Make Life Your Biggest Art Project: Pia Leichter On Writing, Creative Courage, And Changing Your Narrative

How can you explore the edges of your creativity to find your next becoming? How can you turn the evolution of your life into art? Pia Leichter talks about her creative courage, different ways to rest, and intuitive book marketing in this interview.

In the intro, Lessons from Six Years Writing Full-time [Sacha Black]; Reflections on big shifts in life, creativity, and mindset; Spotify Transitions Select Audiobook Distribution Services to INaudio [FindawayVoices]; Death Valley fulfilment; and Successful Self-Publishing Fourth Edition; Writing memoir and non-fiction — I'm on the Writers Ink Podcast; plus Lindisfarne on Books and Travel.

Plus, AI can be used in films that could win Oscars [The Week]; and Executive Order to advance artificial intelligence education in the USA [White House].

Today's show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with writing software, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 15% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

Pia Leichter is an award-winning creative director and coach, founder of the Kollektiv Studio, and the author of Welcome to the Creative Club: Make Life Your Biggest Art Project.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. 

Show Notes

• What does a creative director do?
• Overcoming the fear of writing a book
• How to take control and not let life just happen
• Tapping into your next becoming
• Type 1 fun vs. type 2 fun
• The necessity of rest for creativity
• Marrying artistic expression and commercial objectives
• Changing the scarcity script around books and money

You can find Pia at kollektiv.studio.

Transcript of Interview with Pia Leichter

Joanna: Pia Leichter is an award-winning creative director and coach, founder of the Kollektiv Studio and the author of Welcome to the Creative Club: Make Life Your Biggest Art Project. So welcome to the show, Pia.

Pia: Thanks so much, Jo, for having me on. I'm excited to be here.

Joanna: Oh, yes. So first up, tell us a bit more about you.

What is a creative director, anyway? What part does writing play in your business?

Pia: A creative director typically can work in different creative fields, such as advertising, film, fashion, you name it. I came from the world of marketing and advertising, so in that landscape, a creative director oversees the creative vision for different brands and different projects in the studio.

They marry artistic expression with commercial objectives. They also manage a creative team and kind of blends magic and logic, strategy and creativity, to create an impact in our clients’ lives and the lives of their consumers.

Joanna: That sounds pretty cool.

Pia: It was pretty cool. It was good. It was really good. It's where I spent well over a decade. So it was very rewarding work. I mean, as a creative director, at least in that world, you can have either a design background or a writing background. So I was like the copywriting background.

Joanna: Okay, and what is it you do now then?

Pia: Now I work as a creative partner, working with— Well, I think the simplest way of putting it is, I help people create. I help people create brands, businesses, dreams, art, what they're being called to create. People who do things differently to make a difference, those are generally the people I work with.

I call it sort of a creative midwife. So I help people at different sticky junctures in life, often when we're at this creative evolution point, when what we used to create was successful wonderful, whether it's a business or a creative venture, but it's just not floating our boat anymore.

We're just being called to do something different, and that can be both thrilling and terrifying at the same time, because it's like — 

What is going to come next? What is my next becoming? What is my next creation? I often partner with creatives that are at that point.

Then what's great about it is I have different tools at my disposal. I'm also a certified coach, so I bring together coaching and creativity in the form of narrative development, storytelling, brand strategy, to actually help bring whatever it is they're looking to bring to life into the world.

So I get to combine both of those things, depending on where people are in their journey.

Joanna: Why this book, then? Because it sounds like you've got lots of different strands to your business and your creative life.

Why write this book? What part does that play?

Pia: That's a fantastic question. When I left my agency, the last agency I worked for, I think it was 2021, my mother passed away suddenly. She gave me the passing gift of courage and a reminder that this life is finite and we just got one, as far as we know.

I had been flirting with the idea of channeling my creativity into building my own business for a long time, but I was comfortable. Things were good, good enough. Good enough. So I think I was scared too, of like what would that next thing be? What would I even do? How would I survive? What does it look like?

