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Ashley Rescot: Using Your Teaching Skills as a Writer · The Daily Writer

• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Writer.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Each weekday we bring you a short lesson that helps you live out the four practices of a great writer creativity, consistency, courage, and connection.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: Here on the weekend edition, we take a deeper dive into those topics through conversations with writers, as well as teaching that helps us apply what we're learning.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: For more, you can visit us at dailywriterlife.com.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, as human beings, we are wired for stories.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'd say chances are pretty high that in the last 24 hours you have engaged in some type of reading, watching, or listening to stories.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it was an audiobook, a paperback novel, narrative, nonfiction, a movie on Netflix, a graphic novel, or something else.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: But the fact remains that we can't get enough of stories.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm excited today to feature a guest who is a gifted storyteller as well as an amazing violinist and music teacher.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: And she has found a way to blend those talents into a compelling platform that we can all learn from.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Her name is Ashley Rescott, and she is a professional violinist, educator, writer, and Fulbright scholar.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: She has operated her own violin studio for nearly a decade, and she's not only an extraordinarily talented violinist, but was also fluent in French, having spent a year in Paris as part of her education.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Ashley is also a part of our daily writer community and just released her first book, which is a collection of short stories called The Chronicles of Music Majors.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Ashley also has the distinction of being my only podcast guest whose in-laws live next door to me.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, that's how we struck up a conversation last summer.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: I happened to be outside just after mowing my grass, and I was all sweaty and gross, and I saw there was someone visiting, and my nextdoor neighbor Shirley, uh, she said, Hey, this is my daughter-in-law Ashley, and she's into writing and music.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Hey, I'm into writing also.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: And we kind of struck up a conversation.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: And now Ashley's a part of our daily writer community, and it has been so much fun to see her platform growth and to see all the cool things she's doing over the last year.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: In this conversation, we explore the connection between writing, teaching, and storytelling.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: And Ashley shares why stories make such great teaching tools.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: She also talks about where she gets ideas for her stories and the practicalities of how she writes them.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: And she also shares an immensely helpful framework for how to create short stories.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: And man, that's worth the whole podcast episode in itself because I learned a ton from Ashley's approach to writing short stories.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: This episode will be especially helpful for teachers of every kind.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Ashley has used her new book as a teaching tool and has also creatively woven teaching and learning into the storylines.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: So it's really, really cool how she's blended these different things in her life into what she's doing as far as writing.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot that we can all learn from this.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this was a blast, and I know you're going to enjoy this as much as I did.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: So let's get right to the interview with Ashley Rescott.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: Ashley, welcome to the Daily Writer Podcast.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: It is really good to have you on the show, and I'm glad we were able to line up this time because I've got some questions for you.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: I have not asked anybody else.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: So thanks for being here.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: I feel honored.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much for having me.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: I listen to your show all the time.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: So this is a privilege.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thanks.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate that.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: You should definitely get an award if you've listened to more than 100 episodes.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I'll start like a um people who really want to punish themselves by listening to at least a hundred of my episodes, like you get a special award.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: No, I'm just kidding.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: So get like a digital, you know, the little digital emojis or something.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: I I made it through a hundred daily writer episodes.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: I get a special prize.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's like Cracker Jacks.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: We are here to talk about fiction and teaching and some other things as well.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: So um the first question that I want to ask is can you talk for a bit about your teaching background and how you got into writing short stories?
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I um I'm a violinist, so I started playing when I was really young.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: I was two, um, but my mom started teaching me how to teach when I was in high school.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: So I actually had, I think, like three violin students that I taught in high school.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I also taught a little bit of French my senior year of high school to the kindergarten class, and I really loved that.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so I just always kind of had this passion for working with students.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: And then I taught a little bit of violin when I was in college, but um, when I graduated from college, I actually got to move to France and I taught English and a little bit of violin while I was there.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: And again, just I really enjoyed working with the students, and I could tell this is definitely a passion of mine.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so yeah, then when I moved back from Paris, I taught French at uh KU at the University of Kansas, and I taught for several years there, as well as a few years at a regional branch of Purdue.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I've run my own violin studio now for um 10 years.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: Like I said, I kind of had 10 years before I kind of was teaching on and off students, and then I started my official studio about 10 years ago.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I've always had a passion for teaching.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: And the short stories kind of grew out of the idea that students identify well with narratives.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I know you've delved a little bit into this with even um like the parables in your parables podcast, how even, you know, like Jesus Christ used stories to identify with his um, you know, with his listeners.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think the same thing applies to us as teachers.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes students will remember a story that they may not remember, just me, you know, lecturing them.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: And they've also sometimes I've seen their eyes light up when I'm like, what story are you telling when you're playing this piece of music?
