101: Maternity Leave as Writer + Business Owner

 

I'm going on maternity leave for most of October & November, and in this episode, I share how I plan to handle writing and how I'll be stepping away from the business while I'm gone. 

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Maternity Leave as Writer + Business Owner

Hi, friends, if you hear some rattling in the background, it's the air conditioner upstairs is really really hot today in Charlson, even though it's September, and I just cannot not have air on up here. So apologies for that if you hear it. Um, okay, let's chat about writing, I'm gonna give you a little writing update and how I'm going to handle writing on my maternity leave, or at least what the plan is because who knows how it's actually going to go down. And then also what my plan is for maternity leave and stepping away from the business. I wanted to talk about this, both in case you find it interesting. And I've been curious how you step away when you work for yourself. But also, just to let you know what the plan is, in case you have been thinking about working with me or, you know, wonder about the podcast or content or any of that.

 

So let's chat about writing first. My book has been on submission -- was on submission for a few months. And we decided to pull it after getting some feedback on a particular element of the book that I'm not going to share yet -- I'm not going to talk about yet, but I will eventually down the road, I promise. But we decided to pull it and I am making well made a big change to the story. I did it over the summer. Took about six or seven weeks to do the edits and then sent the updated draft to my agent to get her thoughts on it. And last week, like end of last week, I got some notes back. So I'm getting ready to do another round of revision. And just kind of polish up what I had. And also tweak the first few chapters because the first few chapters in this new version are kind of slow, the pacing needs to be a lot quicker, like it's a psychological thriller, we got to we can't drag too much.

 

So I'm gonna get back in and do some edits and hopefully get them done in the next couple of weeks and send them to her by like mid September's when I'm aiming I'm recording this episode in early September. I think it should only take me a couple weeks. Yeah, but that's what I'm aiming for. So then I'll wait for her to read and maybe get some more notes, we'll probably do at least one more round of editing just to polish, and then send it back on submission, send it to the editors who were interested but had to pass and maybe some new editors, I'm not sure exactly how it's gonna go. And I know I'm being vague. I'll share more about this whole process, once we're through it, but for right now, I just want to be kind of, I don't want to share too much.

 

I am not planning to do anything new, to work on my new book, while I'm on maternity leave at all. I'm just going in with the expectation that I will have my hands full and I will be exhausted. And I will be recovering and trying to figure out how the hell to take care of a baby, and bonding and all of that stuff. So I'm just setting the expectation that I'm not going to be writing. If I get into it, you know, after the first couple of weeks, and I'm like feeling pulled feeling called to write, I'm feeling inspired and feeling like I've got some good ideas and I want to write them sure I'm not going to stop myself from doing it. But I'm setting the expectation and going in with with this idea that I probably will not work on anything new. What I would like to happen is to get these edits done, and send this back out on submission before I go on maternity leave the baby's due October 14. So we'll see if that can happen. It might not.

 

But I editing doesn't require as much, particularly late stage editing doesn't require as much mental bandwidth. And I'm not having to brainstorm a lot of new things. So I think that, you know, if I do have to make some edits and do some revision while I'm on leave, I think that would be fine. particularly well, specifically after the first few weeks. I'm imagining but again, we'll we'll see. I want to Yes, I want to get this book done. But I also want to be mindful and present and, you know, spend this time with my baby. So we'll see. That's the plan for maternity leave and writing. It's a lot more certain with maternity leave in the business because I had to do a lot of planning and saving and figuring out what the plan was going to be. And the good thing about pregnancy is that you have time to plan.

 

I found out I was pregnant in February. So I've had some time to save up. I'm not going to get into even though I'm tempted to rant, I'm not going to get into the abysmal state of parental, you know, paid leave and support for families in this country. If you live in a country outside of the US and you have, you know, a paid leave program, and you can take a year off with your baby, and you can I just like, I'm so happy for you. But I'm also really jealous because our country is absolute shit at supporting families and new moms. And it's just, it's really frustrating. So hopefully, at some point in the future, we can get our shit together and actually do something that would that would help families because, yeah, it's it's a shame that there's not more support. In terms of leave.

 

I -- yeah, so I don't have any sort of paid leave working for myself. So I've been saving up. I pay myself once a month, I take a cut from the profit from the business. And I've just been saving a little bit, putting it into a business savings account so that when I'm gone and not working with clients for October, most of October and most of November, then I can still have, you know, some some money to live during those months, and pay the bills and everything. So I've had to save up money for myself, but also for the business because I have business expenses that I need to pay every month. Even if I'm not like actively showing up in the business. For example, I have a lot of subscriptions to different software, different tools that helped me work with clients and show up you know -- my project management system Honey Book, I have to pay for that every month I pay to host my website on Squarespace, I have to pay my assistant who works for me part time, I have to pay for the podcast plus hosting platform that this podcast comes out on.

 

There are just a lot of different expenses that I that I have, even if I'm not actively working with clients. So I've had to save up for those as well. I do have a little bit of revenue that will be coming in in those months, just because I have some clients that --  a few clients that are on payment plans, and they happen to have a payment that scheduled in either October or November. So I'll have a tiny bit of revenue coming in. But yeah, it's basically just been a process of me saving up over these months and getting ready. And then when I come back, at the end of November around Thanksgiving, I'm going to slowly start easing back into working with clients. My first client starts around Thanksgiving, I can't remember the exact date I have it on my calendar, of course, and I'll be aware of it. But I can't remember right now off the top of my head. But so I'm just starting with one client and -- then kind of easing back into it with my coaching clients picking back up and resuming, you know, some editing clients in December.

