The And She Looked Up Podcast
Every other week The And She Looked Up Podcast sits down with inspiring Canadian women who create for a living. We talk about their creative journeys and their best business tips, as well as the creative and business mindset issues all creative entrepreneurs struggle with. This podcast is for Canadian artists, makers and creators who want to find a way to make a living doing what they love. Your host, Melissa Hartfiel, left a 20 year career in corporate retail and has been happily self-employed as a working creative since 2010. She's a graphic designer, illustrator, writer, community co-founder and has owned and operated a multi-six figure a year creative content business. She resides just outside of Vancouver, BC.
The And She Looked Up Podcast
EP181: Creative Canadian: Author Susan Wadds Builds Safe Creative Communities
Winner of the 2024 Canadian Book Club Awards for fiction, Susan Wadds, author of "What the Living Do", shares her inspiring journey from aspiring poet to published novelist. But we also discuss the power of community and connection in the creative process. Susan fosters safe communities for other creatives through her workshops and retreats while also creating additional revenue streams for herself and she shares with us just how she does that!
This is a great episode for creatives who...
⭐️ want to learn more about the value of creating safe spaces for other creatives in their niche
⭐️ want some insights on community-building among creatives
⭐️ are curious about the Amherst Writers and Artists method
⭐️ are looking for practical advice for aspiring writers to pursue their passion
⭐️ are curious about Susan and her novel "What the Living Do"
This episode is brought to you by our Premium Subscriber Community on Patreon and Buzzsprout
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- find Susan at writeyourwayin.ca, or on Instagram @deepamwadds, Facebook, YouTube, or Substack
- What the Living Do on Indigo
- Amherst Writers and Artists
- Canadian Book Club Awards
You can find Melissa at finelimedesigns.com, finelimeillustrations.com or on Instagram @finelimedesigns.
You can connect with the podcast on:
- Instagram at @andshelookedup
- YouTube
- Tik Tok at @AndSheLookedUp
For a list of all available episodes, please visit:
And She Looked Up Creative Hour Podcast
Each week The And She Looked Up Podcast sits down with inspiring Canadian women who create for a living. We talk about their creative journeys and their best business tips, as well as the creative and business mindset issues all creative entrepreneurs struggle with. This podcast is for Canadian artists, makers and creators who want to find a way to make a living doing what they love.
Your host, Melissa Hartfiel (@finelimedesigns), left a 20 year career in corporate retail and has been happily self-employed as a working creative since 2010. She's a graphic designer, writer and illustrator as well as the co-founder of a multi-six figure a year business in the digital content space. She resides just outside of Vancouver, BC.
This week's episode of the and she Looked Up podcast is brought to you by our premium subscriber community on Patreon and Buzzsprout. Their ongoing financial support of the show ensures I can continue to bring the podcast to you. Want to help out? Head over to patreoncom. Forward slash, and she looked up. That's patreon p-a-t-r-e-o-n dot com. Forward slash, and she looked up. That's Patreon P-A-T-R-E-O-Ncom. Forward slash, and she looked up. There you can join the community for free or you can choose to be a premium supporter for $4.50 a month, and that's in Canadian dollars. Paid supporters get access to a monthly exclusive podcast episode only available to premium subscribers. You can also click the support the show link in the episode notes on your podcast player to support us via Buzzsprout, where you will also get access to each month's exclusive premium supporter episode. I can't tell you how much I appreciate all our monthly supporters. They are the engine that keeps the podcast running and they're a pretty cool bunch too. And now let's get on with the show.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the and she Looked Up podcast. Each week we sit down with inspiring Canadian women who create for a living. We talk about their creative journeys and their best business tips, as well as the creative and business mindset issues all creative entrepreneurs struggle with. I'm your host, melissa Hartfield, and, after leaving a 20-year career in corporate retail, I've been happily self-employed for 12 years. I'm a graphic designer, an illustrator and a multi-six-figure-a-year entrepreneur in the digital content space. This podcast is for the artists, the makers and the creatives who want to find a way to make a living doing what they love. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of the and she Looked Up podcast. As always, I am your host, melissa, and this week I am very excited to be welcoming author Susan Wads to the podcast. Welcome to the show, susan. It's lovely to have you here.
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you.
Speaker 1:I'm so excited to be here. Yeah, I think we're going to have a great conversation today here. Yeah, I think we're going to have a great conversation today. For those of you who may not be familiar with Susan, she is an author and she is an Amherst Writers and Artists Writing Workshop Facilitator, which we are going to be talking about quite a bit this afternoon. She is also a mother and a therapeutic body worker and she is a finalist for the Canadian Book Club Awards this year with her debut novel, what the Living Do, and we're going to be talking about that as well in this episode. So we have got a lot of juicy things to be discussing today. And Susan, the first thing that I start every episode off with is asking each of our guests were you or did you feel creative as a kid growing up?
Speaker 2:I think I was creative. I had great aspirations to be a poet and novelist. Of course I you know I sucked at crafts. I'm not a visual artist at all, but I've always loved words and I've always loved putting them together, however awkwardly that began in everyone but as a writer is writing something that you have done since you were a little kid.
Speaker 2:What brought you to writing, or what is it about words that you love? Yeah, reading, of course, started it all. Started that ball rolling. I had this notion. I think reading was what did it. I just thought I want to do that, I want to make those books. I read Herman Hesse and Narzis and Goldman and wept and I thought, oh, if I could do something that makes people cry, that would be just great. And then when I read Leonard Cohen's Beautiful Losers, then that opened up a whole other realm of possibility, because, it's crazy, he did all kinds of very odd things in that book and that kind of gave me the freedom as I can do. I could do anything, do anything.
Speaker 2:And so you know'm not so smart as a child, but when I was in grade 11, I thought that I wanted to quit school to write. I mean, you know, anyway, my parents indulged me and we went to the principal and the principal asked me when do you like to write? I was writing mostly poems, but also stories at the time, and I I just was not into school at all and felt that I just needed to be by myself. So I said, well, I like to write in the morning. And so what they did was very clever. They said, okay, well, you write in the morning and come to classes in the afternoon. And I thought, oh, oh, all right. So that was me starting my great career of writing at whatever 16.
