9: Writing with Heart: How Douglas Weissman Crafts Stories That Stick

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Creativity is a muscle.
We have to flex it, we have tostretch it, we have to exercise it.
And we find different ways todo it.
But we have to.
Coming back to that idea ofshowing up to do it, like if I'm
not at my table or my deskwriting, it's not going to get written.
Sometimes there is a block.
Not terms of writer blockspecifically, whether you believe

(00:20):
in it or not, but a block justin terms of I don't know where to
go right now.
So I do need that creative flow.
How do I get it?
I go on a walk.
That's fine.
It opens things up.
I go into nature.
I listen to a fountain I havein my backyard.
Whatever it is, something isgoing to at least I'm not going to
sit here and bang my headagainst my keyboard until something
opens up.
Because that never works.
Then I just feel stressed out.
But I understand my process.
These are things I know workfor me.

(00:40):
Welcome to the StandoutCreatives, a podcast for creative
entrepreneurs who want to growtheir business without losing their
passion.
I'm Kevin Chung, your guide tobuilding a standout business.
Each episode I'll sharepractical strategies, real world
examples, and inspiringstories to help you balance the business
side with your creative pursuits.

(01:03):
If you're ready to turn yourcreative passion into standout business,
let's get started.
Ever wondered why some storiesstick with you long after you've
turned the last page?
Douglas Weissman doesn't just write.
He crafts experiences thatpull you into worlds both familiar
and and extraordinary.
Doug is a travel writer andnovelist who collects moments like

(01:25):
precious gems, spinning theminto books championed by small presses.
His stories are love lettersto human connection, friendship,
vulnerability, and the quietmagic hidden in everyday moments.
But how does he staypassionate about storytelling in
an era of AI and constant disruption?
In this conversation, we diveinto Doug's writing process, his

(01:48):
publishing journey, and thepower of stories that refuse to let
you go.
Whether you're a writer, areader, or just someone who believes
in the magic of a great story,this episode is for you.
Get comfy and let's dive in.
Welcome to another episode ofthe Standout Creatives.
Today I have on Douglas Weissman.
Doug is a full time travelwriter and the author of two self

(02:11):
published novels, Life BetweenSeconds and Girl in the Ashes.
His short stories have alsobeen featured in multiple publications.
He loves writing about themagic in the mundane, finding beauty
in the grotesque, and the deepbonds of friendship that shape our
lives.
Douglas, can you tell us alittle bit more about yourself and

(02:31):
how you got into the Workyou're doing?
Yeah, absolutely.
I'd love to.
Thanks for having me.
I fear that I might havemisled you if I, if I let you believe
that my novels were self published.
They were additionallypublished but with really small presses.
So similar, similar grinds interms of having to market on the
back end and push, push, push hard.

(02:51):
But I was able to get somepeople to overlook them and to give
me advice on them as opposedto having to hire people and the
self publishing machine that's there.
So it's both are active andexciting and difficult for different
reasons.
But it was a different.
But I had a little more help.
I would say.

(03:11):
Okay, gotcha.
Yeah.
But with how I got startedwith it and creativity in general.
I always listened to my familystories growing up and I was just
enthralled by them.
My, my grandfather tellingstories about when he was back in
Brooklyn growing up, his timein the Pacific theater in World War
II, engaging with the community.
I'm was a big member, activemember growing up in the Jewish community

(03:34):
and just hearing thesesometimes compelling and sometimes
adventurous stories aboutbeing in the Holocaust.
Sometimes most of the timereally harrowing stories about survival.
But I was just captivated by them.
And I always wanted to try andfind an outlet for my own creative
expression, whether it was foremotional reasons or adventurous
reasons.

(03:54):
In second grade, I'll alwaysremember having written the Unhappily
Ever after of Cinderella.
And me and a friend wrote thestory, which was.
We were in second grade, sothere were like maybe two sentences
on each page written in crayon.
I remember specifically black crayon.
For whatever reason, wethought it was daring and we drew
the pictures and my teacherloved it.
She had us read it to theclass and present it to the class.

(04:15):
And I think from that momentit was just this understanding that
people like stories and I likestories, so how can I continue doing
that?
And I found different outletsfor it throughout my time, whether
in high school or in college.
And I was a creative writingminor in college because I thought
I can't make it a careerbecause you always hear, right, creatives,

(04:37):
the poor creative, right, thestruggling artist.
So I don't want to do that.
Who wants to struggle, right?
It's not really a badge ofhonor when you're sitting there eating
a cold can of beans for dinnerbecause you can't afford anything
else, in my opinion.
But it.
So I didn't want that.
I wanted to find somethingthat would pay me.
But then I just fell intowriting anyway by happenstance and

(05:00):
was Able to make it a viablecareer option, whether ironically,
travel writing, which I thinkeverybody would assume that it's
impossible to get paid totravel and write.
But I was able to make thatwork and then I was able to make
novels work and I've just keptgoing with it.
And so any way I can tell astory, I'm going to find the way
to tell the story.

(05:21):
What's your favorite storyfrom your family growing up?
Oh, man.
Okay, so there.
My.
I always love this story and Idon't know why I found it so impactful.
And I think it's because it'sabout the like unique, random connection
that people have.
My grandfather, I grew upsomewhat close to like a 24 hour

(05:43):
bagel stop in the San Fernando Valley.
And my dad would, every timewe'd go there for a breakfast, you
know, it was like one Sunday amonth or something, he would tell
me the story over again howwhen he was growing up, his dad,
my grandfather, would take himto that same bagel place.
And one day, all of a suddenthey're in line and somebody behind

(06:04):
them in line says somethinglike, really negative.
Like basically they.
They called my grandpa areally dirty word for jewelry.
And my grandpa turned aroundready to hit this guy in the face
and then screams in joy.
And it turns out these guyswere friends from the old neighborhood
back in Brooklyn and hadn'tseen each other in like 40 years.

(06:26):
And not since they had thisbig fight on the beach.
Not with them.
They were fighting other kids.
Like essentially, you know, aneighborhood gang war in Brooklyn.
They were fighting.
These other kids hadn't seeneach other since that moment because
they both got drafted rightafter that, went into World War II
in different spots.
And now we're running intoeach other in the San Fernando Valley,
in Los Angeles at a bagel joint.
And like a bagel joint, it'sjust, it still gives me chills.

(06:49):
And I think it's because ofthat, that desire for connection
and that idea that friendshipcan span decades and even can span
missed time.
Yeah, one interesting thingabout that too is like they had to
both be there and at the exactsame time in order to have that particular

(07:10):
connection.
One time I went to Amsterdamand there I found one of the bartenders
from the city I came from in Orlando.
Like, that is the most random thing.
I had no idea this guy wasgoing to be here.
And it just happened to happen.
It's like, it feels like sucha big world, but sometimes it can

(07:30):
also feel like the smallest ofworlds, right?
Yeah.
I mean, that's exactly what it is.
And I.
I think that's what got me sointerested in travel.
Just those random nicheexperiences that someone can have
that makes it completelypersonal, even when it's not that
epic.
Right.
So, of course, skydiving inSwitzerland is going to be an epic

(07:51):
experience, but it's an epicexperience that so many people have
that everybody who skydives inSwitzerland has.
But the story you told about,you know, the random bartender in
Amsterdam that you see fromyour hometown, Vers, or.
I was in a small town in SouthIsland, New Zealand, and I ran into
a guy who was, like, reallyclose friends with a friend of mine
and went to the same high school.

(08:12):
And so it was like just theselittle things that all of a sudden
bring connection.
And that's why I always bringthat into my creative endeavors.
Those connections, I feel, areparamount to making a connection
with the audience.
And it's in those weird butunderstandable ways.
Yeah.
And I think it's oftentimesthat those are the moments that you

(08:35):
can easily bring into a story.
And it feels real because itwas real.
Right.
You brought your ownexperiences, and that makes everything.
It gives you one moreconnection with your readers and
audience.
And two, it's like, wow, this.
This is something unexpected,but, you know, it's believable.
And it's believable because itdid happen.

(08:55):
Yeah, right.
I was an old instructor ofmine once told me, he said, you can
use coincidence to get acharacter into trouble, but not out
of trouble.
So whenever I'm using a storylike that, it's like, all right,
now what trouble is this goingto get them into?
Exactly.
It's like, what is the termwhen you just pull a solution out

(09:17):
of thin air and it doesn'tseem believable?
You know, what is it?
It's like the hand of God, butit has a Latin or Greek term or something
to it.
Right.
Like, the gods come down andfix everything.
Yeah.
This.
It's like, okay.
I waited for a real solutionto this thing, and it's like, oh,
okay.
Something miraculous just happened.
Right?
Oh, yeah.

(09:38):
Really?
It's.
It's the same annoyance I getwhen a character wakes up and it
was all a dream.
Yeah, that happens.
That's so funny, becausethat's like, one of the things when
I was writing as a kid, just ashort story, and obviously that's
the ending, because you seethat everywhere.
Shows.
You're watching movies, you'rewatching books you might be reading.

(09:59):
It's like, okay.
Oh, yeah.
No, it really is.
I once, I was once did a man.
Why can't I think of the word?
I was contracted to write abook series and it was a YA book
series.
And when, when you'recontracted to do that, it usually
means that the publisher hasan idea for the series and they just
need a writer to kind of fleshout each individual book.

(10:23):
But in line with the overallarc of their.
It's kind of like spec writingfor a TV show or something.
Yeah, very much like that.
Right.
So I went in and I had tocreate a template, basically a kind
of an agenda, an outline foreach of the six books.
But their ending was.
It was all a dream.

(10:44):
Why did I read all of these books?
Right, exactly.
After six books, you reallywant to do this right now?
And that was the biggestcomment was I was like, look, I'm
doing this because you askedfor it, but I don't agree with it.
And I just want it to be, youknow, in the record that I don't
agree with it.
And then it brought up aconversation with the rest of the
team on their end because Iwas an independent contractor.

(11:05):
So I wasn't part of that meeting.
But apparently everybody elseafter the consensus agreed, like,
oh yeah, six books.
We don't want to find out it'sa dream.
Like we want it to be real andthat it changed.
Right.
We don't, you know, all of asudden he wakes up on the couch,
nothing actually happened, andhe realizes he's not going to go
to that competition and blah, blah.
I don't know, I've just madethat up.
But that's the same idea.

