Jenny Valentish: The Introvert's Guide to Leaving the House

Music. In the spirit of reconciliation, I acknowledge the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community.

I pay my respects to their elders, past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Highland peoples today. Welcome to Totally Lit, the podcast celebrating reading, writing and creating literature. I'm your host, Kai Garvey. Thank you for listening. Jenny Valentish, welcome to Totally Lit. Thank you. Happy to be here. I am super excited to chat with you. This is kind of like a full circle moment for me.

You first came across my radar at the Rock and Roll Writers Festival. I think it was 2017 or 18. Yeah, they ran it for a few years. Yes, and I was a little volunteer helping with just a little dream of writing. So it's kind of a thrill now to be interviewing so many amazing authors that I saw at like events like that. Yeah, what a great festival that was. It was such a great thing to bring to Brisbane. It was fantastic. And I met so many great people at that event, like Nikki McWatters herself.

I think I probably just walked past you. I was probably too shy to say hello at that stage. I saw Nikki last week because I had my Sydney launch and she came down from the Blue Mountains. A great reunion. I actually see her every time I have a book launch. She's super generous and coming along to everything. She's amazing. She's been a guest on the show as well, which was cool for me.

And she actually inspired me because when I first met her at the Rock and Roll Writers Festival, she had just won the Grieve Writing Competition through the Hunter Writers Centre. And I was like, oh, I can give that a shot and submitted something and I placed third, so I didn't quite get to the top. That's still placing. That was pretty cool for my first go at something.

Yeah. So thank you to Leanne who organised the Rock and Roll Writers Festival because it really helped me with my writing, just that experience.

Anyway, now we're here to chat about your latest book, which I feel like it was written for me. To be honest. And possibly when people look at you, Jenny, they wouldn't think that you find it challenging to be social. Do you want to tell us why you wrote the book? Yeah. Well, The Introvert's Guide to Leaving the House was originally called Does Not Play Well with Others.

And yeah, and it wasn't a self-help book, which it pretty much is now, although it's a kind of memoir self-help hybrid it was more of a sort of a deep dive into social reluctance and why people might kind of want to opt out or or feel guarded around other people and then when I took it to a firm press because they have a really big self-help arm they says oh we'd really like to kind of push it in that direction and so it was renamed the introvert's guide to leaving their house but it's got a bit

of a long tagline to try and cover quite a few things so solid advice for introverts, awkward.

Sociophobes and standoffishers and I took all those boxes yeah yeah and I wrote it because I wanted to sort of explore my own kind of social reluctance and why that was nature nurture what else is going on your origin story all sorts of things you know if you're neurodivergent if that has a role to play so it's um it casts a wide net and it goes down a lot of weird rabbit holes which I found so enjoyable I mean I love just doing research and getting thrown off track and you're

halfway through a book tour at the moment have you been getting much feedback from readers on the book yet yeah the feedback actually interestingly is that extroverts and non-introverts because that can also include omnivots and amberverts are really getting something out of it too which is you know really what you want so I've had feedback from for instance somebody who's experienced profound grief that

she just related to so many of the exercises that I personally set myself when I was tackling.

Social anxiety and social reluctance when I was younger and I think it's just that idea of, sometimes there comes a point in our life where we may want to assess and analyze our behaviors see what's working chuck out what isn't and reframe some things so anybody who's been through that which is most of us could find that it strikes a chord. That's interesting I'm halfway through my life at the moment and I do. You don't know that.

Well, potentially I could be at the end of my life, but no, I'm assuming I'm middle-aged, so I'm halfway through my life and I definitely have some social anxiety issues, but don't feel, when I'm in the peak of that anxiety that I'm able to control it. Like I'm still, behaving in the same way and feeling that I can't break those habits or change that behavior because I'm too heightened in the moment of it, if you understand what I mean.

And so I find it really interesting, those people that can look at themselves and really identify those feelings and figure out how to change them.

