How To Write The Future

176. Bailey Lang's Habits of Mind for Writers

• BETH BARANY • Season 1 • Episode 176

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“So the habits of mind are: curiosity, openness, engagement, creativity, persistence, responsibility, flexibility, and metacognition. So that's a whole lot of terms. Metacognition is typically the one where people go, huh, I don't know what you're talking about. So that's the one that I wanna talk about. It is also one of the ones that I think is foundational to all the rest.” - Bailey Lang

In this How To Write the Future podcast episode, “Bailey Lang's Habits of Mind for Writers,” host Beth Barany talks to book coach, editor, and ghostwriter Bailey Lang, where they discuss the uses of AI in a creative world, and Bailey shares what the Habits of Mind are and why they are important to writers and how they can help them build sustainable practices. 

ABOUT BAILEY LANG

Dr. Bailey Lang is a book coach, editor, and ghostwriter. At the Writing Desk, Bailey offers one-on-one coaching and manuscript reviews to support authors in building sustainable, enjoyable writing practices that take their books from draft to done. Bailey pairs a deep knowledge of the writing process with intuitive and highly customized practices that help writers develop confidence, grow in their craft, and produce writing they’re proud of—without burning out.

Bailey's free newsletter, Word to the Wise, features writing advice you'll actually use—plus regular interviews with published authors. https://usethewritingdesk.kit.com/

Website: https://usethewritingdesk.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bailey-lang/

ABOUT BETH BARANY

Beth Barany, an award-winning fantasy and science fiction novelist, teaches novelists how to write, edit, and publish their books as a coach, teacher, consultant, and developmental editor.

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  • SHOW PRODUCTION BY Beth Barany
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BETH BARANY:

Hey everyone, welcome to or welcome back, to How to Write the Future Podcast. I'm your host Beth Barany, and I am a science fiction and fantasy writer, helping writers go from light bulb" to draft. I also work with creative entrepreneurs to take their business into action and put it into the world and help their audience. And I love running this podcast because at How to Write the Future podcast, I not only get to talk to science fiction and fantasy writers, but I also get to talk to thinkers and people who are helping us expand into maybe a new version of who we want to be. So I believe in the power of the imagination, and I believe in the power of creativity. So especially storytellers and writers and all artists, we are such an important job in our culture, and I believe, and here's my motto, that when we vision what is possible for us as humans on this planet, we help make it so. That is my optimism showing and I just wanna welcome to our stage, Bailey. Hi Bailey.

BAILEY LANG:

Hello. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to talk to you today.

BETH BARANY:

me too. I am so excited. So if you could introduce yourself to everyone, that would be awesome.

BAILEY LANG:

Yeah. So hi everybody. Uh, I'm Bailey Lang. I am a book coach, editor, and writer. Um, my company's called The Writing Desk and I work with authors, creatives, academics, entrepreneurs, a little bit of everybody, to build sustainable, enjoyable writing practices that take their books from draft to done.

BETH BARANY:

I just love that, from draft to done. Good job. great little pithy statement there. You're writing for our blog, Writer's Fun Zone, and I'm really intrigued by your topic,"habits of mind," and I find that just so attractive. If you could tell us a little bit about: What are the habits of mind and why are they important to writers?

BAILEY LANG:

yes. Such a good question. So often when we think about our writing habits, right, we're thinking about the actual physical act of sitting down to write, right? Like the external sorts of habits that maybe it's happening once a day, maybe it's happening once a week, but it's something you're sitting down and, and doing physically in some way. And the habits of mind are our thinking patterns, right? It's the things that are happening in our heads kind of all of the time. Um, and those sort of underpin all of our other habits. And so my dissertation research way back when was about about these habits of mind, right? So there is this research that came out in. Oh gosh, 2011, on Habits of Mind that help writers be successful. And they were specifically looking at post-secondary writers. So college students, transitioning out of high school into college. What are the mental habits that help people succeed in writing in this new environment? And the sort of research question that I was pursuing is like, are these habits of mind? Things that we see show up in successful writers in other places. Are these habits of mine generally true of successful writers? And so I am a big old archival research dork. so my research project was looking at: can we find evidence for these habits of mind in the historical record, uh, in the writing of, of people from the past? and so what I found was, yeah, we do see it. And so part of the work that I do now is really helping writers get a handle on what these habits of mind look like for them in their practices currently. Are these things that they are actively engaging in? Are these things that they could be cultivating more? and just seeing how, like when you practice some of this stuff, when you really train your brain to think in these specific ways, the payoff for your writing practice can be pretty impressive. Um, it's really cool to see.