(11:26):
Right?
I mean, I guess there are waysto make it work.
Like wizard of Oz obviously isan example of it, but it's also relating
and anal analogies from thefictional world to, you know, the
world that she wakes back up in.
Right, right.
And so that's the idea is whatit happens in that way we have to

(11:47):
still feel like theprotagonists still went through those
things and still learned fromthe experience that they had, even
though it was a dream.
Right.
But there was.
I don't know if you ever sawthe movie the Big Sick.
It's.
I don't think so.
No.
So great movie for anybodylistening, watching.
But one of the things that Iremember hearing an interview with

(12:09):
the.
Both the main characters inthe movie were also the writers and
they're married couple, butthey realized that him as a main
character.
So the, the girl protagonist,she gets really sick and goes into
a coma.
And it's really after they'veonly dated for a little bit.
And he kind of has this, like,do I stay with her when I kind of

(12:31):
barely know her?
But at the same time wanted todevelop something richer with her.
And then he ends up meetingher family and develops this.
So he goes through thisincredible journey through the time
that she's in a coma.
She doesn't go throughanything, and they don't go through
anything together.
So she wakes up and he's hadthis emotional epiphany and wants
to kind of go towards her andhug her and share in that experience.

(12:51):
And she's like, no, no, hold on.
You went through something.
Like, you went through thisemotional thing.
I've been asleep for, youknow, three months, or whatever the
timeline was.
And so it's.
How do we.
We have to demonstrate thateverybody goes on different journeys,
and what journeys do they goon and how do they change along that
way?
Because if he hugged her andthey had this emotional moment in

(13:13):
the audience's mind, it wouldbe like, but what hap.
What did she go through?
I mean, obviously she wentthrough a coma.
That's not what I mean.
But, like, what emotionaljourney did we see her go on?
Right.
How did she come to thisepiphany where we clearly understand
how he came to that moment?
Yeah, so it's, like, abouttelling the whole story and perspectives
of the story in order to getan overall picture.

(13:35):
Because everyone's experience.
If you were to take any storyand just shift the perspective to
a character on the side, yourwhole story is completely different.
Right, right.
We see that with Wicked right now.
I mean, it's blowing up.
It's really exciting.
But mentioning wizard of Ozbefore, but then you shift the camera
lens to the Wicked Witch andwhat's her side of the story?

(13:57):
Yeah, and also Maleficent isthe same idea.
You just.
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Taking different perspectiveson the story.
And sometimes it's good andsometimes it's bad.
Sometimes you can overplay something.
But I guess in this particularinstance, it was like a so much of
a different take that it, youknow, makes it interesting again.

(14:21):
No, absolutely.
There was a book that came outa few years ago, and I read it when
it came out, but I don't.
I wish I remembered more of itbecause it was really fun and interesting.
But that idea of the new takeor shifting to somebody different,
and it's basically a book about.
You have, like, the superherohigh school kids, but it's about
all the kids who are justtrying to get through high school.

(14:43):
Like, it's about the normiesin high school that just want to
graduate and get on with theirlives, right?
Yeah.
There was a TV show similar.
It's like the cleanup crew ofsuperheroes and like just the people
who have to take care of allthe stuff.
As a comedy, I forget what itwas called as well.
Great idea.
But it was pretty good show.
Alan Tudyk was in it, I think.

(15:03):
Oh well, anything with him I'm automatically.
Exactly.
Can you tell us a little bitabout how you got into writing your,
your first piece of fiction?
Because you have a full timejob as a travel writer.
But where did this spark to dofiction come from?
Yeah, I mean I wanted to dofiction before I wanted to do travel

(15:23):
writing or before I knew Icould do travel writing.
And again, this comes back tothe idea of just kind of writing,
not feeling writing was aviable career path.
And I had done writing as aminor, so I'd done short stories
in college.
But there was this endlessdesire to tell more to make it longer.

(15:47):
I mean, in case you haven'trealized already, I'm very verbose.
Like I will, I will just keeptalking and talking and talking if,
if I have the space for ituntil I get tired of my own voice.
And it's usually about twohours in.
So luckily like we're at thehour and a half mark maybe, so there's
still time for me to get tiredof my own voice.
But.
But when I applied to gradschool, so I take a step back a bit.

(16:10):
I had lived in Florence, Italyfor a year in college, I took a year
abroad, I traveled, Iexplored, I also did schoolwork,
I worked.
Like I had a really beautiful,great long experience there.
But it also gave me thisdesire to just do more of that.
And when I graduated college,it was in the middle of the Great
Recession, so I had no job prospects.

(16:32):
You know, no one's making any money.
Luckily I had a desire and anunderstanding that I wanted to travel
a little bit after college.
But I wasn't really sure howlong I would go.
Well, now I'm like, all right,let's just go for a year.
So I was able to satisfy a bitthat travel bug by just traveling.
And I kept, I kept blogs atthe time and it wasn't like they

(16:52):
were public just in terms ofanybody could stumble upon them.
But they weren't for the public.
They were really more as atravel diary to keep my family abreast
of what was going on when Iwas traveling, what experience I
was having, where I was,etcetera because at the time, it
was a hell of a lot harder toreach out to people, you know, Still,
I could Skype, but noteverybody had Skype.

(17:13):
You know, very few people.
I definitely didn't have a smartphone.
Very few people had smartphones.
I could send emails, but itwasn't as accessible and easy as
it is now.
And then I had, like, calling cards.
Pretty much anybody used acalling guard.
Such a pain in the ass.
But I mean, it got you thereeventually after, like, trying four

(17:33):
times and dialing a hundreddifferent numbers to make sure that
you got in touch with somebody.
But so it was.
It was like, this is an easyway blog it.
Everybody could read it.
And then I don't have to tryto figure out how to contact 15 different
people to tell them that I'm alive.
But it also got me more intune with my writing self, my writing
voice, and understanding whatI find interesting and.
And how I want to write, how Iwant my voice to be.

(17:56):
So I applied to grad school.
When I got back, I didn't getin, so I decided to travel more and
I went to South America.
And then when I was in SouthAmerica, I got accepted to grad school.
Then I was in grad schoolspecifically for fiction.
And I was writing a storywhich became Life Between Seconds,
which was my first publishedadult novel.
And I found that story when Iwas in South America because it kind

(18:19):
of.
There were a lot of theseideas roaming around my head, but
the Madres de la Plaza de Mayoreally spoke to me in a way that
I understood because of thesimilarities between what they were
experiencing.
The Mothers of the Disappearedfrom the Dirty war in the 70s and
80s in Argentina versus kindof the stories I was told and understood
when I was growing up with theJewish community and those who survived

(18:41):
the Holocaust.
And so it resonated, and Ispun out from there with this one
particular person, Sophia.
And then there was thecharacter Peter, who I wanted to
be able to explore as thelens, kind of.
I used him as like a Trojanhorse, where this is somebody many
people can understand andrelate to.
So now we're going to use himto go to Sophia's story, and then

(19:01):
we're going to see how theirrelationship unfolds and why the
relationship is so important.
And so the spark of the novelcame from my travels, but the desire
to write a novel had beenthere for so long, I just didn't
know where the story was.
That was a really long answerto get there.
I'm sorry.
Oh, no, no.
It's beautiful because that'sall of that led to the moment.

(19:24):
It's not like all of a suddenyou decided this is a desire that
you had and you just made it happen.
Because this is.
This was the spark that said,I need to do this right.
You're waiting for this thingto come and tell your story.
It's an interesting thing.
I just listened.
I'm listening to StephenKing's on writing right now, and

(19:46):
he described in it how peoplecome up with stories.
And he's like, oh, yeah, itjust comes to you out of thin air.
It comes to you in a momentof, like, revelation.
It's not like something thatis something that you produce usually.
It's just an idea that comes,at least for him.
You know, I don't know if it's.
The same for you that suck.

(20:07):
That, like, Stephen King, whois so prolific, so many stories,
what is he publish, like fournovels a year or something?
And he's like, oh, they justcome out of thin air.
I don't know where they come.
You're like, oh, I'm sure themore that you experience in the world,
the more likely you are tohave an idea for that.
Because you obviously, if youhadn't gone to Argentina, that parallel,

(20:29):
you know, idea from growing upand being there would not have come
to you and that first novelwould be something else.
No, I mean, you're definitely right.
I am a huge believer that,like, if you show up, the idea will
show up, right?
So if I show up on my computerfor 10 minutes, the idea is going
to show up.
And whether I'm there for 10minutes or an hour, as long as I

(20:50):
give myself the 10 minutes,I'll be able to get something down
and it'll work in some way atsome point in time for something,
even if it's not what I wantedit at that exact time.
And so, I mean, to your point,like, that idea of, yeah, Argentina,
it sparked it, and it was justtrying to figure out how to tell
that story, the best way totell that story.
And even Stephen King with OnWriting, which is a great book, and

(21:12):
I think it's one of the bestbooks about figuring out how to write.
But he also has a greatretrospective on his own career as
a writer.
When somebody, I think it wason LinkedIn or Twitter or something,
was like, how does StephenKing write books?
And he was like, he shows upfor this amount of time, he basically
used On Writing.
The person used On Writing islike the structure through which

(21:34):
Stephen King used to write allhis books.
And then Stephen King responded.
He's like, there's a wholeentire book I wrote that I don't
even remember writing becausehe was, like, so coked up and drugged
out that.
But it's just this hilariousretrospective, that idea of, like,
if you put in the processes,the idea will come eventually.

(21:54):
But then you have somebodywho's so prolific who's basically,
yeah, I'm telling you aboutthe process, but process be damned.
Like, I don't even.
I don't even know how I wroteCujo, but here we are.
So it's.
It, I think, when it comesdown to, essentially, is like, what.
What passions do you have?
What are the things?
Or.
One of my instructors actuallycalled it obsessions.
Right.
Like, every writer has theirobsession, and they are at their

(22:16):
best when they are writingtowards that obsession, even.
But it doesn't mean the book'salways the same for me, I'm obsessed
with intergenerational trauma and.
And friend dynamics.
And so you can see that in allof the books, nine books published,
but two for adults.
Life Between Seconds, whereit's Sophia and her disappeared child,

(22:38):
then trying to create afriendship with Peter, who.
Whose mom committed suicideand he basically grew up, you know,
kind of on his own to his owndevices and.
And the.
Really.
In the kind of mother dynamicthat they create of mother son dynamic
they have.
But this is the relationshipthey're trying to build based upon
their past traumas.
Then with Girl in the Ashes,it's a World War II novel.

