transformation Podcast is enabling those to join our community, and as a commune, we can take the first step together down the path of uncertainty. Our show strives to make an impact in our success through reliable broadcast content and resources. As a community, we will continue to transform into our desired selves, right here with me. Your host, Greg Favaza on your transformation podcast. Now let's get to the show.

Well, Gary, I really appreciate you coming on to your transformation podcast. How you doing today? I'm great, man. Thanks for having me. I'm very excited to talk with you. Let's jump right into this and talk about how you became who you are today. All right. I'm from San Antonio, Texas.

And I guess my whole life, my mom said when I was first asked as a kid, like, what do you want to be? And everyone around was fire, fire, an astronaut and all those, you know, cliche answers. I said it. I just want to make movies. So I was always prone to storytelling in general. As a kid, I used to make up crazy stories. I used to write them out like storyboards as early as, you know, five.

And I think even having kids watching the way that they tell stories, I thought it was kind of interesting that I was basically making like little comic books already from the start. Growing up, yeah, I was always. more in tune with writing papers for English that I was, you know, math and world history and all that stuff. It wasn't until I have like a practical use to write something where it's all started to come together. It was actually, I was a waiter and a bartender for several years and they noticed this, uh, that my tip percentage was the highest of my restaurant. So we've got a kind of a small company. It was only six restaurants. So we have this very family feel. We all knew the CEO like a a father figure and he said hey you should um teat how how are you making such good tips i had i had a

couple tips and everything i wrote 20 tips for tips that's what he wanted me to do and he wanted me to go to each store and kind of do a presentation at the meeting for that store but before you do it i had 99 tips and i thought you know what i've always been a list maker i've always been a storyboarder i've done all these things let me let me just write this book and try it out 99 tips for how to make more money in the restaurant industry um and that's kind of spiraled into a whole book career. That's really interesting. Did you always wanted to write a book in the beginning?

Yeah, I think growing up, I read a lot of, I think Arnl Stein was probably before I could understand the big leagues, you know, like Stephen King and Michael Crichton, those are a little heavy for even middle schoolers, I would say. The whole nonfiction thing, that came later. So I always wanted to be a storyteller. I was always prone to horror, obviously, because I read a lot of Arnold Stein. Even before you get goosebumps, I'm 39. years old. Before that, he did a lot of, like, murder mysteries, I guess you could call him. And, you know,

I read so many of them. I knew the killer was by the second chapter. You know what I mean? But I still read them all. They were great. I think he's still, to this day, is the biggest. He's written more books than anyone ever. If we can just take a step back and just introduce, you've written more than one book, if you would like to share that with us. Absolutely. So the first one I was writing, I used to work at Disney, and I had a lot of experience. I went on the college program. The way I found out about the college program was an article in Radar Magazine, which was kind of like an offshoot of Maxim. And they said that for college students, this was this hedonistic society that you could go to. And even though you're working in a theme park, you get college credit.

And it was the second easiest place, like biggest place to party and get laid and all this stuff. So of course, I got to go to that. Yeah. So I wanted to write my two favorite things, horror and my experiences with Disney. I'm huge in the theme parks and Disney and all. that. So I was writing this book and it was called Tales from the Park Side. I was kind of doing a play on Tales from the Dark Side. I started writing this book in 2005, which is right when I left at Disney.

Life happened. I was always working. I went to film school. I got married to the wrong person, the first trial run. So that book got published in 2015. It took me 10 years to write this thing. I was going to go into this later. I was also battling with alcoholism and a few things like that. That first book took forever. I've since become sober and now I've published one book a year consistently. And this year I've got three coming out. At some point, I wanted to get some writing advice for our listeners who are writers. Yeah, absolutely.

So the Tales from the Parkside was the first one. I started writing fiction and then, you know, how I learned how to self-publish and everything. I learned from several authors and podcasts, which I'll mention some of those later. You hear this a lot. People start to become fiction writers. And then it's a very organic process, not just the way. your books flow out of you, but finding out what you're actually good at writing. So now I found that basically a nonfiction writer. And if you had told my younger self that, it would have

screamed and ran out of the room, throw my G.I. Joe's at you or something. But so it's kind of a mix. So Tales from the Parkside came out, got horrible reviews. I felt like 10 years was enough. I needed to get this book out now. So I kind of rushed it, did a book signing. A lot of people showed up. We had a live band. Sought a bunch of paperbacks on that first day. Later, I'm going to talk about everything I learned from writing that first book. Constructive criticism is a must. I've learned several things from that writing process. So the next one that came out was the 99 tips for how to make more money in a restaurant. And that did very well. And I think my CEO, he actually ended up buying a copy for everybody in the company. So that started selling.

