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Ginger Moran: Living in Your Creativity · The Daily Writer

• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Rider.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Each weekday, we bring you a short lesson that helps you live out the four practices of a great writer.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Creativity, consistency, courage, and connection.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Here on the weekend edition, we take a deeper dive into those topics through conversations with writers and teaching that helps us apply what we're learning.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: For more, you can visit us at dailyriderlife.com.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there are a lot of critical skills that we have to develop as writers, but none is more important than creativity.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: You can be productive, you can think like a business person, and you can have great networking skills.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: But without the ability to see the connections between ideas, without the ability to be creative on demand, you're dead in the water as a writer and as an artist.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why I'm excited to feature this conversation with my good friend Ginger Moran.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: She's a published and award-winning writer, teacher, and single mother of two boys.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Her areas of expertise are in nonfiction and fiction writing, as well as editing and creative survival.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: Ginger has a bachelor's and master's degree in English from the University of Virginia and a PhD in literature and creative writing from the University of Houston.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Her first novel, The Algebra of Snow, was nominated for a Pushcart Editor's Choice Award and published in 2012.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: And in the last year, she's released two more novels, American Queen and The Body of Summer.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: In this conversation, Ginger and I chat about the importance of creativity and how to bring about more creativity in your everyday life.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: And the cool thing is that every time I speak with Ginger, I always get new insights on how to be a better artist and writer.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm sure that as you listen, you're going to be inspired just as much as I was.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: So here's my conversation with the amazing Ginger Moran.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Ginger, welcome back to the Daily Writer Podcast.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: It is so good to see you, my friend.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: This is your second appearance on the show, and this will be fun.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: So good to see you, Ken.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: I always love talking to you.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: So we are here to talk about creativity, which is a topic both of us care a lot about.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: And in many ways, we have based our careers around creativity in various different forms.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: So let me start by throwing this question out there.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think creativity is?
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's a word that we throw around a lot.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm wondering if you've given any thought, and actually, I know that you have.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm not suggesting whether you have or not.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm that's my way of framing the question of what do you think creativity is and how does somebody think about it?
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Is it something that we that we learn or is it something we're kind of born with?
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: How do you think about the whole topic?
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: So um you're just gonna get me started because I've actually that's my goal.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'll just talk.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh my sons know very well, just get me going on some one of my favorite subjects, and I'll just rattle on forever.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: But uh, I actually have thought about this a whole lot, and um, we're just talking before we start recording about you know the pandemic and you know this hard time that we've been through.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: And it actually has caused me to look really deeply into creativity.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'm kind of playing with doing a course on just creativity per se.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I actually have looked at it really deeply.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: So um yeah, you know, um, yeah, so I I teach in a Harvard Medical School conference on publishing.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'm on the faculty there.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the really fun things about that is I get to sit in on other faculty members' classes.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a Harvard psychologist who was teaching a class on creativity to the doctors who come to this conference.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I said in honor class.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so she actually has done all the you know research and so on.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: And she says creativity is actually combining or recombining um things that are already there to create a new idea or a product.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: So it isn't really about creating out of whole cloth, it's really about putting things together in a new way.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: That's actually what creativity is.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um I find that so refreshing because I think in the world of writing, we often think you have to come into the world like this massively, like burst with creativity person.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: You have to have talent.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: And um, but she said that talent is actually just a really specific ability to um to it's a specific skill in a specific domain.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: It it's not really um it's not that big a deal, in other words, which is good because I feel like I wasn't necessarily born talented.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I also think that we're all born creative.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: I think we just I think we just come out.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: So the way that I like to think about it is that we are all geniuses.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean that in the old sense of the word.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh word genius is actually based on the same word as beget.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: And it used to be seen not as something like really special and um, you know, a special talent or special creativity, um, but it's really what you were born to do.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's the spirit that came in you when you were born, and it's the thing that you're here to accomplish.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's your mission.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and like everybody has one.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody came here for some reason.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, or you can think of it that way, or that that's the way the Greeks thought of it.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: It was that your genius was just breathed into you before birth, and then you're here to exhale it, express it, uh, to breathe it out.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um there, wow, there's a lot to unpack there for sure.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: So you've spared like seven or eight questions to my mind.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: But here's one, and before we before I hit recording this, we were talking about creative goals.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to point it toward that a little bit.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: So, but let me kind of take a take a segment out of this and set it to the side.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh excuse me, set it to the side for a minute.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I do have a segment of my audience who is faith-based.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I kind of want to set that faith element aside from it because I think a lot of, and I'm probably gonna offend somebody by saying this, no doubt.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: But I think um, so I come from like a pastor Christian ministry background, and I think it is is really difficult many times for people who are are faith-based to separate kind of that creative calling, that creative purpose away from a spiritual or religious purpose.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_03: I see.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to kind of take that part and set it aside because that that I think is a whole separate discussion.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: It is uh in many ways, although I obviously I think they're related and and whatnot.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: But in terms of like our creative purpose or what we're put on earth to do, do you do you feel like that is something that that we have to seek out and discover for ourselves and kind of concoct?
