In this week’s episode of The Writing Coach Podcast, I sit down with writing coach Monica Hay for a conversation that goes deep into the psychology of writing.
We talk ADHD, resistance, perfectionism, brain science, messy first drafts, why story structure works for some writers and absolutely sinks others, and the surprising power of taking up writing later in life.
Monica also shares the behind-the-scenes process of building her innovative writing-buddy and critique-partner matching program
If you’ve ever wrestled with procrastination, compared yourself to your favorite author, wondered why your drafts don’t match the masterpiece in your head, or felt like you “should” be further along by now… this conversation is going to feel like a warm hug from two coaches who’ve seen it all.
Listen now!
The Writing Coach Episode #216 Show Notes
Visit Monica’s Website: https://monicahay.com/
Get Monica’s free gift: A Writer’s Guide to Improving Focus and Presence
Get Kevin’s new book, The Frustrated Writer’s Colouring Book.
The Writing Coach Episode #216 Transcript
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Hello, listeners, and welcome back to The Writing Coach Podcast. It’s your host, as always, writing coach Kevin T. Johns.
Normally, this is the portion of the show where I tell you a bit about what’s going on in my life and business—and maybe do a little promotion. But here’s the thing: it’s November 30 as I record this, Black Friday week has just ended, and you, like me, have probably spent the last several days being bombarded with marketing and promotions. And you know what? I don’t have the energy for any of it.
Today, we’re just going to skip the promotions and dive straight into the good stuff—the content, the interview—and ooh, it’s a good one. Today on the show I have writing coach Monica Hay. Monica and I have a fantastic discussion. We get into all sorts of aspects of coaching, writing, brain science, all kinds of fascinating territory.
So without any further ado, let’s cut to that interview now.
—
Monica, welcome to the show.
Hi. Thank you for having me.
Tell me about books in your early life. Were they something you were instantly drawn to, or not so much?
Yes and no. I was a very strange child. I think I liked reading as a young kid, but I feel like I had undiagnosed ADHD. I wasn’t diagnosed until adulthood, but I definitely needed a bit more time to mature. It’s funny—my dad knew I liked to read, but he never read anything himself. He didn’t understand books, so he’d take me to the bookstore and try to help me find something to read, but he’d always show me adult classics instead of books for kids my age. I’d try to read them and think, “Yeah… this isn’t really vibing with me.” Eventually, I started reading more middle-grade books and that’s when I fell in love with reading. But it was kind of a slow burn. I was a reader, but I wasn’t reading every second of the day.
You ended up doing an undergrad in English literature, didn’t you? So at some point it seems like books really came to the fore. When did that happen?
Probably in high school—and then even more so in college. That’s when I realized how much I genuinely enjoyed reading and wanted to spend most of my time doing it. I think a lot of readers feel that way; they just want to read all day. I studied English lit, though it’s funny—I always laugh that I wish I’d studied creative writing instead. It would have given me more hands-on experience with craft. I like to joke that my literature degree just made me a perfectionist and made writing harder! But I did it because I loved it.
I’d also wanted to study psychology. I didn’t know how to do both, and while I didn’t get a bachelor’s degree in social work, I did end up working in that field after studying literature. It’s a weird path, I know. Somehow I ended up a social worker after majoring in English.
You mentioned your interest in psychology and also going through much of your life with undiagnosed ADHD. Do you feel like your interest in that field came from trying to understand your own learning style?
That’s a really good question. I’ve asked myself why psychology fascinates me so much, and I think it’s because I’m fascinated by humans in general. People are just interesting. I’m always curious about what makes humans tick—what’s going on in the brain. I’m really drawn to neuroscience. Maybe part of it was curiosity about my own brain, but I’m genuinely fascinated by all types of brains and how they work.
I think that plays perfectly into being a writing coach—and a writer and reader. Books and stories are really about people. Whether they’re people in the past, the future, or on another planet, at the end of the day it’s all psychology.