It actually got me the job that I have now. I'm a flight attendant. It's my dream job. I walked in that interview. I said, I wrote the book on customer service. They said, what did you mean? I gave it to them. They loved it. They hired me. That's the reason. They wrote me a letter when I graduated from in-flight training and they said that was the reason. So I thought back, you know what? I am a list writer. What else do I know about? So I wanted to start a series that was kind of like 99 tips about whatever I know about. So the next one that came out was 99 tips for Disney World based on me working there and going there with my family and friends. That one did pretty well. That one's a little tough because you have to update it constantly. So for me, that one was a

one I wanted to put all my creative efforts into. I took the negative reviews from Tales from the Parkside. And what I wanted to do with that book was create a book series kind of like because of my love of Stephen King where it was his whole universe. And the book even started off with all these things. You wanted to study the maps and the lingo and all this. But I found out that nowadays, with however much is out there, people don't really like books that take a month to read anymore.

I mean, it's the same thing you're sitting down. you know, we spend more time going through and making our cues on Netflix, just looking at, you spend more hours doing that than actually watching anything. Yeah. So the attention span is, I mean, everyone pretty much knows this already. So what I learned from that experience was I said, I kind of sarcastically wrote a book. I had this idea about Cupid being evil and creating a dating app where he could capture people's souls and have them kind of duke it out for love. And I wrote it in 18 days compared to 10 years on my first book, doing everything that people said was wrong with that first book. So it was kind of like a sarcastic book.

And that turned out to be what people wanted. It's short. You can read it in two hours. It's technically a novella. It was kind of culmination of all these other things that I loved. And I kind of pieced together from other stories. It became its own thing. So this is how it was an organic process.

And people love that book. God help me. I hope that's not the book. I'm remembered if I died today. Hey, Gary, hang on a second. Did you find it difficult to write about characters that are the opposite sex? Oh, yeah. Even in nonfiction, I take multiple people and kind of combine them.

It's kind of the same way you would write a character and a movie, even though it's based on one person, even if it's not, I kind of combine them with all these characteristics of other people to kind of make a more unique person. I don't know how it was to say it, but it seems like opposite sex, is always hard because just in my experience, family, friends, my wife, they read it, and they're always picturing a specific person that it reminds them of. It is just something to keep in mind as you're writing the opposite sex. But I do read other books from other authors about how to write stuff like that. In between every book, I try to harness another part of my craft.

So there is a book on how to deal, how to write better dialogue. My next question for you is you've got the negative and positive reviews from your first book. How did you deal with those? All right. So I do read all my reviews. Some people, you get, you get a lot of different people who say, oh, no, only read the good ones. And that doesn't help. Opinions don't really hurt. I mean, some are helpful. Like I said, if I hadn't had bad reviews, I wouldn't have harnessed my craft into the way I write on my fiction now. Also, that first book Tales from the Parkside, I've since I'm branched off into a three-book trilogy that's going to be published here. and, you know, if I hadn't read those reviews, I would have just gone with the whole, oh, people just don't understand it. And good reviews help too. The thing is, when you first set out, you'll hear this from a lot of different authors. The only people who are going to be buying your book are your friends and family. You think they're really going to tell you what they really thought?

They aren't. Even good reviews. Some of them are just saying, I liked it. And that's as simple as people get. Not everyone's a critic. Not everyone's a reviewer. But I think reading both sides, yeah, you have to be up for constructive criticism. a lot of people who aren't people with inflated egos that I know anything that kind of strikes that ego, they just shut down, they give up. And that's not the way to look at these things.

Do you think that's the biggest problem in the writing industry is having an inflated ego? Not the biggest, but like I said, it would make it more difficult. Okay. Let's jump back to you were on your second book. Is that correct with the theme part? The Dark Park Squad is a book trilogy I'm going to be coming out with. It takes that tales from the park side. I kind of, I guess you can say I rewrote it. But let me tell you, tales from the park side is so, so bad.

And I love that about it. Not only did I say I rushed it, even though it was 10 years of writing, the typos and just everything I still had to learn. Plus, the technology of writing and self-publishing yourself is constantly changing. But I will never take that book off the market. I think it's important to see your, you know, the way that you're coming up because writing is like anything. You've got to put your 10,000 hours in. It's muscle memory. It's practicing.