Speaker 2:And then I went to at 17, I moved to the Kootenays and 17 through 21, I went back and forth from Ontario to BC and living in various places in the Slokan Valley and finally I was able to procure a cabin up in the mountains where I could write my poems, and but the folly, of course, is that I was so young I really didn't have anything to write about yet, but I wrote a lot. Nobody gets to see that stuff, so that was sort of the beginning. Oh, and the other thing that I did was, again, my parents were very indulgent the year I turned 17,. So I was 16,. They let me go from London, ontario, to Quebec City and spend the summer there writing my great novel, which, of course, has never seen the light of day, all written by hand. I didn't have a typewriter at the time, so, yeah, it's kind of in my blood.
Speaker 1:Where did you wind up, going in Quebec City and having a place to write? That's so interesting to me?
Speaker 2:Well, it was kind of the olden days because I got a pension in old Quebec. That's so interesting to me. Well, it was kind of the olden days Because I got a pension in old Quebec, just not too far from the chateau, just down the road, and I loved it because to me it was my Garrett Right. I was no Virginia Woolf, you know, looking down and feeling very provincial. So yeah, and I think it was like $7 a night or something like that. Those were the olden days, but yeah.
Speaker 1:Was there a reason you chose Quebec City?
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, there was Because the year before I had been in a student exchange where I went to live with a French family and they thought I was far too, I don't know, risque or something for their daughter. So she never came back to Ontario with me. But I fell in love with Quebec city so I pressed upon my parents. I was supposed to be an au pair for a business associate of my father's, but then they decided they were going to their chalet for the summer and didn't need me. I'm like I need to go to Quebec city, so they let me go.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow, that's awesome. Yeah, that's fantastic. And I mean the Kootenays. I'm here in BC. The Kootenays is one of my favorite places in the world and it has such a tremendous creative community up there. It always has, it's got a tradition of that and still is is to this day, so that must have been um quite an experience as well. It's it can be remote, but it's also got quite a tight-knit community at the same time, so it certainly did in those days, even though I was very isolated in my little cabin.
Speaker 2:There was a tremendous the the um valhallaalla community center was being built at the time. Great parties around that, dances and brain damage. I don't know if you know the band brain. You must have heard of them. They were very, they were wonderful. And yeah, so the Valhallelujah Rangers.
Speaker 2:Like there were all these amazing creatives there were skit people and dancers and singers, and then there was what was that called Multifusion, I think it was called in Nelson, which was this huge sort of it was a mix of healing practitioners and I learned square dancing and poetry readings and that sort of thing. So yeah, it was a great time and I think it's still very vibrant, especially around Nelson and my friend lives in Kaslo. There's a real and I went. One of the things I did was for my launch. I went to Nelson to do a launch there at the bookstore, because the character in what the Living Do comes from Nelson, so that was fun to go back.
Speaker 1:I know the exact bookstore you're talking about. One of my old friends lived in Nelson for years, and so it's one of the prettiest little places in the country. It really is a lovely, lovely little town and still very vibrant, uh, creative, community. Yeah, there's a lot of festivals and things there throughout the summer. So, yeah, that's really cool that you were able to do that. Um, I think there's so many of us who would love to just have a cabin in the woods. Um, it sounds very romantic, right, but it I'm sure there was moments where it was very isolating as well. So, yeah, what brought you along the path to your debut novel? Because you've been writing for a long time. You've written poetry, short fiction, a whole realm of things, and now you have a novel. And so what was it that made you feel the need to write something bigger and longer, and what brought you to this particular novel, which is called what the Living Do, for those of you who may have missed that in the intro.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's an intro that took me in in a different way. What made me think I wanted to write a novel? I think I. Oh, oh, yes, okay, I know I have an answer. Can I answer that? Oh, oh, yes, okay, I know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because the thing was it's as often will do with some of my novels as they start out to be short stories and then they kind of blow up on me. So this one in particular, I had written, I had the genesis for the story and I loosely based on my own experience, but it needed to be fiction. So I started to write it in a fictional way. Uh, and I basically wrote the whole story in about 10 pages and, uh, gave it to a writer friend and she read it and said, oh my God, it's like you're yelling. Everything is happening all at once, it's too much, it's like in your face. So I said, oh my God, it's like you're yelling, everything is happening all at once, it's too much, it's like in your face. So I said, okay, well, I guess we'll have to just stretch it out and make more things happen and slow it down a bit. And, yeah, and I took two Reynolds, a novel approach.
Speaker 2:It was a year long course to write the first draft of your novel in the AWA, the Amherst Writers and Artists Method of Facilitation. And so what happens with that, for me and for quite a few other writers, is we get a prompt. It might be a visual prompt, or it might be a tactile prompt, or it might be a poem, and we're invited to take it in any direction that we like. So I took each prompt into my story, so it would take me in slant, it would take me in sideways in an unexpected way. For instance, there's a fire that claims the life of both her father the main character's father and baby sister, and one of the prompts was a fire and I I realized that I needed to have her have a history. That was, that was way more dramatic than mine. So, um, I, that's what I I'm sorry I had to kill them, but that's what I did. And it just went on and on until, you know, I had the book finished.
Speaker 1:so you mentioned and I and I read a little bit in another interview with you that this is partly inspired by your own life, but that you needed to fictionalize it. And so what like? What is that? What is that process? Like taking something that is partly yours but then turning it into the story of somebody who you haven't met yet when you start the writing process, like you're kind of meeting them as you write them? I guess, yes, what was that like?
Speaker 2:That's a great way of looking at it. I love that. I love that. I love the way you put that we have to create a persona. So one of the other elements beside my own life with cancer I'm fine, by the way was I needed to find a character that wasn't me, wasn't?
Speaker 1:me.
