broadBand
Interview wih Blake Vanier
Art in Storytelling with Blake
Intro [00:00:00] Aziz AlObaid: Hello, and welcome to broadband here at broadband, we live by the philosophy that one needs to other human beings, teach them how to be human. Our guide for today on this journey of communal actualization is Blake veneer, a published author and inventor based in sunny, Boulder, Colorado.
I want to set the stage for this interview by shining the spotlight on three main points of focus for our dialogue, the first being Blake and his unique human journey. Next. I want to introduce you to the intricacies of the arduous and long journey that is writing publishing and selling a book and to give you a spoiler, it takes hard work and dedication.
So lastly, I want to encourage you the listener to reflect on questions. Like am I making the most of my free time or my building? The habits necessary to be creative without further ado. Hello Blake, how are you, man?
Blake Vanier: good. How are you? Thanks for having me.
Aziz AlObaid: I'm doing well.
I want to start this dialogue by learning about Blake, the storyteller and author, a lot of people love reading a good story, but a rare few say, you know, I want to take a shot at writing one. So now that you've written one, can you share with the audience when did you start outlining your first book and where were you in your life while you were doing that?
Blake's 1st Book [00:01:11]
Blake Vanier: So in 2007, . I was in internship at Lockheed Martin working on an Aero shell for the curiosity Rover. That Rover that landed on Mars. And I was interning working on the actual structure that would hold the curiosity Rover. And Essentially they have this shell that can take the heat, whether it's for this slowing process or for landing on Mars.
So I was living in Denver and then the commute was A long drive and I didn't want to drive. So I took the bus, I took the train and the bus and on the bus and the train, I read a bunch and I think this kind of started setting the stage.
And then one day I think on the train home, I thought of the idea of you know, maybe a person being able to absorb someone else's essence and that. Then allows that person to use, you know, interact with energy that would be considered magic from our perspective.
And so not only would you get magical abilities, but you'd also kind of get some of their experiences in their life and their consciousness with it. So it was like this tough balance of you want to get stronger and absorb, People's essence , but at the same time, where do you start to lose yourself if you absorb too much?
Aziz AlObaid: So, are you still a full-time aerospace engineer?
Blake Vanier: So I actually quit my job and now I'm fully committed to writing and then some inventing and other sort of projects, which I'm pretty excited about.
Aziz AlObaid: Nice. And
Pressures of the field [00:02:42]Do you feel more of a pressure to create as an artist now that you've forgotten this stable source of income?
Blake Vanier: I am very lucky in terms of having a wife with a really nice stable job. I've saved a lot of money. So I don't actually feel like I have a lot of pressure at the moment, but that could change.
Aziz AlObaid: Is that a good thing that you don't feel a lot of pressure or are you kind of seeing it maybe as a bad thing? Cause you could also kind of just kind of be a little bit lazier if you don't have that much pressure.
Blake Vanier: Boy. That's like, that's one of those things that can be useful.
And I've seen so many people when I was first starting, I joined a writing group and I was just working my butt off, and then trying to write when I was home. And like not finding the time to get stuff done.
And then I'd have friends in this writing group that were unemployed at the time. I was like, Oh, you're so lucky. You could just do all spend all your time writing. And then I'm like, well, actually stressed out because I don't have a job.
I think. Writing is again, like you look at people that are very successful writing and that's maybe not, I don't think you can go into writing with expectation of making gobs of money.
Importance of a Support System [00:03:51]Aziz AlObaid: Right. You know, You mentioned that you have a wife that is very supportive and there's the age old saying that behind every man is a strong woman. How important was your wife in making like this leap of faith and then making sure that you're not stressed or feeling under pressure?
Blake Vanier: I think very important just having anybody in your corner, especially somebody that is really encouraging you. I think she was wanting me to jump out on my own And certainly pushing me a lot earlier than I was ready to.
So I think just having a spouse in general, that is there to kind of catch you when you stumble or trip is super important.
Aziz AlObaid: Well, I'm glad that you have that stable companion and that constant companion
The Writing Journey [00:04:32]Let's talk about your, your journey. And I want to talk about writing. You want to talk about publishing and finally selling the book. So in the writing process if you were to use, say one word to describe the journey from outlining a book to writing the last word in the last chapter, what word would you choose?
Blake Vanier: Yeah. And that would be brutal. I think it's not like something that naturally comes to me and it might just be how my brain works. Cause I want to make all these different connections. I'm working with a guy that's doing my audio book and he just recently said I'm addicted to edits because I keep going back and making small little tweaks to things in the first two.