It's writing every day. Shoot, I haven't taken a day off from writing in probably five years. And that's an interesting thing too because some days you think you're writing really well. Some days you think you're writing really bad. But once that draft is done and you're going through, you can't. can't really tell which ones were the good and the bad, how consistent and how better your writing gets every day. Let's talk about that.

How does your day consist of your writing process? All right. So I've got my writing process in general for every book and then like my daily ritual. For me, I was a restaurant employee and bartender for years. So I was a night owl. I did change. Now I'm an a in person. And I'm, it's kind of funny.

First thing I do in the water, I wake up, I stretch. I drink my first bottle of water for the day. And then I exercise for an hour and write for an hour. Depending on my energy level when I wake up, that order may change. But I usually like to write first. And when I say write, I'm talking, it's early in the morning. Family's still asleep. No social media.

No phone at all. I just set a timer. Don't even look at the computer screen. And you write. This isn't the time to edit or anything. This is pure writing. You know, you'll hear things like throw up on the page and just get it out. But it's true. So one hour of actual writing. And then if you're an editor or writer, you work on computers all the time. You know that you can get this, like, cracked out feeling or it's just because you're constantly staring at the computer screens. So I just like to exercise after that. It clears your head, gets you ready for the day. And then by the time I've started my actual day, I've already got my writing done, which was the mind exercises. I've got my physical activity, which will help me live longer to continue writing. And then I go about my day.

social media, you know, watching movies, reading. Of course, I have a family. That's all part of the rest of the day. But I feel like as long as you have that part knocked out in the morning, you feel great. Let's look at how many words you usually get out on a day's worth of writing? Now, that's going to be different for everybody. Now, you talked about a writing process. And so there's two kinds of writers.

You know, there's people who write by the seat of their pants, I think is what they say, which is, you know, you just go and it comes as if you're writing fiction, it's, you're writing the story. as you go. It's coming to you right then and there. And then there's people who organize. And people go to war about these two different ways. But like I said, you got to find what works for you. So for me, by the way, I do use Scrivener. It's writing software costs, I think, 40 bucks and then you own it forever, great for organizing. Yeah, I'll definitely leap that in the show notes. Since I'm doing mostly these lists, like my nonfiction books are really, which is 99 lessons learned from my customer service adventures. My book getting published by Theme Park Press is my 99 memories of

the Walt Disney World College program, and I'm writing a book about sobriety, which is 99 reasons to stay sober. So for me, the organization is very simply writing out what those 99 things are in Scrivener, and then I have a note section, a research section, and then I basically outline the whole thing, and then when I can write, I just go in and fill in the actual book. So for me, organization is key. After I finished a rough draft, I subscribe to Grammarly. And I'm And I don't know, 150 bucks a year or something. And it's very good. That has shaped me.

You know, I had my editor told me, you should really do this. And I've even noticed my first book, you know, she gave me back 3,000 edits to fix. After I've used Gremling on this last book, there was only a couple hundred. So it has actually helped me a lot as a writer. And then after that, you know, there's three, there's lots you have to do. You still got to do your editor, your book formatting, find something. I'm going to do a book cover, designed the e-book, design the paperback. And we'll go into some of that, I guess, here in a little bit.

But that's kind of my process. So organization for me is 100%. Now, in that very point, if you don't feel like you have a strong foundation of organization, do you believe in the possibility in Writers Block? I haven't really experienced Writers Block because of the organization, which is why I'm a real big advocate for writing your book. I've even heard of people using index cards. So if you have your ideas or chapters on an index card and you have heard that.

That's what Scrivener is. It helps you organize all those into a certain order. And if I do, if I did get any kind of writer's block, I get inspiration for movies. So let's say for my fiction, I like to do something else to focus on. So if I'm writing Dark Park Squad and I'm on the second book and I'm just, I'm not, I don't know what's going on. this one or something, I would say, okay, I need to study something. So I would study the story beats, let's say, of a movie like Die Hard if I'm writing a thriller. So that makes sense. And by concentrating on something else, it's kind of fun, you're looking into that story and kind of

the beats of it. And that kind of helps your brain start formulating ideas as well. You kind of carry the emotion from one to another. Yeah. I would say that something, You know, that's just an example of some kind of activity where you can focus on somebody else's creative juices and kind of see if they morph on to your creative juices starting to flow. Okay. Works for me. Yeah. Very interesting. You never would have thought that, yeah.