Speaker 2:So their road crews. I saw someone said once, and it's actually in the book someone said why are all the women who work, you know, holding the stop slow signs? Why are they all hot blondes? And I thought, yeah, wait a minute. So what if you know that hot blonde? You're not particularly hot, she's an average looking woman. But what if she wasn't holding a stop sign? What if she was down? And what would she be like if she was working alongside those men? What kind of a person would she be? Well, she'd be kind of tough. She'd be kind of tough. She'd have to, you know, deal with those guys and their misogynistic outbursts and so on. So, yeah, that's's so. Then Brett was created and she was definitely. Well, some people say no, I hear you in there, but I didn't think she was me.
Speaker 1:I think it's impossible to write a character without some part of your voice creeping into it in some way, even if they're completely different from me. Yeah, yeah, the book is a finalist in the fiction category for the 2024 Canadian Book Club Awards, which is congratulations. How does that make you feel, especially knowing that this is a Reader's Choice Award? So this is the public. This book has obviously resonated with a lot of people. And how does that make you feel, knowing that?
Speaker 2:Kind of shocked. Yeah Well, the funny thing was in June, when I was in Nelson doing a reading, a gal came up to me and said I just want you to know I've read your book. I'm a verified reader for the Canadian Club Awards.
Speaker 2:And right now your book is standing at number one, which was great because I think there were 12 people in the audience, so it was a real boost for me, yeah. So that was really exciting and I thought, well, that's great, let's see. And then, when it came up that I was the finalist, like, oh my God, and I think overall, what, what? Surprised, because this book isn't a happy book. It's not a happy book, no, it has some pretty deep themes running through it.
Speaker 1:I mean you mentioned yeah, you mentioned some of them and, and just for the audience, if you're not familiar with it, it it talks about gender roles, survivor, guilt, sexual grooming, like there's. There's a lot going on in this, in this book, so it's not a happy suicidal ideation.
Speaker 2:It's so. I mean it has it. By the way, just so everybody knows it has a satisfying end. You, you won't hate her in the end. Um, but what surprised me is how many people have told me that not only the book resonated with them, but they identified with her. You know they might have been really mad at her and wanted to slap her across the face for being so resistant, but in the end they understood. And so many people have said oh, I saw parts of myself in her.
Speaker 2:And that surprised me. Yeah, but the biggest surprise was men who like the book.
Speaker 2:oh interesting and most of I mean, I have four blurbs from really fine you know, author men, author friends, um, but some, so most of the men who've read it started off being my friends. They bought it because they know me and saying things like this isn't the book I would have picked up for myself. But one fellow, one fellow writer in Israel, said I bought a whole bunch of copies and gave them to all my men friends because they need to read it and another man said.
Speaker 2:An old friend said I learned a lot about women. I'm like what I set out to do, that I just wanted to tell my story. So those are the surprises. So when I got the book club award I thought, oh, that's just, that's divine. Yeah, not just my friends.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, no, of course. Right, you know it obviously resonated with a lot of people and that has to be very rewarding, I would think so. Yes, now you mentioned that one of the things that got you going through this process of writing the book was the Amherst Writers and Workshop group, and you are also now a certified workshop facilitator through them. So I was not familiar with this group when I first started researching for this podcast. Familiar with this group when I first started researching for this podcast. So maybe first of all, tell us a little bit about what the group is and what the program is like and the method behind it, and then maybe a little bit of how it helped you as a writer.
Speaker 2:Sure, I think somewhere in the 70s a woman named Pat Schneider in Amherst, massachusetts, developed this work to offer it to marginalized, underrepresented, silenced community Because she came from the academic stream and she found that that was not a place where she could let loose and really express her creativity.
Speaker 2:But what she recognized was that everyone is born with creative genius and the teaching of craft can be done. These are the precepts of the method and teaching of craft can be done without damage to a writer's authentic voice, original voice or their self-esteem. It's such an organic process.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:And and when we so now it's a huge organization. We have upwards of 600, 700 affiliates, and then we have a whole other arm which are writer members that have all their own benefits, and there's a couple of hundred of those. Um, so it's, it's a, it's a process where because when people read their freshly generated work, when they get feedback, it's really we only focus on what's strong and what's working. No criticism, no questions about it, no pinning the author to a wall. We don't. Even even if it is a memoir that is, or seems to be, memoir, we never refer to the writer or you. We always refer to the character, the speaker, just to give that little bit of a buffer.
Speaker 2:And what that does is it creates a tremendously safe space for people to write what they need to write, because everybody has a story to tell, and their story might be in a poem, it might be an essay, it might be a piece of fiction, and that is always wide open. For you know, even if you come to a themed workshop, that might be I don't know it might be a poetry workshop You're actually not even required to write poetry, you can write whatever you want. So that just makes it safe, it makes it interesting and writing with other writers and hearing, and the other thing that it does is it really helps you develop your listening. Because if you're listening for what's strong, what's memorable, what you know, the dialogue, the structure, anything that's strong, it's immediately going to help you figure out what works in writing. Yeah, it will organically start to develop your craft.
Speaker 2:And it's so gratifying to hear because often people will, you know, oh, I don't want to read. Well, you know, okay, well, I'll read, but this isn't any good, you know, just read, just find out. And then there's this magic process that happens when, already, when you're reading, because you don't, I mean, we just wrote, we wrote for 15 minutes, we don't really know what we've written, so we read it and even as we're reading it, it's starting to change because we're also kind of hearing what other people are hearing. And then we get the feedback and oh, oh, did I do that? Oh, it's just so uplifting and it makes you want to keep writing.
