Everyone is in a rush to publish, to launch, to ship – to get something, anything, out into the world as fast as possible. But what if slowing down isn’t a liability? What if it’s actually your superpower?

In this solo episode, Tonya reflects on her conversation with book coach and ghostwriter Candice L. Davis to explore why craft matters now more than ever. In a world where AI churns out endless content and “quantity over quality” has become the norm, choosing depth is its own quiet act of rebellion. 

This one’s for the writers, creators, builders, and beginners. Anyone trying to make meaningful work in a frantic world.

Tonya breaks down how thoughtful craft becomes an expression of care, why community accelerates mastery, and how taking the long road can help your people feel seen, valued, and held.

You’ll hear how:

• Craft is care, it’s how you show your people they matter
• Slowing down honors the work and the audience you’re making it for
• Depth beats velocity (and why rushing just adds to the noise)
• Community is the secret ingredient to better books, better ideas, and better outcomes
• “Pre-published” is still a real identity, you don’t have to wait to belong
• AI can speed things up, but it can’t give you context, nuance, or discernment
• Creating in public helps you refine the work while finding your perfect people
• Your pace and process might be your greatest rebellion in a culture obsessed with speed

Timestamp Highlights

• 2:38 – 5:22 The myth of the “Stephen King cabin fantasy”
• 11:56 – 15:02 Deadlines, urgency, and the fear of “running out of time”
• 18:21 – 21:12 A-plus vs. C-minus work: knowing what deserves your depth
• 24:41 – 28:30 Craft as hospitality (Mary’s studio) vs. craft as language (Candice’s work)
• 28:31 – 32:05 Owning your identity before you feel “ready”
• 32:06 – 35:30 Why beginners need community more than information
• 38:51 – 42:33 Creating in public without rushing the process

Resources & Mentions

• Episode 12: Writing for Belonging, Not Algorithms with Candice L. Davis
• Nothing But the Words — Candice’s podcast
• CandiceLDavis.com
• Episode 10: Visibility Isn't Vanity with Mary Williams

Meet Your Host

Tonya Kubo is a community strategist, marketing consultant, and rebel with a cause: helping people find the place where they truly belong. For nearly two decades, she’s built online spaces that feel less like comment sections and more like chosen family. She’s the fixer you call when your Facebook group has gone straight-up Lord of the Flies and the bouncer at the door of internet nonsense. As the host of Find Your Freaks, Tonya brings together unconventional thinkers and bridge-builders who know “normal” was never the point. Her favorite spaces? The ones where the freak flags fly high.

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(0:00 - 0:36)

Everybody else is doing things as fast as humanly possible so they can produce as much as humanly possible, right? Why write one really good book if AI can help me get 10 books to market this year? The expectation of quality has gone down as the expectation of quantity has gone up. There are still people out there right now who are willing to take the long road if it means taking the long road produces something that they're truly proud of. These are people who refuse to contribute to the growing pile of shallow work just so they can say, I did a thing, right? I wrote a book.

(0:37 - 1:27)

Slowing down doesn't make you lazy. Slowing down doesn't make you bad. It is an aspect of craft, right? Think of taking the long road as your own quiet rebellion.

Your pace and your process could be your superpower. We're wired for connection, but most of us are faking it to fit in. I'm Tonya Kubo and this is Find Your Freaks, the podcast that flips the script and spotlights the quirks you thought you had to keep quiet.

Subscribe now and head to findyourfreaks.com for show notes and extras because around here, what makes you weird makes you wonderful. Normal was never the point. Everyone's in a rush to publish, to launch, to ship it before someone else does.

(1:28 - 2:17)

But rushing isn't all it's cracked up to be, right? Especially if you are looking for where you fit in. If anything, rushing sometimes just adds to the noise. We've been talking quite a bit about that lately in a lot of different circles that I'm in where just because AI allows you to do more in less time doesn't necessarily mean that you should be doing more.

And just because you can generate miles and miles of copy all at once doesn't mean that that copy actually should see the light of day. Like the last thing any of us needs is just more noise or more of the same. And when I was talking to Candace L. Davis in our last episode, right? She's a good friend of mine.

(2:17 - 7:14)

She's a book coach. And something that spoke to me when we were talking is her belief that slowing down isn't weakness. Because of course, if you're thinking about somebody who is constantly meeting people who feel in a rush, who feel like they're running out of time, it's Candace.

Because so often people who want to write books will start trying to write in isolation, right? Like all of us, we all joke about the Stephen King. What I will say is the Stephen King fantasy, right? We all picture Stephen King all alone in a quiet mountain cabin. Snow's coming down.