Or pick up a book, you know, and read one of your favorite books and start not just enjoying it, but looking at the actual writing of it, you know. I've probably read Jurassic Parks, one of my favorite books. I've probably read it seven, eight times in the past decade. But we're reading it as a kid, then enjoying the movies, and then now reading it as an author. It's a whole different book to me. That makes sense. And I start to wonder how did he approach the scientific parts of it and how did he structure his book? Did he write by the seat of his pants?

What are the story beats there? Why is there an action sequence to start the book? And then they're not another one until halfway through. And those things would help you. I think overcome writers block. But like I said, everyone writes differently. Those are just ideas. Yeah, no, those are very good ideas.

Let's talk about your process that you overcame. Because you tell me you wrote about 99 days of some variety. Is that correct? That's the book I'm writing right now. Oh, okay. Are we allowed to talk about it? Yeah, so I quit drinking on April 1st, 2016, almost four years ago. big thing in my life. I started speaking at AA meetings recently, and I was recording myself with my

voice recorder on my iPhone, and I have this thing where when I speak, when I do public announcements on the plane, any type of public speaking, it's kind of like an out-of-body experience. My body kind of takes over, and I don't really realize what I'm saying. I don't know how I was to explain it. So I listened to myself, and I said, you know, some of these speeches are actually kind of helpful. And of course, even though I haven't completed all the steps of AA, one of them is, you know, you have to give more than you get in life. You have to realize that you can give and help others. So if I can help anybody overcome such a sickness that I had, and I even had friends that didn't make it out of the addiction and have unfortunately passed. So this book might be a huge

trajectory change in my career path. I do want to possibly, you know, give this one out for donations, give it for free. But the writing process itself, once again, I have 99 stories and I structure straight story the same. So I hit him with an eye-opening statement, tell a story. Everyone at AA or whoever's reading the book kind of laughs. They all know an alcoholic. They all know someone that can relate to all the craziness of being young. And then at the end, I say a reason I like to stay sober based on that story. So by the end of it, hopefully this can help people. 99 reasons I like to stay sober. If you ever thinking, what can I do? I read a lot of sobriety books. For me, they help,

AA meetings help. And it's just, what made you want to quit drinking at April 2016? I know that's a pretty deep question. It really is. You know, what I say in the book is, just to keep it simple,

health, wealth and stealth. That's it, baby. So I won't want to live longer. I wasn't really, you know, you always have those people.

Why can't you just have one dream? Well, I just, I can't. You know, wealth, obviously saving a ton of money. I think even with free drinks from work and knowing bartenders,

I was still spending $10,000 to $12,000 a year on nicotine and drinking. So that kind of adds up over four years. And stealth is the fact that I can drive in the middle of the night and not have to worry about getting pulled over. I can leave a party whenever I want. So that's what I like to make the main reason I quit were those three things. But there's a much deeper context to that. And it took me several years and several attempts at quitting and rehab and AHA to Philly finally realized kick this thing. People are always asked as a writer, how do you find time to write?

And I was telling you have to give up something. That's all there is to it. So for me, giving up drugs, drinking and nicotine, obviously frees up quite a bit of time. But I also had to cut out, you know, TV shows. The one author that really got me into looking at self-publishing and becoming an author was Joanna Penn. And she's always said from day one that her and her husband got rid of TVs altogether. And she's like, obviously that's not for everybody. But she spit out 14 books over the next three years.

And exchanging one habit for another habit. Yeah. So like I said, it's for everybody. I still watch. I read books every day. And I watch, I try to watch every movie in the theater that comes out. That's two hours, but cutting out for me, obviously drinking. I mean, that's six to 12 hours, depending on how crazy you go at it, that you're just pausing your life.

Cigarette breaks, obviously. And then, of course, with technology, you can write anywhere and everywhere. One of the books I always recommend people is the 15-minute writer, and it teaches you that you have a minimum of 15 minutes a day. I use a note app on my phone. Right now, I've probably have a book written on that thing, copy and paste it in the script, and or later. Is that a book that you're constantly going back to? for just referencing. That's just what I recommend for people

because it kind of shows you how those little things add up. I mean, everybody writes a word count differently. I know we had asked that earlier. I strive between 2,500 and 5,000 words a day, hit 90% of the time in that one hour of writing in the morning. If you want any kind of authors to kind of follow their books, Joanna Penn is who got me started on all this

back in 2012. She was the one to help me realize you have to want to be a writer. She's got a podcast you can also listen to, The Creative Podcast. The Creative Pen is what it's called. So her last name is P-E-N-N. The Creative Pen is her podcast. Raina Hall, James Scott Bell, Jennifer Blanchard, and David Gockren. Those are the five that have really shown me, everything I've learned started with them.