Though, I did once go to a sci-fi conference with a “hard science fiction” panel and someone said, “My book is about two particles in a distant galaxy whose enzymes interact,” and I thought, “Okay… I guess not everything is about people.” But for the most part, yes—we’re looking at people, exploring people, and seeing how they react in different situations, whether heroically, tragically, or comically.
Yeah, that’s why my favorite thing about literature is character. Ultimately, I just love character development.
So how did you get into the coaching side of things?
I did a master’s in publishing in 2019, so you can probably imagine what was about to happen. I moved to New York to get a job in publishing, eventually got one, and realized I couldn’t stand living in New York—especially during COVID. It just wasn’t the vibe for me. And I really struggle with typical nine-to-five jobs: show up at a certain time, stay until a certain time, be productive on a schedule. That’s not how my brain works.
When I left the job and we left New York, I had to figure out what to do. I thought about becoming an agent, but I don’t read fast enough. Agents have to read a lot and read fast, and I knew that wasn’t me. I worked at an agency briefly but realized it wasn’t the right fit.
I kind of stumbled into coaching. The person who diagnosed my ADHD said most people with ADHD prefer to run their own businesses or be self-employed. I thought, “Okay… sure. I’ll try.” And I just went with it. It took me a while to build everything, but that’s really where it all came from—a desire to help people, a background in psychology, and also knowing books, publishing, and writing really well.
You and I are in a bit of a writing-coach mastermind together, but have you ever been in business groups with other entrepreneurs?
Yeah.
They’re all ADHD. Every one of them is like, “I’ve started seventeen businesses. Fifteen failed. Two finally worked.” Constant new ideas. New ideas forever. So let’s dig into that for a minute.
Because you’re open about your own ADHD, you attract a lot of neurodivergent writers to your coaching. And I think the average person might assume that must be hard. But I’m curious—what benefits do neurodivergent writers bring to the creative process? How does seeing the world differently actually help them as creators?
It depends on the individual, but for me personally, ADHD gives me a very high tolerance for risk. I wouldn’t have started a business without it. I wouldn’t have moved across the world. People say I’m brave, and I’m like—can I cuss here?
Please do. I love editing in the little beep-beeps. I’m not offended by cursing at all—I just enjoy censoring it for some reason.
Well, when people say I’m brave, I’m like… honestly, I just don’t think things through. I get an idea and I do it. Sometimes I’ll think about consequences—if I’m being strategic in business—but honestly, many of my best ideas come from that instinct to just go for it.
I have a focus group now to help me run ideas by people, which helps. But ADHD brains are great at thinking on their feet. We tend not to overthink. We have a kind of divergent thinking that allows us not to worry as much about what the industry says and just follow what we think is interesting. That often leads to unique work—stuff that stands out.
My husband is always like, “You’re so ADHD. You just go for stuff.” And I’m like, “I don’t even know I’m doing it.” It’s just natural.
There’s a huge benefit to not overthinking, especially in small business. I’ll have clients ask how I pick a cover designer, and the truth is… I once picked someone because they had blue hair. That was the whole thought process. At some point, you just have to make a choice and trust your gut.
Exactly. My husband is a total Enneagram Five—he researches everything before taking action. I’m not like that. I’ll research a little, but then I’m just like, “Okay, let’s go.” It’s very “mess around and find out,” if you know that meme.
So there’s something interesting here—you come from a science-interested background, but you also trust your gut. You’ve described your work as “soul-rooted.” What does merging those two sides of yourself look like when working with authors?
Yeah, this is something I was literally thinking about today. I have so many neurodiverse clients who cannot stand story structure. For years I’ve wondered why. I think story structure is great for the people it helps, and I never tell anyone to throw it away if it works for them. But a lot of my clients say, “I read all these craft books, I learned all these beats, and now I’m stuck.”
The human condition is endlessly varied. Creativity is personal. Reading is personal. Writing is personal. A lot of the writers I work with are early-stage writers—they’ve maybe written one book, maybe two. They read all the craft books, try to follow them to the letter, and get stuck.