BETH BARANY:

And when you say payoff, like what tangible results are you talking about?

BAILEY LANG:

Yeah. People who work on the habits of mind typically find that they have an easier time sitting down to write. They have more ideas, they feel more confident in their writing. all of those things that kind of contribute to feeling blocked. Right? And struggling to sit down at the page and write. Some of that starts to alleviate, when you focus on these habits of mind, because often the stuff that keeps us from writing is, is mental before it's anything else, right? We're like, we get in our own way. that the internal critic, all of that kind of stuff can come up. And so working on your habits of mind can really inform the entire rest of your writing practice.

BETH BARANY:

Yeah, so, so important. So what can writers do? How can they cultivate strong habits of mind? Maybe you could just tell us one of these habits that you think, or that you've seen having the biggest impact with your clients.

BAILEY LANG:

Oh my gosh. It's so hard to pick. there are eight habits of mind that are studied, and so I'll just give you a brief kind of list of what those are, and then I'll talk about one in particular. So the habits of mind are: curiosity, openness, engagement, creativity, persistence, responsibility, flexibility, and metacognition. So that's a whole lot of terms. Metacognition is typically the one where people go, huh, I don't know what you're talking about. So that's the one that I wanna talk about. it is also one of the ones that I think is foundational to all the rest. So metacognition is the ability to think about your own thinking. Which sounds very Inception. but if you are someone who journals who has a mindfulness meditation practice, who has done breath work, who has any sort of intuitive practice that's metacognition, you're already doing it. and so if you're thinking that sounds too esoteric and complicated and difficult, it's really not right. It really is just a matter of being able to notice what is going on mentally. Then you get into a position where you can make decisions about whether you want to continue down that path or do something that is going to intervene. so if you are like me, someone who has anxiety and you catch yourself like, oh, I am in a spiral right now. I need to go sit outside for a few minutes and do some breath work and like ground myself. it's metacognition that kind of intervenes in that spiral and goes, Hey, here's the pattern. We've seen this before. Like, what do we need to do here? So when it comes to writing, metacognition can really help you. If every time you sit down on the page you're like. this is gonna be really hard and I'm not gonna produce anything good and I'm, am I just wasting my time, et cetera. You can start to notice those thought patterns and then actively replace them with things that feel more helpful. Um, so that's like metacognition is a really powerful tool to practice with.

BETH BARANY:

I love that. And, and metacognition, I would definitely say is a big part of, the NLP training. I received a huge part. It's all about like noticing. What do you notice? That's a big question. We might ask others, but I ask myself too, what do I notice? And so one of my journal prompts for myself is: what's going on here, Beth?

BAILEY LANG:

I love that.

BETH BARANY:

Because I notice when I get in a spiral and I've had low level anxiety, I really noticed it when I started my business 20 years ago. I would have, I would just be kind of anxious and I didn't know. And, and finally I realized, oh, I am like operating on low level anxiety, like all the time. So what, starting to ask myself, what's going on here? And especially when I'm stuck in the hard parts of writing, like editing like I am now and have been for a while, I'm constantly asking myself, what's going on here? Because the meta of editing to, from my perspective. Is the reason we're having a, I'm having a hard time is that I'm asking myself to deal with some difficult things in the story itself. The story's asking me to deal with some difficult emotions, and it's totally okay that I might be having a challenging time at that because there's a reason why I left this part of the editing to the end, and here I am bumping up against it and, and feeling overwhelmed by it. I'm like, oh, okay. So when I ask myself in my journal sessions before I write. And edit. It's, Hey, what's going on here? Then I start to recognize the pattern, the, yeah. Habit of mind. Yeah.

BAILEY LANG:

Oh, I love that. Yeah. That's such a beautiful question, and it, it really just, it does put you into kind of that observer mode and not being this stuck in the experience mode, and that's, that's the power of that question. That's great.

BETH BARANY:

So powerful. So what else should writers know about building a sustainable, enjoyable writing practice?