I'll link those in the show notes. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And then I want to have a list of the podcast. that helped you. Sure. The Transformation podcast is a really good one. I appreciate you sharing that with us. What's the biggest challenge from leaving the customer service industry,

but technically you didn't leave to writing more. I can't even count now how many books you're writing on. Yeah, right now I've got six fiction books plotted out. I'm working with Theme Park Press to edit party to Pixie Dust, which is the Disney Party Memory. And then I'm writing this variety book and marketing really. Of course, I work in the airport. Everything you see on the news that holds a Canada let however millions of other things happen every day.

But I like to look at everything like a story. Everything, just a simple sentence from somebody I can now look at and kind of put it in context of a story. That's kind of where I get my ideas. Not just the fact I've read thousands of books, seen thousands of movies, but I'll see something simple waiting in line to get a Starbucks. and go, oh my gosh, this is a funny idea. What if there was a story like this? And I say the one sentence, and then I tell that one sentence to somebody, they go, oh, that's kind of a cool idea.

That's enough for me to go, okay. And then I write a one-page treatment of a story. That one page would be how you describe an entire movie. That's kind of where I get my ideas, not just the fact I've read thousands of books, seeing thousands of movies, but I'll see something simple waiting in line to get a Starbucks. and go, oh my gosh, this is a funny idea. What if there was a story like this? And I say the one sentence, and then I tell that one sentence to somebody, they go,

oh, that's kind of a cool idea. That's enough for me to go, okay. And then I write a one-page treatment of a story. That one page would be how you describe an entire movie, you know? And then if that works, then I start outlining it. So little things, give me ideas. And it also makes my job more fun because I feel like I'm more alert. I'm looking for things that are funny.

looking for stories that tell. I'm looking for them to say really funny slash dumb things or really profound things that can put you in a good mood and kind of give you an optimistic look at customer service. So I think it comes hand in hand for me. Even when I wrote really, I had, you know, I'd worked at a movie theater. I'd worked at Disney. I had worked at all these different restaurants done valet in downtown Austin. I worked at USA for a few years. I had so many stories to tell all the prank wars at the restaurant, but it felt like that wasn't enough. It didn't have enough weight to it to just tell these stories. So I read a whole bunch of customer service books, and they were a lot of, you know, shit talking, a lot of, I hate people, I hate customer service. This is why.

And one thing I always talk about is if you're going to be a nonfiction writer, you have to find your niche. You really do. If you've ever walked in a bookstore, you know what I'm talking about. Where does your book fit in all of this madness? And who is going to that section to buy your book? So for me, I discovered a niche of maybe people don't want just the negative stuff. Or maybe they do. I don't know, but I took a risk. And so my book is very optimistic.

It's very hopeful. People see the title, really? And they think it's a sarcastic approach, but it's not. It's very optimistic. And then I decided to put out of every story, what did that teach me? If someone was going into customer service, what can I tell them? I've got 20 years of experience to teach. So every story had a lesson I've learned, put some, you know, but it's also, it's kind of funny.

I mean, how I learned about some things, you know. Yes. So that's a way that when I talked earlier about it being an organic process. I mean, it doesn't get more organic than that. I'm usually, that is how I'm taking other people's reactions, the way they perceive the world, what they do, what they say, and turning it into creativity. We hit a lot of questions that I had for you. What's one thing you would give up right now to become an even better writer tomorrow?

I, being a listmaker, I have a list of all the shows I want to see on Amazon Prime, Hulu, Disney Plus, and Netflix. Not just shows that are recommended to me, but shows that I kind of look up. And I know this is going to sound weird, but one way I've cut out, I'm trying to cut out the watching of all these TV shows is I kind of read the recaps. for me that works no but it saves so much time it's tough but you do have to make a sacrifice somewhere watch Game of Thrones and as soon as I started watching it everyone started talking mad shit about it because it was the final season

and I did finish it all and I thought it was just fine but like I said I give myself two hours a day which is usually the length of a movie but I would say before I was a writer you know I would watch at least five hours of stuff every day So that's three hours a day when I spend at least an hour writing. That gives me two hours to free up learning other aspects of this craft, of this crazy industry of publishing and self-publishing.

