EP 417 - Embracing Your Passion for Creativity with Artist and Author C L Fors

In this episode Mark interviews author and artist C L Fors about her recent award win with Writers of the Future and her life in writing and illustration.

Prior to the interview, Mark shares comments from recent episodes, a personal update, and a word about this episode's sponsor.

This episode is sponsored by an affiliate link to Manuscript Report. Use code MARK5 at checkout and save $5.00 off your own personalized report.

In the interview, Mark and Cherrie talk about:

• Cherrie's recent win as an illustrator for Writers and Illustrators of the Future for Volume 41 of the annual anthology
• Entering the contest as both a writer and an illustrator every quarter since 2016
• How Cherrie can be creative in both writing and illustrating based on the same spark of inspiration. Sometimes it comes out first as a story and then later as an illustration, sometimes vice versa
• The process of how illustrator winners of Writers and Illustrators of the Future are "teamed up" with a writer winner
• Cherrie's four-book epic science fiction series - which is a story about people re-claiming self-determination
• The graphic novel Cherrie is working on which, at first, she wasn't sure what medium it was going to emerge into
• How a lot of the skills that Cherrie initially learned about art was self-taught, before she received more formal instruction
• Learning the right time to make that creative jump as a creator
• How when she is in the midst of the process of creating, regardless of whether it is writing or art, Cherrie feels most alive
• Taking a step back to understand if she's taking realistic stock of her time and energy
• The challenge of getting sucked in to social media
• Ensuring that you're not being too hard on yourself
• How Cherrie cannot remember a time when she was not doing both art and writing
• Publishing her first work (a magazine that had her stories, poetry and art) and selling copies of it door-to-door when she was 9 years old in order to earn money to make a purchase
• Getting her Masters in Publishing at Western Colorado University and continuing the program in Genre fiction to get her MFA
• Seeing and representing herself as BOTH a writer and an illustrator
• Using C L Fors for both her art and her writing
• Learning that she has to "go with the flow" and use the time she has to approach her various tasks as an author, an illustrator, a wife, and a mother
• Advice that Cherrie would give her younger self
• How rejection is just a lesson
• What is next for Cherrie
• And more . . .

After the interview Mark reflects on a few things that were discussed including Cherrie's advice on continuing to do something once you find the thing that you love.

 

Links of Interest:

• CL Fors Author
• CL Fors Illustrator
• Writers of the Future
• The Podcast Guest Playbook (co-authored with Matty Dalrymple)
• Writers' Federation of New Brunswick: WordSpring 2025
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