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll I'll try to have them envision some kind of narrative that accompanies it, especially as they start getting um into a little bit longer songs.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: It helps keep their attention and maybe helps them see the different parts of a song in different ways.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so about a year ago, you know, when everything was closing down, my poor little students um weren't getting to see each other as much, and they were craving being able to talk to each other, uh, connection, I think, with other people.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: And it was really nice.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: An author was willing to come to a Zoom book club with my violin studio, and I'd had them all read her book, and it was about a violinist and her sister and kind of these family dynamics as well as music.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: And the students just lit up and they loved seeing each other, they loved asking the author questions.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: And um, one of the dads of one of my students said, My daughter started practicing a lot more afterwards, and I just saw how much that kind of that story as well as the community really helped inspire them to practice.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I had already been working on short stories at that point, um, but it really kind of motivated me to keep going and create different stories for, especially for musicians, that they can use to hopefully identify with either their instrument or different backgrounds or genres that people might play to use their music and just hopefully um they can identify with at least some character or some narrative in the short story collection.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: So, had you always been interested in writing fiction, or was this something that you developed within the last couple of years?
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I've always been interested in writing almost more autobiographical works, whether autobiographical fiction.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh growing up, I loved like the Laura Ingels Wilder um series, you know, which was largely autobiographical.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Little Women is my favorite novel.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so again, Louisa May Alcott drew a lot from uh her her real life.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: So those kind of stories shaped a lot of what I enjoyed.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so I always thought it would be neat to write something like that someday.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but the short stories, I mean, I did a couple as a kid, uh yeah, now that I think back, um, I did do a few of those, but recently I kind of delved a little bit more into them.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: So why do you think stories make such good teaching tools?
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because that seems to be a common element.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, business parables are really, really popular today.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I'm working on uh a book of my own that's sort of in that vein or that genre, and stories seem to be just a great vehicle for doing that.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: Have you found that to be true with your students as well?
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: That whenever people use the lens of storytelling to play music or to really to do anything creative, that there's something about a story that brings new life into what they're doing.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, because I think there's a lot of songs that I played as a kid that, you know, they were all right, but the ones I really remember identifying with were the ones that my teachers would tell a story to go with it.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so, for example, there's a song called Humoresque by Devorjoc.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: And one of my um teachers had told the story about this like skunk that's walking along and it's sad because it's lonely, and then it meets this girl skunk, and so it's happy, but then she ignores him, I guess, or something.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: So then you hear the sad part, and but then she finally pays attention to him and they're happy and they walk off into the distance in the sunset.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so I mean the fact that I remember the story, you know, decades later means that something resonated with me, and I still use that to teach today when I when I teach that song.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: So, yes, I think there's just something innate about the characters that we can all relate to, you know, as humans, that really kind of strikes a chord for us.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: Do you notice a difference in your violin students between and I hope I'm explaining this correctly?
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I'm a musician and have been my whole life, but I don't play violin.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: So, like I'm I'm a guitar player.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm a guitarist and a percussionist.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: So basically I just beat on stuff like there's with drums, it seems like there's there's less finesse than is required for an instrument like violin.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um but with with your music students, do you sense a difference between students who uh are just kind of playing the notes on the page versus those who are playing as if it were a story?
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not even sure if I'm framing that question correctly, but what is the difference between those two performances?