Speaker 2:And that's what happened to me. I hadn't written for a number of years. I went off to India and did a bunch of stuff, went to a commune, Then I raised a family and kind of got away from anything fulsome like any big projects. And then, around 2007, I was like but I'd lost my confidence. I wanted to write. I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to write, but I knew I was hungry for it and so I was pointed by a lovely woman, Anna McKay Smith. I'd hired her to be my, my, my life coach, my creativity coach, and after a while she said you know, I think you need AWA, I think you need Sue Reynolds. And she sent me off to a workshop and I left. I left the workshop crying, actually, just like, oh my God, I can do this, I can do this. And yeah, the rest is history.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I, you mentioned confidence there and I think I don't think it matters if you're a writer or a painter or like I think all creatives have that. What's the word I'm looking for? But sharing our work, especially in early stages, where you're still figuring it out, is so scary for a lot of us, you know, and it's just finding that confidence to be able to put it out there, even when you know it's not ready necessarily to be consumed by the, by other people. But it's frightening and we all know, we all know after we've done this for a while, that the stuff that comes out initially is is the messy stuff, right, Like you got to get that stuff out before you can continue on refining it and and polishing it and turning it into like even just developing it into what it's meant to be at the end of the process. So it is scary to do that and to do it in front of a group of other people. I think, yeah, it's not something any of us are super comfortable with, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah it's so rewarding to watch that over time. I'm thinking this happens a fair bit. But one woman in particular, when she started writing with me, she said oh, you know, kind of privately, she said everybody, everybody's so good. And I, you know, I don't think I'm really giving very good feedback, or you know, I don't really think, oh my God. Now her writing like this is a year and a half later. It's stunning. Writing like this is a year and a half later. It's stunning. And and, and that's that's the reward. To see that, to hear that kind of oh, and, and she's writing all kinds of stuff it's short flash stuff, memoir stuff, and and she's just hit her stride, yeah. So that's that's the, that's the sweet, that's the sweet, yeah.
Speaker 1:I love this idea of just focusing on the strengths too, because often we don't even we're not even sure what our strengths are and, like you said, she's sitting there going. It's not good enough kind of thing. But to get that feedback on what it is that you do so well and that always drives us to do more of it, because we got that great positive affirmation that we are good at what we're doing, so I love that.
Speaker 1:I think that's such a great way to go about it. What was it that made you decide that you wanted to become a facilitator Like? It obviously had a big impact on you because you've gone through that process.
Speaker 2:now to to be able to do this yourself yeah, I mean I wanted to share it, I wanted to spread the love yeah, and.
Speaker 2:I was doing. I started out by doing one evening a week at first, and then I would add one full day a month and that was great and I loved that. And then COVID hit and I would do the occasional retreat a week or long weekend or whatever. And then COVID hit and Zoom happened and we were all locked in and that just made it blow up. I was now I'm doing five, six a week and just loving it. So what made me want to do it? Yeah, that's the simple answer. I wanted to share it and I never I'm not somebody who's ever made a business plan Everything in my life just organically happens and I just say yes, I just yes, we're going to do this. Yes.
Speaker 1:I think that's true for a lot of creatives who create for a living. I don't think very many of us ever do a business plan and I think we all tend to get drawn by like. We like interesting projects, right. That's what it's hard to say no when an interesting project lands in your lap. So yeah. So now you spend a lot of your time hosting and writing workshops. You do online, as you mentioned, and you do in person. Um, yeah, what is it about this that you find so rewarding? Because I imagine it has to be pretty rewarding oh it's, it's, it's thrilling.
Speaker 2:It's thrilling the voices that I get to meet. You know you. Earlier you said, oh, it's messy. Half the time it doesn't sound messy at all. Maybe when it's written down it might look messy, but just hearing what people wrote in, like I say 10, 15, 20 minutes, and often people will say, oh, my God, that's finished, that's ready to go. So that is just thrilling. And in any one workshop I might have a poet writing really deep, sad stuff and another person writing humor. But the humor always has a, you know, a darker edge to it An underside, yeah.
Speaker 2:It's so rich. Yeah, absolutely, somebody might be writing into a fantasy novel. You know, it's just all these different voices. One person said, I don't know, this is kind of R-rated. And we're like, yeah, bring it, it's a safe space, everybody knows it's confidentiality. We're just doing it here, it's for our ears only, that's it. And yeah, so the thing itself is rewarding. I am living my best life.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's fantastic, I think. The messy thing is, I think, for us the creator, it's messy in our head and we don't realize how it sounds to other people. And I think that's one of the great things about getting your work in front of other people. Is you kind of? But you said something interesting, because I don't know how many times this has happened to me. Where you like, I'm in a mastermind group.
Speaker 1:The group of us have been together for years and so often I've caught myself. We use a Facebook group most of the time to just leave our questions for each other, and it's a small group and I'll go into the group with a question, I'll start writing it out and as I'm writing it out and talking it through my brain, by the time I finished writing the question, I've kind of answered it in my own head. Like that act of saying it out loud or writing it out to share with other people it, I don't know it. There is something very powerful about that, and so I would think, doing these kinds of retreats and workshops, I would imagine a lot of people feel that way, Like they start to talk about it and then it's like it crystallizes in your brain, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that will happen, and especially with the feedback. I often what will happen is the feedback points out something that one doesn't even realize they've done.
Speaker 2:Yeah like they might have used a metaphor. They didn't realize it was a metaphor. Or I'm trying to think of an example. Of course I can't think of one right off the, but that will often happen. Oh yeah, I did that. Or there'll be an internal rhyme, or they'll be. You know, I don't know. It's that that's. That's a super wonderful benefit of reading something aloud. Uh yeah, and there's always a gem. There's always something that really sparkles in in everybody. I haven't ever heard anybody read something they just wrote that didn't have something, that was juicy.
Speaker 1:I like that, like juicy things. Do you find that doing this, what you're doing, the facilitation and running the workshops do you find that makes you a better writer?