He's by himself with his manual typewriter, right? And he is just churning out bestseller after bestseller after bestseller. And the reality is most books are not written solo, right? Most books are written in community. But then what oftentimes happens is, you know, people are trying to write that book.

They feel like they have to write that book before they turn 30. They have to write that book before they turn 40. They have to write the book before they turn 50, whatever.

And then they start to feel like they're running out of time. And usually that's when they seek help, right? Very few people wake up one day and say, I want to write a book and then go and hire a book coach, right? They say, I want to write a book and they usually just start writing. And then they get to a place where they're just like, oh, okay, how do I get this book out into the world? And that may lead them to courses and to conferences and to coaches from there.

But they very rarely start by seeking professional expertise. I mean, this is not 100% true all the time, but it's pretty common. And so by the time people will get to Candace and many times they already feel like they've wasted too much time, like they don't have time to spare.

And so she's often having to get people to pump the brakes. No different than what Mary said about her work with her production studio and helping people bring audio books and podcasts and stuff to light where she's having to tell them as well, like pump your brakes. Slowing down doesn't make you lazy.

Slowing down doesn't make you bad. It doesn't make you less professional than the next person. It is an aspect of craft, slowing down is how you elevate your craftsmanship.

You've got to work on the craft. You've got to work on the quality of what you're producing. And if you listened to my episode with Mary or the reflection I did after that, I think that was episode 11.

You'll know that my opinion is that craft is really care. Craft is how you show that you care about the people you are producing your material for. And Candace and I talked about a lot when we were chatting, right? Because as a book coach, and especially as a book coach in this current time period, she is dealing with beliefs around AI.

She has seen how AI is changing what people think about publishing, what people think about writing in general, what it also has changed the standard by which people measure writing. The expectation of quality has gone down as the expectation of quantity has gone up. So we talked about AI.

We talked about deadlines. We talked about the pressure to keep up with colleagues or associates who seem to crank out books left and right. They pay X number of dollars to somebody who told them they could crank out a book in a weekend.

And then you're sitting there still stuck on what's my introduction or what's going to be in chapter five versus chapter one. But I think stepping back, because you may not be interested in writing books, right? Publishing may not be for you. So I think it's important to kind of step back and say, okay, what is the lesson we can all learn here? Like what amazing perspective can we glean from Candace as this veteran book coach ghostwriter who's written numerous bestsellers and award-winning books with other authors and on behalf of authors? I think the big thing is, is there are still people out there.

You know, they are willing to do the hard work and revise the same sentence over and over again. And I think that idea that there are still people out there willing to take the long road is one that you could benefit from taking to heart. It's one that I benefit from remembering and taking to heart because I know that for some of us depth is negotiable.

It's not for Candace. She made that abundantly clear when we were speaking, but I know for some people depth is negotiable. You know, when I worked in a university, I had a supervisor who was like, there's a time and a place for A plus work, but there's also time and a place for C minus work.

If everything you do has to be an A plus, you're just not going to have that much done in the course of a year. So, you know, the big challenge, the strategy that you have to have in the back of your mind is understanding when C minus work will get you the time, the energy, and the resources necessary to produce the A plus work when it really matters. So think about when you're willing to take time with your work or when somebody, when you can see somebody has taken great time with their work, like what does that say to you? What does it say to you when somebody brings you a homemade pie baked with apples from their backyard apple tree versus when somebody brings you two apple pies from McDonald's? Like on one hand, pie is pie and pie is delicious, but on the other hand, knowing that somebody had to pick these apples, wash these apples, peel them, slice them, make a crust or buy a Pillsbury crust from the store, whichever they did, and then actually put that all together and then wait for it to bake in the oven and then wait for it to cool so that they could bring it to you, right? That is grandma level care right there.

And you think about, like, what does that say? I mean to me, when somebody brings me something, you know, homemade, I don't think the from scratch apple pie is any less special than, let's use a more reasonable example, like a Granny Smith frozen pie that they baked, right? I'm not like, oh, you like me more than this person likes me, or you don't like me as much as this person likes me. But when somebody brings me a homemade pie, I think, like, they were thinking of me for a long time. It wasn't like they just opened the chest freezer, saw a pie and said, hey, I should go take a bite of Tanya.

They were going either Tanya loves pie. It's her favorite dessert ever. And my apples are ripe and I need to do something with them.

So I will make them into a pie for Tanya. Or they're sitting there going, I gotta make a bunch of pies. Who can I make pie for? Oh, I know Tanya.