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: Or do you think that is something that is sort of given to us somehow when we're born?
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like, in other words, is is this something that we have to create on our own, or is it something that is given to us and we have to to discover that?
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I think you know, uh, and I totally agree with you about separating those concepts of mission out because I think they they can be looked at very differently.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: I do think that there's there's overlap.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but just putting that aside, as you said, I think that what happens is that this creative urge um that I think we're all born with it.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think we have to make it up.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: I think that we have to sometimes uncover it.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's much more about taking stuff off top of it that we've dumped on it.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um that's really profound.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like instead of making, it's almost like letting go.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I have never thought of it that way before.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: So that so, in other words, there's a sense in kind of like okay, this is this may be a bad analogy, but let's say somebody, when you're born, you're kind of given this pearl, this really precious, yes, beautiful pearl that is kind of a a pure purpose that you have in the world or a creative purpose, however you want to frame it.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: But over time, all the things that we learn from other people, all the experiences, the heartaches, the pain through life, it kind of gets covered up by by a shell.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so, really, as we get older, isn't it?
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: So, are you saying that it's it's kind of almost our purpose that we have to knock out those layers so we can really rediscover that pearl again?
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: I do, I do, absolutely.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: I think that is the hard work, and it is hard work, you know, but it's a different kind of hard work than we usually think.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh it's uh uncovering.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: Recovery.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, this is really this is really interesting.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: I've never thought about it that way before.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I think one of the first parts of that is to understand creativity differently.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like if you um so I I also am really interested in uh what Einstein says about imagination, creativity.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: He says that imagination is the intelligence having fun, always like that.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_03: I've seen that before, I love that.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: He always uh, so I'm kind of conflating creativity and imagination, which are not necessarily the same thing, but he also said, you know, imagination and creativity are actually much more important than knowledge, that knowledge is limited, but imagination creativity encircles everything.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that I think is such an important concept, is that in fact, everything we're doing all of the time is creative.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: Almost every single thing, whether it's making a birthday cake, um making a friendship, making a marriage, raising a child, you know, we're putting together different ingredients in our own particular way.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: We're expressing ourselves through that act of combining and recombining.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so, in fact, like unless it's something that is like right in front of you just at this moment, and you're only using your physical senses to deal with it, you're actually being creative because everything in the past is a memory.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: And what sense you make of that is that you're being creative.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like what you're making of your past is your is creative, you're telling a story because you those those things, those elements are no longer physically present, so it's moved into your imagination.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: Everything in the future is also creative, you're also imagining your future.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: So everything that's happening there is also you're taking your experiences, you know, the the the experiences of your senses and making a story of it.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: So you're in fact always creating, if you want to look at it that way.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, that is that is really good stuff.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's really, really good.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it is interesting.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: I've had a lot of conversations with students over the years, and I'm sure you have too, you know, from your time in the academic world about about history and how history is really, you know, there are events that happen in the past, but yeah, what we think of as history is really kind of hand-selected events it is to create a specific narrative depending on who you talk to, you know, and I mean I'm not I'm not trying to say all history books are bad and we should mistrust everybody and there's a whole conspiracy.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's not what I'm saying, but all of us do that.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we handpick certain things to create kind of our own narrative out of history.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: So there's definitely an element where we are creating history or we're creating our perspective on past events, yes, yes, and sometimes trying to connect the dots or trying to create a particular story of something.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'd never thought about that before.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I I'm like a very practical creative person.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm not talking about like you're constructing things out of whole cloth and you're just making stuff that aren't true.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: You're you're working with the material, and the material is real, like that is really real.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: Like how much money you have, you know, where you live, um, your health, those are all facts.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: Those are all, you know, it's really important to incorporate the facts.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's not like you know, the facts of history are the facts of history.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: Things happen.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: You can't just like totally make that up, you know.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: Then you are getting into it.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you can see those, the arrangement of those facts differently.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, boy, isn't isn't that the truth?