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I think you you hit the nail on the head.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, you can have all the technical precision and you know, virtuosity, or you can have be technically perfect, get all the rhythms, get all the notes, but for me, if there's no kind of emotional connection to the music, I mean, I might respect your technique.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: There's a certain famous violinist that's notorious for this, um, Hyfitz.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: And he's he's you know passed away now.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and some I know he's, you know, again, technically fabulous, but I just don't connect well with his performances because they just seem so mechanical.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas if I'm listening to somebody who really is putting their emotion into it and telling a narrative through the notes, then I can really immediately sense this connection with the performer and with their interpretation of the song.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so so let me take a little bit of a rabbit trail here.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: This is my podcast, so I can do rabbit trails if I want, I guess.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna give myself permission.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm but I'm honestly curious about this because you know a lot more about this than I do.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: So uh let's take a performer like Lindsay Sterling, probably the most would you say she's arguably the most well-known violinist in the world right now?
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: Is that is that a fair thing to say?
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like to people like me who don't I don't really know the violin world.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: Is that a she's the only person I can think of, except like it's suck pearlman, maybe, or there's probably some other people.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right, I'm sure.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: But she definitely would probably be the most well known outside of the classical world.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: Now, within the classical world, there's you know Hillary Hahn and Joshua Bell, and there's a lot, but outside of the classical world, and she's both classical and she does um like a lot of dub step.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm actually taking she's doing a book club right now, so I absolutely love her.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: She's one of my favorite artists, and so I'm in her book club right now, and she's just wonderful.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, absolutely love her.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: So what do you what makes her a a great violinist and a great performer and musician?
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: Is it her technique?
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: Is it her showmanship?
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: Is it her marketing?
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Is it her musicality?
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: What is it about her that makes her stand out so much from let's say a thousand other violinists who are as good as her or better?
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think that it is her showmanship, of course.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: She's a natural performer and connects well with her audience, but I think a lot of her connection with her audience is her ability to tell stories.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, I delved more into this um when she actually did a storytelling um seminar.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I hadn't realized that she really is a storyteller by um trade.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: She studied film.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so that makes more sense now.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: Once I found that out, that she had studied film and the narrative arcs.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so she uses that when she's performing.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's why she connects so well with her audience because she is telling these stories.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: And she's even an author now herself.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: She wrote a book, The Only Pirate at the Party, and she knows how to kind of talk about the struggles that people go through and then how to overcome them.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: And she puts this into her performances, she puts these into her narratives, and these are things that everyone can relate to.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's really made a huge difference in in her career.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, I can't fully speak for her, but I follow a lot of what she does, and I really have the utmost respect for her.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's really fascinating.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's really, really fascinating.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: It seems like there's a lot of parallels between what she does and what other creatives do in the sense of she has the technique, but there's also performance involved.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of personality, there's storytelling.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: There's also great marketing, and you know, marketing is a part of everything.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: I remember seeing her on what did I see her on?
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: It was some Christmas special, either this past Christmas or the one before.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't remember what it was.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: She had a wonderful one this past Christmas, it was fabulous.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: I remember she there was like some kind of uh it was obviously on a stage somewhere.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: There was like a snowy scene, and she was outside kind of among some trees.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: That was the scene, it wasn't real.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: Is this even is even ringing a bell?
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: Am I on the right?
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to think if that would have been it might have been the previous year because this past one she did do a show that was like the home for the holidays, so you could watch it, you know, on okay from your your home.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it was again, though she had several different storylines that she was depicting throughout the show, and yeah, every time she performs, she has such a wonderful storyline, and yeah, I think that that works really well for for viewers and listeners.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: That that's that's so fascinating how she can take one one single thing, you know, violin performance, but then you build stories around it.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, in her case, there's other orchestrations, there's set pieces, there's there's a the film thing makes a lot of sense because what she does is very theatrical and very cinematic.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't know how I hadn't known that before, but in the fall when I took that class of hers, and I was like, ah, that makes sense.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: She's thinking both visually and yes, um, auditorily, you know, and she's combining those things, and then of course, kinesthetically with the dancing, um, which I was skills in that regard.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: I totally forgot about that element because she does yes, so she dances when she performs, like there's there's like a choreographed element to it.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: Is that correct?