(23:00):
It's based in Paris.
It's a serial killer novel,but everybody is still coming to
the scene with their owntraumas and trying to figure out
how to deal with that whilekilling people or finding the serial
killer or dealing with Nazis.
And so it's.
It's like, these are thethemes I'm constantly dealing with.
These are the things that I'mconstantly obsessed with in my writing

(23:20):
and trying to explore.
Even though they come out in different.
Ways, I think I do a lot ofimprov, and one of the basic tenets
of improv is like, yeah, itcan be funny, but the basic idea
is that you have a strongconnection between you and your partners,
but also between the characters.

(23:42):
If you don't have thatconnection, people aren't going to
care.
Even if.
Though it oftentimes is funny,but the.
The way that it works is like,it's only funny because there's,
like, an idea of truth in there.
Mm.
I love that.
Yeah.
I always joke that, you know,when somebody says something and
I'm like, oh, yeah, it's onlyfunny because it's true.
Yeah.

(24:03):
For the most part.
Otherwise, it's like there'sno truth into the idea.
It just becomes absurd, I think.
Yeah.
Which is helpful in acompletely different way on a completely
different day, but probablynot when you're doing improv.
Yeah.
Can you talk about the processof writing your very first book?
You had published some shortstories, but was there.

(24:23):
Did you work with any peopleto get it published, to get your
ideas out there?
Editors was like the start tofinish kind of process.
So the first.
So Life Between Seconds was myfirst adult novel.
And again, I say.
I differentiate that between.
From the.
The YA series that I wrotethat was published, because again,
that was contracted.

(24:45):
And so I was working withother people's ideas, but with.
With life Between Seconds.
That was my thesis for mymaster's program, my MFA program.
And they always.
Well, I learned afterwardsthat people will always tell you,
your first book is not yourfirst published book, and what you
write as your thesis will notbe your first will not necessarily

(25:07):
be published.
And I was like, well, thatidea be damned.
But I always have to prefacethis as well, where it's like grad
school.
I appreciated it.
I enjoyed my time.
I learned a lot.
Would I have gotten to thesame place without it?
I believe I would have becauseI'm tenacious enough to do that.
But it would have taken me ahell of a lot longer to get there.
And so anybody who'sconsidering grad school who wants

(25:30):
an MFA for whatever reason, Ifeel like if you put in the work
and put in the time, you'regoing to get there eventually anyway.
The thing that I got, I feltwas most helpful for my program was
really the workshop experience.
And that's where I did haveeyes on it, because I had eyes from
other learning writers andeyes from professional published
writers.
And it gave me really greatconcepts and ideas to work with,

(25:53):
even in little ways that Ithink are often overlooked.
Like, little comments stuckwith me about my writing.
For example, this is somethingthat seems so innocuous, but it stuck
with me.
Why are you saying the grassis green?
Right.
That comment.
Right.
And I realized it's.
It's.
We expect if we say the grass,people immediately anticipate the

(26:14):
grass is going to be green.
So we don't have to wastespace or time or mental capacity
saying the grass is green.
However, if we say the grassis brown and dry now, it's sparking
something in the reader thatis going to be like, oh, why or they're
going to start building thatpicture better because it, it kind

(26:35):
of upends their expectation.
So little things like that, Ithink are things that I would not
have really heard otherwise orgained otherwise or noticed otherwise.
That really affected how Iimplement the sensory details or
implement the surroundingsthat then create more care, kind
of real character and realworld settings.

(26:57):
And.
But the way that I worked inthat environment, so it's.
The program was two and a halfyears I came out of it, I started
querying and it was all rejections.
So I worked on it for another.
It took me 11 years from thefirst scene I ever wrote for that
book until it came out.

(27:18):
And I would be able to do, youknow, at the time, being young ish
and being able to kind offocus so much on that book, I could
do like two hour revisions.
I could do a four hour writing day.
I could sit in a cafe all dayand just frantically drink caffeine,
eat sugar and write.
But then as I got older and asI got more pulled apart in different

(27:40):
ways for differentresponsibilities and whatnot, I had
to change the way I wrote.
And so the way I wrote myfirst book, which was essentially
I wrote it, I got a lot offeedback on it.
I queried once I got, Ifinished grad school, I got rejections.
I revised based upon therejections and the noise I was hearing.
I had one professional editorlook at it.
I paid them myself and I gotreally great feedback from that experience

(28:08):
and I was able to strengthen,strengthen certain things.
I also spoke with an agent whosaid they really loved it, but they
didn't like a certain aspectof it.
There's a big magical realisminfluence that kind of threads throughout.
And they were like, oh, well,I love it.
Don't get that part.
Take it out and we can work together.
And I said, I'm not ready totake that out.
So it was a cordial, a cordialrejection because I wanted it very

(28:32):
deeply.
They didn't like it, so it was fine.
But I also then eventually,after eight and a half years, eight
and a half years or nine yearsafter the whole process, after the
rejection, after fixing itagain, decided, well, I don't want
to go to agents anymore if Ikeep getting rejection from agents.
And I queried over like 170agents over that period of time.

(28:54):
So.
So anybody out there, ifyou've been like rejected by 10,
forget about it.
Keep going, you're fine.
I just went directly to smallpublishing houses and because I also
knew, you know, what was myexpectation of this book, it's a
quiet book.
It's magical realism, it'srelationship, it's literary.
So it's not something that Iexpected to fly off the shelves with

(29:16):
500,000 volumes a year.
I knew it was going to be asmall sell, so I just went directly
to a small publisher and Iqueried three publishers.
One accepted rather quickly.
I was grateful for it, eagerto do it.
And then through that, we wentthrough two rounds of edits with
them.
We went through one round ofCOVID suggestions.

(29:39):
So I got.
I was able to give input, butthe ultimate decision was theirs.
And then it was published.
And very exciting, I mean,hugely exciting to see that.
But again, how I wrote that,how I approached that was different
than Girl in the Ashes.
Girl in the Ashes was mainlywritten during COVID and I had no

(29:59):
mental capacity.
I'm piecemealing together sixwriting jobs a day.
I had a toddler, you know,everything shut down.
Like the end of the day, mybrain is just melting through my
ears.
But I needed to write, Ineeded some creative output.
So that's when I started my 10minute sprints, where six days a
week I would sit at mycomputer at the end of the day for
10 minutes.
My daughter would be in bed,my wife would kind of be queuing

(30:21):
up the TV for us to just vegout and melt for the remainder of
the day.
And I would just take 10minutes with a prompt, write as much
as I could, and it became a game.
Right?
How much could I write?
Can I write 500 words?
Can I write a thousand words?
Can I finish this whole entire scene?
Can I do a scene just indialogue or whatever it is?
But I was able to get all thatdone and put enough of it together

(30:43):
where I actually had an entirenovel that I could then revise and
build out and make better.
And so now I kind of havestuck to those 10 minute sprints
so far.
Writing another book.
And it's working.
I think it's not as.
It's not as aggressive as Iwas during COVID because I think
I just had to get some stuff out.
But the 10 minute sprintsstill work for me.

(31:07):
Yeah, I think it's all aboutnot being completely set on a specific
way to do things because lifeobviously can throw a giant wrench
at you and the whole world,you know, simultaneously.
So it's like, how do you adaptand make it fit into your world if
you want that thing to comeout and be like a thing that people

(31:30):
can also consume themselves?
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
When you said life can throw awrench at you.
It just made me think ofdodgeball, like just throwing wrench
people.
If you can dodge a wrench, youcan dodge a ball.
Or you can write a novel, right?
Or you can write a novel.
If you can dodge a wrench, youcan write a novel.
Actually, it's a really good,really good metaphor.
Writing a novel is just being,is like being constantly.

(31:52):
Yeah.
All the time.
Yeah.
Since you were, were you afull time travel writer during COVID
and you took a pause duringthat time or what did you, how did
you work that through?
I know you said you took abunch of little things, right?
Taking a pause would be a niceway of putting it.
I mean, I was fired because noone was traveling.

(32:13):
So there was no way to be atravel writer at that time.
But it was, I mean, it wasdifficult, luckily, because of my
writing background.
And this is when I say, likewriters, if you're a good writer,
even in the age of AI, orespecially in the age of AI, if you're
a good writer, you have a job anywhere.
Because the difference betweena good writer and AI, and I'm not

(32:35):
knocking AI 100%, but it hasits uses as a tool, but too many
people rely on it as the thingas a replacement.
And it doesn't work.
And the reason why it doesn'twork is it has no sentence variation,
it has a cold, calculatedvoice, it doesn't have specificity.
And that's the biggest thing.
So if you can, if you can kindof create that ecosystem of a good

(32:59):
voice and make sure thatthings are specific enough within
your writing that it showspersonality and experience, then
you'll be able to still getyour foot in the door.
So I was doing, I was likefreelancing for startup companies.
I was doing copywriting, I wasdoing, I was still doing some travel

(33:20):
work on the website and thestartup that I was working for originally
because they had kind ofminimal capacity and a need for specific
type of content.
So I was able to like, allright, so I still have this little
bit.
And now I'm pulling this inand now I'm doing pitch decks for
startup funding.
And it was all thesevariations and just a whirlwind of

(33:44):
I think I was doing, I wasalso doing SEO for law for law firms.
So it's just all these like,so random, but they fit within an
understanding that I had.
So I made it work.
It's just that it wasn't ableto focus on one thing or the things
that I wanted to or the thingsthat I felt more most passionate

(34:05):
about.
Yeah.
So I think the.
The biggest thing is like theidea that one, it needs to be something
from your life because AI isjust going to write whatever.
It doesn't know anything aboutyou or certain life experiences that,
like we were saying earlier,that make it feel real.
You know, it's about the realfeeling because you can kind of tell,

(34:28):
especially if you're having ittry to tell a story.
It just feels like, you know,it just spits out words in a specific
order, which is what it'strained to do right now.
I mean, that doesn't mean itcan't get better.
Right.
Who knows 10 years from now whether.
It'S a hope or not?
Like, I guess it's the expectation.
Right.
That it will ten years fromnow be better.

(34:48):
Yeah.
They're starting to alreadymake it think about what it's already
given you and whether or notthey should continue to go down that
path.
So it's both scary, butinteresting because if you can leverage
it in a way that's notcompletely taking over, it's really
the way that you're using thetool in order to.
To make your work better.

