Transcript:

Ben Smith:

Welcome everyone to the Retirement Success in Maine Podcast. My name is Ben Smith, and allow me to introduce my cohost, the E.B. White to my Harriet Beecher Stowe, Curtis Worcester. How you doing today Curtis?

Curtis Worcester:

I'm doing great, Ben. How are you?

Ben Smith:

I'm great. We're in the doldrums of winter right now. February. It's cold. We've been dealing with this little cold snap here. We had to go find some guests that are experiencing a little more warmth, and maybe receive it over the internet here.

Curtis Worcester:

That's right.

Ben Smith:

But one kind of thing we've been talking about with our clients recently and especially over last summer, especially with this latest rash of retirements we've been receiving from our clients is they've been saying pretty consistently that something they like to do now that now have more time on their hands... Well, I have some thoughts, but what do you think that they've been saying I guess?

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah. I know I've had several clients say the age old, "You know, I should write a book." They're sitting down with us, and they're telling us... We're recapping their life if you will as they're entering retirement. They say, "You know, I should write a book." I think that's probably my answer.

Ben Smith:

Yeah. Well, you know I guess I agree with that, because especially when we do our financial plans is you start hearing the life story. Some of it's a money story, and some of it is, how did I get to this point? All of those are really helpful in our profession because if we understand where you've been we know where you're going a little bit too in terms of your path, and purpose, and things like that.

Ben Smith:

I think that's been a theme that has been coming up quite a bit. I think you're right. Whether it be clients that are exploring genealogy and they're trying to get their ancestor stories but maybe all they can find is a newspaper article. Maybe some there's... We have a lot of creative clients and they're really-

Curtis Worcester:

We do.

Ben Smith:

... great storytellers. They lived many interesting lives. They want to think about weaving those experiences into stories, and stories that are compelling. They've been told by people that they have encountered about their story that they think it's pretty compelling. But you know many of us have never written before.

Curtis Worcester:

That's right.

Ben Smith:

We're not professional authors. In terms of our day jobs we've done lots of different things. If we're going to do that where should we start? What are some things that novice writers do that get us stuck? What are some things that we should know before we go down this road? Well, that's the premise for this show is how to write your book and get published.

Curtis Worcester:

That's right. Yeah. Our next guest is an award winning investigative journalist and novelist. He's the author of 21 books and more than 4,000 articles. He enjoys sharing his passion for telling stories about the sometimes inspirational, sometimes illegal, but always compelling things that people do.

Curtis Worcester:

He is also the cofounder of Sixty Degrees Publishing. His newest novel Gods of Our Time: A Paris Love Story, recently won the Best International Novel of the Year Award from the Book of Publicists of South California. He has written for the LA Times, the New York Times and Reader's Digest. He has been featured on CBS, NBC, ABC, 20/20, the Oxygen Channel, HBO, and more than 150 radio stations nationwide.

Curtis Worcester:

He has worked as a freelance writer and editor for several years and now serves as CEO of Sixty Degrees Publishing which offers an author friendly environment where art and literature meet. He loves working with authors to help them write, publish, and promote their work.

Curtis Worcester:

He currently resides in Santa Barbara which he describes as a paradise of billionaires, bums, writers, and swindlers. The challenge on any given morning at Starbucks in Montecito is to tell them apart. He loves golf, comedies, and the symphony, and the Rolling Stones. With that I would love to welcome Michael Bowker to the Retirement Success in Maine Podcast. Michael, thank you so much for coming on our show today.

Michael Bowker:

Oh, thanks for inviting me. I appreciate it. It's going to be a lot of fun.

Ben Smith:

Yeah. We're really looking forward to it Mike. I think from a lot of us I think we have lots of different fun stories that we've encountered or things that we might be having in our heads. I know of even just personally a few family members that aren't even in the retirement age and they're saying they have very creative thoughts and stories that are bouncing in their heads, but they don't know how to organize it to get it to the point of publishing it.

Ben Smith:

I'm really interested in having that line of conversations with you. But of course with all of our guests Mike, we always want to get to know you a little bit. We want to hear about your story, and how did you get to this point? Love to just have you tell us a little bit about your childhood, where you grew up and what drove you to a career of writing?

Michael Bowker:

Well, you know Ben I ask people a lot of times when we talk, and this is apropos to business people and providers. I ask them to give me their story, their life story in three sentences. That's the challenge.

Ben Smith:

It is a challenge.

Michael Bowker:

[crosstalk 00:05:33] challenge by yourself to do the same thing. This is what I came up with. I grew up on an isolated farm in Kansas. My friends were the earthworms in the clouds. My parents would read to me at night and it got to where I didn't know where love ended and literature began. I became a writer, and it pretty much encompasses that.

Michael Bowker:

I remember wandering around on that isolated farm and the characters that my parents would read to me. They became my friends. I thought, "That's something I would like to do." It's been a passion since I wrote my first book, which is about, I don't know, 12 pages long when I was about six or seven about pioneers coming across the Snake River in Idaho.

Michael Bowker:

I figured because it was called that it had to be full of snakes. I thought, "They probably can talk." We had conversations. But it was a lot of fun. It's been something that I have enjoyed I think every day of my life, being able to write and converse, convey information to create pictures with words.

Ben Smith:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Curtis Worcester:

I like that. Obviously we just read off your bio there but clearly you've done investigative writing and reporting, but you've also written more than 20 books. I want to ask. What are some similarities and differences in your process writing between those two forms?

Michael Bowker:

Well, Curtis you and Ben came up with some of the best questions anybody has ever come up with. I really appreciate it because it's going to be-

Ben Smith:

Thank you.

Michael Bowker:

... fun to talk about them. I went to University of Washington in Seattle. What I really wanted to do was write fiction, but it was really hard to make a standard living writing fiction. It's a tough way to do it so I thought, "Well, I'll blend it with journalism," because you can get a salaried job and you can still write and things like that.

Michael Bowker:

I started in California writing for a newspaper. We were writing three, four stories a week. We didn't have any [inaudible 00:07:36] AP stuff to fill the newspaper with. My first years were writing nonfiction. The funny thing is there's a pretty good formula for writing nonfiction. Who, what, why, where, when. You write this inverted pyramid with the most important stuff being at the top and going down.