And that adds up over time. Let's go back a little bit. Do you want each book to stand for its own or are you trying to build a body of work with the connections between each one of them? That's a great question. Now when I first started, well, when people ask me once again about, actual sales. Like my definition is, as we've already talked about, I'm successful with what I want to do with my career already. But I always joked and say, you know, I don't sell a lot of

books because all my books are about different things. And it's true. Somebody who buys really is not going to buy a book about Disney World and how to make tips at a restaurant and two horror books. So you got J.K. Rowling, who's exclusively, you know, stayed in the magical world. It is the biggest author of all time. And obviously Stephen King, they stick to a certain genre. So I write my books to stand on their own, but I get the difference now. So what I have done recently is notice that instead of them all being combined, I have a certain brand. So I thought, what were the three things that all my books have in common? And that can kind of be who I am as an author.

All my books are lists. They're 99 tips for this, 99 tips for Disney, 90 lessons learned, 99. So obviously that's my brand. I like the fact I write lists. I'll use that in social media. So the list, all my books have an optimistic and hopeful tone, whether they're horror or about customer service or sobriety. And they're all, because of that, those two things, they're unique ways of telling stories.

So when you look at my author branding, those three items, all my books are connected in that way. And then also just for fun, all the next, I have two book trilogies coming out that are fiction, and those are kind of all connected. So the two different ways to answer that. But I really wanted to share about the author brand and kind of identifying that, yeah, although all my books are completely different right now, they are kind of the same when you're looking at me as an author. Let's talk about your personal heroes. Why do you hold them to such high regard?

Let's see. We're talking mentors, somebody. Well, Joanna Penn as an author, definitely has helped me quite a bit, even though. I haven't met her yet. Storyteller-wise, I've always been fond of Tim Burton and Steven Spielberg as filmmakers and Quentin Tarantino when it comes to stories and dialogue. Authors, my top three are probably Kurt Barnaget and Stephen King and I don't know how to say his name.

The guy who wrote Fight Club, Chuck Fallonick, I think it is. By the way, all three of them have written phenomenal books about writing. on writing by Stephen King Consider this by Chuck Falladick and then Pity the Reader was a book that Kurt Vonnegut wrote about writing. Got to read all three of those if you want to be writer in any way. I was going to say one thing about

social media is a blessing and a curse as everyone knows, but when it comes to authors, I don't think social media is really to be used for selling. You can have an Instagram page for your writing and then Instagram page for your person. I have Gary Ren books as a, Facebook page and then I've got, you know, my Facebook.

I always thought it was interesting about writers is those three writers, of course, Kervonaget wouldn't count, but I don't follow them on social media. So I've always heard people say like, nobody cares about writers. And once you understand this, your career will go so much smoother. Now, do you view writing as a kind of spiritual process? Is that something we can go into? Absolutely. You know, you have to believe in a higher power for sobriety,

whether that means for you. But you have to believe that life's not just a bunch of coincidences. I mean, we are all connected. And storytelling transcends us. It binds us. I mean, even just looking at the old caveman drawings, you know, they're very simple and very, but we still look at those. We still make stories from those.

And spirituality, yes, absolutely. What was the most important thing you've learned in your life? And what was your life before learning it? And what was your life after learning it? One thing my mom taught me when I was younger. And it might sound cliche or like country lyrics. But she always said, you know, you have to find some of the love and live each day like it's your last. When you're young and all you care about is party and getting girls and doing the best you can with the responsibilities financially and, you know, school and work and all that.

But you really do have to love yourself, love what you do. When I was at the height of my alcoholism and in a very depressed and suicidal state and I went to rehab, one thing I learned is that it wasn't about the partying. It was that I wasn't happy. I wasn't getting along with my wife at the time. I hated my job. So once I cleaned house and got rid of those things, I became happy. I realized I didn't need the alcohol anymore. and now that I've got everything going for me,

my main thing that's how people is, if you don't love something, get rid of it. Life is way too short for that. You've got to be, you got to love what you do, love yourself. Even if you start this author journey, most people don't realize that writing a book is literally 5% to 10% of what it takes

to actually get a book out into the world. And they find out that it's not worth it because they haven't written their definition of success, That's whatever reason it is. If you don't love it, get on with it. There's going to be other things out there. So I was going to give just some basic things that I've learned in this whole journey. So at this point, I'm writing 15 books.

I have five self-published. My sixth one is being published by Think Park Press. And then the rest of them are in the future. They're already outlines. I try to write one book a year. It started out with Tales from the Park Side, took 10 years. If I could go back and tell my younger self some things about this process, one, do not rush it.