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: Even people who you you know really well, yeah, uh, people who know you the best sometimes, you can have radically different interpretations of things.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: I never ceased to get amazing.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: Very, very different interpretations.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's crazy.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: So many times, my this happened just recently.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: I forget what it was.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was something with my son.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: He had done something, or something, it wasn't like he did anything bad, but something had happened where she had one very strong perspective on it.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: I had a completely different perspective on it.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, wait a minute, were we even in the same room?
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: What in the world?
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: And it's it's crazy how even you're the person you've been with for decades, you just have radically different interpretations of sometimes the exact same event.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: And again, I think it's really important to you know stay grounded in the facts.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: That's always really important.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes when you have that kind of difference, is to like review the facts, like review the actually the things that happen.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes you can find common ground in that.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I I'm like at the opposite end of the continuum because I got divorced a long time ago.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: And believe you me, there is absolutely no common ground between the way my world and I see it.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: There's really just none.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I, you know, I had to say to my kids growing up, it's like, well, you know, your experience with your dad might be very different.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I just had to start the conversation like that.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: My experience of him, well, I understood it this way.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, that gave them license to uh just have a different experience, um, but without me letting go of my understanding of the facts.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like I could say that too, kind of with impunity, because I said you could understand this really differently.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it almost I love the way you framed that because that could be a useful tool in any relationship that we have where you disagree with somebody that, hey, my perspective on this is this, or my experience was such and such.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: And that kind of lets the other person be free to disagree with you or to to be okay that their experience has been different.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, we were talking about this too.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: The political situation is so fraught now and so divided.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's just, you know, it's um, it's such a difficult time.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: I I really think I I've been a political, I've been active in politics since I was tiny, tiny, um, really literally as a little girl.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: My father was very active.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, I one of the things I find so interesting in the uh world of um in that world is is the idea of reconciliation, which starts with finding the common ground.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, what do we understand?
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's like in Northern Ireland, you know, what they had to say was put the politics aside, never mind the politics.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know, those are real.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: We we have very different experiences.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: What do we have in common?
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we love our kids, we want to provide for our families, we want to survive, you know.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like, okay, let's just start there.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, a lot of the other stuff, you just have to say, okay, you know, we're we might never agree about this.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: And that's okay.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and that's okay, you know, you don't have to, you don't have to agree.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: But again, I think that's uh I think that was that's very creative, like reconciliation is is such a creative act.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, I I never put those two ideas together, but you're absolutely I don't think I had either, so I was just talking to you.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: But I think I think there's a lot of truth to that though, because even just in terms of of being reconciled to other people and having peace and harmony in your life, when you are when you have disharmony, dishar what is disharmony?