If you think of the tenets of mindfulness, and my book isn't about mindfulness, but if you think of it it's about kind of identifying what's going on for you possibly naming it you know and sort of seeing it as a thing separate to you that you can detach from move along reduce or whatever you need to do to it so in a way you know we can do that with social anxiety we can recognize different aspects of social anxiety and why they happen and what our own limitations are what our strengths are and

you know if there are certain scenarios that we find really difficult like I find group chats like going out with small groups really difficult and I'll just sink into silence I'm not trying to you know hammer out everything and fix in adverted commas everything so I think if there's some things we find really tricky then we can just sub that out and do something else you know like meet people individually or another really key one is I think a lot of people with

social anxiety find it hard sitting across from someone you know making and a lot of eye contact, sitting still. So you could swap out face-to-face meetings for shoulder-to-shoulder activities where you and a friend go to a gallery or, you know, just for a walk or whatever it is, game of pool. And then you're just both having the experience together and you can have a more sort of laid-back conversation without that need to sort of jump up from the table that some of us have. Yes, yeah.

I'm definitely a flight person. So the more uncomfortable I am in a situation, the more you'll find me trying to run away. And so I will be sort of half... Saying goodbye and standing up and getting out of it if I'm really feeling ready to be gone. Same. And nobody tells you about writing that you do have to push yourself out to get your work noticed and to be engaging with people. And I'd really love to be like a writer that never went anywhere at all.

Yeah. And more so than ever. Social side is challenging.

Because the industry's got so much harder for the publishers as well in that costs have gone up and fewer people reading books they can take fewer risks so they really need writers that can put themselves out there that are like yeah set me to work I'll do anything at press time you know if so even if you don't have a big social media following or following in general which obviously they love they would be looking for someone who won't shy away from stepping forth if you like so it's

you know there's quite a few well there's two chapters in the book that look at that kind of thing and they look at public speaking they also look at how to cope in the age of the personal brand because like I'm Gen X are you Gen X are you Gen Y yeah so we in particular like we were encouraged growing up not to sell out and not to put yourself out there like that was bad bad taste man so apart from the fact that we might.

Not feel comfortable doing that anyway it's been drummed into us not to you know we're not we didn't we weren't raised in the era of even duck face selfies like the generation below were so there's a chapter on how to how to put yourself out there online without feeling like you're compromising yourself which i think is really important just to find something that works for you so what works for me is first of all even though i kind of have

every platform going i'm not really active on the wall like I do have accounts on x blue sky and tiktok and stuff but I don't really use them so I stick to one that I really like the best which is Instagram and I knew that even though I've written a self-help book I personally would feel really uncomfortable.

Talking to camera in a very earnest way and imparting advice so instead of doing that I do kind of skits with my partner and just really kind of deadpan antisocial skits you know which kind of make fun of the fact that it's a self-help book for antisocial people rather than look like I've fixed this now guys look how confident I am like that was that would make me die inside so I think you've got to find something that really works for you.

Well interestingly enough when I was googling you this afternoon the first thing that came up it was jenny valentish books jenny valentish husband jenny valentish guardian and i was like oh people are very interested in who your husband is i think yeah that's that's been because obviously i have googled myself that's been up there for you okay so you know like 10 years i think if you google most people, husbands will come up, actually. But I don't have one.

I have. How disappointing for all those people that have Googled you. Or promising. Who knows? But no. Well, I was wondering, oh, I wonder if they're just checking out Jenny Valentine's. Number four was age as well. And I'm like, what? Really? Checking out. Yeah. Didn't know that. Oh, well, for the record, I've turned 50. No. Look how beautiful your skin is. Thank you. Look how Vaseline the lens. That is a big, I find a lot of pressure before I go to an event now.