Michael Bowker:

It wasn't until... I wrote a lot of freelance things for the Times, both Times' on both ends of the continent, and lots of newspapers. My dream, you guys, my dream was to write for International Wildlife Magazine. One time I got to do that. I wrote what I think is... It was one of the first. We'll just put it that way. One of the first pieces on plastic pollution in the ocean, and what it was doing to the animals there.

Michael Bowker:

That, despite the fact that I worked on the New York Times, the LA Times... Not worked for them. I contributed to them as a freelancer. The International Wildlife piece was one of my favorites. But it wasn't until I started working for Reader's Digest in the early '90s and people would say, "Oh, that must have been formulaic."

Michael Bowker:

The irony of this is working for Reader's Digest was the least formulaic of any of the writing I've ever done. I was doing the 6,000, 7,000 word long stories. You can tell them any way you want. Really you were using fictional techniques to tell a true story. That's really where I learned fictional techniques.

Michael Bowker:

Those editors there were just terrific. By the way, a good editor is a writer's best friend. He's not trying to make your stuff, he or she... There's obviously a tremendous number of great women editors. The difference between fiction and nonfiction, it depends. As I said, I would use fictional techniques in Reader's Digest, but I had the story handed to me.

Michael Bowker:

Now if you're doing fiction you've obviously got to create the entire story. What is important to you? In both cases though you have something that holds up both. It's the construct of both of them are going to be the same. That is this. That all drama is conflict. That is something that every writer needs to start with.

Michael Bowker:

That is the basic building block. All drama is conflict. What conflict is in your story? Obviously even if you're doing... Just go back. Even if you're doing a how-to. How to build an electric car, which was my very first story I ever sold on a freelance basis. How to build an electric car. Even there the conflict is how do you do that?

Michael Bowker:

There's no electric car there. How do you get from standing over here in front of nothing to in front of an electric car? Even in a basic how-to there is going to be conflict, but in a novel you're looking at okay, what does your main character want, and what obstacles are in the way from he or she getting what it is that they want?

Michael Bowker:

Maybe they want to resolve a trauma in the past? Maybe they want, in the case of James Bond to save the world? But they want something. There is obstacles in the way. The conflict is how do they resolve those conflicts. How do they get over those obstacles? In doing that you develop the character. You develop the character's character how they go about... Because there's always going to be failure.

Michael Bowker:

There's always going to be the time when they think they've got it, and they've got it all planned out, and it all falls apart. How they react at that point is really as we talked about earlier, that's what it's about. It's not what happens to you but how you react to it. In a way nonfiction and fiction have that same internal building block. But at that point then they grow apart, and we can talk about those specifically.

Ben Smith:

Mike, I want to ask about... Obviously from the production side you've written lots of different forms and you've enjoyed that part, but now you have this other side of this too where you have your own publishing company. You called it Sixty Degrees Publishing. Can you tell us about Sixty Degree Publishing, and why did you title it Sixty Degrees?

Michael Bowker:

I'll go for the second question first. I was actually at the... I live in Santa Barbara and I was up at the Natural History Museum just cruising around and looking at everything. They have a wonderful butterfly exhibit there. I was going through that. There was a young docent there and she said... She was just talking to me as I was getting ready to leave.

Michael Bowker:

She goes, "Just so you know it has to be 60 degrees before butterflies can fly. They're cold blooded." I went, "Oh, my gosh. You just gave me the name of..." I had had this publishing company since 2003. It was obviously different because there wasn't internet then to speak of and everything was done in a legacy way.

Michael Bowker:

I just let it go. Then I rebranded it, brought it back out in 2020 as Sixty Degrees. Publisher's Weekly did a real nice full page piece on it and said, "That's what the company does for not only its writers, but its readers as well," which was very nice.

Ben Smith:

Love that. The question then Mike is why did you shift from writing to the publishing side? Why did you go about doing that and why not just go, "You know I'm really good at writing and this is what I like doing?" Why did you start on the publishing end?

Michael Bowker:

That's a great question and it has a tough answer. I would have to get into some issues that we probably will move on. It was one of the legacy publishers who shut down one of my books because I was a champion of people who I felt were being... Well, I don't feel like it, they were being damaged by these big companies.

Michael Bowker:

Turns out that one of the big companies owns the publishing company that I was working with. I thought, "Well, I don't want that to happen again. I don't want to be censored, and so I'm going to start my own company. I'm going to publish the books that I like." This is a thing that can [inaudible 00:14:07] information that I hope people will be open to, and that is everyone told me from the beginning, "You've got to focus on one genre as a writer. You need to become the expert on," I don't know, nanotechnology.

Michael Bowker:

Well, the whole fun for me in this whole thing is being able to cover everything from nanotechnology to doing a profile, to doing comedy. Whatever I felt like writing this week, that's what I wanted to write. That is the similarity in the publishing company. I'm not focused on any one form or any one topic.

Michael Bowker:

I like the book. We'll do it. What happened was there were some people who wanted help writing their book. We hit it off, and we've had a wonderful... I've worked with some of these folks for three or four years on a pretty intimate basis because this is so important to them. I've had a great time, and I think they have too.

Michael Bowker:

The one thing about when we were doing this they knew when I was satisfied with the book, when I felt it was a certain quality, I would publish it. They didn't have to go pitch agents, and pitch... Which is fine, and I will always help people who want to do that, but having the publishing company there and putting some terrific covers on the book, it made this process so much easier for them.

Curtis Worcester:

I like that. Yeah. I like that a lot. I want to rotate here and talk about how someone who maybe hasn't... The topic of our show, someone who maybe hasn't written a book but thinks they can or thinks they want to. How do we do that? I want to kick it off here.

Curtis Worcester:

Obviously you're someone who has taught writing and been with authors basically your whole life here. You've said to Ben and I that writing can be a life altering experience if you take the right steps. Naturally my first question for you is what are those steps? We need the secret right off the top here.

Ben Smith:

Right. Exactly. You said it's the inverse pyramid Mike.

Curtis Worcester:

That's right.

Ben Smith:

You got to start with the right one right?

Michael Bowker:

Yes. One of my favorite quotes here is from Ernest Hemingway who was not out to make people feel better. He said, "Don't ever tell them you had to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way." Whereas I have heard eight and nine year olds who could sing like angels, and who could sing as well as any opera singer around, and that to a large degree, even though you also learn how to sing with taking lessons, but some things you are born with.

Michael Bowker:

You are born with a beautiful voice. Writing, you're not born writing. Nobody is a born writer. No nine year old has written a best seller. It takes work. You have to learn. You have to work at it. To me that's the fun of it. I love reading a book of an author that I love and deengineering.