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: I just made up that word.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, it's a good word though.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: I combined disharmony and disunity, and I just made up a new word that doesn't actually exist, but I guess it does now.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: But when you have disharmony and conflict with other people, that is a major inhibitor to your own creative activity.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: It takes so much emotional energy when you're arguing and you're in conflict and you're fighting with people and you're getting upset because of what people post on social media, and oh boy, it's just crazy.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: So it is really crazy.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: I know that I have to turn the TV off when I start talking to it, like I'll start arguing with this stop right now, walk away, walk away.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: That's just not not worth a single iota of your energy.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and that that is so true.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's really, really true.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: I have found found that to be true anyway.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so one thing I want to dive into here for a moment is you know, we're having this conversation about imagination, creativity, and and so many different things.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: This would go on for hours.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: It could, I know.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: It really could.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: So, one thing that I want to make sure to ask about, because I know you've given a lot of thought to this, Ginger, is for people who are listening, when they're thinking about their creative life and the things that they want to accomplish, I think a lot of creative types really struggle with figuring out what their goals are and figuring out what they should want to do.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, should I write a book?
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: Should I start a podcast?
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: Should I start a business?
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: Should I learn to paint?
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: What should I do?
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: People have impulses, but because we live in a time where there are unlimited options, yeah.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: Anything that you want to do, I think that actually makes it really hard because we have every option available to us.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have any thoughts for people who are struggling with what their creative goals should be?
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: I do.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: Of course I do.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: Of course you do.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's why I have that's why I have you on the show because you have thoughts on these things.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: I always have an idea.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, might not be a good idea, but I have an idea.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, so I, you know, I I agree with you completely.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's so easy to be overwhelmed, you know.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I I think that in a sense, it's great that you can always get what you want.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it is possible for you to achieve any goal you want to.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: If you're talking specifically about writing, whatever you want to do, you can do.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: Now, it does come with constraints, like all freedom.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: There's uh, you know, there's there, you have to understand what that means.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like if you want to be traditionally published, there is a very clear path to that.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: Anybody who wants to be traditionally published can do it.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: They have to follow the rules.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: They can't just say, oh, I'm gonna go out and be, you know, published by random house because I want to.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um there's a that is a very, very, very specific market.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there are very specific requirements you have to meet to achieve that goal.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, a lot of my students, a lot of my clients come to me thinking that's the only possible way to get published.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: No, that's the only possible way to get your book out there.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I'm just talking specifically about books right now.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and of course, you and I know that's not at all true, but I do think that what is really important at the beginning of the process is to really think about what you want.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: What do you want?
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_03: Good question.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: Where are you going?
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: What is going to give you that deep satisfaction?
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: What is going to give you that relief?
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: What will feel like the expression of your genius?
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, again, I just think there are so many creative avenues.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's like choose which one will give you that, you know, deep sense of satisfaction.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: Or, you know, it could be a superficial sense of satisfaction.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, if I make a good meal, that's super satisfying.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's also super creative.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: It is.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: So talk about combining, you know, different ingredients.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that's super satisfying.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: I also consider, you know, raising my children as like probably.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Probably the most important, significant, and hardest creative act of my entire life.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that is just and it's also deeply, deeply satisfying.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's it was it was hard.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: I raised them by myself, and um it was it was a hard rotaho.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: But uh it was it was like you know, and it was you know many, many, many hard things.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's it is the thing that was worth it.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: It was worth going through all of that.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um so yeah, I think it's to kind of leap over, you know, the the circumstances and think what is it that is gonna make you happy?
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: Not what is it gonna what what is gonna get people's approval?
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: What does my dad want for me?
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know, um, what is it that is gonna feel to me like um I've satisfied that urge in myself?
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, a lot of people who are writing books want to express their vision, and that is gonna feel super satisfying to them.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: Other people want to connect with an audience, that's a different path.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it calls for not only that expression, but also really working hard on the craft so that you do make that connection because there are just ways to do that.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, you have to learn that and then apply them.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: And um, that's not necessarily easy.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: But for a lot of people, they don't want that part of it, they just want to get the book out of their system.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you know, um that's that's super creative, but if that's what you want, I remember somebody asking me years ago, well, what do you want?
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, well, I I don't know.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, what do you want me to want?
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's like, what do I what would I find deeply, deeply satisfying?
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: And is isn't it true that sometimes you don't really know what you want until you have some experiences to inform you about that?
