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Forging a Creative Life: An Interview with Leslie and Adam Verner

Today we speak with our creative doppelgangers, another couple trying to make it work in the freelance world. Leslie Verner is an author, freelance writer, and speaker, and her husband Adam is a book narrator. That’s right. He has the dream job of reading books FOR A LIVING. We talk about how to make it in the creative world, what it’s like living with another creative person, and serving the reader versus serving the work.

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As always, there are a few ways to listen: click the play button in the image above, go to the webpage to hear this and all of our other episodes, or head on over to Apple podcasts or Spotify!

Those in our Patreon community receive bonus material and have the opportunity to join in conversations about writing and creativity. This month’s book is Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott.You can join our Patreon community at the $5 / month level HERE.

Finally, please leave a review wherever you listen! Reviews are so helpful.

Keep writing!

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Offering Something to the World that Matters

Today, Jen Pollock Michel writes to me about the power of words:

“In recent months, the work of words often did not feel like “enough.” If people are building hospitals, feeding starving children, conducting important diplomatic efforts, running companies, of what real use am I in front of this laptop? It’s felt a bit immaterial, like I’m offering something to the world that matters a whole lot less than the really solid things that can be named and accounted for. But with the world as it currently is, I’m sensing anew the power of words, both the healing words and the reckless words. I’m starting to believe again that it matters: taming those wriggling words and offering them up to the world, however they are received.”

Read her entire letter HERE.

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Today, we’re also releasing a BRAND NEW PODCAST EPISODE. We speak with our creative doppelgangers, another couple trying to make it work in the freelance world. Leslie Verner is an author, freelance writer, and speaker, and her husband Adam is a book narrator. That’s right. He has the dream job of reading books FOR A LIVING. We talk about how to make it in the creative world, what it’s like living with another creative person, and serving the reader versus serving the work.

Listen to our newest episode HERE.

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Joy Will Come Back

The endless hum of the box fan is a numbing
agent, like Novocain (“You’ll feel a small
pinch”), so I sit on the floor
in the room of our youngest two and listen to it,
the fan, remembering three weeks ago,
what I realize now was the beginning
of our last normal week, when school and work
and going to the grocery were things
we did without counting
the potential cost.

How did we end up here, some of us
out of work, some deathly sick, others
holed up in their houses binge-watching
Tiger King? I ate a triple batch
of tapioca pudding last night and blamed
the kids for how quickly
it disappeared. But I know
the truth.

And now, another Monday. Another week. Another
set of uncertain days (as if
before this virus, the future was thick ice
we somehow knew would hold our weight). The fan
drones on. I wonder what will become
of us.

My new friend Mitali said these days
remind her Ma of her childhood in a Bengali
village. “Cholera came,” her Ma said. “Fear
spread. We stayed in and avoided the sick. People
died. Sometimes even someone
you loved.” She paused, breathing in the memory
of those days. “But when the disease left,
joy came back. That will happen
here, too.”

I sit in the darkness of this
bedroom, drowning sweetly in the sound
of the fan, and realize there is a dim light
outside. It is the light of an early spring
evening. Spring
has snuck in again while we weren’t
looking. Spring, with its buds and blossoms,
warmth and sweet breezes. Spring, with its life
and hope.

This season will not last
forever. Joy will come back.

Will our confidence in the ice
ever return, or will we always
and forever more test it with
our weight? Stomp on it before moving out
over deep waters? Maybe then, when we hug
our parents again for the first time, say hello
to a stranger we pass on the street (without
drifting six feet apart),
when we shake hands with a friend,
and maybe even when we go to the funerals
of those we have lost and
taste each other’s tears, we will
remember not to take
it all for
granted.
The ice is always thinner
than we think.

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This week on our podcast, Maile and I discuss the strange new world we are all living in as well as the book on creativity, The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield. We delve into the fears that try to keep us from creating, and Maile shares an update on her recent querying of agents to represent her middle grade books. You can listen to our latest episode HERE.

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Overcoming Fear, Rejection, and the Great Resistance

Maile and Shawn discuss the strange new world we are all living in as well as the book on creativity, The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. They delve into the fears that try to keep them from creating, and Maile shares an update on her recent querying of agents to represent her middle grade books.

* * * * *

As always, there are a few ways to listen: click the play button in the image above, go to the webpage to hear this and all of our other episodes, or head on over to Apple podcasts or Spotify!

Those in our Patreon community receive occasional bonus material and have the opportunity to join in conversations about writing and creativity. This month’s book is The War of Art. You can join our Patreon community at the $5 / month level HERE.

Finally, please leave a review wherever you listen! Reviews are so helpful.

Keep creating!