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, she really is incorporating visual, kinesthetic, auditory.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: So, so that's kind of what sets her apart in a sense, is yes, not just being a good violinist, technically, because I I wouldn't know how to even determine that personally, but it's bringing all these other elements into it that create something that's really unique.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, definitely.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: Fascinating.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well, now you've sent my mind down a whole rabbit trail.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, I follow her uh yeah, on yeah, Twitch and Instagram, and yeah, I attended her Christmas show, so she's absolutely fabulous.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now let me go back to to your stories here for a minute.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: I would love to know where do you get ideas for your short stories?
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because you're working on a novel, correct?
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's is that coming out this year?
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: Later this year?
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: But you've got the the short stories book is coming out.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, see, we're recording this on April the 12th.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, so later this month.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: Where do you get these ideas for your short stories?
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: Because they're really compelling, they're fun, they're obviously they're short because they're short stories.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: How do you come up with these scenarios?
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: Well, a lot of them were inspired in some way by real life.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: I write what I know.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: I'm always impressed with the um authors who can just like totally go into a different field.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: So they're fictional, but uh they'll there's usually a grain of real life that had inspired it in the first place.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: So, for example, um, my first one, A Change in the Winds, uh, is about a couple of instrumentalists who switched places in the middle of rehearsal.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: And actually did happen in real life.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: My dad told me when he was in middle school band, they played this trick on their substitute teacher.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: Don't really recommend doing this, but where they all like switched places.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: All the students shut off the podcast right now.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, students don't do this in real life, but yeah, he was like, Yeah, we all trade in places, and he's he's a he was a percussionist.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so he wasn't trying to sit, I don't know, clarinet or something.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, like he doesn't know how to play clarinet.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, so that's where like that grain of truth that I use, the rest of the story is fictional, but like that and that was inspired from real life.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: I have um brass at the beach that was actually originally part of my novel.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but my developmental editor was like, yeah, I don't really think that your your main character needs to be hanging out at the beach while she should be practicing.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so I extracted that part from the novel and turned it into a short story.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um but it it was, yeah, it was based off of um an orchestra trip that um I took my freshman year of college, and there's a comical scene where the guy like loses his glasses in the ocean and stuff, and that actually did happen.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: There was no romance like there is in the story.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but no, a guy really did drop his glasses in the ocean.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: And um, this is like day one or two of our trip, and he's like blind, and we're like, How are you gonna perform and stuff?
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I actually did have to teach him how to wear contacts on the trail.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yes, and so I used that experience to um to write my story.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: So let's say you have an idea for a story.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh let's take this seed of an idea, for example.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: You have someone who's maybe they're switching places, maybe they drop their glasses in the ocean.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: How do you take that singular image or that singular concept, and how do you build a whole short story around it?
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to think.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's almost like it sounds cheesy, but I just have characters in my head.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um okay, so it begins with the character.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and then they have a situation and then okay, okay, that makes sense.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: I have these characters in my head.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: Basically, I mean, you know, from being in the music world, again, these aren't direct parallels to somebody, but um, you know, well, some of them were inspired by people.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's a an organist in my Halloween story, um, Bach from the Grave.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so, like the or one of the organists was inspired by a friend of mine um who would always play these fabulous organ concerts.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so yeah, I kind of sometimes do write, you know, with a seed of an idea of somebody in mind.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I remembered his his Halloween spooky concerts were always really fine.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: And how do you know where to start a story?
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: I think this is an this is a thing that is difficult for a lot of people who want to write fiction.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: So you have an idea for a story and maybe some plot points and so forth.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: How do you know where do you actually start the story?
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: In medious race, you know, which means in the middle of things, because if you start by giving us a bunch of backstory and you're only writing a really, you know, in my case, I'm usually writing around 2,500 words.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: Some of them are a little bit longer, um, some of them are shorter, and you can have, you know, much longer than that, but that's kind of my sweet spot, give or take.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, like I said, a couple of them go over that.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: But uh, so you don't you don't have time to give a bunch of backstory, you know, for your short stories.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: You need to start in the middle of a situation and then right from the beginning, like what's kind of your hook, just like you would with the novel.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: What's your hook?
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: So in a change in the winds, this bass player at the beginning, he's like, Oh, I'm really bored.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: Why do I not have any cool lines?