(35:10):
Right.
I mean, that's the thing.
A tool is a tool.
A chainsaw is great forcutting tree limbs, but if you use
it to cut an arm off, then,you know, like, obviously not what
the tool was invented to do.
And it's about how the personis using the tool and taking advantage
of the tool.
So it could be for good or for evil.

(35:32):
Yeah.
How do you.
Do you use AI currently?
Or are you completely againstit based on the fact that it can,
you know, kind of use people'sideas and stuff?
Yeah.
I mean, I hope nobody adds meor hates me for it, but I use it.
I use it as a tool.
I use it as a way to structure.
I use it as a way to organize.
I use it as a helpful way toanalyze things.

(35:54):
Or even as a kind of acorrespondent where if I need a different
opinion or a better analysisof something and I'm kind of too
close to it, which is reallysomething that happens so much as
a writer and as a.
Especially as a novelist, tobe like, oh, you know, what am I
missing?
What am I not piecing together?
Or am I kind of tooting my ownhorn too much here?

(36:15):
Which of course most writersdo as well.
You know, they'll get into aspace where they think that they're
being so smart.
And it's not about the writerbeing smart, it's about the story.
And so if I'm concentratingtoo much on how funny I think the
word play is, as opposed to isthat wordplay actually helping the
story progress?
I might not catch it.

(36:36):
But if I have a tool therethat helps me.
So it kind of, in a way, isreplacing the workshop experience
or the workshop necessity.
For me, where I still want theworkshop, I still prefer to have
people sitting there readingmy stuff.
But in absence of that, here'ssomething that can assist me in that
space.
I mean, granted, when it comesto the idea of AI stealing ideas,

(36:58):
yeah, that's awful, and I hate that.
And I disagree with it 100%.
When it comes to the idea ofAI scrubbing copywritten things that
we're not given permission toAI to learn from, I don't like that
either.
So in the use case that I lookat, it's really about how am I using
the tool in order to better mywriting and to make it as best as

(37:22):
it can be each time.
I'm not using it to replace my writing.
Right.
I mean, if you look atanything, I guess you can find the
fault in anything, right?
Like, obviously, if you useFacebook or Instagram or anything,
really, you can see the faultsin the thing that you're using.
So it's all about what are youwilling to compromise with, what

(37:45):
are you wanting to use it for?
Is it, you know, ethical touse it in that way?
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, this is also how Ilook at it.
Exactly how you're saying isalso, like, if AI went away tomorrow,
is it going to drasticallyaffect the way that I work?
No.
Right.

(38:05):
I'll have another tool.
I'll have another way to move forward.
I'll have another group that Ican meet with that workshops things.
I'm not going to be losing,like, my entire income because I
can't spit out a hundredarticles in a day that all basically
have the same words just mixedup in different order.
And so it's.

(38:25):
Yeah.
And so I.
I kind of.
I don't know if I make myselffeel better by that or if I'm just
naive.
I don't know.
But that's at least how I lookat it.
I think it's just really agreat way to streamline things and
think through ideas.
So.
Exactly.
If you wanted to makesomething fictional and interesting

(38:46):
and real, not so good.
If you want it to help youorganize your structure, tell you
where things don't make thatmuch sense, and how you can kind
of adjust things to soundbetter, then it's a great way to
use It.
Yeah, absolutely.
Let me tell you, I love usingit for, like, an essay or an article
to be like, all right, what's.

(39:07):
What does the flow look like?
Does this make sense?
Right?
Or how can this flow betterand help me piece this together better?
But I would never use it tostructure a novel.
And it's not anything againstAI per se.
It's just.
I love, like, one of my greatjoys is to write down every chapter

(39:27):
on a color index card.
And I take, like, okay, who'sthe character?
Who's the main character inthis chapter?
All right, so that's one color.
And then what's happening inthis chapter?
And I'll write that down, andthey'll do that for every chapter
of the book, and I'll lay itout on my floor, and then I'll just
start moving it around.
Because I don't write linearly.
I write modularly.

(39:48):
So interesting.
What I write today could bethe ending, where what I write tomorrow
could be chapter two.
But I don't know.
I'm just writing events thathappen and the sequence isn't really
there until I feel like, allright, I feel like I have enough
momentum that I have abeginning and an end and there's
somewhat of a middle.
So now let's see what I'm missing.

(40:09):
And I'll go through and I'lldo this process, and then I'll start
moving things around and belike, okay, I know I'm missing the
connections between thesepieces and these pieces, and.
But the thread is here throughthis, so I have to make sure I have
that.
I love that.
I nerd out over that so much.
It's silly, but that's theonly reason I would never use AI
to do that.
Where I know programs, is it composedly?

(40:30):
Maybe it's not composedly.
I forget which program it is, but.
But I know there's programs,and I know also final draft does
it.
Where it'll.
It'll kind of map out yourplot progression in a sidebar as
you're working to help youmove through things.
I would hate that.
I would never want thatbecause I love to do it myself, and
it helps open things up for me.
But that comes back to theidea of process.

(40:51):
Everybody has their ownprocess where I also don't outline
unless I'm required to.
I'm not going to give somebodyan outline unless they make me, because
I don't do that.
I write and discover as I write.
I'm a pantser, and I know it.
And that's part of How Idiscover so much of what happens,
I just kind of write through it.
But that's me knowing myself.

(41:12):
And so as we write or create,I feel like we have to understand
ourselves and not rely on thebullshit we tell ourselves.
Sorry, Am I allowed to say that?
Okay.
Should have asked first.
Well, because for instance,for a long time I would say like,
oh, I can only write at night, right?
I can only write when it'sdark out and everybody's asleep and

(41:32):
it's 2am and I'm drunk andit's the only time I'm going to write
when.
No, that was just something Itold my.
It was a procrastinationtechnique so I didn't have to get
myself to sit down and writeduring the day.
And then if I fell asleep by2am well, so be it.
No, writing is a muscle.
Creativity is a muscle.
We have to flex it, we have tostretch it, we have to exercise it.

(41:54):
And we find different ways todo it, but we have to.
Coming back to that idea ofshowing up to do it, like, if I'm
not at my table or my deskwriting, it's not going to get written.
Sometimes there is a block.
Not terms of writer blockspecifically, whether you believe
in it or not, but a block justin terms of I don't know where to
go right now.
So I do need that creative flow.

(42:15):
How do I get it?
I go on a walk.
That's fine.
It opens things up.
I go into nature.
I listen to a fountain I havein my backyard.
Whatever it is, something isgoing to.
At least I'm not going to sithere and bang my head against my
keyboard until something opens up.
Because that never works, thenI just feel stressed out.
But I understand my process.
These are things I know workfor me.
So as long as we come back tothat idea of what works for you,
what do you.

(42:35):
Other than like, you know,drinking an entire bottle of Jack
and thinking that you'reHemingway, which, by the way, Heming
never wrote.
Hemingway never wrote drunk.
So you're not Hemingway ifyou're riding with a bottle of Jack
in your system.
But just that idea is like,what are you telling yourself?
And what is the lie youbelieve just to make it easier not
to write versus what are youactually doing to help you write?

(42:57):
There's so many interestingthings that you said in there.
But I think one of the focusesof that thing is the creative process
and how do we do it?
Because that's one thing thatis baffling to people who don't consider
Themselves creative.
But I think anyone can be creative.
That's one of my main things,that anyone has the capacity to be

(43:19):
creative.
So what is, I guess, yourcreative process as far as coming
up with ideas?
Does it like sometimes it'sthin air sometimes.
Do you force yourself, like inthat 10 minute span that you're writing
every day?
Does it vary?
Yeah, it definitely varies.
I mean, there are times whenI'm walking, but it varies in terms

(43:40):
of I never know when a greatidea is going to come to me.
But I do know that ideas willcome to me.
It's just a matter of, I thinkAndrew Bird, who I love as a artist,
he's a singer, professionalwhistler, also amazing whistler.
But he once said, this ismaybe 20 years ago or something,
he said, I have like a hundredsongs come to me before breakfast.

(44:04):
But I, you know, the only onesI write are the ones that I remember.
So like, that's kind of how Ifeel where I have so many ideas flowing
through me at any time, butthe ones that matter are the ones
that I remember to write down.
And otherwise, if it's thatgood of an idea, I feel like it'll
just come back to meeventually or I won't lose it at
all and I'll just be likeobsessing over it.

(44:25):
I gotta write, I gotta focuson this.
I gotta do this one.
And it also helps where if Iam feeling blocked, I do go on a
walk.
And a lot of ideas come whenI'm walking and I just open myself
up or, or I listen to a lot ofpodcasts and something will click
in a podcast that was sounrelated to anything.
But for whatever reason, mymind's now made this connection between,

(44:49):
I don't know, the dictator inRomania in the 1970s with a waffle
bat.
I don't know, but it's likesomething just randomly, randomly
things connect.
For whatever reason, I justhave to make myself open to it.
And when I'm sitting hereforcing myself at the computer, I'm

(45:10):
not open to the idea.
I'm forcing myself to getsomething done.
Which is why I give myself the10 minutes.
Because in 10 minutes I don'thave enough time to question myself.
I don't have enough time toedit myself.
I don't have enough time toprocrastinate by saying, like, I'm
going to clean my desk first.
No, I got 10 minutes.
And if I give myself theprompt, which is something simple,

(45:31):
or I have a friend who isgreat at writing prompts where she'll
basically be like pick an A Band a C and just have a list of things
in each column.
It's like one is a person, oneis a mood, and what is an activity
or something like that.
And you just put it all together.
All right, well, this is whatI'm working with, and I just make
sure that it's within contextof whatever novel I'm writing, and

(45:54):
then I can move forward.
And honestly, I will say that90% of what I write goes in somewhere
within the novels that I write.
So even if it's absurd, I finda way to finesse it, that it fits
somewhere.
That's an interesting ideabecause it's.

(46:14):
It's way.
A way to do things whereyou're not wasting your time.
First of all, it's a way thatyou're going to be able to use it.
And when you do that, sinceyou're writing out of order, you
have to figure out why that happens.
Right.
Which is very like a puzzle.
It's essentially like a puzzle.
You're trying to figure outhow to fit this in in a way that
makes sense within the flow of your.

(46:36):
Your story.
Oh, man, you just.
You nailed it as a puzzle.
Are you.
Do you like murder mysteries?
Yes, and I like escape roomsand I like jigsaw puzzles.
So I love all those things.
But I am terrible at guessingwho the murderer is before the end.