I have a theory—and I could be totally wrong—that many neurodiverse people have pathological demand avoidance (PDA). They really struggle with rules, and I think that’s why heavily structured systems shut them down. It’s not always conscious. They just feel resistance.
I’d love to do brain scans and understand why. But the other side of me knows that creativity isn’t formulaic, and not everyone thrives under rules. That’s where my science-curious side and my intuition-rooted side meet.
It’s so interesting—we have the same job but serve completely different audiences in different ways. I’m like, “Step one: get a story-structure tattoo.” And your clients are like, “Story structure feels like a prison sentence.”
Different brains, different needs—and that’s good. There’s room for all of us.
Exactly. One of my clients recently said, “Why does story structure feel like being put in prison?” And I said, “Babe, I wish I could tell you why ADHD exists or what’s going on in your brain, but you’ve got to listen to what your brain wants and follow your intuition.”
When you’re new and haven’t practiced a lot, you don’t yet know what works for you. You only learn that by trying things, iterating, putting in the reps.
Exactly. I always use a hockey metaphor—because I’m Canadian. You can read twenty books about hockey. You can know the perfect power-play formation. None of it matters the first time you put on skates. You’ve got to practice. You’ve got to get the reps in.
Exactly. You won’t know what works for your brain until you show up and try. There’s no manual for any of our brains.
Since you work with a lot of neurodivergent writers—but really, this applies to anyone dealing with resistance, procrastination, self-doubt, avoidance—what’s your diagnostic approach? How do you figure out what’s holding someone back?
I ask a lot of clarifying questions. There can be multiple roots to the problem, so I do a kind of deep dive into their psyche—which sounds scarier than it is.
I ask things like:
What happens when you sit down to write?
What is your body telling you?
What thoughts appear?
Are there thoughts—or is it panic?
Do you freeze?
Do you even make it to the chair?
I’m trying to understand what their body is doing when they try to write. From there I can get a sense of what’s going on. I’m not a psychiatrist, obviously, but I know enough brain science to recognize patterns—like someone going into fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.
And the solutions usually involve boring but effective things like showing up to write for five minutes and building a habit. Building what I call “writing neurons.” Creativity neurons. You have to show up to build them. It doesn’t have to be every day, but it does have to be consistent. And yes—it feels boring when you say it out loud. It’s like going to the gym. You have to put the shoes on and go.
I mean, it’s the same with weight loss, right? People say, “I want to lose weight, get in shape, feel great,” and the secret is… move more and eat healthier. We all know that. But just because it’s simple and boring doesn’t mean it’s easy to execute. That’s why folks like you and I exist—because even the simplest habits can be incredibly difficult to maintain without support along the way.
Yep. It’s almost impossible for a lot of people to do these things, because most of us don’t know—well, maybe we know that exercising helps us feel better—but people don’t realize that when they’re dealing with resistance around writing, it’s actually a brain-science thing. It’s how their brains are wired. They think, “Oh, I’m just not cut out for this. I’m not meant to be a writer.” And I’m like, “No—your brain is trying to protect you. That’s literally what it was designed to do.”
Sorry—I always use the lion example. I took my family to a lion safari once, and we were all so excited to see the lions. And like the grocery store putting milk in the back so you walk past everything, they put the lions at the far end. When we finally got there, it was this bright sunny day, giant rock, and the lion was dead asleep—totally still, definitely not roaring or eating anyone. My kids were like, “Is it going to do something?” And I said, “I don’t think so, honey.”
Whenever I’m feeling resistance or laziness, I remind myself: we are the lion. In nature, if we have a chance to lie on a rock in the sun, we do it. We conserve energy. We’re biologically conditioned not to work insane amounts. So it really does take systems and practices to get into a productive rhythm.
It does. And during the boot camp I used to run on overcoming resistance, people would always ask, “But why is our brain like this? It’s been millions of years!” And I’m like—yes, but the modern world has only existed for a microscopic fraction of that time. We have ancient brains living in a modern world. It’s annoying, yes, but it also gives us information. Two hundred years ago, we didn’t know how the brain worked. Now we do, and we’re lucky to have tools to work with it.