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's like at the back.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: Then he sees the cute flutist, she's playing a solo.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: So already, okay, you've got the hook that he wants, he's got to figure out a way to catch her attention, right?
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's the meat, it's the meat cute, if you will.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: So you already have a mini goal.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: You have a little mini goal here for the short story is the, you know, how do I get her attention?
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: And the way he ends up getting her attention is trading places with one of the wind players, um, so he can sit behind her, you know.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: So you've got to have a goal.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I start in the middle of the story.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have to have his whole backstory, but he's in rehearsal, and then yeah, he trades with the clarinetist and that catches her attention.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so yeah, I you don't need to know everything about him, but just kind of putting him into rehearsal or into that situation right away.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um that makes a lot of sense.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'd never heard it put that way.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: Even this idea of having a mini goal as opposed To like a big mundanation goal, that's that's a really key insight I've never heard before.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I had to do that in each of them, they have to have some kind of a mini goal.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: So, um, I'm trying to think if I look at yeah, like the Halloween one, unfortunately, I'm I'm dealing with different issues people have to face in college, especially.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: So that one deals with some hazing, and so one of the guys is having to deal with hazing, and how does he kind of find brotherhood, find friends, um, in spite of this kind of bad hazing situation?
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: And the organist kind of helps him get get past that, get okay get out of that.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so yeah, each one has some kind of kind of a little, yeah, mini goal, if you will.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: So once you have the idea for the story, what is your process for sitting down and actually typing it out on computer?
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: I assume you type it out on computer.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you dictate it.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: Or my or on sometimes I do it on my phone.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: I wish I could get my fiction, I wish I could dictate fiction on the last short story.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not gonna lie, I tried dictating the first part, and my critique partners were like, oh, your opening was really slow.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: And it's because it wasn't in made us race.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: What I just talked about, it was like giving too much backstory.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so I haven't mastered the act of like dictation, like in made this race.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, just I can get ideas down with dictation, but I can't get the same vibe.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so yeah, I usually have to think of the goal.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: I usually for short stories, you don't want a lot of characters, right?
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: Especially if they're really short.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I usually have like a hero and a heroine if it's like a romance or if it's just a friendship, you know, I'll have like the two guys that are gonna be friends, or in one I have a professor and um his grad students that she's gonna learn how to take on his legacy, basically.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so usually I kind of have like two leads, and then I maybe have a sidekick.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, if you're a little bit longer, you can add in a few more.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: But if you're sticking to the 2500, I would probably keep it to about two to three characters.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, brass at the beach, the one where he loses glasses.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: That one's a little longer.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: So I was able to afford a couple other characters, but um, so I start with this cast of two or three and a mini goal, and then I divide it into just little mini scenes.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I not following the standard advice, you're supposed to stick to one point of view, is officially.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: So there's me giving you advice, stay to one POV.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: However, I don't do that.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: I like to switch between the two leads.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that way I can hear from you know the hero and the heroine or the two different friends, the professor and the student or whatever.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: I like to have each of their perspectives, and I think it just freshens it up.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I'll type for a little while in the one character's, you know, POV, and then the next scene, it'll be in the other character's POV, and then I go back.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: And that's pretty common in the romance genre.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you can also use it, you know, in like a friendship story or, you know, other stories as well.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: See, this is really fascinating because you I don't know if that's helping, but it's extremely helpful.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: It really, really is.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and actually, let me follow that up in just a second.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: But first, before I forget to ask you this, how long does it actually take you to sit down and write out a draft of the short story?
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: Is this like a matter of you do this over a few days, you do it all in one shot, or how does this actually work?
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so for like a 2500-word short story, I'll probably write that.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: I might do a two-hour session to get a half, half of it done, maybe um, one to two hours to get half.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: And then I might come back to it the next day and do the next half.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I'd probably say, yeah, like usually a lot of them I wrote over a weekend.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: So I'd write Saturday and Sunday, and then um, you know, for like a couple hours, you know, an hour or two each day.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so then I could usually have a draft and then I would send it to my critique partners.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you know, I also would critique for them and they would critique for me.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so part of my 2,500 words was because that was the limit we could send to our critique partners for um for a submission.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, so maybe that's an artificial reason, but if you wanted to send more, you'd have to divide it into two different um submissions, which I did for a few of them.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so then they would critique it and that they could have up to a week, I think is what technically, and then they would send me back their feedback.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: Now, then putting in the, you know, their suggestions and kind of like the editing for that.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that takes another couple of hours, you know, to crank that out.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe six hours to do all of that ish.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: Give or take.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean it's different for each person, but probably that's probably about right for me.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know how a story is going to end when you sit down to write it?