(46:58):
But it also.
But I also don't caregenerally, because it's not that
I don't care who the murderer is.
I just don't care aboutguessing because I am invested in
the story, in the characterdevelopment of them finding out more
about themselves than just.
What about just who killed whoand why.
Right.
It's about, like, oh, I'mfinding out about this person and

(47:18):
what their motivation mighthave been.
But their motivation is reallybased on so much more about who they
are.
Right.
As opposed to just giving thema motive.
And I always love that.
So that idea of, like, the puzzle.
Oh, I love it being a puzzle.
It really is a puzzle to me.
But I have to remind myselfthat it's a puzzle because I feel
like I suck so much and likethese other types of puzzles that

(47:42):
I'm like, no, no, I'm actuallyreally good.
I just.
What do I care about more?
That's what I'm focusing on.
Yeah.
What do you care about more?
And it's not necessarilygetting it right.
It's about creatively findinga solution because you can have an
infinite number of ways to fitthat idea into your story as a puzzle.

(48:04):
Piece.
Yeah.
Oh, man.
Nailed that.
I got the.
Christie used to say that shedidn't know who the murderer was
until she got to the end ofthe book, like writing the book,
because she didn't wantanybody to know.
So she basically would giveeverybody enough motive and everybody
enough so anybody could be the murderer.

(48:27):
And she wanted it that way.
And she would basically figureit out at the very end because she
didn't want anybody toanticipate who the murderer was before
they got there.
And so books are so interesting.
Yeah.
Because.
Right.
The possibility is open to anybody.
And therefore all your ideasmake sense.
But only one person had the.

(48:48):
It's.
What is it?
The.
The motive, the opportunityand the.
The will.
How or whatever to do it.
Yeah.
Like, the will, I think, is the.
Like the only piece that'smissing from all the other people.
Right.
Where it's like everybody elsehad all the other things, but this
is the one person who justtook advantage.
Yeah.
Which makes them all very goodmurder mysteries.
Right.
I guess that was how shefigured out to get people like it.

(49:13):
Yeah.
Which, again, I couldn't do that.
I mean, I guess maybe I couldjust in terms of, again, coming back
to that investment in the people.
But I fear that I am coming tothe realization that I'm not like
a plot heavy novelist.
Like, my book has a plot, butI'm very character driven.
Where even my book, Girl inthe Ashes, it's about a serial killer,

(49:35):
you are following the serialkiller throughout the book.
But that's more of.
I feel the hook is that ideathat I'm more interested in what
the serial killer is doing andher motivations and her ideas.
And while in occupied Paris inWorld War II, like, that fascinates
me.
I am less interested in serialkiller book In Occupied Paris in

(49:57):
which we're following adetective who's trying to figure
out who the serial killer is.
Because I'm like, there's somuch going on at that time.
I don't really think anybodycares about a serial killer.
I don't know where it cut off,but it started lagging.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Probably on my end.
Because there's probably likefour TVs going on downstairs.

(50:21):
You were just in the middle ofsaying that you are following the
serial killer instead of the plot.
Yeah.
So in my book, Girl in theAshes, we follow the serial killer
as the main point of contact,as the main character.
And just what she's doing, hermotivations, going about her day

(50:41):
in occupied Paris during WorldWar II.
And I find that Morefascinating than if we were following
a detective trying to find aserial killer in occupied Paris during
World War II.
Because there's so much goingon already that I don't think a serial
killer would really be that interesting.
I don't think a detectivetrying to find a serial killer in
that time would really be that interesting.

(51:02):
But as I learned from, likeDexter, they show Dexter.
Serial killers can beinteresting if you approach it right.
And following the serialkiller is something you just don't
see that often, because weanticipate being a serial killer.
You have to be a sociopath.
Sociopaths are completelydisconnected from society.
Therefore, how do you connectwith somebody in that way when you

(51:25):
need to, as an audience memberin order to want to follow them?
And that's why I feel likeDexter was so exciting and enticing,
because he's clearly a sociopath.
He doesn't have the samefeeling capacity as, like, the average
person, but he demonstrateshumanity in different ways by only
going after murderers, bydemonstrating a conviction to a particular

(51:45):
code, by showing he has somesort of affection for children, which
feels the antithesis of whatyou'd expect from a serial killer.
And so it's.
These ideas are same in Girlin the Ashes, where it's like, I
find her so compelling, mymain character, Odette, because she
has a vengeance agenda.
And what is that vengeance agenda?

(52:07):
We learn.
Just like in all these murdermysteries, we learn what the motivations
of all these characters areand the deeper meanings and the deeper
backstories as we move along.
So it's not really about themurder, but the murder is kind of
sexy Candy that people will beenticed by.
Yeah.
It's the backdrop of beingable to tell a character story, as

(52:29):
opposed to this is the storyabout the serial killer.
It's more of a deepintrospection of what does it mean
to be this type of person inthis situation.
Right.
If I had the ability to makethings so beautifully concise like
you've done, we would have.
This conversation would havebeen like, 10 minutes.
It would have been great.
But you do such a good job ofbeing able to just make the things

(52:54):
I say so concise andinteresting and straightforward.
And I'm like, ramble, ramble,ramble, ramble, ramble.
That's why I.
The only way to do that is toget all the context within what you're
saying.
So it's like, the only way Ican help you do that or myself do
that is by listening,absorbing, and seeing contextually
how.
How to essentially digest theInformation, you.

(53:16):
Know, you're really good at it.
Thanks.
What was the, the, you know,the float in the sky idea for.
For the serial killer book?
Yeah, I wish it was thisreally cool, earth shattering moment,
but it was actually just mywife loves Dexter the show, and I

(53:41):
had never seen it, and she waslike, we got to watch it together.
I'm like, okay.
So we're watching it together,we're going through the series, and
then at some point in timewithin us watching it together, we
go up to central California,to my cousin's wedding, and beautiful
area.
Kind of looks like, you know,parts of Italy or parts of the wine

(54:03):
regions of France.
And my wife just kind of leansover to me and says, what if?
There was a Dexter characterin occupied Paris, but it was a woman.
I was like, what if?
What if?
And then my mind just startedspinning out and I.
So we.
We got home on like thatSunday or Monday.

(54:24):
It was a holiday weekend, soit might have been that Monday.
And I immediately just satdown on my computer and wrote the
opening pages.
So what you see as the firstchapter has changed very little from
the original pages that Iwrote intended to be the first chapter,
because I was just.
Sometimes that happens.

(54:44):
Sometimes you.
You get these moments that areso inspired that you capture it.
I mean, for me, it's rare, butI would say that there's about three
scenes in every book that Iwrite that change very little, and
the rest of it changes tremendously.
But that's one of those scenesthat just fit easily and was able
to set the tone for the wholeentire novel.

(55:08):
So this one in particular isdefinitely dedicated to your wife.
When you're writing 100%, it'sbasically like, thank you for the
inspiration, thank you for thesupport, thank you for the guidance.
Thank you for not murdering mein my sleep.
How do you market your.
Your novels?

(55:29):
I guess.
Did you have help from thepublisher or what?
What did you do to go aboutgetting your book to people?
Oh, man.
Marketing.
I.
So I'm a travel writer by day,but I'm in a marketing department,
and I learned marketingspecifically in that area.
And it's still reallydifficult to market my books even

(55:50):
knowing conceptually elementsof things to do.
So anybody who's had troublewith this, I just.
I feel for you and I get it,and I'm right there with you.
But I also had two verydifferent books and two very different
publishers.
They were both small presses,but one's like a small press and
one's like a micro press.
So even the amount of moneythat they have towards marketing

(56:11):
are very different.
And then I was a intern at apublishing house for a little bit
when I was in grad school, soI was able to learn a lot about the
marketing efforts and what itreally meant.
And one of the things Ilearned was that unless a marketing
or unless a publishing housebelieves that your book is going

(56:33):
to be a bestseller, they'renot going to invest marketing dollars
in it, or they're going toinvest very minimal marketing dollars
in it.
So even if you have atremendous book and you know it's
great, and you're publishingwith one of the top five publishers
in America, they're still notgoing to put money behind it if they
have, like a Stephen Kingcoming out.
And they're going to marketthe crap out of Stephen King's book
because they know they'regoing to sell millions of copies

(56:53):
of Stephen King's book.
Right.
But I was going with a smallpublishing house for the first one,
and it was a quiet book and itwas a November release.
So there are a lot of thingsworking against my sales, knowing
that directly because of myexperience, and then because it's
a small publishing house, theyhave even fewer dollars to put towards
marketing.
So I.

(57:14):
I publicized the crap out ofmy own book.
I went on a whole bunch ofpodcasts, I went on vlogs, I went.
I just, I reached out to everybody.
I was doing guest blogs on allthese book posting places or.
Or book review sites, and Ireally put myself out there, and
it did a really good job ofgetting me out there.

(57:35):
And then it made inroads andconnecting me with other people.
And that was wonderful.
Did it?
I see it's trying toreconnect, so I don't want to keep
going.
We got another hiccup here.
Saw that, Saw that.
So where.
Where did it stop?

(57:58):
It was just.
You were going everywhere toget your.
Your book published.
So it gave me a lot of inroadsand I was able to connect with people
who then connected me withother people, which was really nice.
But I am not able to say ifany of that did anything to actually
sell my books.

(58:19):
Right.
And then come Girl in theAshes, which I feel is a far more
marketable book, far morecommercial book, but I'm burnt out
as hell.
Like, I did all that legworkfor the other book.
It's a year later, I spentthat year marketing the other book
comes out, and now I have todo it all over again for a completely
different book.
So I did not put in as muchEffort and legwork with that same

(58:44):
emphasis.
However, this publishinghouse, even though it's smaller,
did a lot more effort andmarketing on the book's behalf.
So that's where you get kindof the flip side, where the company
or the publishing house forGirl in the Ashes, smaller, but they
put out fewer books, whichmeans they have more dollars to support

(59:06):
the books they do put out.
The other one was a smallpublishing house, but still put out
a decent number of books a year.
But it also meant that, like atraditional publishing house or bigger
publishing house, they had todecide where those marketing dollars
were going to go.
So it's.
I think personally, in today'sday and age, the best places to put
your efforts in marketing arenot on like, you know, the, the book

(59:31):
banners or Amazon.
Amazon ads.
I think it's doing blogsreaching out to book reviewers specifically
who have a large enoughfollowing that are going to give
honest and trustworthy, Aregoing to demonstrate honest and trustworthy
reviews so that their viewersbelieve them and will then follow

(59:51):
their advice.
And I also think that thereare some platforms that are gaining
a bit of prominence where ifpublishers invest in advertising
in these platforms with avariety of their books, as opposed
to a single author withoutmany books to their name, I think
it'll pay off in dividends forkind of everybody in that whole ecosystem.

