How do you know when it's time to wrap up one phase of your life and move on to the next? What's the secret to staying connected as a writer when you're working alone? And if you have multiple passions and endless ideas, how do you actually finish things instead of constantly starting new projects? Pilar Orti gives her tips in this interview.

In the intro, Writing Storybundle; An honest accounting from an extensive self audit of an indie author publishing business [The Author Stack]; Money books; Direct purchases through ChatGPT; Book discovery and GEO; The ultimate guide to AEO [Lenny's Podcast]; Conversions through Chat [SearchEngineLand]; SORA video app; AI for eCommerce and Amazon Sellers; Deliciously twisted Halloween book sale.

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This podcast is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo eco-system. You can also subscribe to the Kobo Writing Life podcast for interviews with successful indie authors.

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

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Pilar Orti is a nonfiction and memoir author, as well as a voiceover artist, podcaster, and Pilates instructor.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights, and the full transcript is below. 

Show Notes

• Wrapping up life phases with books. Using writing to process and close chapters of your personal and professional journey





• Connection strategies for remote workers and writers. Understanding your own connection style and respecting others' preferences





• Co-writing across continents. The practical process of collaborating with someone you've never met in person





• Using AI as a writing collaborator. How generative AI helped overcome the blank page and create a unified voice





• Knowing when to end projects. Recognising the signs that it's time to stop versus push through challenges





• Being a finisher in a world of ideas. Balancing multiple interests while actually completing projects

You can find Pilar at PilarWrites.com or on LinkedIn.

Transcript of interview with Pilar Orti

Jo: Pilar Orti is a nonfiction and memoir author, as well as a voiceover artist, podcaster, and Pilates instructor. So welcome to the show, Pilar.

Pilar: Thank you very much, Jo. Hello everyone. Hello creatives. It's exciting to talk to you.

Jo: Tell us a bit more about you, how you got into writing and podcasting, and your multi-passionate career.

Pilar: I'm going to try and give you the bit that's more related to writing, because if not, we'll be here for half an hour just with me bubbling on.

I always liked writing, and I was thinking about this, I wrote my first play to be performed when I was seven. I got all my friends together and we did this little show. I think it was about a soldier or something, I don't know why.

All throughout my teens I kept writing plays and got my friends together to do them, and we put on the shows. Looking back, I think for me writing has always been about sharing. All the writing I've done, I've always wanted it to be public, so I've never journaled or anything like that.

I continued writing plays. Eventually I set up a theater company with a friend and we did some plays. Then I did a translation of a Lorca play, When Five Years Pass. That was the first time that I started to think that my work could be published in some way.

So I looked for literary managers in theaters to see if they were interested in the show. I even sent it to Samuel French and Oberon Books, all these small presses that specialized in theater. They all came back with that same thing: “It's a great translation, but it's really niche and nobody's going to want to see this Lorca play.”

So I started to think about how to put it out there and came across self-publishing. Once I saw that my work could get out there relatively easily—I didn't have to go through the whole trying to find a publisher process—I started to write a lot more.

I continued doing some stuff for the theater company and then I started blogging as well. We're talking now about the end of the 90s, 2000s.

Then I wrote a book called The A to Z of Spanish Culture, which was supposed to be a nice project with lots of friends. We would each take a letter of the alphabet and of course, like these projects go, everyone dropped out and I ended up doing the whole thing myself.

Jo: We should just say at this point, you're Spanish.

Are you writing at this point in English or in both?

Pilar: So I went to an English school. I landed there when I was five, in Madrid. So I'm bilingual. My first written language is English and my first spoken language is Spanish. Unfortunately I've dropped writing in Spanish and I really struggle, but my entire academic career has also been in English.

So I think English is the language I feel most comfortable in when I'm writing. Everything I've written has been in English.

Looking at The A to Z of Spanish Culture, I was sharing an office with a theater company and a couple of other theater companies at the time. At some point I mentioned this book, and someone said, “Oh, you're a writer or you want to publish some books. You have to listen to this great podcast called The Creative Penn.”

That was my gateway into the whole world of podcasting. I mean, I knew about podcasting because I'm also a voiceover artist—I've been one since '98—but that really opened up that world.

So I continued writing, and my relationship with writing up to a couple of years ago was just that I wrote mainly nonfiction about things I wanted to write about, looking back at where I was at that time.

Then I published a book on physical theater, a very small book, just as I was leaving the theater company. I also wrote a little book about my life as a voiceover as I saw that work was starting to dry out. I think I'm wrapping up parts of my life with books.

Last year, as I came to the end of my consultancy career talking about working with remote teams, I spent some time just writing, either editing something I was working on or writing. I decided after trying it for a few months that now was the time to write all those books

I wanted to write and to also start looking at my writing as the main thing I was focusing on, because as you said, I always do lots of things. So that's where I am with the writing.

Jo: I like this idea of wrapping up parts of your life with books. I actually think that's a really interesting comment and I definitely feel that. I guess I've started to do that too. I feel that it's true for me, for my fiction as well.

My Desecration, Delirium and Deviance series, I wrote when we were in London and they're about London. When I moved to Bath, I wrote my Matt Walker series, which was set in Bath. Then the Pilgrimage book was about that pilgrimage. So I really like that insight, that sort of wrapping up parts of your life with books.

Just coming back, you said y