Speaker 2:Yeah, because, because I'm hearing fabulous work, yeah, but the the thing is that one of the rules of being a facilitator is that we have to write along with our participants. Okay, we have to take the same risks and we have to read at least once in every workshop and hear what people say. So, uh, what makes me a better writer is that I'm writing more than I would if I was left to my own devices that's super interesting, because we always yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 1:We always think of like workshops and retreats and things like that. The facilitator is kind of sitting over here and everybody else is sitting here and talking and you're just directing traffic, but you actually have to take part, like that makes it really immersive and you've got to walk the walk as well, right? So, oh, I love that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And you know, so often I will show up and I think oh God, I don't. I mean, I've written everything I want to write and then, and then guess what Stuff comes, Isn't that yeah?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's brilliant. It's a brilliant method. Well, let's just talk with, like, an online workshop or an in-person workshop. What can they expect at this? You've kind of mentioned a few things, but what is the whole? What's it like for them when they walk into that room?
Speaker 2:for the first time. If it's in person, what they will find is what we call an on chairs, which is a quote or a poem which is sitting on each chair that is to be sat upon, and that has a couple of functions. In an in-person one One it gives people. They know that that chair hasn't been taken because there's a poem on it, right? So? And they have something to do, right If they're feeling awkward and they also have and it'll be something that might spark something for them that just simply delight them. So what I do in an online one is, even though I can't put it on their chair, I send it with along with the zoom link. I send a little, so it has a slightly different function, just sort of a little amuse-gulle, as they say, little taster.
Speaker 2:So that's on chairs and then you know, it just depends on whether, if so, somebody new is in. Then we will go around and do introductions, maybe a little bit about their own writing or what they hope to do. When everybody knows one another, we generally just jump in. We might do a little meditation, a little grounding meditation to begin, and then I always do I do. This is just the way I run my workshops. We are free to run them pretty much any way we like, as long as we adhere to the principles and the precepts.
Speaker 2:So, what I like to do is give a five minute warm up prompt.
Speaker 2:So when it's online, I'll put a word and a picture up and say just you can ignore it or use it five minutes. And then we read around without any commentary, so we just get the voices in the room and then I'll offer mostly right now, of course, I'm doing online so I will put a poem. I like pictures and words, so sometimes it'll just be a picture, but often it will be a poem or a quote and a picture. I'll read the poem or I'll get somebody in the room to read it and I've got a couple of wonderful readers so I'll just hand it over to them and then. So then I offer some suggestions of what they might do. You know this character, you might have this character waiting for something, or you know, give them a situation that they might put their character you or your character in memory or imagination is kind of the way that we roll into the prompt and then I do a timed writing. I give them a warning at about two minutes and then a few seconds to wrap up. Then I move on to the next prompt, same idea, and then after that usually I like to do a good 15 minutes so people can have time to drop in. Some people do seven minutes or 10. I like to do 15. I keep my groups small. I keep them to six people plus me. So nice and intimate. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:And then, when it's time to read, they have the opportunity to choose between one of those pieces. So sometimes you know you might write something a little too raw, a little too close to the bone. So that gives you the freedom to do that, knowing that, well, you never have to read. One never has to read. One never has to follow the prompt. One never has to read. One never has to give feedback. So this we just want to keep everybody safe and comfortable. But generally speaking, once people get the swing of things, they will read and get the feedback from.
Speaker 2:Depending on if I have a full slate of seven, including me, we generally have two or three people give feedback and I always give feedback. And then I do one more prompt and and then so. So then just one more prompt, and then they still have a choice to read the one they didn't read the first time or the second time. So that we do, and that pretty much wraps it up. And then I do what Kate Marshall Flaherty gave me, which is a found poem she calls a waterfall sento, which is a found poem she calls a waterfall sento. So we find a phrase or a sentence in something we've written that day, we put it in the chat and we wait until everybody's got it in, and then we all hit, go together and then we get this sort of found poem that we, that we read at the end with everybody's words together.
Speaker 2:So that's the. That's the online workshop. And everybody's words together, so that's the. That's the online workshop. I have a retreat coming up in Spain, May 25. We went there last year. I was busy this year with my book, so I didn't do an international retreat, but the place that we went to in Spain was so exquisite, so amazingly beautiful, that I have to go back, so so in May we'll go back for 10 days.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's a nice long retreat. What happens at the bigger retreats? Because in my work that I do, so many of my clients this year are doing retreats and conferences and events and they're all creators, the people that I work with, and they are just lapping it up and I'm, so, I'm, I'm, I'm not able to travel right now, so I'm just living vicariously through them all. What? What do you do in in your retreats, because that is quite a few days there, so what?
Speaker 2:Yeah, there I do. My friend Sue Reynolds, who is my mentor and teacher and friend, does her retreats a little bit differently. We started out doing them together. She was leading and I was just organizing, and the way I like to do it is so essentially. Oh, I take my friend Isana. She comes everywhere with me because she teaches yoga. We call it old lady yoga. It's basically rolling around on the floor, it's a lot of meditation. So nobody needs to be shy because they don't do yoga, because it's a little bit of stretching, a lot of breathing, and it's just beautiful.
Speaker 2:We do that first thing in the morning, then we go for breakfast and then we gather to do essentially what I've. But now we're in person so I can give them things to hold. Often I'll have to close their eyes, uh, and feel something and feel it and smell it and whatever, and then open their eyes and then write about it as a warm-up as opposed to just a word. So that's one way I do that and then I basically roll it out um, the way I just described. But we're there for because now now we're talking 12 people, yeah, 12 people. So, uh, we're there for three hours and then and we have lunch and then do whatever you like. And this place is gorgeous. It's got all these wonderful places to just chill out and lounges, and there's a pool, there's places to walk and relax and read and write, do whatever you like, and you have basically from well, we finish at, I think, 1. So, yeah, you have until like 6 o'clock, when we have dinner, to just do whatever you want. It's so restorative. People are tired.
Speaker 2:Suja, hers are much more thrilling. She goes everywhere. Also, she's like Amherst's mama, but she goes to places in England and Italy where famous writers are, and she does these excursions every day. She does the morning, similar to what I do, and then she's and I'm just getting a little too old for that I mean wonderful, we've got the energy, just go for it. Uh, but mine I really like to just stop, and then one day, one day, we do an excursion. So after the writing, um, I think we eat, and then we head out. We went to Ronda and we had a walking tour where we visited places where Rilke was, hemingway, orson Welles, which I didn't even know he was there, and so that was really beautiful. And then we finished up with a flamenco show oh nice, which got me totally addicted to flamenco. Yeah, and that's an oh to flamenco. Yeah, and, and that's an oh.