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: Or does sometimes an ending sneak up on you and it surprises you as much as it probably does the reader?
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: I usually am a bit more of a plotter if you're talking about plotter versus panther.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: So um, yeah, I'm a bit more of a plotter.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I usually have some kind of an ending in mind.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: A few times I would tweak it up or it would evolve.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but usually the evolution might happen for me more in the middle, but I usually have an end in mind, and my middle might be the muddy middle that I have to figure it out.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: But usually it's like I know that um by the end, you know, a lot of times it's like the guy and the girl end up together or something, you know.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: But how that happens might evolve a little bit.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, like my Christmas one, I think the the problem is she's supposed to go to a sorority event because this was really a thing for my sisters.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: They were supposed to go to a sorority event, they had to go to a concert instead.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so she's all mad, she doesn't get to go through date.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then there's like another problem that the guy playing Santa um is sick or something.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so then this other guy has to come in.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: So you've got like, can he do it?
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_01: Can he actually, you know, fill in at the last second?
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's the tension, like, is he gonna screw up the performance or whatever?
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but then at the end, it's like, oh, he ends up getting to be the date, you know, instead.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I usually kind of have that idea, but how it evolves, like you know, throughout sometimes I'll see where it goes.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: This is actually extraordinarily helpful because you've just solved a huge problem for me.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: I have been struggling for good the last several years, like literally, uh, not on a daily basis, but on a on a regular enough basis where it's caused me some some stress.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: I I cannot figure out how to write a short story.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I've written a couple, but I don't think they're really that good.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like I've heard them.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I put one on the on this podcast a few months ago.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think it was okay.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't really great or anything, but I did it just kind of as a something fun to do.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm a very structured person, so I like to have a template or a system to do things by.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: So so what you've described these last few minutes is really helpful because it's making me realize okay, you have a germ of an idea, then you have a few scenes, then you have maybe two, maybe max three characters.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: 2500, 3000 awards.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's really, really doable.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I appreciate you laid this out.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, that's enormously helpful.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's what's nice too.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's not as intimidating as the novel, you know, and so you don't have to know everything about this character.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: You want to know a little bit, but you don't have to know everything about them or have this elaborate, elaborate outline.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: You just need a little outline, and you can still think about your general story structure.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: Ideas can still apply, you know, whether it's the three-act structure or whatever, you know, you can still think about that.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: You need the hook, you need the, you know, the conflict and the resolution.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: You still need those things in a short story, but it's just way condensed and you don't need multiple problems happening a ton, you just need like a one or two.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it's a much more bite-sized, you know, chunk.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: And it's also great for writers that are if you're just trying to give an idea of your writing to new potential new readers, it's nice because again, they may not be ready to commit to you for a novel, but they can see is this even a writing style I like or not.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: Mine's really heavily um on dialogue because again, I'm an auditory person.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm kind of just imagining conversations that I would have had with music students, um, and then just putting them on the page.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: So I I really do like the dialogue and having the two characters' um perspectives because it gives it that and it invigorates it a little bit, I think, when you've got the characters playing off of each other, which is fun.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: I really love this stuff.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: This is really, really helpful.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_01: Nice.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I love the book club idea, and I know that you're doing this.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: Can you talk for a bit about how music teachers would be able to use how they'd be able to use your book in the classroom as part of their teaching?