I always find it so interesting—especially this week each year, Black Friday week. I don’t know if you run into this, but I’ll meet writers or wannabe writers and they’ll say, “Well, I’ll never be able to write a book because I can’t afford Scrivener.” And I’m like… dude. Shakespeare wrote on an animal skin stretched across a frame with a stick dipped in ink. Virginia Woolf did not have AutoCrit. You’ll be fine.
Exactly. That’s one of the best things about being a writer—our craft is so cheap. We need a journal—
—and a pencil, basically. I mean, think about the Marquis de Sade. He wrote an entire book on toilet paper in a jail cell, and two hundred years later I have it on my shelf. It’s an amazing art form: we don’t need paint, or giant canvases—just paper and something to get ink onto it.
Yep, exactly. Isn’t that great? My hobby is so cheap. I love it.
It does take a lot of energy, though—energy and time. I used to be a musician. I played in punk rock bands growing up. I’d write a song on Monday, we’d rehearse it Wednesday, and play it live on Friday. Writing does not work that way. There’s no quick spark of creation followed by people cheering one week later. With writing, that spark might take years before anyone sees it. Totally different experience.
Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s one of the hardest parts of being a writer—the long wait, the uncertainty, and the lack of guarantees that anything will come of it. That uncertainty stops a lot of people. For sure.
Well, I’ve written a ton of books, and none have landed on the New York Times bestseller list—and yet my life has been deeply enriched by being a writer. You and I would not be having this conversation right now if I hadn’t written and published a book fifteen years ago.
That’s what I try to tell my clients: If your book sells a zillion copies and makes you rich and famous, great. But that doesn’t happen for most of us. What does happen is that our lives expand. We meet people, we grow, opportunities arise. I just came back from Barbados because I was marketing one of my books last month. A childhood friend saw the marketing and said, “Hey, want to come hang out at my condo in Barbados?” And I said, “Sure!”
I love that. The ripples. The ripples.
Exactly. You don’t need to sell a million copies to get a Barbados trip out of your writing life. Things happen. Unexpected, amazing things.
Also, I have to say—sometimes you do not want to be rich and famous. It doesn’t always create what you think it will.
No kidding. There’s an entire generation of influencers discovering that living your life online is maybe… not the healthiest lifestyle.
Monica HayNo, it’s not. It’s not a vibe for most people.
One thing every writing coach struggles with—and I think this is something you really specialize in—is getting people out of the perfectionist mindset. Getting them to stop revising and polishing while they’re still drafting. I feel like I say it again and again, and they’re like, “I know, Kevin, I know,” but their eyes are saying, “But I’m going to be the one who gets it perfect on the first try. I won’t need revisions.”
Every time. Every time. It’s funny—because I tell a story that snaps people out of that glazed-over look. I think we all know that look. But when I tell this story, the glaze disappears.
I teach a lot of zero drafting—fast drafting, storming, whatever people want to call it. I’ve heard a million names for it. And I always tell clients: If you think having a perfect draft means you won’t need to revise or rewrite the book, you are sorely mistaken.
My first book, which I wrote over ten years ago now—I thought I was doing everything “right.” I revised constantly. Every time something changed, I’d go back and polish it because I wanted a “clean” draft so I wouldn’t have to revise much later. I was so naïve. I think I rewrote the first fifty pages so many times I genuinely lost count.
And when I finally finished the book, I hired a developmental editor. Based on her feedback, I rewrote the entire book from scratch. I maybe kept a few thousand words, but the whole thing got rebuilt—even though I thought I had done it “correctly.” Having a clean draft did NOT protect me from rewriting the entire book because I was still a newbie. I was still learning. Honestly, I’m still learning. We all are.
People think striving for a perfect draft will protect them from revision or rewriting, and I’m like… that’s not how this process works.