Speaker 2:But then this beautiful thing in other works, in other retreats that I've done, we've invited people to a salon in the evening after dinner to see if they'd like to read something that they wrote during the day or talk about things. People kind of few people here and there. It was been nice, casual, getting together. This one in spain every day are we going to do salon tonight? And they all gathered together. We had great conversations. Uh, one fellow was talking about this amazing documentary that he's doing. Had us riveted. Um, just, it was so lovely. You know would ask a question how do you determine what's great in art? How do you distinguish between good art and great art? Oh, my God, and just you know, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that was a lovely way to wrap up the evening and it surprised me. I, you know, I offered it and, wow, it just took off. People were like lining up to get to the salons.
Speaker 1:Yeah, in my previous business we used to run conferences and and workshops as well, and we did a retreat at one point and the thing that we always you know, we would send out the survey afterwards asking for feedback and everything and the thing that just came across every year loud and clear, is like, loved it, love, getting to see everyone wish there was more time to just chat and get to know each other.
Speaker 1:So every year we would build in more time for everyone to and we would still get that feedback, like I honestly think I used to joke we could just get rid of the workshops and the sessions and stuff and we could just put them all in a room and they would be very happy for three days just chatting, because there was just this. I think creating can be very solitary at times, regardless of what aspect of the arts you're in, and to get to sit down with other people and feed off one another, which is kind of what it is. You're bouncing ideas and you're having those conversations and you never know what's going to come out of them and the relationships that you develop in those kinds of environments.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was beautiful to see, especially last year, how these people were forming friendships and going on hikes together. People just met and forming these bonds was beautiful. It's lovely. What I did was I made a book, also bouncing off of Sue's idea. I made a journal which had because I didn't want to carry like scads of paper with me. I made books and gave as many as I could, away, first of all with all the poems that we were potentially going to use and a little bit about Spain, and then the back was lined so that they could use it as a journal. So they also had a keepsake and someone just told me this was a year ago, over a year ago, and she said you know, I still look at that journal and I still use it. Oh my God, that's fabulous.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's wonderful. Before we started recording, you and I were just talking. I've been recording all day today and last week I was recording a lot for upcoming episodes for the season and one of the things I had mentioned is that this kind of underlying theme has shown itself in all these interviews I've done this week, where connection and community are what everyone is talking about this year and what everybody is searching for and looking for. And you mentioned that you feel this is part of the pandemic, which I absolutely agree, that you feel this is part of the pandemic, which I absolutely agree. But I think this is just something that people are craving, and to be able to help them and to facilitate those kinds of get-togethers is really important for the creative community. Yeah, I just think it's something we need to have more of.
Speaker 2:Quite frankly, yeah, yeah, the community is. It's really important and, like you say, creating is usually solitary. Definitely the revision process is solitary, but it's it's so wonderful to have a community, to have that support, and I think I think it's new Like this is. You know what I was saying about the pandemic and everything. It was more about the recognition, just because we'd been locked in and then it was like you know what we need, this more than ever, and it's to have yeah, I don't, it's to have, yeah, I don't have. Just, it's just so important to me and I I love right, I love all these people. I'm my. Most of these people I've never met in the flesh. I always joke and say you know, one day I might get to see your feet, because I have people in israel. I have people all over the US, east Coast, west Coast, england, ireland, new Zealand. It's crazy. It's just wonderful to have a community. It's virtual but it's remarkable how intimate you can get in a couple of hours looking at somebody on screen. It's crazy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think you're absolutely right. I think when we initially came out of the pandemic, it was kind of like that bear coming out of hibernation, you're bleary eyed and you're looking around and you're like, oh yeah, I remember this. And then, once we got out there and we had kind of shook off the hibernation, it was like where are my people? I need my people, I need to have that interaction and, yeah, it's something that I think people are just craving like crazy right now.
Speaker 1:We also talk a lot on this podcast about having multiple streams of revenue as self-employed creatives, and I think a lot of us don't realize how creating these kinds of safe environments because I think that's important, making it safe for our fellow creatives to work in, hone on their craft, meet others doing same or similar things I don't think we realize that there are people out there who are more than willing to pay for that. I don't think we realize that there are people out there who are more than willing to pay for that. And, uh, how do you first of all, do you struggle with that as a writer like actually hosting these workshops and and and retreats and charging for them? Is that something that you're comfortable with, or is it something you had to get comfortable with? How did that work for you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, sort of asking for money is always a bit awkward. It's weird. However, I think, because I see and appreciate the value in this work and and have paid for this very work, happily that it doesn't seem like such a stretch. I don't charge a lot, especially especially since most of my people are US, so when I say you know it's $27, I said what's that $4 for you? But also, the thing is with what I do often is I have some people that I know don't have money but they love to write, and so if I have an empty seat, I will offer it to them and that's something. And, as a gesture towards reconciliation, I always offer seats to Indigenous people if they want to come. But the rest of them, yeah, they can pay.
Speaker 2:And I've been told, like with the retreats, I've been told well, you know, you don't charge enough. I'm like you know what? I'm not trying to get rich. I don't everything works out. I think one of your questions in your little blurb that you sent me was you know what's your biggest mistake? And I, I was like what you know, I make lots of mistakes, but, but they always turn out, so I don't. I don't look back and see them as mistakes. Either they open something absolutely fresh and unexpected up, or it just turns out and everything's fine. So I don't really see it as mistakes, and I can't remember why I'm saying this to you.
Speaker 1:No, we were just talking about you know.
Speaker 2:Money.
Speaker 1:Money, yeah, and I think it's always weird for creatives and I think we always kind of underestimate our value or the value of what we give to other people or what we bring to other people. But the whole idea of like mistakes and you know, I don't know quite where you were going with what your biggest mistake was, but I'm assuming it was maybe along the lines of you didn't charge enough in past, previous things.