You know, it's one thing to write, get all this done and then think it's pretty good. Then read it again. And then realize that you have to put another several hours into the scene you've already put hours into, and so I mean, I spent couple of weeks now just thinking about my, a blurb on the front of my Amazon page for my book.
Writing Book Series [00:05:28] Aziz AlObaid: how complicated is it to write a multi book series? I mean, walk us through your creative process and outlining multiple books all at once.
Blake Vanier: So when I started this, I thought of the idea of the essence. And I don't think that's a super unique idea in itself, but I think I started rolling out a little bit of a story arc that my characters could experience. And then I was like, well, we got to set the stage. And so then I started writing pages and pages of like history before the story took place. And so I spent. Several months. I think just writing in this journal about all the history of this world, like from current to a thousand years ago to 2000 plus years ago. And I like really tried to set the full stage.
And then from there I knew I wanted to have, I basically had. A rough outline and then a slightly better outline. And then like you're adding notes and collecting thoughts.
And Actually being organized because it's a combination of being able to keep the whole thing in your head and finding homes for each little idea. Yeah. I'll get a random thought and then I'll be like, where could that fit? And then I'll have a notes for part six. And then I write my notes in there and then I don't use half of them, but..
Writer's Block [00:06:38] Aziz AlObaid: Fair enough. Fair enough. How real is writer's block? You know, you kind of always see in movies and TV shows the writers always struggling with some kind of writer's block.
How can you break through that obstacle and how real is it?
Blake Vanier: I always imagined that I'm trying to get from a to B cause I write, you know, just my process is a matter of Doing a rough outline of kind of where I want the story to go, and it's getting from a to B successfully, and that might be a span of 30 chapters, or that might just be like one scene, so for example, in the third book they're traveling to this area of like crazy strong energies that people can't really get into. It's like the Bermuda triangle, if. On like Cracker steroids or PCP and so in order to get through this, you have to allow the conditions to be just right in the world. And so I had to, I had to struggle with lining up all of these things. That's like a writer's mountain that I had to surpass.
Aziz AlObaid: that's completely fine. Let's talk about this writer's mountain. I mean, I'm sure if you have like something as daunting as a mountain in front of you, you might be a little bit de-motivated or, you know, you might kind of want to maybe drag your feet and procrastinate a little bit.
Getting the motivation [00:07:54]
Blake Vanier: Yeah, so the key though, Is in anything that's worth doing is to chip away at it slowly. I think consistency is going to win more battles than speed, it's just, it doesn't matter. Like if I'm really struggling. I don't have to be racing to the finish every moment of the day. And as long as I'm taking a few steps towards that, the peak of that mountain every day, and it might, you know, one step might take me 30 minutes or one step might mean, I think about it for five minutes and I go on a walk or something and I let it Just doing the background. I think it's just a matter of knowing that this is a task that I want to see to the end. And so every day it deserves some of my attention
Aziz AlObaid: yeah. So you, you mentioned attention you also. And shin, you keep going there's consistency,
Avoiding Distractions [00:08:45] So how do you eliminate these distractions and avoid getting yourself into like an unproductive routine?
Blake Vanier: so there's a couple. Tricks. And so one trick that I like to use when I need to really focus is I'll set a timer for 45 minutes or it could be five, 10, 15, just something that I know that I can complete. And I say, during this timer, I'm going to be 100% dedicated to the task.
I'm going to ignore, you know, any little. Chat ping or anything else? I like to work on my iPad. Cause it's kind of, it's not as nice when you have a desktop and you have 20 different windows up, but this iPad just only has one app going at once, basically.
So I just sit there and I can just kind of work and focus. And just having that kind of commitment to myself saying for this specific time is just for the story. And I think the goal there is, it just needs to be a timeframe that, you know, you can commit to, it doesn't need to be four hours and it doesn't need to be 45 minutes. I like 45 minutes. Cause I know that's a pretty good amount of time where I don't have to take any sort of break mentally.
Aziz AlObaid: Awesome. Amazing. I really want to move on into you know, the, the struggles and the difficulties of publishing a book. ,
Affecting the Readers' Brains [00:10:03]
but real quick, I read an article by the journal of neuroscience.
And the article was talking about the cocktail of. Happy and euphoric hormones that your brain releases when you're engaged with someone's story hormones, like dopamine and oxytocin, oxytocin,
So do you think about how your story affects your reader's brain? While writing a book, or is this kind of like a by-product that you don't even think about?
Blake Vanier: Yes. So that is an interesting question. I. Don't think about how it affects their brain, but I think about how it affects their mind in the sense that like a good story has a lot of different things going for, it has a little bit of intrigued a little bit of suspense and you know, and it's a rewarding.