(01:00:11):
But it's a kind of pray andspray method where you kind of got
to be all over the place.
You can't just be in onespecific place unless you already
have a huge following in that area.
So I think there's that.
But there's also, if youconcentrate heavily in a specific
area, master it.
That's also a method, so.

(01:00:33):
Oh, absolutely, right.
That's why, like, ending withthat, if you have a.
Like, if you have 50,000 follower.
50,000 followers on Instagramand you come out with a book and
boom, look, you have 50,000followers right there that you can
just market to over and over again.
Amazing.
Or if you have a podcast with25,000 or even, you know, 5,000.

(01:00:55):
Market, market, market,market, market.
You have that space.
If you don't have anywhere tobe, like, you don't have a website,
you don't have a newsletter,you don't have a podcast, you don't
have a LinkedIn account withover 500 people, then, yeah, you
got to put yourself everywherebecause it's about reach.
There are.
It's a stupid number.
It's like there are like100,000 books published a day.

(01:01:18):
It's something like that, right?
So it's people.
It's not that people don'twant to find your book.
It's that people can't findyour book unless you're like, pointing
it in their face because it'sjust so much noise out there and
they want to find your book,you know, and that's why if, if you
have a horror, you go on likeone of those dark.

(01:01:40):
There's these great dark storypodcasts or, or the horror newsletters,
like all these things existthat you just do your research a
bit.
It's just a matter of what'sthe return.
Are you willing to put it out there?
Are you.
Is your desire to make moneyor is your desire to get noticed?
And I don't mean noticed in abad way.
I mean like kind of authornotoriety, right?

(01:02:03):
Because if you want authornotoriety and you don't really care
about selling your books asmuch because you have a lot of books
or you have.
Or like you're kind of gaining.
You want to gain awarenessbecause your next book's going to
come out, then there's plentyof areas that you can pursue as opposed
to like, oh, I just want to.

(01:02:23):
I'll just do a, A book ad onmeta and it'll go to Instagram and
it'll go to Facebook andthat's fine too.
So it's just trying to get.
Figure out what works best foryou, what your purpose and goal is
getting out there.
Are you marketing yourself?
Are you marketing your book?
Are you marketing both andthen figuring out what the best places
are for you to do that.

(01:02:44):
I missed, I think I missed anopportunity at the time with not
doing more meta ads becausethe way that it would have been able
to niche down would have beenvery effective for Girl in the Ashes.
And I can always go there next.
But I realized just it couldhave been a.
It had to be an investment.

(01:03:04):
But I think it would haveworked out better than just the podcast
route for me.
Yeah, well, I think a lot ofit is just being willing to experiment.
But not only that, just also,you can't just experiment.
You have to see what theresults of your experiment are, because
otherwise it could have been anything.

(01:03:25):
And you're.
The next time you do it, youdon't know what it was.
Right.
So it has to be one, you haveto be willing to put yourself in
all the places that you feelcomfortable being, and then the other
is just to, you know, track.
Be able to track how thateffort that you made made a difference.
Yeah, that's exactly it.

(01:03:46):
I mean, as a marketer assomeone in the marketing department,
like we have to be able toread the effects of things.
How many people are clicking,how many people are coming in.
And that's one of thedifficulties of when you're putting
yourself on podcasts or you'reputting yourself in particular spaces
where you don't have, youdon't have that readability in how
much traffic it's drivingtowards purchasing or engagement

(01:04:08):
or notoriety.
But it's definitely, it'sdefinitely necessary and worthy.
I remember one author I talkedto, she sold her books at farmers
markets.
She would just have a littletable and you could, I mean, she
had direct access.
She knew she brought 10 books,she sold three.
You know, so it's or seven orall of them or whatever it is.

(01:04:31):
But along that idea, if youpublish a book, whether it's traditionally
published or self published,depending on the content type, you
know, if it's not too risqueor if it's not too controversial,
if you go to your localbookstores, you know, if you local
Barnes and Noble, they'llgenerally be very excited to have

(01:04:57):
you do a hand sell.
So not so much one of those things.
And I've done this in a fewdifferent places in Los Angeles and
they've been great about it.
So the hand sell is difficultfor a lot of writers because it means
that you have to stand therewith a stack of your books talking
to strangers and trying tosell yourself and sell your book.
So it's difficult, but you doget that instant gratification of
knowing someone's buying yourbook, of actually autographing your

(01:05:18):
book for them, of.
Of these kind of interactionsthat you don't get otherwise, which
can be a lot of fun and really rewarding.
But it's also mentallyexhausting, especially for writers
who tend to be introverts.
I am not necessarily anintrovert, but it's still exhausting
for me when I'm up there forthree hours just talking to strangers,
trying to hock a book here or there.
But they are really receptiveeven if your book is self published.

(01:05:42):
So it's an avenue that I thinkis underutilized.
Yeah, I think we oftentimesjust think about all the stuff you
can do online.
It's like an infinite world.
But there's also such a biggerimpact I think you can make in person
when you're talking to people,because it's not only the story that

(01:06:03):
you're selling, it's kind ofyourself and what this story means
to you and how that couldpossibly relate to the person that
you're talking to.
Oh, man.
100%.
You nailed it.
And it's, it's.
We forget.
Because online feels so easyor at least accessible, we forget
that the biggest sales pointis word of mouth, right?
I'm going to trust my dad totell me about a book.

(01:06:26):
Like, I'm going to trust thebook he's talking about more than
I'm going to trust an ad thatI get from Instagram about a book.
So if I get that word of mouthand more people are going to get
that word of mouth, if you'relike sitting there handing them the
book, like, oh, I talked tothis author and their book's pretty
great.
You should read it.
Oh, what is it about?
I don't know.
Read the book.

(01:06:50):
What was it like to receivethe verse piece of feedback that
wasn't from somebody that youknew or approached about your book?
Oh, man.
Oh, it was harrowing.
Like, I was like, so, soKirkus reviews.
I don't know if you know it,but it like a really prominent review

(01:07:13):
site.
And they were always like,they're one of those reviewers that
you'll see on the back of likea Stephen King, right?
Because they're just superhigh end.
If you get a review from themthat, well, if you get a positive
review from them, it could bea killer moment for you.

(01:07:33):
And so they have kind of twotiers though, because they have the
regular tier of, you know, wechoose and you don't know if you're
going to make it in or theyhave like, you could pay for a review,
but when you pay for a review,you, you still don't know if it's
going to be good or bad.
You're just paying for it.

(01:07:55):
So I did it because I wantedthe review and I thought it would
kind of be something thatcould elevate my book and notoriety
and all those things.
Luckily, I had the funds to doit and so I did it and I was, I got
the email and I was like, Igot the email and I was really worried
about what it was going to be,but it was like a great review.

(01:08:19):
This is my daughter.
She is five.
You want to say hello?
Hi.
Hi.
Thank you.
All right.
Welcome back from school.
Sorry.
She's eating a ring pop.
Yeah, I mean, it felt the waywhen I got that email and I was scared

(01:08:41):
to open it up, I felt asnervous as about when my daughter
just walked in right nowwithout any provocation, knowing
the door was closed and shewasn't supposed to be interrupting.
But you know, you Just life.
You just roll with it, right?
Yeah, but it was.
But then the review turned outto be really good and I was like

(01:09:02):
dancing around and felt like Iwas going to have a heart attack
from excitement as opposed to fear.
Nice.
Is that something that youlike you framed up on your wall or
you have it saved somewhere or something?
Oh, I definitely have it saved.
I have it bookmarked and Ialso have it.
So I have it bookmark on myfavorites, but I also have it up

(01:09:23):
in the favorite bar.
So every once in a while Iaccidentally, accidentally just click
it.
Sometimes you need a reminderhow you made somebody feel.
Especially those days that are hard.
Absolutely.
I mean, I don't.
I make it a point not to readreviews, but every once in a while
I think every creative justwants a.
Just like craves good or badto read them.

(01:09:44):
Usually it's not good to readthem, but every once in a while,
like there are a couplereviews that just really sing and
really remind me why I lovestorytelling and why I love my voice
in storytelling and why how Icame to that voice in storytelling.
And like there's one, there'sone one star review that I really
love.

(01:10:05):
Actually it's a three starreview that I really love.
And it just says needs better edited.
Which I think is hilarious, of course.
Right.
I love that one because it's adig at me that then digs back at
them and I just can't ever getover that joy.
But.
But there's another one that Ilove that was five stars on Amazon.

(01:10:25):
That was just.
It said something along thelines, I mean, it was a very long,
robust review.
But one of the things thatstuck out to me was it said this
is not an, this is a novel Icould not read quickly.
But then they go on to explainwhy and how that they loved that
feeling.
And I was like, well, this isreally beautiful.
And you're right, it's not anovel that you can read quickly.

(01:10:45):
I mean, it deals with a lot ofhard subjects and death.
And I believe it was aboutGirl in the Ashes, but it might have
been about life between seconds.
But both of them are aboutdeath and both of them have harrowing
details and both of them havethose kind of similarities that I
discussed earlier.
But they also lean on kind oflong sentences.

(01:11:07):
And I love like one of myfavorite things is a run on sentence
and I will use it too much.
And that's one of the reasonswhy an editor is a really important
thing.
But I do do it on purpose.
But it's Just.
It definitely slows down thereading process.
Like when you are sittingthere reading, you know, four run
on sentences in one page orone page that is one long sentence,

(01:11:28):
it's going to take you a lotlonger to read than a normally constructed
page.
And I do it on purpose,generally to try and imitate whatever
emotional construct I'm goingfor at the time.
And I'm aware of it.
Do I overuse it?
Absolutely.
But the fact that this personwas getting the effect I had intended

(01:11:51):
from it and acknowledged it ina way that they appreciated it was,
you know, I was over the moon.
Yeah.
Sometimes those are the thingsthat are the smallest things.
Like that.
Just that person noticing yourintentions and the reason why you
did things.
It makes it feel like your.