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Postmarked: Dear Jen (32) — A Few Thoughts on Trust in a Time of Uncertainty

Jen

It’s wonderful hearing from you, and I’m so glad you guys made it home safely.

Thanks for asking about my novel—I think I’m finding a bit of groove. This one is a wriggling thing, and hard to grab on to, but I’m about 50,000 words in, so the path to the end is in sight.

Today marks two weeks since we were told to stay home as much as possible here in Pennsylvania, two week since schools were canceled. It’s so strange to think about how much has changed since I wrote my letter to you fifteen days ago. Then, life was still relatively normal. We had no idea, or at least I didn’t have any idea, what was coming.

We’re approaching the end of the honeymoon phase of staying home all the time. I know the jokes and memes about being trapped in your house with your children abound, but to be honest, Maile and I have so enjoyed our time with our kids. After all, it’s only been two years since Maile was homeschooling them all, so in some ways this feels like a flashback to a simpler time in our lives, when everyone was under our roof most of the time, and our schedule was in our control. Add to that the fact that Maile and I both prefer not to have busy schedules, prefer to be at home, and these two weeks, in many ways, have felt like a blessing.

And yet.

This morning marked the first time a friend of ours was admitted to the ER with Covid-19. We have close friends who work in the healthcare system, as well as friends in New York City where the disease is exploding. And the fog of uncertainty hangs over everything, no matter how much we enjoy being at home—will our aging parents and friends make it through this? Will the economy recover? Will I still have writing projects through this time, or on the other side of it? How will the publishing industry be changed?

During our dinner club last week, when we met on Zoom instead of in real life, one of our friends laughed and said, “Well, now we all get to live like Maile and Shawn have lived for the last ten years.” I think she was referring to the uncertainty everyone is feeling, and in some ways what she said is true: Maile and I have grown accustomed to uncertainty. Rarely in the last ten years, since I started writing full time, have we had more than three or four months’ income lined up. Often, less than that. A few times, we have had nothing lined up. We have operated, these ten years, with a certain level of trust (more or less, depending on the season) that God would provide what we needed. Strangely enough, and in sudden fashion, it would seem that everyone has been ushered into this kind of uncertain existence.

Trust is no longer a luxury. It is a necessity.

Something that has meant a lot to me during this decade of trust has been Brennan Manning’s book, Ruthless Trust. My favorite quote from that book goes like this:

“The way of trust is a movement into obscurity, into the undefined, into ambiguity, not into some predetermined, clearly delineated plan for the future. The next step discloses itself only out of a discernment of God acting in the desert of the present moment. The reality of naked trust is the life of the pilgrim who leaves what is nailed down, obvious, and secure, and walks into the unknown without any rational explanation to justify the decision or guarantee the future. Why? Because God has signaled the movement and offered it his presence and his promise.”

I think we are, all of us, entering into a season that will require more trust than we have ever managed to muster before. As Manning later writes, “The most urgent need in your life is to trust what you have received.” While none of us have chosen to walk into this new life defined by a virus, I think we can still take heart in what Manning has to say, because even here God offers us his presence and his promise.

So, here we are. You and me and our families and nearly everyone on the planet, walking into darkness, waving our hands around in front of us, trying to get a feel for what lies ahead.

May we all sense a presence and a promise during these strange, uncertain times.

Our love to you and yours

Shawn

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Maile and I are going to run the same free writing class for kids again next week that we did this week. These 20-minute classes will be held each day next week, from 3/30 – 4/3, at 3:00 p.m. Eastern time, and we’ll explore creating characters, settings, conflict, plot, and ways to move forward in the writing life. Please share this link with all your friends!

https://eepurl.com/gXC2AH

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Wrestling Down the Story (With the Help of Dark Chocolate): An Interview with Yangsze Choo

Yangsze Choo is the author of two amazing novels: The Night Tiger (a Reese Witherspoon book club pick) and The Ghost Bride (a new Netflix series), and this week she joins us to chat about procrastination, the quick fix versus the long work of writing, and how to write when the kids are home for summer vacation.

This episode was recorded before the Coronavirus became part of our everyday lives, which means much of what we talk about feels like it happens in another world, but Yangsze is such a calming, gentle voice. I know you’ll enjoy hearing from her.

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As always, there are a few ways to listen: click the play button in the image above, go to the webpage to hear this and all of our other episodes, or head on over to Apple podcasts or Spotify!

Those in our Patreon community receive occasional bonus material and have the opportunity to join in conversations about writing and creativity. This month’s book is The War of Art. You can join our Patreon community at the $5 / month level HERE.

Finally, please leave a review wherever you listen! Reviews are so helpful.

Keep writing!