When your book is out in the world, it is out in the world forever. It is so shockingly and funny, just awful, my first book. And I love that about it. And it did help. But I would go back and tell myself, don't rush it, man. It's been 10 years, but it's just not ready yet. Also, be prepared to constantly be learning. It's not just learning the Scrivener and that there's three different types of editors

and learning how to use grammarly and looking how to do book formatting and how important book covers are and then how to work with Kindle Direct Publishing, which is who do you use for Amazon and what Kindle Unlimited is and how to create your own company so that you can do your taxes properly and track your sales. All the analytics should you use iTunes? Cobo and Nook, I can go all day about all the things that you can learn. Of course, traditional publishers will do all that for you if they select your book. Of course, then you make a small percentage of what they actually get back.

So constantly learning. You have to want that. Obviously, you need that. So for right now, I've got a book formatter. I have somebody who does my designs and I've got an editing team, the two people, that I use for developmental editing, for creative content editing, and then, of course, the actual typos and stuff like that. It's hard to get reviews.

That's a huge thing to understand. I mean, even now, I've sold thousands of copies of really, and there's only three reviews on Amazon. And there's books on how to do that. There's so many things I wanted to still learn about the giveaways that we talk about promotional things, how to get reviews. I want to create a podcast someday. You know, some people swear by email list.

And even now, I've got people who really like Tales from the Parkside. And I run into them and say, they said, oh, I still like that book. And I said, oh, cool. No, no, number six is coming out. And they said, what? Why do you tell me? Because I didn't start an email list. And so people, you know, you'll see that.

People swear by those. Those are people who want to know when your books are coming out. And that, you know, eventually, you've got hundreds, thousands of people on an email list. Of course, you can predict kind of your sales. point. A website, of course. I use Amazon and they create an author page for you, but of course they take a percentage of everything. Or for me, looking into building a website and selling actual books myself, shipping them, signing them for people, having people order them directly and start like an actual business. I haven't explored LinkedIn. Of course, I'm looking to do audio books of all

my books, creating newsletters, maybe blogging. So that constant learning and the, uh, and the reviews, that's another one. Another thing to know is that it's hard to sell your first book. You think, I thought tell us from the park side was going to be huge, uh, because we did a book signing and I had social media, uh, but no, and you'll read this from a lot of those books I recommend it and we'll put in those notes. Friends and family will buy your first book. The rest is on you. So the most important thing I need to tell new authors and myself as a younger person is you have to have a definition of success and hopefully it's not money. When you do the research, you'll find out 99% of Amazon authors make less than $200 a year. Not a lot of people,

you ask the world. Not a lot of people even read anymore. So for me, I had two definitions of success. I wanted to get actually published, which I'm doing, and I wanted to write 13 books, which I am also in the process of doing. So for me, I'm successful. I've learned all these things. I get to come on these podcasts and share come of my journeys and experiences and stories. And for me, that makes me successful no matter what actually gets into my bank account. Gary, I really like that definition of success. If you can leave our viewers with some good advice to follow and some bad advice to avoid, what would you let them know? All right. And some of this to be a little repetitive. But so for good advice,

listen to some of those podcasts that we're going to list. They always have great stuff. And whatever your heart tells you is right, do that. So for me, I knew from the start that the email lists would be important and I didn't do it. And now that I'm starting it, I feel like it's a little late because, you know, I've been out for five or six years. I think it could have really grown by now. Keep learning. Obviously, is great advice.

Like I said, you might find something that you actually like. for me, I had somebody doing my book formatting, but I actually like that now. Make sure you track your sales. And what I mean by that is, so I spent, I don't know, five, six hundred dollars on Amazon ads and Facebook ads. And I followed after I'd spent the money, physically saw those things. And then I went into my Amazon analytics and saw that I had only sold, you know, two or three extra copies than normal. Then there was a Facebook group called Bartenders and Servers Unite and somebody had gotten a hold of my book, read it, loved it, started putting some of it on that Facebook group. And then the next month,

I got a huge check and I had sold 1,200 copies and I hadn't spent a cent. That was just the universe working in my advantage. But every little thing that you do to kind of go out there and market and expand yourself and your brand and all that, track what's actually working and use your energy there. So that's probably the best advice I could give, knowing your definition of success, like we talked about. If you can find a specific niche, find it. So like for me, for really, I wanted to find people who wanted to have hopeful, optimistic customer service stories, people who like customer service books in general about the stories. And then people who wanted the tips, the lessons I've learned. So for me, I created a specific niche out of three

that were already selling books. Now, as far as the bad advice, like I was saying about following your gut, some of the things that you think are things you don't have to learn about, like email lists, we'll come back. You have to try those things for yourself. Another one example of that is I always see people on some of the Facebook groups for writers and the communities that I follow. They make commercials for their books that they put on YouTube. And have ever heard of one of those going viral? I have not. I haven't either.