I'm like, oh, is my hair frizzy? If I didn't make sure like because I'm a little bit round so I'm like I need to make sure my tummy's always covered so don't wear a shirt that's too short and I've never thought that there would be pressure like that and I'm not I'm just a picture book author like nobody cares if I'm at an event or not but when I see a photo of myself with someone I'm like oh gee put more thought before you leave the house.

Oh yeah I tell you what one thing that you have to do as an author which is a bit painful but at the same time i'm very grateful is you know you go around to the bookshops and you sign copies they very nicely you know take a picture of you signing copies and sometimes you have. To do a little piece to camera and stuff and so you're just constantly under terrible lighting holding up a copy of your book like a bit of an idiot and grinning for.

The camera so yeah there are little things that you do where you think gosh if only my book had been this absolute runaway success without any promotional help then i could just you know be aloofly stay in my jenny cave but alas we can't no we have to go out into the world and talk to other people even i i'm always leaving the house going don't be weird don't be weird don't be weird and without i don't know if that mantra helps i will i will say something weird well they do say

about men you have to be careful about the way you manifest because the way you word it you can actually bring what you're trying not to yeah happen so I always feel like I'm apologizing out in the world where I've said something really weird and I know I was in an event recently and I was saying how my husband and I joke oh well we'll be dead soon like it's all gonna be over and somebody gave me like a sideways look and I'm like oh they didn't get that joke yeah but i

think having a gallows humor is great you know we are we you know introverts and people with social anxiety do tend to be over thinkers yeah and also they always prepared for the absolute worst not just the worst but also seconds from worse third from worse like what's the whole gamut of you know bad situations that could occur so we're always prepared aren't It is kind of surprising how optimistic authors can be in that we're constantly writing.

We're constantly submitting with the, like we're not. We think we will get published, so we keep trying, yet we're constantly opening our emails to rejections and just sort of dusting ourselves up.

Yeah. There's this whole cycle of rejection and interaction with people all the time where socially it's not great for our mental health, to be honest.

Yeah, and authors aren't necessarily the most robust people when it comes to rejection because we have to be overthinkers we have to carry entire worlds in our heads on our own you know and and you know work on it alone and so that does feel like rejection when you when you finally pitch something that you've put a lot of yourself into and it's turned back i was actually part of a roundup from kill your darlings this week where the subject was rejected yeah and i

was looking at it from a journalistic lens actually because i'm a journalist and people do tend to get quite um dispirited if they get a rejection of a pitch and i think oh my gosh probably seven out of ten pitches get rejected for me and you know i've built up contacts over the years it still happens, sometimes i get no response at all i just can't waste time sweating it or taking it personally it's like okay right I have to tweak it and move it along move

it along I think we just have to understand that it's a it's a tough industry out there the book industry and you know the the journalism industry and it's about kind of like. We have to make a pivot in the air like a cat and just think, okay, that didn't land. I'm going to land somewhere else, you know, and just keep going. I do think that we have to be resilient and treat it like a numbers game in a lot of ways.

I think that dopamine hit you get from getting a yes is amazing, but it can be hard if it's years between those yeses instead of like for some people they're getting traction every month kind of thing. But then there's some that have a much larger gap between yeses. Yeah, yeah. But not only that, but people, you know, sometimes it can seem like, oh, my gosh, it's like the acting industry. It's like, oh, the same four people will get columns, it seems like, you know, or book deals.

But it's pretty awful because I know people who are a bit older than me who used to have everything at their feet when it comes to writing gigs And then it just happens as it does that new people came up and, you know, they're not getting the same kind of invites and attention that they used to. And it's really hard to swallow. So even people who are getting yeses at some point are going to get no's. So it's really about, I guess it's a Buddhist thing of attachment,

right? So try not to attach your entire self-worth to whether what you're putting out at the moment creatively is getting picked up or not.

Well, even separating your self-worth from your work completely in that just because you can write a good piece doesn't make you a good person or a liked person either. And also looking back at yourself and deciding why, what is your motivation to write? Is it, are you writing because you want people to know who you are or are you writing because it's something you feel you have to do because some writers are just compelled to write? And I hear some people write and never submit.