BAILEY LANG:

I have a issue of my newsletter about this coming out in a couple weeks. I was just writing about this topic like all morning. One of the big things that I'm always trying to tell people is you have to figure out what works for you and what works for somebody else may not be what works for you. So if you ever are getting advice from someone and they're like, well, this worked for me, It should work for you too. Just remember, that's not necessarily true, right? They don't have your life, they don't have your experiences, they don't have your constraints. They may have the absolute best of intentions and they may just be really excited that like, Hey, this worked for them, right? It's, I'm not saying that people saying that have any bad intentions, but you have to be really discerning about writing advice and be willing to experiment with stuff. Right. Um, you may have a sense sometimes that like, ooh, I don't know, that doesn't sound like it's gonna be fun or enjoyable. Or effective. And then sometimes you try something and you're like, wow, that really, that really worked. so being willing to experiment I think is really good, but also cultivate that awareness of like, something that somebody says is the best piece of writing advice in the world may not be the best piece of writing advice for you. And the only writing practice that is truly sustainable is the one that you are going to to maintain, right, and stick with or adapt as circumstances change. But it has to work for you. It can't be the other way around.

BETH BARANY:

Yeah. Yeah. And, and what I noticed is people can get frozen at the threshold. And I don't know about you. I'd be curious to hear what you think, but my solution to that is timed writing and the smallest amount of timed writing that feels feasible. So not an impossible, like I gonna write for an hour, but my favorite is 20 minutes. Some people love 15. I even say stand in your kitchen, heat your coffee up. And write for two minutes. And just to have the experience of what is it actually like to physically be writing constantly for a very, very small, almost dumb amount of time. Like I could do a minute, I could do two minutes, well do it. Go and see what that's like. Write small. Challenge yourself self to write five 50 words or a hundred words. So it doesn't have to be a time bound. It could be word bound, whatever works. But really, if you have the urge to write, but you're not writing, that's actually where the pain sits. That's why you're in pain. You're not in pain because of something else. You're actually in pain'cause you're not doing what you love. Yes. and what's the easiest ask You can ask your system like, oh sure, but I could do a minute. So I don't know what your thought is on that. if your habits of mind include that like threshold I wanna be writing, but I'm not writing.

BAILEY LANG:

I think there's a few that kind of touch on that. So you have like the, the flexibility element, right? Is that willingness to, say, I'm gonna try something right? I am. While my tea steeps, I'm just gonna pull a notebook out and write. You know, that's three, four minutes. so being willing to, to try other stuff and just see like what clicks, what doesn't. Yeah. Flexibility is huge in that, that openness, I think is big too. Just again, that willingness to try, not to close off possibilities before you give them a shot. but also then the responsibility element of like, I'm going to, to try this and then reflect on it, And taking that element of: did this really work for me? I'm going to evaluate it. I'm going to be the owner of the choices that I'm making about my writing and like putting yourself back in the driver's seat I think can be huge. And yeah, I love the example of like, how can you set the bar so low that you kind of trip over it, right? Like it, you don't have to clear a huge hurdle to start writing. Like what is, what is an amount of writing that feels almost silly to, to say you could do. Start there if you are super stuck, like set that bar so, so low.

BETH BARANY:

let's Switch gears a little bit to something that's super timely and also, affecting our lives now and will continue to affect our lives, which is AI. And what role do you see AI playing in the future of creative business, especially online? And we're talking to be more specific, the tools like chat GPT, the LLMs, the large language models. yeah. What are your thoughts on that?

BAILEY LANG:

ideally none at all. That would be my ideal world. I think that these tools are actively harmful in many, many ways to our creativity, to our ability to think, to our ability to produce new ideas, right? Because they're. Aside from all of the hype about them, right, they are based on probabilistic models. They are constantly pulling everything toward sameness and the mean, right? That's how they, that's how they operate. So the more we see people rely on them, the more everything's gonna sound and look the same. that said these tools are out there. I don't, barring a complete collapse of all technology, I don't think they're fully gonna go anywhere. I think that once this hype cycle kind of dies down and we see what really is their function, what really is their utility, I think we'll start to see some more realistic use cases. Right? Like right now we're still in that cycle where. There's a lot of people who are like, oh, you know, it's gonna replace writers and, you know, we're not gonna need creatives and artists and people who make things and think creatively. And I simply don't think that that will ever be true. Right? I don't think that these technologies can replace your human creativity, but I do think that there are really narrow, well scoped use cases for some of these tools. so Karen, how's book Empire of AI is a really, really good read on this topic. She has a lot of information just first about how like weird and deceptive and dysfunctional a lot of AI companies and marketing are, but also the history of LLMs and the use cases that they would actually be really well suited for. So there's this beautiful example of how LLMs are being used to preserve some indigenous languages and they're being used and owned and operated by speakers of those languages to serve their communities. that's incredible. If we can get stuff like that where these tools really are serving our needs and not exploiting and extracting from creatives and data workers in the environment. That would be amazing. Right? I would love to see things move in that direction. That's definitely not where we are right now, but I think that possibility still exists.