Speaker 1:But you know, when it comes to, like, the idea of mistakes and we were just talking about this in a previous interview that I did today that these are the things that bring you to where you're supposed to be, like making those mistakes and I don't even like the word mistakes, they're just learning opportunities. That's how I like to frame it in my mind. Like you know, you don't grow if you don't learn, and you don't learn unless you make mistakes. It in my mind, like you know, you don't grow if you don't learn and you don't learn unless you make mistakes. So it all has to happen to get to the next step in your journey.
Speaker 1:So I think, yeah, but yes, I think a lot of creatives really struggle with the whole idea. But I think I think where I was kind of going with that is that so many creatives whether they're writers, artists, woodworkers, whatever it is that they might be doing don't realize that doing these kinds of things is a very viable way to earn additional revenue and still be very immersed in what it is that you love to do and sort of foster that love in other people, and I think that's actually very rewarding for a lot of us when we actually step out of our comfort zone and do something like that. Did you have to step out of a comfort zone to start doing workshops and retreats, or was that something you just felt at home with right away?
Speaker 2:It's hard to remember that, yeah, step out of my comfort zone. Well, yeah, in terms of the thing is, in the beginning, mostly it was people that I knew in the beginning, so it was sort of like trial by friends, which is a good way to do it sometimes, friends, which is a good way to do it sometimes. So I, you know, I cut my teeth, I did, yeah, I did a few kind of stumbled through, but mostly I think it comes fairly natural now and I guess it did. It's hard to remember, it's really hard to remember, but doing it now hard to remember, it's really hard to remember. I've been doing it now.
Speaker 2:I was certified in 2014, but I I'd already started, uh, hosting workshops in the met using the method before I was actually certified. Um, yeah, giving a, definitely, letting people know that that's what I was doing. I wasn't 10, I was certified and maybe that's how I slid into it. The first retreat that I did on my own, away from Sue was going to Greece, but it was very small. It was very small, there were only seven of us, I think, and it was lovely. It ended up being so divine. I was pretty much a caretaker for a couple of them. So yeah, I don't know. I guess maybe because I started with the retreat the first one was small and then next was Spain. I tried to do one during the pandemic or just as it eased up in Quebec.
Speaker 2:And I had three people come, so that was in Quebec, so we didn't go, we didn't fly to anywhere. I decided to go ahead with it. I don't know, it's just every. Everyone is different, everyone is exciting and everyone, you know you talk about being rewarding, just, you know, being able to write with people and listening to what they have to say. And then, so I tell you when I so, once the pandemic started and I started to put up these workshops online.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was a little nervous in the beginning to be doing so many and doing them online, and I look at my lesson plans now and I see how they've developed. So it was going on for a while and I think in the beginning I was charging almost nothing but $15 or something, but I was doing six, seven a week and after a few weeks I looked at my PayPal account and went, oh, oh, that's real money, that's an income. So it was a surprise. And then, yeah, so from there I realized, oh, this is, as you say, a surprise. And then, yeah, so from there I realized, oh, this is, as you say, another stream of income and it's uh, and I'm also a body worker and because I couldn't give any massages during the pandemic, that whole practice diminished and it worked out great because then, even after the lockdown happened, I just carried on and I didn't have to go back to giving 17, 20 sessions a week. You know, I do maybe five or six now, so it's perfect.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a nice balance there that you've got when it comes to I think another thing that kind of intimidates people about potentially running workshops and retreats is how do you organize them? And when you became accredited, did they give you any kind of instruction on how to like the logistics of doing these things, or is that something you have had to figure out on your own, Because I know from doing them myself that's a lot of work and it can be, especially when you're talking about international destinations and things like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, I did them illegally apparently.
Speaker 1:I think a lot of us have done things unintentionally, illegally.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it wasn't on purpose, because basically, what I did, like when we went to Costa Rica and had I figured it out, by Italy, I don't know Anyway I was taking everybody's money, I don't know, anyway, I was taking everybody's money Except for their flights I didn't do that. I let them well, some of them I helped book, but anyway, mostly I took the money for myself and for Sue and for the retreat. You can't do that, not unless you're a certified travel agent. If you're Tico or whatever, okay, yeah, no. If you're tico or whatever, okay, yeah, no. Uh. So now what I have to do is I have to get them to pay the retreat themselves.
Speaker 2:they pay, they pay me for my facility it has to do international whatever anyway, so I can be paid here for my facilitation, but then everything else has to be paid to the center. Oh, but yeah, figuring it out, I think it's relatively uncomplicated. I was really trying to get everybody together. Last year I booked Airbnbs for everybody and paid for them. Year I booked Airbnbs for everybody and paid for them, and then I think I can do that. I don't know, I don't know if that's illegal, but anyway, nobody's come after me yet, and so but it was a lot. That was a lot of work trying to organize everybody and try to figure out their flights and everything. I'm not doing that this year, well, especially because I'm having people coming from various destinations and I have no idea, Right, right, yeah, I'm just telling them, you know, we meet at the train station at such and such a time on such and such a day, and they have to figure it out, and people are grown up, they can do that.
Speaker 1:So it becomes a little um onerous when they do that do you organize something with the venue, like wherever it is that you're going to be staying, whether it's an airbnb, a hotel, uh um, do you organize like a package? And then it's basically they can, when they're booking, they book directly and stay, that they are with your group or whatever.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, well, I'm trying to think with. Each one is different. Spain and Greece was the same. That that I. I was doing all the logistics with the venue and then I would tell them these people are coming and some people would pay in advance to the venue. Some waited until they got there. There they were fine with that. But yeah, it's a, it's always for me. I go to a place like a retreat center, not a hotel.