So that kind of kept me stuck, speaking of creative evolutions. So when she passed, it was like, hey, what am I waiting for? If it's not now, then when? So I left that job, and I launched Kollektiv Studio.

That was an epiphany moment for me, like, wow, I don't just get to create other people's dreams, I get to create my own. Then from there, it was just a wild and wonderful and weird journey into entrepreneurship.

Then the second epiphany with the book came from getting a call from my hybrid publisher, the founder, also great salesman and great writer. He asked, you know, have you ever thought of writing a book?

I believe everyone has a book in them, but I definitely have thought about it. I had a conversation with him, and he shared a stat like, 90-something percent of people that say no now to writing a book will actually never write that book because if not now, when?

So I had my second big light bulb moment of, “Wow, I don't only get to channel my creativity into commercial endeavors. I actually get to channel it just to make art, to make things, to write a book that feels important or meaningful to me.” A whole new path opened up to me.

So that's what led me to write the book, and I'm really glad I did. It was a really transformative process. It took me places I never thought I would go, I couldn't even imagine going. That wasn't necessarily the intention, but it was definitely a growth opportunity, and still continues to be.

Joanna: Yes, because it's definitely a combination of self-help and memoir. I've also written a memoir, Pilgrimage, and it was also one of the, I guess, hardest books that I've written, and transformative, as you say.

For people who feel like they want to write something so personal, but they're holding back because it is work in many ways, and it's a journey, and as you say, transformative—

How can you encourage people to write their book? How can they get over the fear of everything that could happen because of it, both internally and externally?

Pia: Well, asking a really powerful question is, what happens if I don't write it? What does life look like? What then? What happens if I don't write it today, or in a year, or three years?

It could be writing a book, and it could also just be doing that thing that's really calling you. Then what? Then you keep doing exactly what you're doing. At some point, the desire to create that book, to write that book, to create whatever that thing might be, becomes stronger than the fear. That would be one thing.

The second thing is remembering that you don't have to do it alone. I think what held me back was this thought, this myth of the lone genius writer in a cabin in the woods. Creating it all and their typewriter, and it's just all of the words just flowing out.

I thought, oh my gosh, I don't know if I'm going to be able to just do that, like just spit out a book. It turns out, just like creativity is collaboration, I didn't have to. There are wonderful editors and people along the way that help us create a book, create anything. We don't have to do it alone, and we often don't do it alone. So there's that.

Then the third thing that helped me was remembering that — 

We all have a hidden expiration date. Nothing's guaranteed.

So we got this one life, we might as well live it in the way that feels most fulfilling, and whatever makes you feel most alive.

Often, what makes at least me feel most alive is also a little frightening but thrilling. I feel like, gosh, I'm doing it, I'm here, I'm living this thing. That feels really important. So those are three potential motivators for starting to write something deeply personal or vulnerable to you.

Joanna: I guess another reason is kind of taking control of things, looking back and kind of taking control of the narrative. As you say, you work with people in the narrative coaching side.

In the book, there was a line that said, “I used to think life was happening to me.”  I feel like a lot of people feel that right now. There's some big political things going on, big historical things. There's AI going on. It feels like history is happening to us. So if people are feeling that—

How can people take control and not just let life happen?

Pia: Well, it's remembering that we're always at choice. Even when it might not feel like we have a choice in the direction of our lives, we do. We get to choose. We get to choose what we want to do next at every point. I think that's easy to forget in the overwhelm of information and the current political climate.

With all of the really fast paced changes that are occurring in the world, it can feel really overwhelming. I think just remembering that you get to choose. You also get to choose to not listen to the news in the morning, if that feels like sensory overload or too much.

You get to choose to pick up a pen, and you get to choose how you want to direct your next scene. You get to decide. I don't know, for me, that feels like creative agency. That feels like creative power, knowing that you are creating your experience, that you are an active protagonist main player in this game called life.

I think taking some kind of action. First —

Get clear on what it is that you might really want to do —

and that can be something small or large, right? Then actually taking action to make it real is a way of creating evidence for yourself.