BETH BARANY:

Then for creative businesses. I have some examples that I could share that I could answer this question, but I'm curious what you think. There you are, you're a writer, you're a novelist, you have a book. You might be a nonfiction writer, maybe you're, you're writing articles in what way can these tools actually, maybe be useful or, or do you think not at all for us, writers.

BAILEY LANG:

I talk to a lot of writers who use these tools for, they'll give it a piece of text they've written and say, what have I missed here? What's another angle on this that maybe I have not thought of? That can be helpful up to an extent. I think that is a potential use case. I think you still have to be careful, right? Because these tools are not thinking, they're not truly evaluating anything that you give them. they're taking text data sets and spitting out the most likely answer that, that seems plausible, right? So you still have to be really careful, but I know that there are some people who have used it in that way, um, as kind of like a very early stage brainstormy thought partner. So that's, that's one possibility. it with, 50 caveats stacked on top. Uh, but I would be really curious to hear like what you see as some possibilities for these tools.

BETH BARANY:

Where I find it the most useful is when I've spent a lot of time creating something and then I want the AI tool to extract my short marketing messages from it because, and I've always felt this way since years and years and years ago where I had to, I wrote it, the novel, and then someone's like, Hey, you've gotta write a pitch for this novel. And I was just like horrified and actually felt. I felt like I was being asked to do damage to the story by condensing it to two sentences. Well. These tools can help you do that. Um, I know now how to write an elevator pitch for my fiction, but, writing an article and then, or writing, writing a landing page, you know that I spend tons of time writing a sales page for class and then having the tools extract. 20, you know, marketing messages from it. it's like a writing assistant. And then of course I go through everything and make sure it's my voice and, and I can train the tool. I don't use Chat GPT I use Notion's AI and it's trained on me so I can say, you know, using my voice, my branding voice, which I've already trained it on, You know, x, y, z types of marketing messages and be sure not to hallucinate or use emojis. use my brand voice guidelines. you know, I've gone through a lot of processes to, to be able to do that. So it shortcuts the work for me. And then I can go through it, review it, and test them. You know, I usually test them inside of the different social medias, make sure they have the right length or whatever, and then I can hand them off to my team that will put them out into the world for me. So. I find that incredibly helpful. Also, I've used it to write, emails, same kind of thing, like, here's the marketing material I created on my own. Now adapt this to different kinds of emails. Then I've also used it to generate lists of hashtags. Like, here's 10 hashtags, please generate 20 more for me in this this audience for this purpose, for this content. Its strength is that it's pulling from what is already known.

BAILEY LANG:

Yes.

BETH BARANY:

So if you're wanting to address like what is known, what is popular, and you're adapting-- maybe you have some unusual content and you're like, well, what is this like, that's already there. Okay, that's useful. Or what are the hashtags people are currently using? Pull those in'cause you wanna catch people's attention right now. Mm-hmm. So that's where I use it the most. I also use it for idea generation for names, naming. That's a huge thing for me. Give me 30 names, that mean this or this type of culture, or mix these two cultures and come up with a bunch of names or, fun things, inventions. And then I'll take what it gives me and I'll invent on top of that. I'm like, oh, I like a bit from here and a bit from there. So it's a quick way to get a whole bunch of ideas. So I'm not staring at a baby naming site I need a kind of newness. those are pretty much the main thing. And then I also use it for research. I use Perplexity for research because it's pulling right from the web and I can get it to compile information quickly for me. Mm-hmm. so it's a time saver. I think they're primarily time savers, but it's icky for me to use it for fiction. I'm like, are you kidding? Right. Never do that. Right. But I also have used it, and then on the business side, I've used it to help me draft some business things because, and tell me where my blind spots are, because it is working on today's know-how. So I find that useful because I have a lot of blind spots, so, I'm using, I guess like a mini teacher, I suppose.