It’s iterative. Writing is iterative. There’s no avoiding that.
Nope. No avoiding it. And I know it’s not an easy pill to swallow. People want to write a perfect book, sell it, have it become a bestseller—and that version of the process barely exists. The people it does happen to? Outliers. And I don’t really care about outliers. They’re not interesting to me.
I always think of—well, I only remember the title because it’s so forgettable—but the book F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote after The Great Gatsby. It’s… not a great book. The guy writes The Great Gatsby, and then the follow-up? Meh. If there were a formula, he would’ve just written another masterpiece. But there are forces outside our control—our creativity, timing, the zeitgeist, what society is responding to… all of it.
Yeah, I don’t think I ever read that book.
It’s fine. It’s fine. But it’s not the great American novel. And no one compares themselves to that book—they compare themselves to Gatsby. And they forget the four books and hundred short stories he published before that, and they forget the work that came after it. They find the single outlier and go, “Well, I’m garbage compared to The Great Gatsby.” Everyone has their own version of that one perfect book they judge themselves against.
And it’s fascinating, because most of us never see a messy draft unless it’s our own or a writing friend’s. It’s hard to imagine what “bad writing” looks like. We might say, “Oh, this published book is badly written,” but people forget that first drafts can be very messy. My zero drafts are completely unreadable. Things change halfway through. Characters disappear. Because when I zero draft, I don’t let myself revise until I finish. So if I decide halfway through that a character doesn’t work, I just drop them—they vanish.
And I roast myself in my drafts! I leave comments like, “Monica, dragons probably don’t sweat—what are you doing?” I do it out of love for myself and the process. But most beginners expect their first draft to look as clean as the finished book they pick up at the library. And that’s just… not reality.
My metaphor is always: people think they’re carving the statue out of marble—but dude, you don’t even have the marble yet. The first draft is getting the block of marble into your studio. You’re trying to carve eyelids when you haven’t even hauled the stone inside yet. You have to get the marble block first so you have something to work with.
I think one of the biggest challenges—and I’m sure you deal with this a lot—is the dissonance between the perfect book we imagine in our heads and what ends up on the page. As long as it’s unwritten, it’s perfect. But the more they write, the more real it becomes, and the more they have to face that gap. How do you help people through that?
That challenge is what stops most people. That’s where they give up. Either that, or they don’t even start because they’re afraid of that disappointment. I don’t like calling it disappointment, but for them, that’s how it feels.
I see this especially with people who were “gifted” kids. They were told they were amazing, talented, exceptional—and then they grow up and create something that doesn’t look as good as it did in their head, and suddenly their whole identity goes into crisis. “I guess I’m not actually good at this. If I’m not good, maybe I shouldn’t do it.”
This is where I bring in growth-mindset work. I explain that there is no skip button. You can’t jump from “the perfect vision in your head” to “a flawless draft.” The only bridge between those is practice and iteration. If you want a draft that makes you happy, you have to practice. And that’s where many people quit. That’s why so many drafts get abandoned—half-finished or even complete. People think they’re not up to the task. And I’m like: “Babe… no one comes out of the womb knowing how to write a good book. You learn by doing. Period.”
And culturally, I think there’s a myth we’ve all internalized. The industry is opaque. You can watch James Cameron’s Avatar and then watch a four-hour behind-the-scenes documentary—longer than the movie—about how it was made. But we never get that for novels. We just get the myth of the literary genius.
“Oh, Virginia Woolf must have been born brilliant. She didn’t work for it. Mrs. Dalloway just magically fell out of her.”
That myth has been perpetuated for a century.
Why do you think that is?
I think it’s the magician refusing to reveal the trick. There’s a Hemingway quote—something like, “If readers think it’s easy, let them think it’s easy.” There’s this romantic desire to appear magical and gifted, untouched by the grind. I think artists like the myth, even when it’s not real. It’s fun to believe you’re a literary genius.