And so as far as that, like part is something I worked on with, my wife was making. Any one story, having lots of little threads and those little threads can be a couple chapters long. They could be the whole book, but every chapter kind of has some sort of reward to it. And so you know, I think working around somebody who's mine and kind of building up different emotions is very important Intermission [00:11:10]
Aziz: Hey guys, this is the part of the podcast where people usually tell you to buy this product or subscribed to this service, but we don't have any sponsors yet. So we'll sell ourselves. Instead. We have four simple asks one, please subscribe. If you haven't already. To share the podcast, share it with your friends, share with your family and share it with a stranger.
Start a conversation, three, check out the show notes. You can find all the references that we've already made and are about to make on there. And for engage with us on Instagram and email, enjoy the rest of the show.
Publishing a Book [00:11:41]Aziz AlObaid: You said that you wanted to publish edit and you want to edit, right. Do everything.
But can you explain to me and to the audience, how a book gets published nowadays? I mean, cause usually even my understanding is you have a publisher, the publisher funds the book and pushes you to publish within a timeframe. And you're saying that you kind of doing it differently. You're doing it independently.
So how does a book get published in 2021?
Blake Vanier: Now we have this self publishing scene, which has an incredible amount of tools available to us. So as far as publishing You know, getting the edits done and all of that is a bit challenging because you're finding people that you trust and you're, you're paying for it upfront. And then your self publishing
but the actual buttons involved in that you're contending with is perceived value, right? Your book can be it could be the best book in the world, but if somebody doesn't perceive it as valuable, then they're not going to spend the time or the money on it. And when you have a publishing house, That has successful books or has the reach to kind of reach a bunch of people that helps to build that perceived value.
And so now starting from nothing is quite a challenge because you're trying to convince people to take a risk on this. And so where the publishing houses can maybe get away with a lot more because they have this reputation, which adds to that you know, starting from scratch. I'm going to say it again, but it's brutal.
Aziz AlObaid: Very brutal. At least it sounds very brutal at least to me. Okay. .
Selling a Book [00:13:19] So, is writing the book, the difficult part, or is selling it the hard part.
Blake Vanier: So I would say the writing is difficult just because it takes a humongous amount of time and it takes a lot of willpower to, you know, not get demotivated or to have your feelings hurt when a scene's bad or, you know, feel bad about it or lose motivation. But it's also something that you is that's tangible. That's something that you can directly control
now. Advertising getting the book out there is like a different beast. the feedback that you get from it is. Different you can't really you now, instead of looking at talking to a few friends and seeing how a chapter or something reads, you're trying to look at data from, you know, 10,000 impressions or looking at, you're trying to find your a little category or a keyword that triggers your book well. And you're dealing with the algorithms that are trying to optimize searches for people. So like if you search Harry Potter and you see a little ad that says like a book pops up and it says sponsor, that would be, uh, an impression. And so you're not. They don't pay for that unless you click on it,
Advertising on Amazon [00:14:40] Aziz AlObaid: So talk to a little bit, but the advertising, can you share with us like a behind the scenes of what it's like to advertise and sell on Amazon? Because that's the biggest e-commerce platform in the world. It must be so daunting. I mean, talk about a
Blake Vanier: Yeah. Yeah. So what you basically like Amazon wants to make money? They want to sell your book if people want to buy it. And so you have to convince Amazon that it's a good product. and that helps I believe. And so the other aspect is, you know, trying to encourage Amazon to sell it to people. And that's you do that by making your own little ads.
Now, the ads are tricky because you essentially. Make an ad. And you say that your ad is worth 30, however many cents a click. That means that Amazon will show your ad to, you know, a million people. And if nobody clicks on it, then you don't pay anything.
Obviously that would be bad, but now every time they click on it, you have to pay. And so Now, when you're looking at a profit of only like $2 and 30, 50 cents per book, that means that you can only afford 10, you know, anywhere from eight to 15 clicks before now, you're all you're in the negative.
So trying to tune these ads to show to people. That are going to have a high chance of ordering or reading your book when they click on the ad is very challenging. And so you have to, it's a lot of trial and error.
Aziz AlObaid: So it sounds like it's like a very Complex game of trying to memorize all these different buzz words that have worked and find new ones that could work even better.
Blake Vanier: Yeah. I don't know. Memorize would be brutal
because we're talking like, a spreadsheet. you know, You can track the words on your ads. Amazon does make it pretty nice in terms of tracking this information.
Aziz AlObaid: But it does very complex. It does sound.