Like, yes, I get to choose. I can take a day off of work tomorrow and go finally see that art exhibit and eat that cardamon bun I've been dying to eat. I can do these things. That can feel like beautiful pockets of freedom. I think the more that we practice that creative director of our lives muscle, the stronger it gets.

Joanna: Yes, because, as you say, you can do small things. It doesn't have to be changing everything. I do actually want to come back, because you said earlier about this sort of question, what is my next becoming? Then you just said you need to get clear on what you want to do. These are really, really big questions.

I recently turned 50. It was one of those moments like everyone has. I've been a writer now for nearly 20 years, and this sort of, “what is my next becoming?” is something that I've been thinking about. I know people listening, because the way the author life and the author industry is really changing, like—

‘What is the next becoming?' How do we tap into that question? How do we explore that question?

Pia: Well, I think we get closer to what feels like fun. Sometimes these questions can feel so big, and it feels weighty and meaty and important, and yes, of course they are, but also we get to move towards what feels really fun, like what lights us up. It could be anything.

I feel like they're insights into our own becoming within that, within the things that we gravitate towards that make us feel alive, or make us feel joyful. It can be either small or big, but just getting curious about what really feels like fun.

When was the last time you really had fun making something, doing something? Is there a red thread? Is there a pattern that you might be able to notice? I feel like there's something in that.

For me, recently, I've been having a lot of fun working where there was like synchronicity. I started working with someone who actually read the book, who we became friends, who's a fantastic musician and producer.

We decided to take the poems out from my book and create a spoken word album, and he's creating tracks for each poem. That feels like so much fun. I don't know, maybe the next becoming is just allowing myself to create what is lighting me up, and what makes me smile, and what feels good, what feels warm.

It's like, ooh! It might not make the Billboard Top 100 list, but it's really great to be able to co-create with someone who can take your work in a completely different direction, and the process of doing it makes it into something else. Like the poems now become something else.

So I don't know, it's just a small example of what feels like fun, and it was a nice reminder that, yes, move towards that. That feels fulfilling, and then let's figure out what the next thing might feel like. Instead of sort of this big, definitive answer, like, what will the next 50 years of my life look like?

I think we are fluid, changeable beings. We will change, luckily. That's the beauty. So maybe just reconnecting to what feels joyful right now can be a first step. I'm also turning 50 next month, so I feel you.

Joanna: Well, there we go. Well, I guess I find the word “fun” quite difficult, I must say. I think it's my upbringing, but there are things that I enjoy. It's interesting with writing. I don't know if you've heard of type 1 fun and type 2 fun. Have you heard of this?

Pia: No, tell me, please.

Joanna: Okay, so type 1 fun is, like you said, it's kind of joyful. You know, like having a drink with friends, having a dance. It's fun. Type 2 fun is you do something that might be pretty painful at the time, like I walked these pilgrimages, and maybe at the time it's not what you call fun, but you look back and go, yes, that was worth doing.

That's like type 2 fun, and you smile as you remember it, but it was hard. I feel like writing books is type 2 fun. It is not necessarily a joyful process.

Was writing this book a ‘fun' thing? or fulfilling?

Pia: Well, before I answer that, I just want to point something out. I think what I'm hearing you say is fulfillment because what feels fulfilling doesn't always feel fun at the time. I really agree and align with that.

We could use the word joyful too, whatever word resonates most. Fulfilling, what feels like fulfillment is important because that means it's connected to something that has really deep meaning for you.

Whether it's your values or what feels like your purpose that you're actually living and expressing. It feels really fulfilling when you're living in alignment with what you value most. So the book was definitely fulfilling.

There were pockets of fun, but they were pockets. It was also challenging, definitely, but it felt really fulfilling. It felt like, yes, this is exactly where I'm supposed to be and what I'm supposed to be doing. It just felt that way, and that kept me going.

I think that keeps us going when we're doing any kind of creative project that requires a long commitment, it's when it's connected to our big fat why, or what feels fulfilling, or what has meaning.