Michael Bowker:

Okay, they made me feel this way right here. How'd they do that? What was the sentence structure? What was the paragraph? I'm less interested in the actual word descriptions. That's the easiest part of writing. Writing a book is a lot like creating a house in that most people just see the outside of the house. They see the paint job and they go, "Oh. I could do that. That looks easy."

Michael Bowker:

But then you realize there's this foundation you have to pour in. There's constructs inside. But once you get started then that's the fun of it. That's the fun part is being able to create on the interior so that when someone reads it they go, "Well, that read really smoothly." You go, "Well, that's because I've been doing this awhile and I know the techniques to make it go smoothly."

Michael Bowker:

You do have to learn. You do have to work at it. Very, very few people can walk into retirement and write something... Mark Twain said the difference between an almost good book and a good book is the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning. I kind of like that quote. It's okay.

Michael Bowker:

But you do have to learn. You should find some books, some good books on how to do it. Talk to people, but most of all read and deengineer what you're read. Movies, even movies, find out what movies you emotionally... The big difference between nonfiction and fiction is nonfiction, in most nonfiction you are relating something on an intellectual basis. You are giving them information.

Michael Bowker:

Fiction you are relating with them on an emotional basis. You're touching them emotionally. Different ballgame entirely, and both of them are way fun. But you hear people all the time Curtis, they'll say, "Oh, I started writing but I didn't have time to finish it." Bologna. You didn't know how. You don't know how to go from step A to B, to C, to D, to E, to F. Once you know... For example I've never had writer's block ever.

Ben Smith:

[crosstalk 00:19:16].

Michael Bowker:

The reason I never had writer's [inaudible 00:19:17] not one time in all the things that I have produced is that there are multiple choices to go from A to B. For me the fun is deciding which choice, which way to go. Which tool to use. That's not exactly a good symbol, but it is more or less what we're doing.

Michael Bowker:

That's the difference between, I think, fiction and nonfiction. But if you're going to learn, if you say, "I want to be a writer," okay. Then start reading first of all, and don't read passively. Read aggressively, and read by just pulling it apart. "Oh, my God. Steinbeck made me feel so amazing right here. Hemingway made me mad over here."

Michael Bowker:

You read all the other books, whatever books you like. Take it apart and learn. There are many writing coaches online now. Again it's not always easy to find the one you need. The way they communicate with you is critical. You have to find someone that you're compatible with, and it's someone that you're... To me it has to be fun. If it's not fun you're not going to do it for very long.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah.

Ben Smith:

Right. I think that's the point here Mike is I think as a retiree and someone that's saying, "Hey, I want to do something that gives me purpose, and I'm excited to tell my story," that's the fun part. Obviously the part where people maybe get frustrated might be that maybe they don't know how to go from A to B. They don't know what B is.

Ben Smith:

Maybe it's something where they're writing their story and they get stuck. I know you've helped coach people either from the publishing end or as a writing coach. What are some things that you've seen novice writers do that gets themselves stuck?

Michael Bowker:

Well, you know I read through the quotes that people have about writing, and what Hemingway said, or this person said. I have my own quote. It is, don't try to be someone else when you write. Don't try to be a writer. Just keep it simple and be yourself.

Michael Bowker:

I see writers try to write. I see them try to be... What they're doing is they're going directly to the reader, and they're trying to get the reader to say, "Wow. What a great writer this guy is." Well, when you break that there's a plane that needs to be between you and the writer. They should never see you.

Michael Bowker:

When you read a really good book you're not thinking about the author. You are thinking about either the characters or what they're saying because they're communicating with you. They're not trying to say, "Look at me! Look at me!" Most beginning writers do. They're trying to be a writer. It gets down to usually the first thing you write is not going... I mean in the first sentence you're probably going to want to replace it, so don't worry about that.

Michael Bowker:

Don't try to be perfect. Just get it down, and then go back. I believe in drafts, first draft, second draft, third draft. Each time if you're careful and not trying to rewrite the whole thing you will do well. But I believe that people can become writers of quality work. Anybody can. I truly believe that, but they've got to put the work in. You got to put the effort in because nobody is born writing.

Ben Smith:

Mike, I want to ask a followup to that because I think you made a really good point. One is look, perfection is the enemy of getting things done. You hear that a lot is, because as you said it's like, well the first sentence has to be perfect, and then if I block on the second sentence... If those aren't perfectly connected, then we're stuck on those sorts of things.

Ben Smith:

I think a lot of do this in lots of our jobs too is we always try to spend all the effort to go from 98% complete to 100 where 98% is doing a lot of that is actually a pretty good way to do it. I want to ask another question to that though is I could also see where writing something and we get a rhythm.

Ben Smith:

Maybe we're lacking confidence. We don't know what's good writing or not. We think it is. We ask for feedback. I want to ask you as someone that is giving feedback to people, as someone is writing and they're asking for feedback what are some mistakes that people make when they ask for feedback? Because I can see where they ask the spouse and the spouse is like, "Oh, dear. It's perfect of course. It's great!"

Ben Smith:

They ask the friend and the friend's like, "Well, I'm not going to tell him it's terrible. 'Yeah, it's great!'" How do you go about getting honest, real feedback here that it's maybe not overly nice, and not productive, but maybe it's not too destructive too, which maybe counteracts everything you're looking to do?

Michael Bowker:

That's a real good question. I truly believe you're going to need to get a professional editor with the caveat that I'm a real believer in sharing with the writers that I'm working with. I think that if you come across and say, "No, this isn't any good. That isn't any good," you're just going to cut people's willingness and excitement to write out of there.

Michael Bowker:

You can't talk to people like that. If you get the editor, find someone that not only knows what they're doing but knows how to communicate with you. Two different skills. The editor you work with needs to have both. I really haven't had many editors that I can even think of, and I've had 100s, who were, "Oh, you should have done it this way. You should have done it that way."

Michael Bowker:

The really good editors don't do it that way. For example I might have a character, or I have a writer who didn't really get into the main character. Kept trying to get into every single character. They would look at the main character and make that a third party instead. The reader will lose continuity. You have to stay with that main character.

Michael Bowker:

There may be more than one, but a lot of... There's one thing I always stress in my... Or not stress. Underline for people that I'm working with. That is transitions are far more important than people have been taught. Transitions are the art of writing. You go from one scene to the next.