(01:12:13):
Your work matters.
Right.
It matters more than workingfor yourself because obviously we're
as creative people, we're alljust doing it mostly for ourselves,
but also to have a connectionwith people.
Right.
I think it's that.
It's.
It's the connection.
Right.
It's like, yes, if I was doingit for myself, I wouldn't try to
get it published.
Right.
So I do the initial draft formyself because I feel like the story

(01:12:35):
needs to be out there.
But then I do want to makethat connection.
I want other people to makethe connection with that, work with
these characters, with thething that I've invented that then
became its own monster.
And you.
You put it beautifully,because we are making it for ourselves,
but we crave.
We crave the audience, not forourselves, but because we feel like

(01:12:58):
if they appreciate it, it isnow a connection we've made through
this thing that we've created.
Yeah.
It's beautiful when you canget people to think deeply about
stuff, because we're all justgoing through life with so many distractions,
especially if you can drownyourself in something like Netflix

(01:13:20):
or TikTok or whatever it is.
And if you can make even thatsmall connection to one person, you're
like, oh, this might have beenworth all the struggle.
Because obviously when you'rean artist, it's.
It can be a struggle.
It doesn't mean it needs tobe, but it can be.
Yeah, I love it.
It doesn't mean that it needsto be, but it can be.

(01:13:41):
I think every.
Well, every artist goesthrough it at some point.
It doesn't mean they're alwaysgoing through it, but it's something
that everyone encounters at apoint in their artistic journey.
Unless, you know, through somecrazy luck, you know, they're just
naturally 100% talented at something.
Right.
I think there's also.

(01:14:02):
There's also this idea.
At least I went through it,and I feel like others have gone
through it, but it could justbe me trying to make myself feel
better.
This idea that you kind ofhave to go through the dark tunnel
in order to realize that youdon't need the dark tunnel to be
creative.
Like, there's like.
I have struggled withdepression since I was 13, and there

(01:14:22):
was a time where I thoughtthat if I didn't struggle, then I
wouldn't be creative.
So I felt that my creativitywas immediately tied to that struggle.
And it was.
I had to really work tountangle those things.
Because, yes, I can struggle,and I have struggled, but it doesn't

(01:14:43):
mean that I am any lesscreative if I'm not struggling.
Yeah.
So we can turn the struggleinto, you know, it's like turning
your obstacle into your.
The way forward, essentially.
So you can use the strugglesto propel you forward.
Because if we're not failingand struggling, sometimes we don't

(01:15:05):
learn the lessons that we needto learn in order to continue to
create.
Right.
Yeah.
Well, it's also that idea of,like, there was a time when I legitimately
felt like I might have beensabotaging myself so I could struggle
so I could be creative.
I think that's a commonartistic struggle.
Right, Right.
Where it's like, oh, when Irealized I don't have to sabotage

(01:15:25):
myself and I can be happy orenergetic or excited or have a good
day and still.
Still move forward creatively.
Oh, well, now I don't have totrip myself when I'm running and
scrape my face just so I havesomething to write about later.
Yeah.
It's about taking any emotion,really, and working with it in a
way that, you know, propels your.

(01:15:47):
Your work in a more meaningfulway because you can take anything
and turn it into something creative.
You can take a struggle, youcan take a joy, you can take curiosity,
you can take whatever emotion.
It's just like how you use thethings that come at you is the way
that you succeed.
Yeah.
Oh, I love that.

(01:16:11):
Awesome.
So what is your.
What is the idea germinatingand for the book you're working on
now?
Oh, man, so many ideas.
But how to hone them all in.
I.
So the actual idea.
I have a very, very dirtydraft currently, which just means
there are still plot holes,there are still disconnections.

(01:16:32):
There are still a lot ofthreads that have not met the other
side yet.
But the overall idea is a.
It's a YA fantasy novel.
But it is about a girl'sjourney to understanding the world

(01:16:53):
around her that she's beendisconnected from for 16 years.
And so the idea is that shestarts in the this drought ridden
city that has beendisconnected from any other civilization
for hundreds of years and thenwhen she finds herself ousted from

(01:17:14):
that community, how can she survive?
And then learns that there'sentire worlds outside of the space
that she thought was the kindof the only remaining civilization
in existence.
Where did this idea come from?
Honestly, it really.
So now that you've met mydaughter and her ring pop.

(01:17:35):
It came from her about a yearand a half ago.
We were just playing as we doand she.
I don't remember what we wereplaying exactly.
I think we were playing cafeor something like that.
And she told me, she's like,stop, I have to farm these rainbows.
And I was like, oh, that'sinteresting, a rainbow farmer.
And I thought, okay, well nowI have.

(01:17:57):
And that started there.
And I was like, well what ifit was the last rainbow farmer?
And then what did a rainbowfarmer do?
And what was the communitythey were involved.
And so it started from thereand now the rainbow farmer is no
longer the goal of.
It used to be the originalconcept was oh, this girl going out.
The rainbows were this thingand she had to find the rainbow farmer.
There's only one left.

(01:18:17):
And that they have to helpheal the world or whatever it was.
It so it, the idea sprang fromthat and it's changed drastically.
But that was the impetus andI'm never gonna, never gonna forget
it.
Can't forget it.
That's beautiful.
It's always good to have afive year old.
Well, at the fourth time shewas like three and a half.

(01:18:37):
So it's always good to have atoddler around to give you new ideas.
Yeah, yeah.
New ideas can come from anywhere.
And obviously as you'vedemonstrated, you don't need to look.
You have to be able to see theopportunities that come your way.
Right.
You know what, I think younailed it.

(01:18:59):
Like circling back to thebeginning of the conversation, right.
Where it's do they just comeout of thin air?
It's, oh, maybe it's just thatwe're, we have to make ourselves
more receptive to the ideaswherever they are, wherever they're
coming from.
So they're not necessarilyjust falling from thin air.
We're just now recognizing its presence.
Yes.
I think as creative people weall just need to be able to, to know

(01:19:22):
when the idea is something to pursue.
Yeah, I think we've all done that.
Right.
We travel far down a road onlyto realize, oh, this isn't.
This isn't where we should be.
This isn't working.
I shouldn't have gone downthis road with this project.

(01:20:08):
Yeah.
But there's only one way toknow is if you.
You attempt to go down it.
Right, right.
Oh, that's true.
I have a project that I'vebeen working on for a long time,
but it's one of those oneswhere, like, I was working on and
then I lost interest and putit away.
And I feel like it's probablygoing to be the one I go back to
after, after I finish thiscurrent piece because it's just.
It's too fun.
But I lost the fun of it.

(01:20:30):
And now when I'm looking at itagain, I'm like, oh, this would be
fun.
I should.
I should do it again.
And I don't mind sharing.
Like, that one is, is if youtake the.
The Great British Bake off andmix it with, like, a Jewish summer
camp, that's the story.
That.
That does sound like a fun,fun little tale to tell.

(01:20:54):
Yeah.
Awesome.
Well, I got a few morequestions left, so let's go through
these.
Yeah.
Well, as my dad would say, wehave time for another question, but
do we have time for another answer?
Do you know anyone else whoalso runs a standout creative business
and what do they do to stand out?

(01:21:18):
Oh, that's a good question.
I would say that I do know.
You know, I know plenty of writers.
I know plenty of artists,photographers and things, but they've
all kind of gone intocorporate life in a way to, like,
feed their creative.
Well, feed themselves, andthen then also still create on the

(01:21:39):
side to feed their creativelife and soul.
But, you know, I have onefriend specifically, who.
I mean, she is great in herwriting, and she's able to concentrate
on her writing.
And she has rewritten herfirst novel.
Like, I mean, rewritten, notjust, like, drafted.

(01:22:00):
She rewritten the thing like,five times.
And in the same time, shewrote an entirely different novel
disconnected from it.
That's going to be a trilogythat is on that.
They're shopping around, herand her agent are shopping around
right now.
And it's like she's just a machine.
She is, like, in this placewhere her.
She's still able to do thiswith two kids, with her husband,

(01:22:22):
with a life up in theWashington, Seattle area with Lyme
disease.
And she's just like.
She just finds the power andinspiration from little things.
She tells me, like, enjoying acup of Coffee in the morning, kind
of her private, cozy spacethat gives her this little joy and
energy.

(01:22:43):
And it's walking with her son,only because her daughter's in school,
so her son's still of an agewhere he's not in school yet.
So walking with her son in themorning, walking with her daughter
and son in the afternoon whenthey get home.
When she gets home from school.
So it's like these littlethings she tells me, are.
It's not about, like, thegiant great gains.
It's about these little thingsin her life that gives her energy

(01:23:04):
to pursue the creative thingsthat she finds interesting and the
things that she's passionateabout and the things that also she
finds compassion in, becausethat's a big.
It's like anger and compassiontend to, I've noticed, feed her writing,
or she at least puts themessages into her writing.
So it's really a cool balanceas well.

(01:23:25):
Kind of fire and ice, in a way.
Yeah.
However you can make itthrough your creative journey, especially
if you have appreciation for it.
I think that's really the bestway to.
To continue to be able to go on.
Because it's.
It's hard, right?
It's hard.
That soggy middle.
Right.
That middle where everybody'sready to just be like, oh, I'm.

(01:23:47):
I think I'll give up here whenthis is the hard part.
I don't want to do this anymore.
I'm interested in this shinyobject over here now.
But that's.
That's when we have to pushthe hardest.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's what often separatesthe people who make it versus those
who don't.
The.
The bullyness.
Right.
Oh, man.
I gotta tell you, I freelyadmit that I was not and still am
not the most, like, the bestwriter, the most creative writer,

(01:24:10):
the best storyteller,especially from my class, like my.
My MFA class.
But I was.
I was like, one of the few whojust kept going where everybody else
dropped off at some point forsome reason or another.
And whether it's stubbornnessor whether it's just a desire to
get published or whatever itwas, I just kept going.
And eventually it led to thedesired outcome of being published.

(01:24:34):
So.
Yeah.
I mean, that is what separatesthose who do and those who don't
is just.
I didn't stop.
Yeah.
Some people think they can'tdo it, and then there's those who
do do it.
Right.
Right.
Yeah.
Oh, man.
I used to.
Sometimes I still do.
So I can't say I used to, butI exercise at home.
But using, like, YouTubevideos or things like that.

(01:24:54):
And there's one.
One particular feed where theysay, it's like, those who think they
can and those who think theycan't are both right.
And it's like, such a cheesything, but it's so motivating and
it's so true.
And.
And I bring it back into mydaily life where it's, you know,
sometimes those cheesy thingsare so accurate and we kind of scoff
at them, but they really fuelme in a way.