Blake Vanier: Oh, and, and that's only, that's only half of it because you're dealing with You know, your ad itself, the copy. So like what, what tagline am I using for a particular keyword or a category? And then, so you have to like try, I'm trying, I have 15 different taglines that I'm trying right now. And then, and then when somebody does click, you have to look at what's the conversion rate.
And so like, you know, there's just so many factors. Like people might not click because the blurb is bad or they might not click because they. Copy's bad. So it's just a tuning of a million different things.
Aziz AlObaid: For sure.
Why are we drawn to Art? [00:17:15] So Why do you think so many people are drawn to the art world, given that it's filled with constant rejection and self doubt and a very low odds of making a decent living.
Blake Vanier: You know, humanity as a whole is successful because of the community. Right. And so Basically, I think that human humans as a group are built on a community. And I wonder if like part of this is, you know, our desire to contribute to the community, like build a story that they can, we can share with a bunch of people or, you know, make some art that a bunch of people can appreciate.
Necessary Habits [00:17:59] Aziz AlObaid: All right. So I wanna, I wanna tackle the questions. Am I making the most of my free time? And am I building the habits necessary to be creative? you know, You certainly have all these like pockets of free time throughout your day. Most people, unfortunately like to fill it up with social media. But would you say those pockets of free time would be, would be good or is it enough to create and like say a 30 minute break?
Blake Vanier: So one thing that I had found is that having your creativity with you. Everywhere is incredibly liberating. So like, whether that just be a little notepad, you can write notes in our phone where you can start writing your story in there. That means that you can go into a waiting room. And now all of a sudden, if you expect it to be there for five minutes and they're 30 minutes, well, you just got 30 minutes of work done.
You know, you got to explore your medium for 30 minutes. And so now instead of like being, you know, rushing around. From one appointment to the next, you can kind of just, you know, find these little moments and really kinda find a way to make the best of them is quite nice.
You know, if you're interested in creating or just having thoughts and you feel all the empty spaces with social media, You have killed all creativity, essentially.
So like, you know, if you're on a date and you're sitting at the restaurant and your date goes to the bathroom, And you have two options. You can look at the room and kind of just, you know, let these thoughts kind of flow through you and kind of maybe you notice how they're moving and that inspires you to write a scene, or maybe you see somebody struggling with something and you're like, Oh, we could invent something to fix that.
That in-between space where you're just left with yourself is where a lot of creativity happens. And I see that Now people are so attached to different media, like your social media and your phone, or some other silly thing that you're robbed yourself of these opportunities to let your brain kinda, really be productive and creative. Seeing it Through [00:20:17]
Aziz AlObaid: Some listeners may be great at starting a project but there are difficulties rise and continuing the project and seeing it all the way through. What advice do you have for them?
Blake Vanier: It's easy to start a project when you Have that confidence, you know, and you're motivated. But. Motivation is fleeting from day to day. And it's about discipline. And I think that has a lot of weight because it's the discipline and that willpower that is going to see things through, because it's a lot of like anything you're doing, you're going to have Doubts and uncertainties and confidence issues, but that discipline can help keeping you moving forward.
And that's part of the challenge for anybody. it's easy to get caught up in the moment and plan for something huge and then not
Aziz AlObaid: I want to add on by sharing another really cool bad-ass set as well. And that's David Goggins and David Goggins book. He writes about how, you know, you can be motivated to go for a run, but if you, you know, look outside the window and it's snowing and it's really cold, then you get de-motivated and then you go sit on your ass and watch Netflix.
But if you're driven. To go for that run. You don't care how many layers you're going to wear, but you're going to get out there. You're going to run in the snow and you're going to actually have your run. So it's discipline a hundred percent. I'll completely accept that, but you also kind of have to build that sense of drive and purpose that you're doing something for, for a true reason and a valid reason. Important Message to Audience [00:21:50] All right. What is an important message that you want our audience to take away from our discussion?
Blake Vanier: I guess if you're trying to be creative, I think it comes down to finding a good support group being okay. When the support group isn't making you the center of attention and then realizing what you're doing or pursuing what you think is a worthwhile goal and, you know, touching that goal every day.
You know, I think that would be the messages did I get, was I allowed to say four
Aziz AlObaid: Phenomenal. I love it. And that's honestly, that's that's the perfect way. And that's the perfect message that we can leave our listeners with today.
Blake, thank you for sharing your journey for satiating, our curiosities.
I appreciate you brother. Thanks for coming on.
Blake Vanier: Yeah, thanks for having me. It's always a pleasure. Always. Good. Talk to you.
Outro [00:22:33] Aziz: This podcast will now be possible without your support. So please subscribe to our podcast, share it with your friends and family. Check out the show notes for any references made and engage with us on Instagram and email. Thank you.