Yeah. I see that too. Maggie Stiefvater wrote something on Substack where she said people constantly call her a genius, and she’s like, “No. I just do the boring work. That’s it.” But that story isn’t sexy. “I sat down and did the work” is not a headline.
Right. It’s not the apple falling on Newton’s head. Cal Newport’s new book—Slow Productivity—talks about that. He uses that exact Newton example. Newton had been developing those theories for years, publishing work, experimenting. But the apple story captured public imagination. We love the idea of sudden genius.
I wonder why we love that story so much. Maybe because we hope that could be us—that an apple will fall on our heads and we’ll get a lightning bolt of brilliance. The idea is seductive: “I won’t have to do the hard work.” And yes, maybe it happens for outliers. But it’s not the norm.
I think we all want the fairy godmother or the Obi-Wan Kenobi moment. We want someone to appear and say, “I acknowledge your genius. Here’s your dress for the ball. Here’s your lightsaber. Go begin your destiny.” We want that moment where someone chooses us and changes everything. But in reality, change comes from slow progression—years of dedicated work toward one thing.
Exactly. We want the ease of being chosen. And I get it—it feels great to imagine that. But it’s hollow if it happens without effort. My friend Amy wrote several books before getting published. She queried, agents didn’t work out, all the usual stuff. And when she finally “made it,” she was like, “I’m so glad my earlier books didn’t get picked up. My success feels earned.” If it hadn’t, it would’ve felt empty.
It’s funny—I don’t know if you’ve seen this with your clients—but I’ve noticed that people who identified as writers since childhood struggle much more with feeling “not good enough.” But people who discover writing later in life expect it to take time to get good. Have you noticed that?
Oh, absolutely. Because for the ones who’ve called themselves writers since they were kids, it’s part of their identity. So when things don’t succeed as quickly or as spectacularly as they want, it’s not, “This draft isn’t working.” It’s, “I am not who I thought I was.” It feels existential.
Yeah, and this friend went to med school—she’s a doctor. She’s one of those people where I’m like, How are you real? She plays piano, learns languages, she’s a doctor… I just can’t. And she was like, “Yeah, it’s just going to take hard work to write books and publish them.” She gets that. Because she didn’t start writing until her late twenties, it’s really cool to see her come to it later in life and respect that it’s going to take work, time, practice, and iteration. So many people don’t realize that’s what it takes.
Did you ever watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine?
I don’t think I did.
There’s this little flashback where the main character, Jake, in like 1998, is dressed head-to-toe in ska gear, yelling, “Ska forever! Ska is my life!” I think most of us eventually realize, as we get older, that the thing we’re into right now doesn’t define us forever.
So people who come to writing later in life recognize it as something they’re adding to their lives—enriching their lives—rather than something that defines them. It’s not tangled up in their core identity; it’s more like, “Hey, I’m taking up writing. I’ve always wanted to do this, and now I’m retired, or have the time, and I finally can.”
I love that.
Well, speaking of writers not needing to do it all alone and getting support along the way, you have a cool new program about matching up writers. Can you tell us a bit about that?
Yeah. So I had this idea for years, and I was really nervous about trying it because logistically it was… a lot. But I did it, after many months of building. Basically, it’s a writing buddy or critique-partner matching program.
You can either do the writing-buddy option—where you’re matched with a writing friend without any expectation of swapping pages, which is great for newer writers who want privacy—or you can do the critique-partner side, where you do swap pages.
I created this out of a need to connect people. Over however many years I’ve been in this industry—I’ve lost track—what I’ve seen is this: the writers who are able to keep going, who have resilience to handle the hard times (and every writer will experience hard times) are the ones with community.
Not just a supportive spouse or friend, but community with other writers specifically. Just like we don’t fully understand what it’s like to be, say, an actor if we’ve never done it, non-writers don’t truly understand the struggles of writing. You need people who get it—people to go to when it’s hard, and people to share the journey with as you build your writing life.
So many people think they have to “earn” community. They’re like, “I’ll find a writing group once I publish,” or, “Once I’m legit.” And I’m like, No. Community is what helps you publish. Having other writers in your corner is part of what makes you successful, because you have people to lean on.
