Episode 247: Success and Finding Contentment in Your Work

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Today on Fable and the Verbivore, we’re sharing an unscripted episode where we talk about rethinking our definitions of success and finding contentment in our work.

Over the last year, we’ve done a wide range of topics — from writing about disabilities to writing with empathy —that took a lot of energy and preparation. We’ve also been doing this podcast for almost 5 years and as we near our 250th episode we felt it would be good to do a series of episodes getting back to our roots of how this first began — through unplanned conversations about life, books, and the writing craft. So, for the next few episodes we’re continuing to see where our conversations take us, without planning in advance what we’ll talk about.

In this conversation, we dig into reconsidering our ideas around success and finding internal motivation and fulfillment through your work. Things like:

  • Making your own definition of success, but also re-defining it when needed 

  • Focusing in on internal motivations and noticing what actually brings you fulfillment in your work and process, but also what doesn’t

  • Accepting challenges that excite and spark interest for you in your work as well as require you to rise to the occasion

  • Noticing when what used to be motivating feels like drudgery and taking a break or stepping back to ask what’s changed and what may no longer be serving you

  • Looking at each project as its own individual story with distinctive needs and taking moments to assess what those currently are

  • Giving a project more time if its needs it in order to become what you feel it wants to be

  • Observing when the release schedule or your expectations for a project are adding too much stress or pressure and making choices that actively prioritizes what you currently feel is most important

  • Noticing when the joy is no longer there in your work and being willing to stop, get honest, and ask yourself some delving questions

We hope you enjoy this episode and the more improvisational format of this series and that some of this connects with your own journey!

Keep reading, writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

Notes:

The Verbivore shares Trent Reznor’s story with NIN that helped inform a part of the storyline for the movie Soul. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross composed the score along with John Batiste who created the jazz compositions. That story came from an interview clip mentioned in Lessons From the Screenplay’s YouTube Video “The Soul of Good Character Design”

The Verbivore mentions the story of Stephen King’s Misery and how he realized after the fact his subconscious mind was trying to tell himself something about his own addiction (as mentioned in his book On Writing). The BookRiot Article “Writing and Addiction in Stephen King’s MISERY” also references this idea.

Books and Films Mentioned:

  • Soul - Directed by Pete Docter

Music from:https://filmmusic.io
‘Friendly day’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
Licence: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Bethany Stedman