Speaker 2:Okay, um, other people go to hotels and I think yeah, there's so many ways you can do it, but they hire tour companies and I'm just doing it by myself, which is why I can keep my, I can keep my fees low. Um, yeah, so so I'm, I'm in conversation with the retreat center and they're always lovely, whether it was in Italy or in Greece or Spain. They're just so generous and so they will organize for us a pickup bus person to pick everybody up all at once, and then I get them to organize a trip out. We went to Rwanda this time went to other places where we have dinner and stuff. So I ask them, where should we go? Who should we go through? Kind of thing. So try to keep it as simple as possible, but everybody, you know everybody has to do their own thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there are other people.
Speaker 2:I know Kerry tennis. It does an Italian one where he includes cooking lessons and really cool stuff like that. So yeah, I don't know might do that.
Speaker 1:I think, too, for those listening, like we're talking about don't know, might do that one time. I think, too, for those listening, we're talking about a destination multi-day retreat here, but you could still get started with this, doing exactly what you do by hosting online workshops or online meetups once a week, or doing something smaller in your local community one or two nights a week where a group of you meet. I know, like my local library, there's a writer's group that meets there. There's also a fiber artist group that meets once a week to do something similar. Like. There's a lot of different ways that you can make something like this.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's. You don't have to start with an international retreat. Oh my God, yeah.
Speaker 2:Let's take 15 people overseas. No, start small and see if it's a. You don't have to start with an international retreat oh my God.
Speaker 1:No. Start small and see if it's something that you enjoy first.
Speaker 2:But find a writing buddy if that's what you want to do or, like you say, whatever your art thing is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, because, yes, absolutely, have you found I mean, we've kind of touched on this and this is kind of the last question I'll leave you with but have you found that running these workshops and retreats has helped you develop a vibrant community around you, like, do these people become more than just your attendees?
Speaker 2:And you know, I've actually got to meet some of them in person. I live very rurally and I don't have a community around me, so I'm you know, my closest friend is 22 minutes away that way, the other one's 25 minutes.
Speaker 2:That way, I don't, yeah, I just don't have a close community physically close to me, but I feel like I think I said earlier, I just feel such love for the people that show up and then when we get to go away together, it's awesome, it's just yeah. So that was that was really lovely to meet some of the people I've only met online. To meet them in person. Yeah, it's just, it's fabulous.
Speaker 1:I think that's a uniquely Canadian thing too. We forget how much of this country is rural. If you live in downtown Toronto or downtown Vancouver or downtown Montreal, you can find a writing group to join, but when you're further out, workshop for purely selfish reasons so that you can build a community around you. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. So it has been lovely having you on the show today. What is next for you? You mentioned you've got a retreat going to Spain next year and, yeah, what else have you got in the?
Speaker 2:works well. I have a finished novel that is out on submission. So hopefully, hopefully, this little thing that's happening will spark some interest with an agent or a publisher and take me to the next, into the, the next, the next push Um cause, trust me, there's a lot of work um involved in launching and promoting and marketing one's novel, even if it is traditionally published. So, but I'm, I'm, I'm a little bit more seasoned now than I was Um, so that's happening and I'm in the midst of I have a rough draft of another novel. That's a little bit more. It's a departure for me, it's a little more speculative. Yeah, it's fun to write because, yeah, anyway, do you want me to tell you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you're ready to share a little bit about it, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it was inspired by Claire Sylvia's memoir about receiving the heart and lungs of an 18-year-old young man who died in a motorcycle crash and without knowing that, as she was recovering she was craving things like beer and she wanted to ride a motorcycle and she wanted mcdonald's french fries, which was like what? Apparently he died with some mcdonald's french fries in his jacket. Um, so anyway that I my head kind of exploded about well, who, what? I thought we were here, you know, and so, and it goes, it's much more. Her memoir is much more than just that, because she gets his name, his name comes to her, she dreams him, she lives with him. So I did a whole. What if?
Speaker 2:what if the heart and lungs are fully conscious and they want out. Oh, so I've got. Now I've got a 51 year old woman with a heart and lungs of a 25 year old man who doesn't die in a motorcycle crash. He dies in a plane crash, but anyway, yeah. So it's told in two voices the voice from the inside and the voice on the outside.
Speaker 1:So I'm having a lot of fun, yeah, yeah. Oh, that is kind of interesting. I'll have to look out for that and see if you.
Speaker 2:Just got to finish it.
Speaker 1:So, for those who are listening, where can people find you online if they would like to learn more about your retreats and what you do? But also where can they find your book?
Speaker 2:My website is writeyourwayinca and the book is called what the Living Do. You can find a link to get it on my website, but it's available on Amazon both CA and com, and I think other countries. It's available on Amazon both CA and com, and I think other countries. It's on Amazon. I have an audio book coming out I don't know when, but I did get to choose the narrator, which was really exciting. Oh, cool, yeah, and so I'm really excited about that but it's not out yet.
Speaker 1:It will be right, so everyone watch for it. Um, what the living do is, as we mentioned, nominee. It's a finalist, not just nominated finalist, for the canadian book club awards, which I believe are awarded in january. So, yeah, so keep an eye out for that. But, uh, if you have a book club and you haven't read the book, it might be one that you want to pick up and give a whirl with your group. We will put links to all of this in the show notes, everyone, so you don't need to worry about spelling or any of that kind of thing, so you'll be able to click right through. And yes, susan, it has been great having you on the show this week. I really enjoyed getting to chat with you. Thank you so much, it's been great fun.
Speaker 1:Thank you and for those of you listening. Thank you so much for joining us. We will be back in two weeks with another brand new episode and we will talk to you all then. Thanks for listening. Thank you so much for joining us for the and she Looked Up Creative Hour. If you're looking for links or resources mentioned in this episode, you can find detailed show notes on our website at andshelookedupcom. While you're there, be sure to sign up for our newsletter for more business tips, profiles of inspiring Canadian creative women and so much more. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to subscribe to the show via your podcast app of choice so you never miss an episode. We always love to hear from you, so we'd love it if you'd leave us a review through iTunes or Apple Podcasts. Drop us a note via our website at andshelookedupcom or come say hi on Instagram at andshelookedup. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week.