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like who I would have never guessed that I would be uh into building stuff.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when I was a kid, I had no interest in that or auto mechanics, any of that kind of stuff.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: But then, you know, a few years ago, I built my son a tree house, uh pretty elaborate tree house in the backyard.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: I fix stuff on my own vehicles, which I actually really enjoy because it's very hands-on.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm not like some professional mechanic or anything, but it's generally I just look it up on YouTube and I can fix fix minor-ish things.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's really, really satisfying because it's like, oh, you're kind of analyzing what needs to be fixed and you're troubleshooting.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes you don't know what you really want until you just do something and you find out.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's really I like this, I dislike it.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, I'm teaching a class later on today, which um people can ask me about if they want to.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, about people's heroes quest.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's actually part of my creativity course.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just trying stuff out right now.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um I love that.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: That um, you know, I so I actually encourage people to do a kind of look back over their life, like, you know, decade by decade.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: What have been the important events?
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: What has, you know, really, what are the patterns to those events?
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: Where have they been really engaged?
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: You know, where have they met a huge challenge?
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know, a hero's quest is about you know going out into the world on an adventure and meeting all kinds of tests and finding your way through those.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then the the end part of a hero's quest is that they go back and share that with their community.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: So I, you know, we'll actually be talking about this today is um just to look back on your life and see what the things are that you have felt really, really satisfying.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, where have you been really engaged?
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: Where have you been tested?
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: Where have you done things like I I don't, there's not one single piece of auto mechanics in my past.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: So I do not I'm gonna start that anytime soon.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I might surprise myself, but um, but there are tons of other things.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: My I had a great aunt who um was she was she kind of filled the role of my grandmother in my life because my grandmother wasn't very grandmotherly.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: So my great aunt, I spent a lot of time with her.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: She was in her 80s when I was little, and she would we would play games together, but they weren't going to be very physical.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: So we would sit on her couch and play, Where am I hiding?
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: So you could hide anywhere in the room that you could see, like you know, you were pretending.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: And the other person had to guess where you were hiding.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: So you could be on top of the picture frame or you know, in the cabinet, you could be all kinds of different places.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I love that game.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: I just thought that was the best game in the world.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't care that wasn't outside, that she wasn't, you know, looking around for me.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, are you in the corner?
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, nope, I'm not.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, you had to not um lie about it.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: Because, but um, you know, that was just so central to my childhood is playing that kind of game with her.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, she helped me write my first book, which was called Sammy the Squirrel, uh, and bind it, you know, with like, you know, bias tape from her sewing box.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, I I didn't, when I was in my 20s, I was halfway through my master's degree and I didn't think about being a writer.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: I was an English major.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_01: I loved reading, I loved writing about other people's books, but it never occurred to me to be a writer.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and somebody suggested that I try, you know, writing a short story.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: And um I thought, well, I'm not a writer.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, are you kidding?
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_01: But then, you know, over the years I just thought, oh, wait a minute, I played those imaginary games with my great aunt.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: She helped me write a book.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I still have Sammy the Squirrel.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's made it through many, many moves.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: And that was just so much a part of my um life, you know.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: But I I wouldn't have thought about it if I hadn't like looked back and said, oh, wait a minute, you know, I've actually been a writer all my life, you know.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I've been telling stories and making stuff up.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, I love that.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this is this is like a whole course in creativity here that we can expand into other stuff.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: I have I've literally I have not taken this as many notes on on an interview uh in a long time, honestly.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: So you're like you're sparking so many ideas for for different things.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: So, one thing that I do want to ask about, and thank you for all this, by the way.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: This is great stuff.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: Is I know that you have a new book out, and I would be completely remiss if I didn't ask about that and what it's about and how we can get a hold of it.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: And tell us a little bit about uh obviously the book, but also why you wrote this particular book and kind of the creative impulse behind it.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, yeah, I'd love to.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_01: So the book, my new book, is called The Body of Summer.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's a mystery that takes place uh in Charlottesville, Virginia.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the main character is a um professor of English uh at the University of Virginia.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_01: She also grew up there, so her family is is also there.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the story starts off with uh her ex-husband calling her, and this never did really happen.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: Her ex-husband calling her to ask her if she could get a lawyer for him because he is at the police station, and it's quite possible that he's going to be arrested for murdering a woman that he was out with the night before.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_01: So um she gets totally caught up in this.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, she ends up, you know, investigating the murder herself.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: It turns out that uh the student, the woman that was murdered was a graduate student in her own department.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so she's tried to you know have a life that doesn't include her ex-husband, although they have a small child, um, but that ends up not being possible.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_01: So um, you know, the way I describe the book is it has to do with um with uh the South family, um, English departments, uh, and uh and passions that won't go away.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: How did you develop the the idea for this book?