Michael Bowker:

I do focus quite a bit on character development, pacing, transitions, and conversation and dialog are critical in fiction obviously, more so than ever because people like more screen oriented presentations where they can see the conversation, and hear... A book that has authentic conversation is rare and just a delight to read. But there's a scene in A River Runs Through It. I don't know if you guys have ever-

Ben Smith:

Sure.

Michael Bowker:

... seen that.

Ben Smith:

Brad Pitt, yeah. Yeah.

Michael Bowker:

The father is teaching the son to write. He's homeschooling him. The son hands him the paper. Father goes through it carefully. Then he hands it back and he says, "Half as long." The boy has to go back and say the same thing in half as many words. That's part of it. That's part of it. The more you can think, "How can I say this in the tightest, most compact way," that's probably as common a thing as I see in people who are just starting out.

Michael Bowker:

It takes them far too long to say whatever they're going to say, or convey whatever they're going to convey. But that's easy to... That's not hard to overcome. That's just practice. That's the fun part of it. It really is.

Curtis Worcester:

I like that. I like that a lot. You just mentioned how important transitions were so I'm going to transition to the next question now. Probably not great but I'll do it.

Michael Bowker:

That's really [crosstalk 00:27:17].

Curtis Worcester:

I want to ask you a hypothetical question here for me, or I guess role playing wise. Say I'm someone who has a great book written in my head but I just don't have the ability, or maybe I don't have the ability to develop the skill of writing, or how to translate that story to paper. I want to ask you, what resources are out there to help someone in this situation to work through that barrier and essentially get their story told?

Michael Bowker:

That's a good question, and a lot of people, they just don't feel like learning that process. I understand that. I hire people all the time to do my website and things like that. I can figure out how to do it but that's not where I want to spend my time.

Michael Bowker:

I think finding a cowriter, and you can find a ghost writer which means they never take any credit. They just take pay. Or you can find a cowriter who will take half credit on the cover of the book. I recommend cowriting because then you have got that person completely invested in the book. But if you watch everybody that's on television these days and the newscasters, they all come out with books all the time.

Michael Bowker:

Well, I guarantee you they didn't write it. People like me wrote them. In my early days I did ghost write some things, and I cowrote many books because I enjoy working with people. As you can tell I'm not a writer who would like to live in a cave. I enjoy working with people, so I've done a number of cowriting things. I would recommend if you're looking for somebody to work with, I would recommend going and going online, and looking up writers' groups, there are several, and maybe joining them, and then talking with people online.

Michael Bowker:

You can communicate with them and just see. "Okay, am I going to..." Again you not only need someone who can write well and put your thoughts and your ideas down, but you've got to deal with someone that you get along with on a daily basis because this gets pretty tight. You can spend a lot of time, and it's important time. Those are the two things you're looking for.

Ben Smith:

Like that. Mike, I know one thing that you just said and this has come up in lots of different podcasts, but your point about finding... You hear this in lots of ways. Maybe finding your tribe? Is align your-

Michael Bowker:

[crosstalk 00:29:44]-

Ben Smith:

... interests with the people that also have the same interests, and finding your community. Especially as we retire, and as we age we tend to get a little more siloed. It's tougher to get out. Obviously the pandemic has been tough on people and it's tougher for people to share those interests. To find more of those groups that, "Hey. I like to write. I like sports. I like this thing. I like that thing."

Ben Smith:

The more you're connecting the more you're going to have a vibrant life, and the more you're going to find ways to connect with more and more people. I think that was a really insightful thing that you just said, but I want to ask another question that we've been thinking of too.

Ben Smith:

There's ego that's involved in some of this too. As I write, and I'm thinking it's going to be great, and everybody tells me what a great idea I have. But I know obviously sometimes you write things that maybe are commercially successful and maybe sometimes they're not commercially successful. How do you determine? Here you are. You've had a career doing this. How would you determine what you think would have commercial success or not?

Michael Bowker:

Well, that's the so called million dollar question.

Ben Smith:

Right.

Michael Bowker:

Let me start off by just saying this, that it depends on... A lot of people write books to help their business, because it's hard. You can give it to your clients and stuff like that. I understand that, and it's a product then. It's a product just like a car or anything else is a product and that's legit, very legit. Those are some books that do well.

Michael Bowker:

If though you maybe want to write a book of fiction... Almost every writer no matter what they tell you, they believe their book is going to be the million seller, and it's going to be made into a great movie.

Ben Smith:

That's right.

Michael Bowker:

Okay? I start off by saying this. "When you had a child, did you have that child because you wanted to make a million dollars with that child? Why did you have that child? These books are your children. They have a value." I'm very sorry to go against the grain here, although of course I'm not, is that you write a good book and you have done something that is a pinnacle in your life and always will be.

Michael Bowker:

How do you put a value on that? Of course we want to sell it. Of course we do. Unfortunately these days about the only way you can guarantee sales if you don't already have a name like John Grisham or something, is to have a giant email list. That's as blunt as it can be. You have to be on television. You have to be on radio. You have to have a giant email list.

Michael Bowker:

Then you can guarantee that it's going to sell. Otherwise 99% of all books do not make a profit. The average book sells about 75 copies.

Ben Smith:

Wow.

Michael Bowker:

That's family and friends.

Ben Smith:

Wow.

Michael Bowker:

Almost all books do. Out of two million books published I think 10 of them sold a million copies-

Ben Smith:

Wow.

Michael Bowker:

... a year or two ago.

Curtis Worcester:

Wow.

Michael Bowker:

One of them was the Bible which kind of doesn't count. Four of them were Harry Potter. Now you're down to like five books out of two million sold... You have to know why you're writing it to start with. Then we can get into this. The other half of this whole thing is promotion.

Michael Bowker:

Promotion is a different ball game altogether. But if you have this dream that your book is going to go out and just become a huge bestseller and that's why you're doing it, then you better be ready because promotion a lot of times is every bit as important as the quality of the book.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah.

Ben Smith:

Absolutely.

Michael Bowker:

That's how it is today.

Curtis Worcester:

I'm glad you brought that up that way too because I think certainly for the people Ben and I are envisioning with this conversation I'm fairly confident that not a lot of them are going to write the book to make a lot of money. I'm glad how you presented that because it is. It's two very different kind of goals there.

