Our attitudes to money shape so much of our lives, and today I explore how we can integrate our creativity with our money in discussion with Orna Ross. If you’re struggling with your financial journey, then you’ll find this interview fascinating.

In the intro, I talk about my lessons learned after 3 years as a full time author-entrepreneur and what’s changing for me right now.

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.

Kobo’s financial support pays for the hosting and transcription, and if you enjoy the show, you can now support my time on Patreon. Thank you!

Orna Ross is a poet, award-winning and bestselling literary fiction author and founder of the Alliance of Independent Authors, also voted one of the Top 100 most influential people in publishing last year. Orna also blogs and writes non-fiction books on creativity, and today we’re talking about her latest book, Creating Money, Creating Meaning: Getting into financial flow.

There’s a video on YouTube here.

We discuss:

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• How Orna’s Go Creative series explores creativism – exploring creativity with things we don’t usually associate with that. This particular book started life over 10 years ago when Orna started to explore the idea of applying the creative process to making money – and it turned out to be fun!
  

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• Why creative people have an issue with talking about money. How our backgrounds can shape our attitudes. Overworking, underearning, undercharging – do you recognize these issues? It’s common amongst creatives and you can change.
  

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• How you can start to change your attitude to money. Look at your behaviour and the way you talk about it. On welcoming money in, in a similar way to inviting the Muse in for our writing (as Stephen Pressfield talks about in ‘The War of Art.’) Changing your thinking from conventional thinking, deconstructing thought patterns.
  

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• How to deal with money discussions in your relationships. How differing money attitudes can co-exist in a relationship.
  

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• The 7 stages of the creative process for the money journey, using me (Joanna) as an example! The importance of setting your Intention for your financial life, as well as your creative life. Incubation – let it settle and while you’re thinking, move into Investigation – learning about how to get there and what you have to do to make it. If you’re serious, you need to change your behavior, and learn new skills. You need to spend the time thinking about what you REALLY want. It takes time to make this shift.
  

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• Drafting – if your financial goal is to become a full-time author, this part will be testing out what that really means. Maybe doing it on the side while you work your day job, as I did part-time for 3 years. Clarification, when you bed down what you are moving into. Amplification – consider what worked for you and what needs to be changed and let go of. You’re now starting to understand who you really are, as well as your business model. What you will and won’t do. Which opportunities will you take advantage of?
  

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• Many of us repeat this process multiple times, and we learn along the way. It’s a long term process! People also drop out during the process if they aren’t on the right path. Life is a challenge – no one said it would be easy!
  

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• Completion – you’ve done what you set out to do e.g. leaving the day job, or reaching a financial goal. There’s an emotional moment, and then you start all over again the next stay, towards your next goal. That will change as you move through the journey. Finishing energy is really important, but often the original intention has morphed over time.
  

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• On acceptance, enjoyment and enthusiasm. Why some people should keep the day job to make money, and only write for fun.
  

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• Comparisonitis and envy around money – how to reframe it so that you can create that success within yourself.
  

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• The practices of release and letting go: inspiration meditation, FREE writing and mind free movement, all of which are part of the exercises in the book.
  

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• Why this book has been so hard for Orna, and her own money journey. On long-term thinking.
  

You can find Orna at OrnaRoss.com. You can buy Creating Money, Creating Meaning: Getting into financial flow here (on preorder until Sept 23, 2014). My own money story is included in the book, and I think this mindset shift around money is a perfect accompaniment to my book, Business for Authors: How to be an Author Entrepreneur.