(01:25:14):
And I'm like, yep, if.
If I think I can't, I'll give up.
But if I think I can, I'llkeep going.
So I'm just gonna.
I'm gonna power through this.
What is one extraordinarybook, podcast, documentary, or tool
that has had the biggestimpact on your creative journey?
Oh, you know, I mean, on mycreative journey.

(01:25:40):
So I didn't listen to podcastsuntil relatively recently.
So it's like, podcasts.
I love them, and I still feellike they inspire me.
Elizabeth Gilbert's Was It True?
True Magic Lessons in Magic orsomething, it's a podcast based on
her book I thought was great.
It was only like, one season,eight episodes or something.
But it's just.

(01:26:00):
She would always talk to afamous person who succeeded in a
way.
And it just gave meinspiration in a sense that, okay,
here are other people whostruggled and then found success.
So in those stories, it's notlike I'm looking at a famous person
who's just famous, andtherefore I think I'll never be there.
It was, oh, I wasn't always famous.
This is my journey to get towhere I succeeded in whatever big
area I succeeded in.

(01:26:22):
So that was helpful in that regard.
But it came along so muchlater that I would say, like, on
writing, of course, King,because it gave me the structure
that I felt I needed to reachthe next place, right?
Where now I have a foundationin my MFA program, here's a different
foundation.
And now.
And then understanding what mycreative output is.

(01:26:43):
So instead of, like, I'mOfficer Skating and I'm really dodging
the question because I feellike the biggest thing for me was
music and finding out, like,what is my.
What is my preferred playlistwhen I'm listening to or when I'm
trying to write, what am Ilistening to?
That will push me through aparticular mood.

(01:27:05):
And usually I'll put on somerandom thing.
Like, it would be like, a YanTierson, who I love as a composer.
I.
I love his composing formovies, like film compositions, more
than I love his.
His actual, like, band work,but that's personal.
But still, I would like, putthat on.
I'd put on the.
The soundtrack to, like,Amelie, and I would just listen to

(01:27:25):
that and write if I wantedsomething whimsy or I would put on.
On repeat.
There's a piano version ofWhere Is My Mind from the Pixies.
And I would just put that on.
It's like two and a half minutes.
And I would listen to it forlike an hour and just pounded the
keys because it would help mekind of get into that rhythm, get
into that zone, blockeverything out, ignore the world.

(01:27:47):
And then it would eventuallyturn into white noise where all I
have is me in the story.
So I guess in that sense, thetool, music as a tool was very helpful
in helping me figure stuff out.
Yeah.
Whatever it is that makes yougo forward is what you need to use

(01:28:08):
to succeed.
Right?
Yeah.
The accordion.
I would actually.
I would write on my.
What do you think makes acreative business stand out?
And what is one piece ofadvice you would give to someone
based on your personalexperience that will help them stand
out?

(01:28:29):
I think a creative businessstands out not because of its creativity,
but because of its intention.
Where, like, a creativebusiness can be to sell a product,
it can be to sell a person, itcan be to sell.
I mean, I'll.
I'm going to separate book orfilm from.
And music from product, butstill the idea is similar.
However, in the creativespace, you're not necessarily just

(01:28:53):
saying, buy this thing you're.
You're looking at.
And I feel like so manycompanies are trying to answer this
question nowadays, but itcomes from creativity.
First, you're looking at the why.
You're looking at not yourwhy, but you're looking at why are
they going to care.
Right.
So I know why I care about my book.
It came from my brain, it camefrom my heart, it came from my experience,

(01:29:14):
it came from all of theseplaces inside me.
So of course I'm connected to it.
Why are you going to care?
And then I have to understand,okay, I'm going to just twist this
left to center.
So you will pay attention towhy you're going to care about this,
why you want to care about it,why you're going to make this emotional

(01:29:37):
connection with this thing.
And I feel like creativepursuits and those selling creative
products or those working increative spaces understand that better.
Possibly because they're soafraid of selling themselves that
they're so much better atselling their.
They're so much better atselling their Idea.
Right.
Because I know, you know, Iknow plenty of others.
I know myself.

(01:29:57):
It's like if I stand in frontof you and try to sell myself as
an author, I'm going to get confused.
How do I market myself?
How do I sell myself?
How can I talk about myselfwithout sounding like I'm gloating
or without sounding like I'mtooting my own horn, without putting
myself in a vulnerable position.
But I'll gladly tell you aboutall the books I've written and the
things that you're going to beinterested in in those books as a
human being.

(01:30:18):
Making connections, buildingrelationships, finding family.
Right.
How do you.
How can you survive every daywhen people around you are dying?
How can you live with yourselfnot knowing what happened to your
child, that she's, that shecould be out there somewhere, hurt,

(01:30:39):
in pain, and you are stuckdoing nothing.
How can you decide to leaveyour child behind?
Like, these are questions thatany normal person would struggle
with on a daily basis.
And that's where the emotionalconnection comes from.
So it's like, I know.
I know how to do that.
I know where, how to make theemotional connection.

(01:31:00):
And I think that's thepowerhouse of creatives and creative
businesses is they're going tomake that emotional connection because
that's where, that's wheretheir strong suit is.
Because it comes from there, emotions.
It's not just, I'm selling youa trampoline.
Yeah.
It's really about, instead oflooking at like you have to sell

(01:31:23):
something, it's more like, howdo I, as a creative person help you
relate to what I'veexperienced and what I can provide
for you as a way to look atthe world?
Essentially, again, you justmake it so concise and beautiful.
Like, here's a 20 minute longexplanation and you're like, how

(01:31:44):
do I help you connect with the world?
Can you give the listeners achallenge they can take action on
right away to try to startstanding out.
Oh, man.
To try you an action to startstanding out.
Well, I mean, I think that theaction they need to take is.

(01:32:07):
Or an action that I can givethem to take is the action that they
feel they need to take thatthey are, that they know they need
to take, that they're not taking.
Right.
It's like, what is the barrierthat I put up for myself that I am
not doing and for what reason?
Right.
Because so much, especially inthe creative field, we expect perfection

(01:32:28):
and we will not do somethinguntil it is perfect.
Right.
And then we use that pursuitof perfection as procrastination
So I think that the actionablestep that your listeners need to
take right now is find outwhat is, what is that expectation
of perfection you arecurrently telling yourself that is

(01:32:49):
keeping you from actuallydoing the thing.
And then do the thing thatyou're telling yourself you can't
do yet.
We're our own worst enemies oftentimes.
Right.
100%.
Now I'll put the caveat right.
Like I'm not.
If you're only on chapter oneof your book, don't query the agent
yet.
Right.
But if you've like rewrittenyour book four times and you're like,

(01:33:12):
it's still not perfect and Idon't want to query until it's perfect.
Query.
Put, query the agent.
Right.
If you are.
You've taken a million photosbut you don't want to post them on
some site yet because you, youhaven't felt connected to whatever.
It's like, no, that's you procrastinating.
Post them.
Right.
So it's.

(01:33:33):
Figure it out.
Figure out.
Really do the self analysis tounderstand what step are you not
taking because you're tellingyourself something and then take
that step.
Yeah.
Like we were saying.
Just saying, it's like thepeople who figure out how to continue
going are the ones that aregoing to succeed.
Yeah.
Because if you stop, you know,it's never going to happen.

(01:33:54):
Obviously.
Like.
Yeah, well, it's like what's,what's the.
You know, in fiction we alwayssay the inciting incident.
Right.
The inciting incident is thevery thing that pushes the character
into action or that pushes theplot forward.
It's, you know, it's gotGandalf finding the ring or noticing

(01:34:16):
that it's the ring.
It's the cat scratch inDesperate Characters.
In politics.
Desperate Characters, it'slike, it doesn't have to be this
big epic thing.
It's a little thing, but thatpushes the story forward.
And if you are not lettingyourself move forward, you're never
going to do it.
What will, what would thatinciting incident finally be if you're
not doing it yourself?

(01:34:37):
Right.
So this will be your inciting incident.
This is your call to take that step.
Awesome.
Well, Doug, it's been reallycool talking to you.
You got a lot of great ideason creativity.
I love your, your thoughtprocess and some of the stories that
you're working with.
So let.
Where can people check outmore of your work or find you online?

(01:34:59):
Yeah, you can find me online.
I'm really active on LinkedInwhere I do actually give kind of
actionable writing tips daily,pretty much, or at least five days
a week.
You can find me at DouglasWeissman on LinkedIn.
You.
You can also message medirectly there or on my website,
douglaswiseman.com if you finda dentist website.
That's not me.
There's only one other guynamed Douglas Weissman on the Internet

(01:35:20):
and he's a dentist in New Jersey.
I'm not that guy.
I'm the other guy.
You can also find me onInstagram, again, Douglas Weissman,
where I actually do I read achapter or I read a page from my
book most recently publishedevery day until it's complete.
So I have all 361 pages oflife Between Seconds up there.

(01:35:41):
And I'm currently workingthrough Girl in the Ashes.
If you want to look at Girl inthe Ashes or Life Between Seconds,
you can find them on Amazon.
You could find them at Barnesand Noble.
You could find Girl.
Or you can find Life BetweenSeconds at Target.
That's exciting.
Or bookshops.org support yourindependent bookstore.
You can find them both thereas well.
Awesome.
Well, yeah.

(01:36:02):
Thanks again for coming on, Doug.
It's been great talking.
Thanks for having me.
Thanks for letting me ramble.
Of course.
All right.
Bye.
Bye.
That was an inspiringconversation with Douglas.
If there's one thing to takeaway, it's this.
Stories have the power toconnect, transform, and stick with
us long after the last page.

(01:36:23):
If today's episode lit a fireunder you and you're ready to take
your crew creative work to thenext level, head over to thestandoutcreatives.com.
Whether you're a.
Writer trying to reach theright audience, a creative looking
to share your work moreeffectively, or someone who just
wants to build somethingmeaningful, I'm here to help you

(01:36:44):
make it happen.
I keep spots limited becausethis isn't about generic advice.
It's about crafting a strategythat fits you.
So if you're done waiting andready to create a career you want,
sign up today.
Let's make it real.
And if this episode spoke toyou, share it.
Tag me.
And let's get more creativevoices heard.

(01:37:05):
Until next time.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}9: Writing with Heart: How Douglas Weissman Crafts Stories That Stick