It’s boring, in that same way everything helpful is boring. We know connection helps us, but it’s hard to create. In my opinion, having meaningful connection with other writers is the missing link—the shortcut—between people who start and then give up, and people who actually finish and publish.
I mean, we can look at pretty much the entire 20th century. The modernists—Fitzgerald, Hemingway, all those people—hanging out in Ezra Pound’s place in Paris, figuring out modernist literature. Virginia Woolf was friends with E. M. Forster. Move forward: you’ve got C. S. Lewis, Tolkien, and the Inklings all meeting up. Another decade: the Beats—Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, all those guys together.
Throughout history, artistic movements are the result of artists coming together in community—not just to support each other, but to challenge each other. “Do better; you can do better.” They push and cheerlead each other in ways that just don’t happen when you’re totally on your own.
Right. And even if your spouse or partner is supportive, they don’t necessarily know how to cheerlead you the way another writer would.
No, no. I call it the trenches. If you’re not in those World War I trenches of writing a book, you don’t really get it. The people in the mud up to their knees—those are the ones who understand.
Well, where can people find out about that program, and where can they find out more about you?
My website is very simple: it’s monicahay.com—M-O-N-I-C-A H-A-Y—and that’s where all the information is. I open the writing buddy/CP matching every couple of months. I’ll probably open it again sometime in 2026, hopefully. I’m not one of those entrepreneurs who has their whole life scheduled a year in advance. I don’t know how people do that—that is not me.
I know every minute of every day until Friday. That’s it. I just want to survive until Friday, and then it resets. When people are like, “In Q3, I’m going to…” I’m like, “My God, week three of this month is too far away to think about.”
Exactly. I’m like, I don’t even know what I’m eating for dinner tonight—how am I supposed to know what’s happening in Q4?
It’s like when the dentist says, “Are you good for an appointment at 10 a.m. eight months from now?” and I’m like, “Probably? I don’t know.”
Exactly. Hopefully? That cracks me up.
But yeah, you can find me at monicahay.com, and you can join the writing buddy program there. People always ask, “How do you match people—like, with giant surveys?” And the answer is: yes, massive surveys. The writing-buddy survey is over 60 questions; the critique-partner survey is over 70. So it’s a very thorough process.
And that brings us full circle, because one of the first things we talked about was how you diagnose—diagnostically… how you figure out what’s going on with your clients. (Let’s use simple words for Kevin.) You said, “I ask a lot of questions.” So I suspect your experience digging into people’s personalities through coaching transferred beautifully into the in-depth surveys you’ve created for the matching program.
Yeah, I basically just call myself nosy.
I get that. People sometimes say, “Oh, Kevin, you’re a great interviewer,” and I’m like, “I’m just curious.” If you’re genuinely interested in people and what they have to say, interviewing isn’t that hard—you’re just like, “Tell me more.”
Exactly. “That’s interesting. Tell me more. I’m curious.”
Great. Wait—so did you give a URL? Did we—
Yeah, monicahay.com. That’s where all my links are.
Yes. And there was a giveaway we were going to mention that folks can grab, right?
Yes. If you want a free guide on creating focus and presence in your writing life—which, if you’re ADHD, you probably do… honestly, most people do, especially in the modern age with phones—you can also find that link on monicahay.com. It’ll be under my Linktree. You can find that along with a bunch of other freebies.
Basically, if you own a smartphone, you need this tool. Go check it out.
All right, Monica, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. It’s been such a delight chatting with you.
Yeah, thank you, Kevin. This was great.
—
There you have it, my friends—my interview with Monica Hay. I’ll link to her website, her freebie giveaway, and all the good stuff in the show notes for this episode over at my website, www.kevintjohns.com.
That is it for this episode. Thank you, my writerly friends, so much for tuning in. I can’t wait to see you—and entertain you with another fantastic discussion—on the next episode of The Writing Coach.