Curtis Worcester:

I want to keep going here Mike. This relates to my previous question, but what if just writing a novel is just too daunting of a task, but again I really have things that I want to say? I know you brought up cowriters, ghost writes. I want to set them aside for a second and just ask. Where would you point someone who just really wants to get more exposure and practice their writing skills themselves?

Michael Bowker:

Well, of course you can start a blog on your own if you want to. You can join online groups that are already doing... There are some online groups where that's what they do is you write a piece and then you share it [inaudible 00:34:26]. I frankly don't like a whole lot of feedback from anybody but my editor.

Michael Bowker:

In my book Gods of Our Time the main character, one of his big problems is that he thought he has to be perfect. He's been struggling with that his whole life. In the end he gets it resolved. Well, I kept that book in my computer for a year after I was finished because it wasn't perfect.

Michael Bowker:

You can tell where he gets that issue. Finally I say, "My main characters resolved these issues so I'm trying to find their number so I can call, find out how they did it." The key thing is if you find joy in writing, which I absolutely do, then this is going to be something that is going to be of a great pleasure for you to do. It's a lot of work and you go, "Oh, my gosh. I could have done this better." You feel insecure like crazy, but that's all part of the joy of it really because it's so human in its journey.

Michael Bowker:

But in the end if you do want to make also, you also want to make money with this, then you need to be ready to do some serious promotion. There's nothing wrong with that. It can be fun too.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah.

Ben Smith:

Mike, let me ask you then about that because obviously it sounds like if... We've had this conversation with others too is like, "You know this thing that I'm really passionate about, maybe it turns out better than I ever thought." We hear this with starting a business.

Ben Smith:

"I started a business because this is something I always wanted to do was make the donuts." But what if all the sudden the donuts I make are really popular? It gets really big? It's growing, but I was envisioning this thing being like a small thing. I would do something, and I would produce it. I want to ask about the publicity end then.

Ben Smith:

If all the sudden things are going well and you are getting some commercial success, what does publicity of a book... What does that look like? What sort of things does someone need to do to go out and promote their work. What would it entitle... Is it, well I'm on the road for the next 36 weeks and I'm sleeping out of hotel rooms and doing public speaking? What is that?

Michael Bowker:

Well, there is the old days and then there is the new days. In the old days I had a book coming out with Simon & Schuster, and gosh I don't know, I did probably 150 television shows, hundreds of radio shows. We traveled around. We did the book signings and all that stuff. Nowadays you almost have to put that together yourself because the biggest thing right now is really podcasts.

Michael Bowker:

That is the best way to sell your book right now is to get on the influencers' list, podcasts. That's probably the number one way.

Ben Smith:

Interesting.

Michael Bowker:

Television works, but television is very difficult. Oprah Winfrey doesn't live but probably 15 miles from me, and she's got this secret mailbox that everybody is looking for to put their book in her [inaudible 00:37:32]. It's hilarious. It's like a legend around here. This is a kind of a warning. You can sink tens of thousands of dollars into promotion of your book and not get anywhere.

Michael Bowker:

You have to really be smart about of it. Most of it's online, getting on Goodreads which is a huge book club that's online. You have to be very careful going forward because everything is going to cost a lot of money. When I did Gods of Our Time I went ahead and set up book signings from California all the way across the country in New York, then in Liverpool. I know John Lennon's sister and she was going to let me do a book signing at the Cavern Club which is where The Beatles started.

Ben Smith:

Very cool.

Michael Bowker:

Then we're going to go on to London. Then we're going to go on to Paris. At each stop, and this is really critical to me, this is part of what my writers do as well, I was going to do a nonprofit celebration and huge party for, in this case it was going to be for heart therapy for people who can't afford it.

Michael Bowker:

At each stop we were going to do a book signing, but we're also going to do... I was bringing all the artists from each one of these cities into this. They were going to sell their art as part of that way to make money for these heart therapy things. Had like 25 of these things set up. Of course it came out February, 2020. It couldn't have been worse.

Michael Bowker:

We did three and then boom, over with. Everything got canceled. We're going to redo it, but see how creative that is. That is not a typical thing that you would hear.

Ben Smith:

Yep.

Curtis Worcester:

Right.

Michael Bowker:

You don't... Frankly as cool as it is, and as ego stroking as it is, you don't really sell many books at book signings at bookstores, but still it's the way to get into the local newspapers and things like that. But a good publicist is critical I think. But it's easy to find one that can be a sponge for all your money too.

Ben Smith:

I bet. I want to ask just maybe on another piece here Mike is maybe you already have the skill of writing. I'm thinking about earning extra dollars. We hear this a lot from our clients is they're workers. They like to stay busy, and they like to continue to make money. They don't like seeing their bank account or their retirement account go down in value.

Ben Smith:

They want to keep producing as long as they possibly can. Say if I want to do that as a writer because that's something I like to do for fun or I really want to explore this more and more. How viable is writing in retirement for extra income?

Michael Bowker:

I think it's very doable. Very doable. As long as your expectations are reasonable. When I was working for Reader's Digest for example, I'll probably get in trouble for saying this. It wouldn't be the first time. I was making about $7,500 a story. It would take two weeks to do. Well, this was a nice bit of change back in the 1990s. I had all these other two weeks every month to work.

Michael Bowker:

I don't think they pay 1/10th that now. Everybody's pay has gone down. Now there are some copywriting places for big tech that pay pretty well. It runs the gamut, but if you're going to start writing and you want to write you might want to start with your local newspapers and your local magazines, and start working for them to start off with.

Michael Bowker:

Then you get a nice little portfolio. You put your little portfolio together. Then you go on to the next step, regionals. There's the Writer's Market Guide which is available online, is the bible really. There are many other books but that's a really good one that shows all the magazines and newspapers that pay freelance writers.

Michael Bowker:

You put together a query letter Ben. It's about three paragraphs. It's a very formulaic thing. Three paragraphs, one, just the first paragraph is like, "Whoa, that's a grabber." You don't let them loose. That's [inaudible 00:41:37]. Then the next one is what your background is. Then third, a little bit bigger look at the story that you're going to pitch.

Michael Bowker:

That's a query. Now when I started you used to have to type these out, stick them in an envelope stick it in a self addressed stamped envelope with it. Then you'd wait by the post for it to come. Now obviously it's via email. Be prepared. Even when I was at my most successful and writing for the biggest magazines and newspapers in the country I was getting a 95% rejection rate.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah.

Ben Smith:

Wow.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah.