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it especially was because of how effective it was for me when I tried to implement this last year.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: And when the author came to my Zoom studio class and talked to the students, I just thought that was really cool for them.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_01: And we were able to delve into she had written a little bit about John Williams.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I was able to introduce my students to John Williams.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: She had put in a Sites Violin Concerto, which one of my students was working on.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so I was like, oh, this is something that I would love to do for other music teachers, you know, is to be able to like, I can't, I've come to the realization I can't teach all the violinists of the world, you know, my time is limited.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I am very supportive of the other private teachers.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: But if they need someone else to kind of bring in a fresh perspective, bring in something new and fun, especially while we're having to do a lot digitally, um, having the students read, you know, the short stories, and then I've got questions for reflection.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I know this part dabbles on like, are you being too, you know, didactic as a teacher?
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I know that part of me probably comes out a little bit more in the questions than it does in the narratives.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: But they I want them to talk about how, like, did you know this composer or did you know this um this music that was referenced?
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, if not, like play, they could play it on YouTube or I've got playlists for each of these so that I'm ideally trying to introduce different, you know, different composers, different musical genres to students in the short stories.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_01: I've tried to cover as many instruments as possible.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_01: There's a couple I know I I didn't pull off, but I intentionally chose different instrumentals so that hopefully students can at least find either their instrument or something similar.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_01: And then that way they have a starting point and just a way to connect because music can be an isolated experience when you're in the practice room.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_01: And then especially this year, it can feel very isolated.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_01: So I wanted to provide these kind of, you know, fictional friends, or if you will, for them to realize they're not in it alone.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: There's other people that are doing this.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so ideally, I'd love to, you know, come and do like Zoom calls with different music teacher studios and go through kind of the questions for reflection and see um which things the students identified with.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_01: And even if they don't have me come, so teachers can do it themselves.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: I I've even made it to where you could do one each month, a story each month.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: And again, yeah, that way if students are, you know, maybe they're not big readers, I've made these really basic level.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is not, you know, your academic read.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_01: So you could do like the first one uh where they switch places is like a back to school story.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_01: So you could do that in September or whatever, and then the Halloween one in October, and I've got the Christmas one, you can do it December.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I've tried to kind of make it to where it's not an overwhelming amount, especially for people that may or may not be big readers.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's easy to read material and you could just, and again, if it's 2,500 words or whatever, give or take, it's not daunting, and you could spread it out over the course of the year.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: Any advice for teachers who are considering writing their own fiction who maybe are they're thinking of diving into this, but you know, uh maybe they're a little bit intimidated.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: Any advice that you would give to people who are considering getting into fiction?
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, the best advice I could think of, and Kent didn't pay me to say this, is join his daily writer community.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, thanks.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: I love the part.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: Oh man, there is so much that you need the encouragement to keep going.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so seriously, though, being in a community, and obviously I'm part of Kent's Daily Writer community, and that just makes a huge difference because if you're doing it totally solo, there's some days that you're like, oh, I don't feel like doing this.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_01: Or again, you feel isolated even as an author, just like I was saying, my musicians can feel that way, authors feel that way too.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think being in a community like yours makes such a difference because you're always giving us prompts and and you know, encouragements and and then the ability to talk with other writers.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's just so essential.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_01: And then the other thing that I've kind of tried to do is figure out like who's obviously who's your target market, because not everyone wants to read music fiction or not everyone wants to read thrillers or whatever, you know, or sci-fi.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_01: Find what's your target market and then kind of really become an expert in that field.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: So in this case, like I almost approached my fiction similar to you, would approach similar to how you would approach nonfiction because I wanted my my audiences actually to be the same.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I know a lot of writers, they have their nonfiction audience that's writers, and they have their fiction audience that's whatever, you know, horror or something.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I was like, oh man, that sounds hard to maintain two different audiences.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: I can't even maintain one, much less three other pin names and all that.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so I was like, I think I'm gonna try to, you know, my my target audience is people that either are musicians or they like music.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I write both nonfiction and fiction for that audience.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_01: So figure out what's your, if you're a teacher, what's your trait?
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_01: You know, are you a math teacher?
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, well then, you know, you might do something that's you know fun and nerdy in the math world, or if you're a history teacher, write historical fiction, you know, go with your strengths.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm writing what I know.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: So go with what you, if you're a teacher, what's your area of expertise?