 

So have hopefully some time to adjust to having a baby and working again, we can't get her into daycare until March or April, we weren't able to get a spot. So what we're going to do is just flex. My husband works from home as well. And we're going to flex our hours and I'm going to get creative with my schedule and maybe work weekends just to kind of you know, manage everything. And my mother-in-law is also going to come once a week to watch the baby for a few hours until March just so to give us some time, which is so wonderful. I'm so happy that she lives close by and can do that for us. In terms of everything else in the business. I worked with my assistant, I hired this marketing assistant in July I think. I'm pretty sure I shared about this on the podcast that I was hiring someone. And I hired this person in July and she's been an absolute godsend. We have not been working together for that long and already I'm like, so grateful for her for just helping me out taking some things off of my plate helping me feel less overwhelmed. It's been amazing.

 

So I came up with a plan and we've yeah, we've got a plan in place for things. I'm not going to be checking email. I'm not going to be doing anything related to the business while I'm on leave. I'm putting an auto responder in so that if someone emails me during that time, it'll say hey, I'm going to maternity leave thanks for your message. I'm back this date. And please email my assistant if it's something urgent, and she's gonna be monitoring my inbox a couple times a week anyways, just to make sure that nothing urgent comes in. Which is why I'm -- another reason I'm so grateful to have her like I trust her, she can let me know if anything is happening that I need to be aware of. But that way I can fully unplug and step back and not be checking email. Because I know myself, I know, if I get in there, get into my email, I will start working. And I don't want to do that.

 

She is also going to be repurposing some older social media content for me so that I can still be posting a bit on TikTok and Instagram. My content plan for when I'm out is to wing it and see how I feel. The last month or so I've been doing more. I've been in this experimental phase of sharing more about my life -- sharing more about the pregnancy. And so if I feel inspired to do so if I feel like I have the bandwidth, and I want to be, I don't know, creating content, or vlogging, or something I will. It's been really, really fun for me, I have to just as an aside, let me just pause and tell y'all, I've been having so much fun creating this different type of content on social media, I think it's exactly what I needed to just give my brain a break and to allow me to like, try other things and push myself. And it's -- I'm kind of in my flop era on social media, like I'm kind of my views are down, I'm not getting many followers. But I don't care because I'm having so much fun.

 

And I gave myself permission to have this month -- like it started end of August. And I was like, okay, just until end of September or early October, like just post whatever you want. And it's been so much fun. So I might continue to do to do that on maternity leave, if I feel inspired. And if not, you know, I'll just show up occasionally and pop in. And then I can have that little bit of new content plus the stuff that's being repurposed and reshared. And we'll call it good. For the podcast, I have recorded a couple of new episodes ahead of time that will come out in October. And then we're also doing a something called like the best of the Blank Page to Book podcast. So we're going to rerelease five episodes that did really well. And that I got a lot of feedback on from people that really -- episodes that really resonated with people and were helpful. So we're going to be releasing those in late October and November.

 

This is going to be a great opportunity for you. If you are maybe newer to the podcast or you haven't listened to all the episodes, definitely keep listening through the fall, because there might be some episodes that we share that you have not heard yet. Yeah, so that'll be that'll be the plan for the podcast. I'm not going to be booking any new clients. Like I said, not doing any work, not responding to any inquiries until I get back. As of right now, I'm booked through the end of 2024. And I've had the booking paused for new editing clients for a while just because I want to give myself a little bit of time, like even just a few weeks when I start working again, to get my feet under me and also to be realistic about how many clients I can be taking on at one time. So what I'll do at the end of November, well actually not end of November. Realistically, it'll be December, when I announced like, hey, I'm taking new editing clients on here, the dates for 2024 or coaching as well.

 

If you've been thinking about working with me and my six month coaching program, I'll share any openings and capacity that I have for that in December. So just to give you a heads up. I'm excited about this leave, I'm excited to have this time. I'm really grateful that I have this business that allows me to do it. And I have support from you know, my my husband and family and my lovely assistant who I can rely on during this time. And all of you like just being so supportive and so excited about the pregnancy. It's really been -- it's been awesome to have that support.

 

My mom is going to come down -- my mom lives in Minnesota. So she's going to fly down to South Carolina to spend the first week we can have with my husband and I have just while we get everything, you know, figured out what the hell we're doing with a newborn. And yeah, so then, and my husband has two weeks of paternity leave -- actually he only has two days but he's cobbling together some PTO and some unpaid leave to just to take two weeks, which I'm trying to be grateful for two weeks like at least we have two weeks together, but it'd be nice if we had more. Because after those two weeks, it'll just be me until I until I start working again and we'll just kind of have to figure it out. But anyways, that's the plan for maternity leave and for writing. And I'm really excited but nervous too -- like little nervous, but excited about this next phase of life and also the next phase of the business, whatever it ends up looking like when I when I come back. Excited about that, too. All right. Thank you for listening, and I will see you next week.

Katie Wolf