I think it's really important to create from that place because it's our light in the dark. It's like those moments where you're like, okay, I'm done here. It kept me going, you know, a reminder of why I was doing this in the first place.

Joanna: There's another challenge in the book. It's a provocative question that will trigger all the workaholics listening. You say, “What if my creative genius, and yours, lives on the other side of rest?”

I read this, and I was like, rest?! Who do you think we are?

Why is rest so hard for us, and yet so necessary for creativity?

Pia: I think, at least in Western culture, we're geared to connect and believe that our value is based on what we produce, and hard work and work ethic is really prioritized. It's just something that's very important culturally.

Like, “you got to work hard,” and, “blood, sweat, and tears,” and, “give it everything you got,” and that there's meaning in that.

I'm not saying there's not, there's space and place for passionate, focused work, but there's also room, and it's very important, for rest and ease. There's a place for doing, and there's a place where we get to also be because we are human beings.

There are a lot of insights to be discovered and dots that connect and eureka moments to be had in this daydreamy, restful, ease-filled place where we're not so focused on a task or getting something done.

Neuroscience shows that this is also how our brain functions. We have the default mode network, which is also called our imagination network, which is really closely correlated with creativity. It's the thinking that happens when we're not consciously thinking.

The dots that connect in those moments, the illumination that happens when we're just allowing things to marinate and just be and process, kind of percolating like coffee. It's really, really important for our creativity and for ideas to be able to have that time as well.

So it's not an either/or. Both the default mode network and the control network work together.

So creativity also requires that analytical mind, like the research and evaluation, but incubation and illumination are equally important. Yet in our society or culture, we tend to prioritize that which can be quantified.

You know, like, “Well, I have done this amount of research, so therefore I've been productive,” and — 

What if productivity was also based on allowing ideas to a bubble to the surface and emerge?

That's just as valuable as focused, task-based activity.

Just to say, I'm a recovering speed queen. I grew up in New York City, so I'm not a Zen Buddha person. I am practicing. I am practicing slowing down.

I'm finding that when I do, when I catch myself when I'm rushing for no reason, or when I'm overdoing the doing, there's a wealth of information and insight that emerges when I just give things space. Sometimes nothing emerges, but I feel my energy shift and different, and then I show up to the work differently.

It's dangerous to start getting into the sort of equation of, well, I'll rest so that I can be more productive. No, that's not what I'm saying. We can get into that way of thinking, and it's just the same way of thinking applied to rest.

So, no, not necessarily, but I find it incredibly important for the creative process and also just that energy of being alive. We also get to just be, and our just being, there's value in us just being who we are. It might sound counter cultural, but that's what I believe.

Joanna: Yes, I like the term active rest, obviously, because I find that exhaustion is when I'm kind of watching Netflix or whatever, and that doesn't help my creative. Well, it probably does in some level. It helps my creative side because there's a lot of story, there's a lot of storytelling in great TV.

I walk a lot, get outside and go for really long walks, and I find that helps.

It's the resting the brain kind of thing. I don't want people to think that we just mean rest means lying on the sofa or like going to bed, although sometimes that is a good thing.

Also for me, I guess the filling the creative well. Which for me, involves travel and reading and all of that kind of thing.

What kinds of things do you include in rest?

Pia: I love that you're pointing that out, Jo. There's this wonderful article—and I can't remember her name, you can put it in the show notes [Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith]—she writes about seven different types of rest, because often we just equate rest with laying on the couch and it's not.

There are all different ways that that we can rest and regenerate. Some of them could even be like light socials and regenerate through relationships. It really depends on the person, on the individual. What makes you feel refueled and recharged?

I do feel that for most of us, daydreaming, and just allowing, just being, is an important part of the rest portfolio, if you will.

For me, to answer your question, rest looks like meditation, movement, and believe it or not, in a way, journaling—like just free writing—feels restful to me in the sense of, I'm just allowing thoughts to pour out and just kind of be rather than trying to write coherently, or make sense, or add value, or whatever the words are.