Ben Smith:

Wow.

Michael Bowker:

I figured, fine. I'm going to do 100 queries a month, and I'm going to get four or five stories out of that. Those rejections were... I still have them in a big box. I kept... You have to.

Ben Smith:

Yeah. It's like, man if you ever want to feel down you just start reading some of your rejected queries right?

Michael Bowker:

But they were nice. They were good rejections, but just be prepared for that kind of rejection. That's part of the success process.

Ben Smith:

Yep. Got you.

Michael Bowker:

Don't ever look at it as a negative. It's not. That means you're out doing it, and it'll come to you. It will. You keep getting the better ideas, and better ideas.

Michael Bowker:

Podcasters, or bloggers will pay. Huffington Post. If you go online and just look for markets that pay freelance writers you will get a lot. Just cruise through on Google or whatever search engine you got and you'll start seeing it. Be prepared for them to say no. No big deal. Just keep at it, and it will happen. You'll get to do some writing. Then you go, "Oh, now I've got to write it." Okay.

Ben Smith:

I landed the fish. Yes. Now I got to-

Curtis Worcester:

That's right.

Ben Smith:

... real it in.

Curtis Worcester:

I like that.

Michael Bowker:

Yeah. I would say yes, that there is, for someone who understands that no is a big part of the yes process who is willing to learn writing, and learn every day, and make it part of a fun process so that you're going to want to keep doing it, "I can't wait to get up tomorrow morning to do it again," it can work absolutely.

Curtis Worcester:

A key thing I heard you say there was have realistic expectations. My next question is not realistic expectations, so I just want to get that out there. On this podcast we love to dream. I think a lot of our clients sit here, and I've done it, you think about, "I'm going to write the next hit movie," or, "I'm going to write the next huge TV show."

Curtis Worcester:

I want to ask you about the process of that. Now I understand it's probably not realistic that I'm going to write the next Golden Globe winner movie, whatever you want to call it. What is the process of turning a story that you've written into a television series or a movie, and then the industry specific question how does ownership of my story change through that process? Does it then not become my story by the end of it? I'd love to hear your take on that.

Michael Bowker:

We'll start with that question first. When I did a lot of the Reader's Digest pieces I did, were turned into television and shows. CBS, and Showtime, and stuff. I worked with them. They bought the rights to the story. Then they can change it any way they want. You lose... Now some of the very top writers who are very well known, and they know that if Hollywood buys the rights to their book and it comes out that they're a guaranteed profit maker, then they'll stick and say, "No. I want to have a say."

Michael Bowker:

But very, very few people have that. Yes, you do lose control. Frankly most the time they mangle it. That's just all there is to it. There's not as much talent in Hollywood as there is in the writing world, and they have a different goal. They're trying to do whatever they do. I'm not a fan of a lot of what's going on in Hollywood as you can tell, but at the same time we're still trying to sell our stuff there, our books.

Michael Bowker:

There are different ways you can do it. Gods of Our Time, it was picked up as an option right away, but it was because one of my friends was at a party in Westwood in LA, and had just read the book, and met a producer, and said, "You need to get this," and so he did. The way it works is they'll come to you and say... Or you go to them. Which ever way it works.

Michael Bowker:

And say, they'll buy an option. The option either is zero dollars to maybe three or four thousand at the most. That gives them a year and a half typically to go pitch it to big money, to the big Universal, or somebody like that. Sometimes the stars themselves, let's say it's Brad Pitt or someone like that, they have enough power to make that happen so they would be pitching it through them.

Michael Bowker:

Or the directors, more and more directors are gaining a lot of power in Hollywood. How do you even let them know that you exist, that you're... Well, that's a scattershot of things. There is not one specific formula. There is something called Story Rocket which is a software program. I would suggest people might want to look into that.

Michael Bowker:

I have it and it helps you connect. There are some people now who are building libraries of work, and producers are invited in to look at these pieces. You can get maybe a literary agent who is good at this, who has pitched it to Hollywood before. It's not just Hollywood anymore obviously.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah.

Michael Bowker:

There's more desire for content right now than ever before. Netflix. All of these people, they're all looking for great content. We're going to be pitching all of the books that I have published through Sixty Degrees. That's probably coming up in April. We'll do the pitch for that. Unfortunately the company that got the option for Gods of Our Time really got hit by COVID and so that option has lapsed.

Michael Bowker:

I'll be pitching that one as well, but there are a variety of ways you can do it. You can look up how to pitch on Google obviously and decide which one you think is going to work the best. But you probably, if you don't know anything about it it's probably best to find someone who can coach you through it.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.

Michael Bowker:

Right now is absolutely the time because there are such a variety. When I signed the deal with the publishing, or with the film company, there's one whole page of single spaced small type of how much they would pay me if Netflix took it, if it got on episodic TV, was made into a 30 minute... There's all kinds of financial structures there, whereas when I was writing in the 90s there was just like one.

Curtis Worcester:

Well, it depends if it's going digital right? A film. Theaters. All that stuff now right. Yeah? No, that was really helpful.

Ben Smith:

What I just heard you say is Curtis is going to write the next hit movie, so we should just start-

Michael Bowker:

Yes.

Ben Smith:

... allocating time for Curtis to start at the typewriter working on it.

Michael Bowker:

Well, I'll just add in one thing here Curtis.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah.

Michael Bowker:

When you go about to write the very first thing I always say is, "Tell me what this is about in one sentence." In the old days they used to do corny stuff like, "Oh, it's Godzilla meets Titanic," or something like that. They always had something meets something else, but I think it's gotten more creative than that.

Michael Bowker:

Then put it in a paragraph. Give it a little bit more largess. Then give it in maybe a full page. Once you start building it from small to bigger it'll go better and they will ask for that.

Ben Smith:

Interesting. I like that.

Curtis Worcester:

That's awesome. Yeah.

Ben Smith:

Mike, I want to ask maybe a different way of writing now, is I know when one of the things about pandemics... Of course there's been mortality and there's a lot of introspection that's been happening right now. Just even relatives and even my father is doing this right now. He's looking at all of the previous history of his family, but also the history of his town. He's looking at all of it.

Ben Smith:

I think about that there's a lot more to maybe the genealogy trend than just somebody born this day. Somebody died this day. They lived in this place and this is their profession. That's what we know about that people. It feels like there's more and more of our stories that can be told maybe in a biographical or an autobiographical sense.