Tanya likes pie and Tanya likes apple pie. In any case, what I feel like when that person comes to bring that to me is they're saying you, Tanya, matter enough for me to do this well, to do this well for you. And again, there is a time and a place for the thought that counts.

But when we're talking about community building and making people feel like they really, really belong and fostering that feeling of belonging, then we need to find a way to communicate the level and depth in which they matter to us and that we hope what we're providing will matter to them. So going back to Mary's, because I think Mary and Candace's interviews are great, like opposite sides of the same coin almost, right? Where Mary really works on spoken craft, you know, podcasting and recording, and Candace focuses on written. For Mary, her studio, that physical studio that she has created there in the Vancouver, Washington area, is an act of hospitality.

Like she has thought about the furniture that she has there, the beverages that she has there. She had thought about having one particular type of coffee maker and she chose to have a different type of coffee maker because the different type of coffee maker was more versatile than the other type of coffee maker. For Candace, words are much the same thing.

Like she thinks of, like, what is the most important thing that the reader needs to take away from this page? And how do we wrap the words around? How do we get the words to communicate that before they have to flip the page, right? So for Candace, it's like every sentence is earning the right for the reader to keep reading. The last line of every page of a book is what compels the reader to keep turning the page. So again, it's just this reminder, I think, that it's not about excellence for excellence's sake.

It's not about perfectionism. It's just a different way of showing love. Craft is how we can show love to the people that we care about.

And, you know, this is true in our own families as well. This is true in our workplaces, right? This doesn't have to just be about book writing. And the other piece that I was thinking about as I was going through, like, the editing notes in Candace's interview is also this resistance against really being fully present, fully yourself until you have arrived.

It's like, I can't tell anybody I'm writing a book until I have a finished manuscript. No, that's not true. You can tell people you're working on a book.

You can join writing groups. I was looking at a literary agency's website last night, and what I loved is they had a section for what they called pre-published authors versus their section for published authors, right? So they have the section for all of their authors who have books out in the world, and then they have the section for their authors who are not yet published. And then rather than saying, like, you know, oh, like, wannabe authors, click here.

They're like, you know, if you identify as a pre-published author, go here, and, you know, we've got some tips and some resources for you. So you don't have to wait until you arrive at some, I don't know, predetermined point or predetermined level of credibility in order to own the identity of being a writer or whatever it is that you are working on, right? It's like, I used to run a mom's group, and my mom's group, it was very easy, right? From the time you were pregnant until your child was, like, six years old, you were welcome in the mom's group, right? It was for moms of young children, but I found out that there were other moms groups, even in our area, that weren't open to pregnant women because they weren't moms yet. Like, can you even imagine that? Like, oh, no, I'm sorry.

You're not a mom until you hold the baby in your hands. Well, if everybody waited until they had an actual child in their hand to identify as a parent, there'd be, I mean, talk about a rude awakening. Talk about a rude awakening.

So you don't have to have everything buttoned up, polished, perfected before you start finding community around that thing, right? So course creators and, you know, back to, like, if you're somebody who wants to be a hiker, you want to learn hiking or geocaching or cycling, like, you don't have to have all these accolades under your belt before you can start going to groups that are focused on those places. In fact, if anything, I don't think there is a better place to learn, to fast track your learning and your skill building than to find the communities that have the experts in them. And as long as they're open to beginners, go in there and just listen to them.

Don't talk, just listen even, right? Because think about all the mistakes that they will save you from making just by listening to their experience. You know, the things that they wish they had done, they didn't, they wish they knew when they were brand new. And for Candace, there's nothing she loves more than when somebody shows up to one of her writing sessions with a messy draft or a partially finished chapter.

Because one thing that she would say is if somebody has a messy draft or an unfinished chapter, she can actually save them so much time by taking that unfinished chapter, giving them some feedback that they can then use to inform how they finish the chapter, rather than having them hand her what they think is a finished chapter, and then she pokes a bunch of holes in it that they have to go around and rewrite. And the other piece is, is there's always going to be more to do. Sometimes you have to take the one mile bike ride to learn that you actually should have taken a left when you got 25% of the way, and your destination would have still been a mile, but it would have been much prettier.

But these are the lessons you get when you aren't afraid to seek out community when you're a novice, when you're just learning. And so think about that from your own perspective, like whatever lens you're listening to, okay? Or you're listening to this under, I should say. Don't be so worried about the final destination or the finished product that you lose sight of the fact that you can be building relationships even in the messy middle, or the Spartan beginner stage, right? Like before you even begin, right? You want to plant a rose garden.