That's really helpful, and movement, also. Even though I'm not resting, just moving creates a different space for ideas to bubble up. I often get strange thoughts, good strange thoughts when I'm moving my body. Also while I'm meditating, even though I'm able to see the thoughts that are passing by, I'm like, oh, interesting.

So I think it's about finding what feels good to you, but it's about also honoring that part of you that is not doing and working to produce something all the time. There's a place for that, but there's also a place for seven different types of rest, we can call it that.

Joanna: Yes, indeed. It's interesting because there are some people in the writing community who say, “Oh, you must write every day.” I always say, no, I don't write every day.

I'm a full-time author entrepreneur, but I don't write every day.

I call myself a binge writer. So I do the book, and then I do the project, and then I launch the book. Like, right now as we're recording this, I am in launch phase for my book, Death Valley. I'm not writing. I'm in the sort of restful, kind of exhausted, kind of like, oh my goodness, I'm never going to have another idea again.

But even this morning, I actually felt a little twitch. I felt that twitch of interest in other things. So that's when I start going, oh, okay, maybe my brain is getting ready again. So, yes, this kind of going in and out, I guess, of the output phase. Input phase, output phase, rest phase.

Pia: Yes, cycles, just like seasons. We're cyclical, you know, and things have cycles. I can really relate with, you know, after I wrote the book in December, now I'm still in launch mode. Launch mode lasts a year at least, which is interesting to me.

What's great is it's activating different aspects of my creativity. So it feels like there are different parts of my creativity that I'm applying in the launch phase. I think that's interesting, and it also gives the book writing creative space some air, which I also need. So I can relate to that.

Also, self-doubt creeps in some time where it's like, oh, I have a newsletter. It's like, oh, I can't possibly think of anything. Everything is so busy. What am I going to write about? I don't know.

The minute doubt creeps in, just like you said, then the next day it's like, oh, I'm going to write about doubt. It's like an idea pops up, and it's just trusting that you have a wealth of ideas within you, and when you give it some space and you trust that they're there, they will emerge. That, I'm sure of.

Joanna: Yes, absolutely. So coming back, right at the beginning you said about artistic expression and commercial objectives, marrying those two as part of being a creative director. So that sort of brings us to this. You mentioned there, launch mode happening for a whole year.

So you're now on the commercial side of this book. So tell us about that and about—

What kinds of things are a challenge around the commercial side of the book?

Pia: Well, as you mentioned earlier, Jo, that writing the memoir was one of the toughest—I don't want to put words in your mouth—I think you said one of the hardest ones?

Joanna: Something like that.

Pia: Something like that, yes. Well, I think marketing this book feels a little bit more vulnerable because I'm sharing very personal stories, in service of the reader and the book, within its pages.

So I am learning how to step deeper into the arena and be vulnerable and show up and ask and tell like, “Hey, I have a book. This is what I'm doing,” and to ask more people to get involved as I go through this launch process. So that feels vulnerable to me, and sometimes really challenging.

Getting reviews is challenging, especially when it's about my life. So I feel like I'm building really important muscles for my creativity so that I can more freely express myself.

At the end of the day, people are going to experience my work and myself however they experience it. That's their experience, and they should have whatever experience they want to have. Just like Mel Robbins says, “let them.” Let people have their own experience. It's not mine, it's theirs.

It's that separation that is really important, I think, when you are showing up and sharing something that feels vulnerable and powerful and important, but vulnerable. So I'm learning. I'm learning to stand for my work, and also, in this case, it also means standing for my story.

I think that's sort of the extra component that makes it more like the growth opportunity I mentioned earlier. So it's been a wild ride, because even though I come from this world, I've never marketed a book before. So there is just so much to learn.

There's actually so many things that you could be doing as an author when you market your book, and a lot of money you could be spending on it. So, to me—

It's about finding what activities or actions I can take that feel most aligned and that would have the biggest impact for the book.

I'm still sort of figuring out what that looks like. I had a pre-sale community that was incredibly important to the success of this book, and I'm really, really grateful I had a pre-sale. It allowed me to build community, and it helped strengthen that asking muscle.