They just keep it for themselves. And I'm sort of like, oh, why would you bother? So I definitely am compelled if I write something, it's for someone else to read.

Yeah, of course. even as a kid when like doing a drawing or something like you constantly do i would have to turn that drawing into a card for blah blah i mean all kids do but you know it's got it there's got to be a purpose and someone to validate it at the end right yeah i don't know many people who just make music or write without showing it to anyone i think usually if somebody doesn't show people it's because they're afraid rather than no i'm fine not putting

this out there but i teach memoir and the reason most people who i work with write is because they weren't really heard growing up they've never they've never had their things that are so important and painful to them they've never had them acknowledged or validated and they've grown you know maybe they're in their 40s 50s 60s now and they've given these things a lot of thought and they're they're experts on the topic of whatever it is that ails them, you know.

So they've got a lot to share and they probably realise that this book that they're writing could be a lifeline for someone like them had it been available to them. So I think that's a big motivation for people. Well, it can be very healing to put things down on paper. But I think too, sometimes the things that you're sharing about yourself. People have opinions on them as well, so you've got to be prepared for, I guess.

The commenting and response to what you're sharing, and then that's a whole other level of resilience that you need to have as well, especially if you're sharing something that might be a bit controversial or polarizing, I guess. So that can be, I guess, what holds some people back from writing some of their personal experiences. I mean, I wrote a memoir called Women of Substances and, you know, you don't really hear people being critical per se because where and how are they going to do that?

The thing that would bug me a bit was more, I'd get quite often, oh, that's brave. But in a tone that implied, I can't believe you would hang your dirty laundry up like that.

But that's as far as any negative comments went it's just yeah some people find it distasteful that you well they find memoir distasteful don't they um i'm a real big fan of kate spicer you can look her up on substack and i actually used to write for her in the 90s when she edited a magazine called minx in the uk and now and then she's got a sunday she had a sunday times column and and she writes for the daily mail sometimes in the uk at columns but she she's got a substack

where she's written about you know this the end of a 15-year relationship and being having adhd. And really sort of struggling to stay afloat and as she's writing it each week she writes about the kind of feedback she's getting and it's from it's from friends or acquaintances usually who are just like why would you do that do you think you're oversharing you know why would you put yourself out there to that extent so it's not like something specific,

I think, would get singled out and attacked to your face. It's more that some people have a distaste of oversharing. Yeah, well, I think your friends and family also are concerned for your welfare and they're sort of like, oh, do you think maybe that one you should keep to yourself? Or concerned for their welfare.

I share a lot about I'm a carer to two sons with autism, But I'm always trying to be mindful of only sharing my own experience and trying to be respectful to them because I'm like, oh, actually, this is not just my story. They're living it as well. There's some stories that I can't necessarily share because it's not respectful for them. So really thinking about, okay, if I want to write something, how do I convey that without, I guess, betraying their trust in me as well?

Yeah um so sometimes sharing things that isn't it's not your story necessarily to tell sometimes well they do overlap don't they know women is an island but i think that's the biggest concern of anyone who wants to write about themselves is how to navigate that and you get such varying opinions on that you know helen garner has said well i've never been as hard on anyone as i have been myself which i don't know would be if it would be any comfort to them even so um

kathleen deviney who i often work with giving memoir workshops she says if people don't want to be written about negatively they should have behaved better yes graham green i think said uh to be a writer you should have a splinter advice in your heart but i'm i'm more along your lines where when I wrote my memoir I gave all chapters ahead of time that had family or my ex in it to them to read and I said I'd make any changes which is a bit of a risk

because you know you could end up feeling really angry. It's a crucial story. Yeah. You want it to stay in don't you?