You want to have a beautiful rose garden so you can show roses in the fair. Go check out a couple of Master Gardener meetings. Check out a couple of Master Gardener classes.

Learn who is an expert in roses. Get some information from them so that you don't make the mistake of planting the wrong type of rose for your area, right? Or the wrong type of rose for the level of sunlight and the level of drainage in your soil system. That is probably the best, most practical example I can think of, of why it's important to be looking for your perfect people in your learning stage, wherever your learning stage is.

And while there are tools out there to shortcut our learning without us having to seek out others, right? You know, you can ask ChatGPT any one of a number of questions. ChatGPT lacks context, right? ChatGPT lacks nuance. ChatGPT can only give you what you give it, to some degree, and what it can think to source.

And I use think, the term think loosely, but it can think to source as in response to what you ask it. But a human can say, well, you know, okay, I know you're asking me, what is the best type of rose to win in the county fair? Like, what's the best variety of rose to grow if you want a fair winner? But actually, the question that you should be asking me are, what are the types of roses that grow best here? And then maybe you can tell me a little bit about your yard, your garden, and your habits. And then we can figure out, of those best roses, which ones will do best in your garden? And of those, what are most likely to get catch the judge's eye at the fair, right? So a human is going to be able to say, I know you're asking this question, but I think the question that you really want the answer to is this.

AI can't do that for you. A DIY course can't always do that for you. And even though those one-to-one direct relationships, whether that's a support group or taking an in-person class or whatever, those are a slower process than just asking ChatGPT or Google a question.

It is how you tend, or it is the best way to get the most specific answer to your very specific situation. And if you're a rebel at heart, kind of like I am, if you're a little rebellious, think of taking the long road as like thumbing your nose at the man. Think of it as our modern day rebellion, while everybody else is doing things as fast as humanly possible so they can produce as much as humanly possible, right? Why write one really good book? If AI can help me get 10 books to market this year, then think of taking the long road as your own quiet rebellion, right? As you going, you know what? No way.

Like I'm going to be punk rock here by taking the long road. I'm going to be punk rock here by really putting some thoughtful, intentional effort toward what I'm creating. So ultimately here, what do we want to talk about? Or how do I want to leave this? I think if nothing else, if you're sitting there just thinking that you're a slow poke, right? That you're just moving too slow and the world is passing you by, or everybody else does things in a neat, tidy way, they don't need edits, they don't need revisions in whatever they're working on, I really hope that you will recognize that that's not true.

That if anything, your pace and your process could be your superpower. They could be the key to you providing others, especially your perfect people, with depth that they can't get anywhere else. So whether you're trying to plant a rose garden, you're writing a book, or you're putting some other work out there in the world, people want the most pure form of you they can find, and they'll wait for it.

Now, back to, right, we can't live the Stephen King fantasy and hole ourselves up as shut-ins until we have created the magnum opus of whatever it is. You can go deep and be building in community and be building in public, right? There's nothing wrong with that. You'll see that all the time on my social media.

You'll see that all the time in my newsletter and stuff. I'm like almost, you know, live journaling stuff, and then I go back, right, I take responses, and I go back, and I kind of polish what I'm doing. So going slow doesn't mean you have to go in private.

That's really what I'm saying. It is, as you build your community around what you're working on, it's okay to make it a conversation. It's okay to put something out there, have them respond, and then you make adjustments accordingly.

Just like if you were planning that rose garden, it'd be okay to say, okay, I'm going to plant this rose bush, and then somebody else says, oh, you know what, that rose bush has thorns that are really pokey, you know, but this rose bush produces flowers that look the same, and it's not as pokey, and then you just say, oh, okay, well, I'll plant that new rose bush next to it, and I'll see which one does better. Okay, so create in public, right? You can go slow, but you can still share your stuff in public. Invite people in to your process, right? Don't worry about fast-tracking it.

You're not fast food. You don't have to be on a conveyor belt. Let the people you're creating for, whatever you're creating, let them shape the work as it evolves, and know that as you do that, more people will find you.

They will be attracted to you. They will help you go on to create better and better works, and at the end of it, if it's the case of a book, it's a book you're really proud of, but it's also a book that people feel the ideal reader feels like was written directly for them, and if it's some other work, maybe it's your version of that homemade apple pie made from the apples in the backyard, but just think of how much people will value what you've created because they know that deep down, you centered it all around how much they matter to you. That's it for this episode of Find Your Freaks.

To help more weirdos find their way here, subscribe, rate, and leave a review, and if you're craving connection, join the freak show at findyourfreaks.com. What makes you weird makes you wonderful. Normal was never the point.