Like, “Hey, I've written the draft, but I'm not done yet, but I need your help to take the book to print,” and reaching out to almost everyone I knew to ask. That was a huge muscle builder. So now it's reaching out into the wider world to share the story and to explore different avenues.

Next up, Amazon ads. Let's see what happens. You know, reviewers. It's just finding different avenues. I'm sure you have a lot of insight around this to bring the book into the world.

Joanna: You're exactly right, there are so many things you could do. I actually love that you've talked about launch mode for a year because in the kind of indie author community that I'm part of, we tend to just move onto the next book.

We're not so interested in launching. We're just loving writing so much that we move on to the next book. I think having that commitment to pushing the book for longer is actually really good.

Especially with an evergreen book like this, it's not going to go out of style. It's not based on the news, it's not political. So you can basically market this forever, which I think is great.

You talk there about aligned and impact. So, and I mean, then you mentioned Amazon ads, which is interesting. I would be interested how you feel that goes.

You are doing a lot of podcast interviews. How has that gone? How have you been pitching for those?

Obviously, you pitched me, and I was interested. So is that going well?

Pia: Yay! I'm so glad you were. Yes, it is going well. Here's the thing, I think creativity can feel very uncertain, right? We don't know what we're going to create when we set out to create anything.

I think podcasts and showing up and sharing our stories is also uncertain. You haven't met me before, I haven't met you. That's also the beauty because we don't know what we're going to co-create together in our conversation and what that could be like.

So I find it, again, it's that combination of nerve-cited. You know, nervous and exciting, and thrilling and terrifying. I feel like, as we move further, I like to call it as Brene Brown says, like the arena.

That quote from Roosevelt: As we move further into the arena, it's we make ourselves more visible, and we get bruised, and we get ripped and cut. People will see us more and have something to say, but at least we're out there, like living. You know, we're doing the things.

I think that requires courage and belief in what it is that you're creating and in yourself, I suppose. Also I'm going to say the word you don't like again, fun. For me, sometimes we forget that we also get to make it joyous, like it can be a fun experience.

So far, this is fun. I'm getting to know you, and we're having a conversation, and hopefully connecting with your audience and people to share stories. So I don't know, it feels good.

I was on social media for my business, very heavily for quite a number of years, actually. I was on X building a pretty large community for a while, and then not to get deep into politics, but with certain recent shifts in the social media landscape, it just didn't feel aligned anymore.

Even though it was really counterintuitive, like, oh, really? I'm going to build my business and keep launching my book without it? Like, really? But it felt right. I was like, nope, it's not feeling good for me. It doesn't feel like this is my path.

People sold books and built businesses before social media. We can do it again.

We can keep doing that. So I'm currently exploring that, and that's led me to podcasts. That's led me to reach out to build and strengthen community, have more meetings one-on-one, exploring events.

What are different ways that I can meet people and share this story and hear their stories? That feels exciting, even though it's a bit daunting, because it's like, oh, I haven't really seen how this is done before. So that's what I mean by aligned, just to further unfold that.

Impact is, well, this feels like impact. Being able to have a conversation, being able to connect, and hopefully with other people. So impact is not only sales or reviews, which are, of course, very important in the life of a book, but also human impact, reaching people.

Joanna: Yes. I mean, I am having fun having a conversation with you. I think, and you talk about intuition in the book as well, I try to have an intuitive—you know, obviously I prepared and I sent you questions—but I feel like the conversation becomes quite intuitive, and we get into things as they come up. That's what I enjoy as part of being a being a podcaster.

I did want to come back on the commercial side because I'm obviously making money from my books, and many of the listeners are, or they want to. You have a section in the book where you talk about this. You talk about your money wound and also your scarcity script.

I wondered how you think that appears for writers and authors? Because let's face it, you have to sell a lot of books to make decent money.

How can authors change their script around books and money?

Pia: That's a great question. Well, how we do one thing is how we approach everything. So it's how you approach books and money, it's also life, how you approach money and life generally.