But they didn't ask for any changes but I had also held back quite a bit and I found that to hold back on things that would explain to the outer world this is why I am the way I am which is kind of what you you want to be understood when you write memoir so hold back on crucial things because you don't want to overstep someone else's boundary, it does make you feel like ah this is my one shot at the world understanding

me and I have to rein it in and not give things away it's like actually I found that super stressful when I was writing the book it made me feel really angry even though it was my decision you know I wasn't telling the full story.

That could be quite constraining, couldn't it, to be wanting to tell a story that you just can't tell. Yeah. And also identifying...

Why you want to tell it and why you need like you want people to understand who you are as a person and it's like oh why do I need that I think there's multiple reasons really and you know one is because I I have labored at my craft and I think I can put a really good product for want of a better word out there another is to be a lifeline but there's always a selfish one too which is a deep down you know deep seated childhood need for something i mean i love that madonna has

been so she's so been so open about how she didn't get enough attention as a child and her entire career has been about getting that attention that she didn't have because she came from a large catholic family so i think there's always something very personal about putting a book out it's not all about doing the world a service is it i'm just thinking i'm the opposite of madonna i'm in the only child i got too much attention

so no i couldn't get into any mischief there was no no room for it but i guess as an adult i'm i'm free to get into as much mischief as i like yeah but i mean if you have that kind of micromanaging which i did as well.

Then you can't necessarily express yourself because there's a lot of control and expectation so maybe you need to express yourself later takes you a long time to identify who you are as a person as well when you you haven't had any boundaries to really break against because you haven't been able to try anything in life you get yeah not really knowing what you who you are And so it takes you a bit longer.

And writing's a sense-making exercise, isn't it? Memoir. I mean, we write to desperately try to figure things out. That's why the first draft's called The Vomit Draft, because it's so, you know, it's just like a huge purge all over the paper and hurt feelings and knee-jerk reactions. And it's a dialogue that we've scribbled down in a rage sometimes. So, you know, it's all trying to piece things together.

And then maybe leave it for a spell and then come back to it and have the great gift of being able to see it with a bit more distance, which if we just kept it all in our heads, it's much harder to do. I think it must be because I haven't written memoir at all, to be honest, but that reliving of those experiences must be interesting and getting perspective on how you felt and what actually happened because often what we're experiencing

and the way we're feeling about it changes as we grow as well. Yeah, yeah. So it must be an interesting process to look back on all of those and identify experiences.

What you really felt and how you feel about things now yeah and I think you really have to have a strong like a real certain end date in mind like I'm going to end this story at the point where I turned x or you know x year so that it doesn't become this big galloping mess into the present day where you haven't processed things yet you know so my my memoir was largely set in the 90s actually so I've had plenty of time to figure things out but also I wrote about a

hundred thousand words in 2009 when I quit drinking and then left it or at least barely touched it for about seven years and then decided to write a memoir and I don't think I used any of that draft but I knew I'd got all the stuff I got down how I felt at the time which was super raw, And then seven years later, I was able to go, all right, I'm going to now look at that story with the wisdom of someone who hasn't drunk for seven years and has done a lot of work.

And did you find from that writing of the first draft when you were just becoming sober, was it a different experience again when you sat down that seven years later to write it?

Yeah, it had a completely different take on things. it was a lot more I felt a lot more self-pity then a lot more resentment I was really like, gobbled up by AA I went for about 18 months and I didn't really it wasn't great for me as an introvert to be honest I didn't enjoy it but at the same time it sucks you into this kind of whole other world of slogans and mottos and people who've been maybe in the rooms as they're called for up to 30 years and you're like,

oh my God, I did not know this whole existence was here. And so, it was a very different book from, you know, the perspective of 12 Step and the perspective of still being full of resentment. So it would have been shitty to read for other people. People would have picked up on, you know, you've got to be a reliable narrator, haven't you? You can't be a reliable narrator if you're still processing stuff. Yes, true.