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: Is this is this something that just kind of the seed of the idea came to you all of a sudden, or is it something that you you kind of take pieces of different things and you stitch them together into a story that that you really want to write?
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: It definitely is made up of all different pieces of you know experience that I've had.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I've already said I was divorced, but I wasn't divorced at the time I was writing this book.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_01: I was an English professor.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: I was I ended up being an English professor at the University of Virginia, but not when I was writing the book.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um that where what really happened with it was my first novel, The Algebra of Snow, um, is an extremely, extremely literary novel.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: I had an agent for it who sent it to you know the big publishers.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: And lots of the editors really liked it, but it's um it's about a mathematician, a professor of mathematics who's alone in the Adirondack Mountains in winter, and really honestly, practically nothing happens.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a completely interior novel.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: So um at the time I did not feel very confident about plotting, so it became this, you know, kind of um psychological thriller about whether she would survive this experience or not.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's a little bit based on Margaret Atwood's surfacing.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I so the I it was actually nominated for a pushcard editor's choice award because one of the editors uh at one of the big houses really loved the book, but she said, you know, we can't publish something that is this, you know, under a map.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_01: So um so I thought, oh darn it.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_01: I came so close, I'm gonna try writing something that's much more plotted.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and I love mysteries, I love reading mysteries.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I just thought, okay, well, let's, you know, take this and that and uh uh and put it together and then just see what happens.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like I just got everybody in motion.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, well, you know, what if she or her ex-husband is accused of murdering somebody?
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my god, turns out the person is in her department.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's like then it just went from me.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: That that's really fascinating to hear how you developed all this because I think a lot of people believe that writing a novel or even a short story for that matter is something that just comes to you fully formed in an instant almost.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: But but this is but you're saying this is something that really just kind of comes together over time, but you have to take action and start.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_01: You do, you do, yes.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I that's I I would say if there's anything I've learned about writing, it's that um you just take that little seed of an idea and you write some of it every day.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_01: You you know, write a page or two pages every day.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_01: And you could end up with something that's really terrible.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so far, um, that's my fifth novel.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_01: So so far they've ended up being novels.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's a bit of an experiment.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a total panther, so I never outline anything.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I just have to let it let them roll.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_01: So you just start out with a something that feels like it's really got an idea.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, John Casey was one of my teachers at the University of Virginia, and he just said a novel has to have a tap root, it has to have a problem at the heart of it that is worth that length of time.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I did take that to heart.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I actually start always with something that mystifies me because that's going to keep me interested.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_01: Like if it's something I don't understand, um uh that will keep me going through that, you know, long process.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: So, how long does it typically take you to write a draft from start to finish?
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like your first draft of a novel.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm super, super slow.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_01: I am not one of those people.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_01: I know there are a lot of people who are very successfully writing a book a month, uh so not me.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um books take me.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I'm always doing a lot of other things at the same time, you know, working full-time, raising kids, you know, working with clients at this point.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it it can definitely take me a year to do a first draft.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: But it doesn't seem that unusual though, because some people take years to write a first draft to find their way through a story.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_01: It takes me a lot of time to do the other drafts because I'm such a panther, it can really come out a giant mess.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_01: And then I really have to work with it.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: But but you've got something to work with as opposed to exactly an extreme plotter who spends a year plotting at their book, but they never actually write it, you know, which doesn't do anything.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_01: I sometimes ask my clients, it's like, I'll look at a draft of their book and I'll I'll just say, you know, can you make this worse?