Ben Smith:

What do you think about, if I'm going to retire and I want to tell my story, or I want to tell my dad's story, or I want to tell my mom's story, what is the best way to write that story, and what elements should and shouldn't get contain? Because I can see where it's like we spend all this time on fifth grade for this person, and all the minutia of fifth grade versus from the overarching arc of our lives.

Ben Smith:

Maybe that isn't as important. If you were to start that, or to coach somebody into a biography or autobiography how would you coach them into it?

Michael Bowker:

I love that question. I did this with my mother. This is one way you can do it. I spent a year talking to her. She had plenty of energy, was smart as could be. But I also didn't want to tire her out, because what you want is the person that you're working with to go, "Ah, I could have gone a lot farther than that," so that the next time they're very eager to get going again.

Michael Bowker:

We would talk 45 minutes once or twice a week. I would tape record what she would say. You could use Dragon Speech Recognition so that it types it right in there and you don't have to transcribe it. We went through her entire life. What's extraordinary is again Hemingway, everyone's life is a novel if told truly.

Michael Bowker:

The key for me was I knew how to ask for the right questions. When she would say something, if I could tell there was more to it and she may not have gone into this other room, I provided the open door for her, and kept going in logical places.

Michael Bowker:

If you're doing it on your own, chronologically obviously is an easy way to do it. But I would always start with something else once you finish it. Put something else before, "I was born in so-and-so." Technically one way to do this, it's probably the easiest way for people who are not skilled writers, or experienced writers I should say, is just talk it into a a tape recorder.

Michael Bowker:

Just speak it into your phone, whatever it is. Because how many more words have we spoken in our lives than we have written?

Curtis Worcester:

Absolutely.

Michael Bowker:

We are much better at conversing than we are writing. It's just, talk through it. If you want to create a structure of what you want to talk about you can do that on paper so you have an outline. That way when you start talking about it you'll know how to get from point A to point B, and all the little subsets in there.

Michael Bowker:

But if you can work with somebody that's terrific. But if you want to do it on your own that's how I would suggest doing it. You'll be surprised at how it translates pretty well. Your speech translates pretty well to the written word. You're going to have some sentences that aren't complete obviously. We all have done that.

Michael Bowker:

But I would highly recommend that. The one thing that's fun Ben is that... I've done these kinds of autobiographies with other people. Memoirs. Memoir is much better.

Ben Smith:

Sure. Yeah.

Michael Bowker:

I look for a through line. There was a woman that I know, and in fact she just turned 100 years old this year. She was taken from her home in Poland in World War II and put into a Gulag in Russia. She wandered out when she was young at that point, and happened to find a native potato field that no one knew was there. Those potatoes kept everyone alive during the winter.

Michael Bowker:

I said, "But if we find a through line of your life," she ended up being a PhD and teaching at Stanford University, "What got you through this?" We finally figured out it was curiosity. Curiosity so often led her to the next step in her life. I would challenge everyone, what is the through line that defines your life?

Michael Bowker:

It could be fear. It could be a lot of different things. Then as you write you can go back and touch on that from time to time. It gives the book a continuity that is really cool.

Ben Smith:

I like it, because that's really a true north right in that you have your own compass to everything you do. Again, I know in retirement especially, in trying to find our purpose, is sometimes as you're saying is when you find that true north on the compass it seems to all fit. That's kind of the fun part of it is it doesn't matter if I'm writing, or if I'm volunteering, or I'm visiting family.

Ben Smith:

Whatever that through line is that makes the most sense, it's like all the sudden it feels right I guess is the biggest thing, is how I'd say that. I really like what you said there Mike.

Michael Bowker:

[inaudible 00:55:29] and it adds to the whole... It's not just a chronology of events. "I did this. I went here. I did that." With folks I would say, "Well, how did that make you feel? What did you feel?" People stay away from expressing their emotions when they're giving their life history quite a bit. "Oh, I went here and I achieved this. I went there and I got married." Well, wait a minute. Wait a minute. What about the human side of this?

Michael Bowker:

What were you afraid of? What made you attracted to this person? What did you want out of life at that point? There are questions to ask as you go. It really helps to have someone. By the way, to go back to something you said earlier, it is very dangerous to have friends read what you're writing, as you mentioned. They typically are not going to tell you, "Man, this sucks! Throw this away. This is awful!"

Michael Bowker:

It probably doesn't, but nevertheless you're not going to get, as you mentioned, true north on that at all. Unfortunately you do need them though when it comes to writing reviews on Amazon.

Curtis Worcester:

That's right.

Michael Bowker:

That's so bizarre-

Ben Smith:

That's right.

Michael Bowker:

... how important that is. Everybody goes, "Oh, I read a book because of the reviews." I go, "Oh, man. I hate the whole review thing," but it is what it is. You got to talk all your friends into giving you five star reviews. Once you understand how all that process works you lose respect for a lot of it, but it's still critical. You got to have all these reviews.

Michael Bowker:

You get all these reviews you possibly can, and be prepared. Every writer needs to be prepared for a bad review. It will come. Again as Ernest Hemingway said, he said, "If that person who criticizes your work isn't willing to stand right in front of you face to face and say that don't pay any attention."

Curtis Worcester:

There you go.

Michael Bowker:

You figure most people. If you believe in yourself and you know yourself, it's easy for me to say because in nonfiction I'm bulletproof. I've just done that so much I don't care what people think. I know it's good. Fiction I'm like a little baby. "What? You can't say that about [inaudible 00:57:43]!" That's my child. You can't tell me it's ugly.

Curtis Worcester:

Oh, man.

Michael Bowker:

I'm as sensitive as anybody else when it comes to that stuff.

Curtis Worcester:

Michael, I have one kind of wrap-up question for you here as we reach the end of our episode. Obviously the name of our show is the Retirement Success in Maine Podcast, so one question that we love to ask all of our guests is how will you find your personal retirement success when you get there?

Michael Bowker:

That question is [inaudible 00:58:11] of course I think about it every day. I found when I wrote Gods of Our Time, and I wrote it... Its setting is in Paris. I love Paris. I've been there many, many times. I am completely... I chose that setting on purpose because I thought, "If I'm going to be somewhere every day for a year I want to be in Paris in the 1920."

Michael Bowker:

Oh, my gosh. Picasso is there, and everybody is there. Even though I love to write nonfiction, that year I spent writing Gods of Our Time was even a step above that. It was pure joy every single day. I'm a night owl but I went to bed every night by 9:00 so I could get up early and get to work.