And now, do you think if you sat down and wrote something again, would it be a different piece again? No, I feel that those seven years I took off and before the next draft, I feel like my view now would be the same as it was then. So that's good. That makes me feel, okay, you waited the right amount of time. No, nothing's changed.

And so if people would like to work with you at any of your workshops, have you got anything coming up? I basically do something called – well, I do six-week writers groups, which are on Sundays, and they're four people per group. So they're ongoing, like, forever. And if I get a whole big surge of interest every now and then, I go, okay, well, I'll do two.

I'll do a mid-weeker as well yeah apart from that though I mainly do one-to-ones I do have workshops and every now and then I've got a Facebook group called Sundays We Write which anyone can join every now and then I'll go right we've got enough people to do a memoir workshop we've got enough people to do a features feature writing workshop if there's enough interest I'll do one otherwise people can just do one-to-one zooms with me which I really enjoy and I like,

you know I can either read stuff beforehand and we can troubleshoot anything that's going on for people with their manuscripts or just work on ideas from scratch or even I love doing live editing where I share my screen they give me something that they're working on and I edit it and explain what I'm doing but yeah really enjoy that I love teaching it's a great learning for someone to be watching that live as well as I hope so yeah because I edited

magazines for eight years and was a sub-editor and so i mean i know you've got the skill titan and yeah yeah titan and get all that grammar snapping into shape, And has there been some, have you helped craft some books from scratch to publication? Yeah, I wouldn't say they're from scratch because people came to my writers groups or to me, because I have a manuscript editing service with, you know, maybe half a manuscript or a rough draft, but there's been a few.

So Shana Smith has written an addiction memoir called Going Under, and that came out with Ventura. And then in two weeks I'm launching the book of Samantha Byers, and it's a brilliant novel called Dead Ends and it's coming out with University of Queensland Press and I first saw that when she brought it to my six-week writer's groups and then we did a manuscript assessment. So there's been a few, there's been one more as well which has just escaped my mind actually.

More to come, that's very exciting. I have joined your Facebook group. Great, thank you. I'm not sure if I'm ready to be a memoir writer yet. I've got to move past short stories and picture books. Why? They're completely valid just on their own. That is true. They... Attract many talented people that I have a goal. I want a novel of some sort. Just trying to create the time is the challenge. I'm still stuck in the world of full-time work. Yeah. Podcasting, which takes up a lot of time. It does.

And just submitting and being involved with the KidLit community. And I'm like, oh, I just need to figure out how to do this. Yeah. Yeah, and, you know, often it can be a slow burner that you start and just keep coming back to over a decade. I mean, if you're enjoying it, then the time is not a drama. And I think being realistic about what the timeframe is of actually having. Creating. Yeah, that's what I meant, the timeframe, yeah. Yep, yep.

So watch this space in 10 years, mate. Yeah, looking forward to it.

Fantastic well thank you so much for joining me jenny i've enjoyed chatting to you and i will keep an eye out for you you are at some events at avid reader here in brisbane which i'll keep an eye out for and i think the next thing after that you're in castlemaine castlemaine yeah, and then i'm ghostwriting a book after that it should be an interesting palate cleanser i've got three months to ghostwrite someone's book i've never done that before so it'll be exciting.

I think that is definitely a writing path for some people to do ghostwriting as well. That's how you make some money to fund your own next book, frankly. And there are people who have a story to tell, but then they need someone to help them get it out to the world. So ghostwriting is a great way to do it. I know a few people. Do ghostwriting, but I'm like, I don't think I could take the pressure.

Yeah, it really depends on the client, doesn't it? It really depends on the client and, you know, what they're like to work with. Amazing. Well, thank you so much for your time, Jenny. I appreciate it. And I look forward to your launch. Brilliant. Looking forward to seeing you. Totally Lit is an independent podcast. You can help support us to continue to chat with wonderful Australian creatives by leaving a review on iTunes or sharing our socials with your friends.

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