So for me, I don't see how those could work. I think they'd be fun to make. But like I said, that goes into the definition of success. So knowing that there's different things that work for everybody in every situation and type of book, it's hard to specifically say what's bad advice. The only thing I can definitely say would be an unethical thing to avoid is vanity publishing. Can you elaborate? If you should never have to pay anyone to publish your book.

You either do it yourself through conduct direct publishing or you'll find a publisher who will do all of that because they believe in you in your book. Vanity publishers are the ones that say, give me $7,000. They do everything for you and then they sell your book as is. but they were not going to edit it. It's going to come out like it is. But yeah, you should never pay. I'd say that's the number one unethical thing I've heard of. And it's so don't let anyone take money to publish your books for you.

Gary, out of the 99 lessons learned from my customer service venture, out of those 99 lessons, what is the number one lesson you could recommend to somebody? One thing I've learned, I'm going to tie in back to the writing thing. and then I'll do one for the customer service. But this one's going to be tough and it's controversial for people.

Okay, so don't show your book to anyone before it is done. And what I mean by that? I used to let my wife read my book. So there's 99 things, right? I would write one story with one lesson and I would let her read it and she would go, oh, my gosh, she would either mention that,

you know, oh, I think I know who you're talking about or, oh, I don't think you should mention this. You sound like an entitled white asshole or this or that. And that would throw off my whole trajectory of how I'm telling my story. She didn't know the context in an entire book or anything, but it does influence the way you write. So from now on, I have noticed like the Disney book, the only person who's read that is me and my publisher. And no matter how much we change, they call it killing your babies, things that I've wanted in that book. We have had to cut out.

But nobody knows I'm cutting that out because nobody's read it. By the time it comes out and it's polished and it's clean and it looks and feels and and sounds like all the other books that they have published, I'm going to be so happy with that final copy, and that's the copy to show people. So that's the one lesson I've learned when it comes to writing. Now, if you've noticed when you've read, really, there's some of those lessons are funny,

like the first, what I learned about cocaine being a horrible drug, you know, I got the effects of that. But looking at the positive side of things, I mean, that's the greatest lesson I can tell, tell everyone. And there really is a positive spin on everything. Even if somebody at a restaurant just asks a dumb question, do you have green lemons?

This is why I love people. I'm like, yes, they're called lines. We have that. It's funny. You can't look at, if you can't laugh at ourselves, what can we do? So just look at the bright side. It all come for you. If you're writing, write every day, be creative, enjoy your life, be creative whenever possible.

That's what I love to tell people. And, you know, after the whole journey of your first book, you'll know if you want to continue right away. And the feeling you get when you first hold that book in your hand and it is complete, no matter who reads it, how many copies you sell. You're going to feel successful no matter what, just from that. Gary, this is awesome. This is really good. How can our viewers get in touch with you and where can they go to find your work? So right now, I'm exclusive to Amazon.

So I do paperbacks and I do e-books and I publish exclusively to Amazon so my books can become available on Kindle Unlimited, which is like their subscription. The website, the libraries, the audiobooks, those are still coming as I continually learn about this industry. So right now it's basically just my author page, which is Amazon.com slash author slash Gary W-R-E-N-W-N-N. And I also have my email, Gary Ren at Gmail. And I've got a Facebook group, Gary Ren Books. I'm also on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, letterboxed, and LinkedIn. I love talking to people about anything and everything. Seriously, you write me something and I will respond.

Thank you so much for coming in. We really appreciate your time. Yeah, hopefully it was helpful. I know I can go on quite a bit of tangents. The reason of that organization is so key. My crazy life. Thank you so much. You've been listening to your transformation station.

Rediscovering your true identity and purpose on this planet. We hope you enjoyed the show, and we hope you've gotten some useful and practical information. Join us weekly on Monday for the YTS Challenge and bi-weekly on Wednesday for the exclusive interviews at 8 p.m. Central Time. In the meantime, connect with us on Facebook and Instagram at YTS. The podcast. We'll be back soon. Until then, this is your transformation station. Signing off. LifeLock, how can I help? The IRS said I filed my return, but I haven't. One in four taxpaying Americans has paid the price of identity fraud. What do I do? My refund, though. I'm freaking out. Don't worry, I can fix this. LifeLock fixes identity theft guaranteed and gets your money back with up to $3 million in coverage. I'm so relieved. No problem. I'll be with you

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