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's like this isn't bad enough yet.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_01: This isn't messy enough, it doesn't have a heartbeat.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I love that.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, of having a heartbeat.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's like when you make this more disastrous, it's like, yeah.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: Ginger, this has been a lot of fun.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, wow.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: Again, I've taken a bunch of notes on this.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, cool.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I'm so excited about going through this again and really thinking through a lot of the great things that you said.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: Tell people where they can get in touch with you, how they can get your new book.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if you want to share more about any courses or anything else that you're doing, that would be fantastic, also.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_01: So um my website is just gingermiran.com.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and you can contact me through that or ginger at gingermiran.com.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, my Facebook page is gingermoran.com.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_01: My uh Twitter is ginger moran, so it's like it's all me.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I so right now I actually am doing something I just started, which I call teaching Tuesdays, which is a Tuesday um time where I'm so I'm actually teaching my hero's journey.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of whatever I'm working on right now.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna teach that on Tuesday.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_01: So I'll keep that going.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_01: And if you know more people get interested, I'll I'll just keep going with that.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I also have a writer's Wednesdays where people can just come in.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_01: We just sit there and write together.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_01: So that's where I'm working on my new book is uh Wednesdays at 3 p.m.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_01: We just all get together, and as you know, it's so helpful to write with us.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: It is also it really, really is helpful.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_01: It makes just a huge difference.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, yeah, I'd be um more than happy to talk to anybody as you can see.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_01: I like to talk.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: Fantastic.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well Ninja, thanks again.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: This was an absolute blast.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: I love your thoughts on creativity, and this is this is so helpful.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm excited to see what you're gonna do next as far as writing courses.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_01: I forgot to say you can get my books on Amazon, just look me up by name.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I have a couple of books up there right now.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_01: I wrote I published another book last fall uh called American Queen.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, and The Body of Summer, but there just look me up by name.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thanks again.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: This has been a blast.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: I always appreciate you coming on the show.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_01: My pleasure.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely love talking to you.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: I took away so many things from this conversation, as I do with almost all of my guests, but I gotta tell you, every time that I talk with Ginger, it's just so much fun, and I always feel so inspired to be more creative in my business and in my personal life as well.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: Probably my biggest takeaway was this idea that creativity is like a pearl.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_00: And when we're born, we are we are sort of born with this innate ability to think creatively.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, the moment that we're born, we don't have the ability to express that.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: But as kids, in the first five or ten years of our lives, we have this ability and we have this desire to be creative and to express ourselves.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_00: But as we get older, that impulse almost becomes kind of rusty.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: And over the years, as we become more self-conscious, as we sometimes face disappointments in life and so forth, just as we go through life, that pearl becomes kind of rusty and it becomes kind of encrusted.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: And it's our job as writers and artists and creative people to peel back those layers and expose that pearl of creativity once again.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's an idea I really figure out.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: I want to figure out how to explore in some more areas.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't quite thought through how I'm going to do that yet, but I I love this little pearl of wisdom, no pun intended, or maybe it is a pun intended.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: I love this pearl of wisdom that uh Ginger has given me on this episode.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I hope you enjoyed this.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure and check out Ginger's website, which is gingermaran.com, to learn more about her writing, her programs, and of course her novels.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_00: There will also be links in the show notes to her social and all of the good stuff that Ginger is putting out into the world.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: So thanks again for tuning in and hope you enjoyed this conversation.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for listening to today's episode.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_00: I want to take a moment to let you know about our Daily Writer membership community.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, one of the very best ways to develop better habits and impact more people's lives with your writing is to spend time around other successful writers.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're tired of feeling isolated and chasting success on your own, then I know you're gonna love the Daily Writer community.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: For years, I searched for the kind of writing community that I would want to join.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: But I can never find what I wanted, so I created my own.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_00: Some of the features include weekly writing sprints, monthly community calls, book discussions, calls with guest experts, and much more.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_00: For more info, you can visit dailywriterlife.comslash community.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, and I'll see you tomorrow.