Curtis Worcester:

That's great.

Michael Bowker:

My purpose in retirement is to... The financial planning like you guys offer to me is the cornerstone of it all. You've got to do as well as you can with that so that when you do retire rather than say, "Gosh, what do I do now," you go, "Yahoo! I get to do what I know I love to do more than any other thing."

Michael Bowker:

My plan is while I'll still do some nonfiction, I'll still run the book company, I'm going to spend a great deal more time writing fiction. I have 13 books already outlined.

Ben Smith:

Wow.

Michael Bowker:

They're ready to go. I'm so excited-

Curtis Worcester:

Wow.

Michael Bowker:

... about that, but the financial planning that you guys provide is the engine that makes that go. I have come to really appreciate that.

Ben Smith:

Well, thanks for saying that Mike because again I think this is what our show is about is, of course we feel like we do a good job on the financial planning, and the investment management, and the pieces that they might not get a lot of fan affair, but the things that they allow us to do in retirement is I think the part that we get excited about. When people go out and do the thing and then they come back.

Ben Smith:

It gives us that gratitude in return of, "Hey. We're doing all these things to help our clients live more fulfilled lives." While they could have a good retirement to hear, "Man, that I was able to have a better or great retirement because of some of these things and money allowed me to do some of that." It's finding the purpose. It's finding the true north.

Ben Smith:

I think exactly what you said is that you're going to go, "Hey, these books I've already outlined. Now I get the chance to do it and I'm really excited about every day that I get to do it." I can't thank you enough for coming on our show on behalf of Curtis and myself. This has been a real treat and a pleasure talking about your process, how all these lessons that you've learned that we can translate to our listeners here today and our clients. Thank you so much and we can't wait to have you back again maybe for the next book when it comes out.

Michael Bowker:

Ben, I appreciate that. If any of your listeners want to contact me they can at michael@sixtydegreespublishing.com. Michael@sixtydegreespublishing.com. I will help them any way I can. I'm still coaching people. It's just a joy. I might have underscored the difficulty in becoming a million seller to a large degree, but I want to make sure that I also really put in bold what absolute joy writing can bring. Thank you guys. Thank you so much.

Ben Smith:

For those that are listening too, we'll have Mike's contact information on our blog as well which will have this podcast, and in our show notes and the links there for you. We'll make sure we'll highlight that for you as well. Thank you very much Mike. We'll catch you next time.

Michael Bowker:

[inaudible 01:01:54].

Ben Smith:

Excited to have Mike on today for how to write your book and get published. I know we all have our internal stories [inaudible 01:02:04] our life, or we want to share this fiction work that we have in our heads. Yeah. I think Curtis, you and I, and our team, we hear that enough from our clients that, "You know, there might be something here I want to explore from a storytelling perspective."

Ben Smith:

I think Mike did a really good job running the gamut with us, showing us some of the process side, some of the business side, the publishing end. The publicity, all of those things. What was something, Curtis, that you took from our conversation with Mike today?

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah. I think you're spot on Ben. You hit it from every angle, and the process start to finish. But I think a piece that stuck out to me was actually a quote he brought up. It was when you're starting this process or trying to figure out how to write. I think he just said...

Curtis Worcester:

I'm looking at my notes so I don't butcher it. He said, "Don't try to be someone else. Just keep it simple and be yourself." I think that it was just one, you could probably take that quote into any area of life, but particularly writing. Why pretend that you're something else, or why try to be this shock and awe book that you're writing?

Curtis Worcester:

You're so proud of the story that you have and that you want to write, then write it. Write it how you think it should be written, and how you lived it if it's writing a story of your life. I think that was just so cool. Then just a little bit into the process of where you can find help.

Curtis Worcester:

You can find coaches online, or you can find people like Michael. Again we'll have his contact info, but just overall I really think he did a great job of again the whole process, but really walking us through how to get started. How do I write a book, you know? Because obviously that's what we wanted to talk about and I think he did a great job.

Ben Smith:

Yeah. I think what you said is right, is he made the point about that he's a big fan of drafts. Anything to get going, and you're trying to do is you always try to be perfect the first time. Maybe you need to write your story and have all the grammatical mistakes, and maybe the character development is not right, or as he said maybe we're spending too much on the non main characters.

Ben Smith:

All of those things might be present in the first draft you've ever written. But to then go to somebody and say, "Here's an editor. Here's a writing coach and go, 'You know, this isn't quite right, or you need to expand this,' or, 'This needs to shrink.'" There's those pieces out there, and to not worry about that part and just get, as you said, being true to yourself in all of it. I thought it was really fascinating though is the entirety of the book era, is this writing but publishing, promoting. All of that, it's just brand new to us right?

Curtis Worcester:

Sure.

Ben Smith:

It's just something we don't do. To hear from him, from his publishing company and how all of that works even from the movie side and the TV side, and how that all fits together. But I know I asked from my... My dad's doing this right now. He's blowing up my Facebook world with his stories.

Ben Smith:

He's really excited about town history, and the town of Kenduskeag and all of that. It's something where getting the story is a concise thing that we all... I think there's a lot of stories as we're aging we're trying to look backwards and find meaning, and through threads, that there's something there too I think that people are interested in. Yeah. I thought Mike did a really great job covering all of that.

Ben Smith:

Again, we will have Mike's contact info as you said Curtis in the show notes, so his website, his email address and contact info if you want to reach out to him. He also listed a few resources and websites that you might want to look to if you're looking to promote, or if you're trying to, as he said, even trying to band together with other authors too.

Ben Smith:

Maybe there's other peer groups you can find on Facebook and social media to help have these conversations and share your work, and have talks about it. If you go to our website, if you go to blog.guidancepointllc.com/60 for 60 because we're at episode 60.

Curtis Worcester:

We're 60 now.

Ben Smith:

We're 60. We're past 59 and a half so we now are-

Curtis Worcester:

That's true.

Ben Smith:

... past the-

Curtis Worcester:

That's true.

Ben Smith:

... IRA minimum age to start taking out without penalty.

Curtis Worcester:

That's right.

Ben Smith:

Of course we're financial planning geeks. We had to throw that out there. But we really appreciate everybody tuning in today. Again we're 60, and we're just having so much fun. We're finding our own retirement meaning right now in this podcast. Thank you so much for listening. Can't wait to have you tune in and again, take care.