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_01: And there's plenty of people that probably are interested in that.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_01: Like now I know there's a lot of like medical fiction or something, you know, for people that are, you know, doctors or whatever.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_01: So go with your expertise, and then that helps a lot for your um finding your audience.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: That is that is really, really good advice.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: Last topic I want to want to dive into here for just a moment is I would love to hear more about your upcoming novel.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_00: So you not only have one book coming out this month, later this year, you have another book coming out.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: So, like there's no stopping Ashley in 2021.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: You are on a roll with the crazy.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I um, as we're trying to format both of those right now, my husband is helping me as well because he's got a doctorate and he, yeah, so he's helping me some with that.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, we're literally formatting the short stories in the novel like simultaneously.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, fortunately for me, they're in the same world.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_01: So it's the same college, fictional college world.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of people from my short stories are like, oh, we loved it, but we wanted more.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_01: They, you know, they read like the 2500 words and they're like, ah, we want more of the story.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so first of all, I'm giving students the opportunity to finish those stories.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that's one of the things I'm recommending that it's like, here's like a starting point, and you envision how these students continue that story because I already did continue a bigger picture story with my novel.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: And in that one, it's not characters that were in the short stories, but it would basically be like similar, but then on the big picture.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_01: Does that make sense?
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: And in this case, I did delve into the instruments that I know myself really well.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like I was like, I don't think I would know how to write a whole novel on, you know, like an obscure brass instrument that I, you know, don't play.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_01: So I the novel I can go with my strength, which is violin um and the string section.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so I take the same idea though, of you know, this little grouping of people, um, you know, the hero, the heroine, but then I have a much bigger cast um of characters.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_01: And ideally, I'm hoping it to be a series.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so the cast will follow throughout the series.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so you can see the different, yeah, the different instrumentalists in in this series.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yes, I have my hero as a uh cellist and then the heroine is a violinist, and they're both trying to kind of really figure out how to navigate their family lives, which are very different from each other, and how to um branch away from their family when need be for their musical goals, and then other times how to embrace their family, that their background and their family can help them in their musical goals.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's kind of a little behind the scenes for what's coming up this fall.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: So and when does that one come out?
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm hoping for a September release.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_01: Cool.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_01: Right now it's still in the editing phase, but I'm and I'm sending it out to a few beta readers at this point, and so yeah, it's it's exciting.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's really exciting.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's very cool.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: Well, actually, thanks so much for being a guest on on the show today.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'll have links uh in the show notes and I'll mention in my my closing where to find you and everything.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: But uh, this has been an absolute blast.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_00: You have solved the huge problem for me of short stories.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you very, very much.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: I really appreciate that.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thanks for having me.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate it.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: Totally my pleasure.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks again.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_01: All right, bye.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Ashley.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_00: It was an absolute blast having her on the show, and there were several major learning points that I took away from this conversation, but I would say my main one is this, and it is simply the importance of writing stories.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's been really fun to see Ashley's journey over the last few months of getting her book out into the world.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, it takes a lot of guts to publish a book and to put it out there for other people to read and to experience, but she has done it.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I encourage you to learn from her example and to write your own stories, even if it's just for fun, in order to explore your creative side.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're daring, just like Ashley is, then you can publish it, which I of course encourage you to do.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: Stories are such an important part of our identity as people and as humans.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: We can all learn to tell better stories.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: And Ashley has given us some great tips on how to do that.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, a huge thank you to Ashley for being a guest on this episode.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_00: You can find her site at rescottcreative.com, and there will be additional links in the show notes for her book, social media links, and other things as well.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for listening to today's episode.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_00: If you've been listening to this show for any length of time, you know that one of the four practices of a great writer is creativity.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: And in order to stay creative, you've got to have great input.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where writing prompts come in.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_00: A writing prompt is a sentence or two that helps you break through creative blocks, brainstorm new ideas, and get back into a state of flow.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: Writing prompts are an awesome creative tool for journaling, storytelling, creative writing, stress relief, social media posts, and so much more.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_00: But the great news is that you don't have to create these yourself.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: We've put together an amazing package of 365 daily writing prompts.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: So every day for the next year, you can have a shot of inspiration delivered straight to your inbox.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_00: You can check it out at dailywriterlife.com slash writing prompts.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, and I'll see you tomorrow.