BAILEY LANG:

Yeah. I hear you saying, you know, like, yeah, this is not something that you would use to generate your fiction. Right. That would be so outside, so far beyond the pale, but like all of these uses of saving time. Right. Taking a task that would normally take you way longer and having a tool that lets you streamline that a little bit. These are really narrow uses that I think, it's, that's a good function for this tool. I don't think that it is a replacement for creativity. And like you said, right? You're taking what it gives you and then you are riffing on that further. You are still using all of those critical thinking skills. All of those writing skills, all of that creativity that you have honed over the course of your career to say you can look at that and then discern this is useful and this is not right. And that's, that's where I worry about like overreliance on those tools by people with less experience. Then they won't build those muscles, right. And they'll lose the ability to say, this is helpful and this is not. And so I think there's, I think there are like risks there, but the way that you have described using it like that makes total sense to me.

BETH BARANY:

Yeah. And I do think there's a huge risk, and I saw it from day one'cause I was fiddling around with chat GPT when it first came out in November, 2022, I did tests on it. I did some podcast episodes on those tests. critical thinking skills- they are, they're diminishing. it's measurable and our ability to handle the blank page and our ability to ask critical questions and, and evaluate and discern and critique and all of that. Uh, they're, they are diminishing and they're, I think more important than ever. And I foresee that there's gonna be more and more classes. But as we wrap up today, I'd love this question that you offered up, and I think it's so important, which is: What tips do you have for neurodivergent writers who wanna build a strong writing practice?

BAILEY LANG:

Yeah, this is one of my favorite things to talk About. so I am autistic. so this is a topic that is near and dear to my heart personally. It's something that I spend a lot of time reading and writing and thinking about. a lot of people that I work with are neurodivergent in one way or another. and so I think it's important, particularly for neurodivergent writers, kinda like I was talking about earlier, to recognize that, advice that works for somebody else. May not be the advice that works for you, right? So if you are someone like me who requires both a lot of structure and a lot of novelty in your writing process, right? That may be a situation where. You're gonna set up a writing practice and then blow it up every three weeks and do something different, because that is what your brain needs. if you are someone who just requires novelty, right? Someone being like, Hey, use this habit tracker is going to feel like someone told you to sit on this fire anthill, right? Like, you're just, it's not gonna work for you. Um, and it'll be painful if you try. so really recognizing like, what are. The features of your neurodivergence that intersect with that bump up against that align really well with different pieces of writing advice, and don't be afraid to modify stuff to make it work for you. it's, it is extra work for neurodivergent people to be in the world and try to do anything, and that sucks and is unfair. but it is really hard on us also to try to do something that, a way, the way a neurotypical person would, right. It's, that's gonna add a lot of cognitive burden, uh, and it'll burn you out to try. So don't be afraid to do that work. Right? And, and kind of start there and say, what is it that my mind and body need to fully let me be in my creativity and to live that out in the best way possible? And to be okay with that, not looking like how it. Quote, unquote should look or how somebody else tells you it ought to be right. It, it has to work for you. Um, so that's something that I, I will probably be beating that drum for the rest of my career. It's like it doesn't have to work for anybody else, it just has to work for you. How do we make space for everybody? How do we all get to be the creators and the storytellers and the thinkers that we are?

BETH BARANY:

Yeah, and I would say that's definitely the premise of my work here with the podcast, but also my fiction. It's like, well, why can't we all be supported fully? Supported fully, emotionally, creatively, psychologically, physically. You know, why is it only some people and I just call BS on that, that's baloney. We're all human animals and we're all part of the animal kingdom. So even the animals, right? Like we are in the animal kingdom, let us include that. I like to throw one more question at people toward the end of the podcast, which is, what does it mean for you this whole notion of to write the future?

BAILEY LANG:

Oh, it's such a beautiful question and I really believe that writing is a form of magic. Like storytelling is quite literally magical. You are creating. Worlds and people and ideas and visions that didn't exist before. And you are bringing those forth into being, and I think similar to your motto, right? Like our ability to, to imagine these things, to share these ideas with each other, that is how we move forward. That's how we get a future that is better for all of us. We have to have stories. They, they foster connection. They build empathy. You know, they lighten the load when things are really heavy. If that's not magic, I don't know what is.

BETH BARANY:

Oh, I love it. Bailey, thank you so, so much for being a guest

BAILEY LANG:

Thank you for having me.

BETH BARANY:

All right, everyone. That's it for this week. Write long and prosper. And that's a wrap.