The same speaks to ideas. Like scarcity could be, of course, scarcity of fun, scarcity of opportunities, but scarcity of ideas. Where am I ever going to get another idea? There's not enough ideas. What am I going to do? Then that sort of becomes a block, or could be a self-fulfilling prophecy. So how do we start to shift?

Well, it's trusting that there is an abundance of ideas within us. There's proof of that. Like, look, Jo, you've written, did you say 45 books?

Joanna: Yes. Something like that.

Pia: If that's not abundance, honey, I don't know what is. I find that helpful to anchor into trust and into the process of actually creating. So I didn't write the book from a place of “if I don't make this book a financial success, I won't survive.” I think that's a difficult premise to write a book from, given the state of the industry.

I wrote the book from a place of “I want to share something that has meaning, and I want to give it the best chance at succeeding in the world and reaching people.”

The scarcity, I don't know, when it comes to writing books, what I really think about more than money, is I think about trusting that you have the book within you, that you have the ideas within you.

Then the money part is releasing, hopefully, that you're in a position that you can release the expectation of what it needs to deliver financially and just do your best to get it into the world and have different income streams. That's been very important for me and my creativity.

So not having my only income stream be this book. That would feel very tight for my creativity, that would like start to strangle it, I think. Having multiple ways of creating income feels like abundance to me. Like, look, I can do this, I can do that.

It could also be this book, that maybe the income the book generates is not just through sales. There are other doors that it opens that become really interesting and fascinating.

I kind of try to detach from expectation and outcome, however hard that might be. That, to me, sometimes can feel like scarcity. Like, if I don't get this, then what? It's more like, well, I trust that I'm going to get the opportunities that I need, and then I'm going to receive what I need, and I'm going to do this for the love of doing it.

However utopian or whatever that may sound, it feels important to me and to creativity. I don't know if I fully answered your question, but that's what comes up for me, as you asked it.

Joanna: Yes, and I am absolutely into multiple streams of income and abundance of ideas. In fact, only this last week, I learned something new from someone that I'm implementing right now, and having another stream of income from that. It's like, new ideas appear every day.

I actually love that you said about people sold books before social media, and so they can still now. I think that's so important, because people are like, “Oh, well, if I can't use this,” or, “I left this platform and went here, and there's nobody here, and what do I do?” I'm like—

There are literally thousands of other ways to sell books other than social media.

Pia: Absolutely, and that's where we can apply our creativity. If you're writing a book— you are creative whether you write a book or not—but especially if you're writing a book, then you acknowledge your own creativity.

So imagine just applying that in different ways. Like, hmm, what are different ways I could get this book into the world? So that's what I'm playing with. There's some that I might be able to see, and others I might not, and other ways people might help me see.

They go, “Oh, have you thought of that?” “No, actually, that's really interesting.” I think people come into your life also to show you. I heard something, actually, it was from a tarot reader, full disclosure, but she's wonderful. She said that the affirmation or the thought is, “allow me to recognize the opportunities.”

That shifted something from me. I really loved it, talking about scarcity and abundance. Like allow me to recognize the opportunities. Hey, wait a minute. That means the opportunities are already here. Oh, how cool. That's like game changing for me. They're already here. I just need to recognize them.

Sometimes if we get hooked to what something has to be. Like it has to wear this specific Yves Saint Laurent outfit, and if it's not wearing that, then it's not the opportunity.

Letting go of what it has to look like or exactly what it has to do or be, kind of frees us up to see, “Oh my god, look. It's wearing a vintage Dior dress from the 70s. Wow, look at that opportunity.”

Sometimes opportunities can come to us in a lot of different shapes and forms, but we need to kind of release the grip a little bit and trust that they're here. It's available to us. We just need to recognize them. So that was something I found very helpful on my journey.

So it's like, I don't know what this will be. Let's see. Let's see what opportunities I might be able to recognize as I go journey through the process of marketing this book.

Joanna: Well, it is a great book. Welcome to the Creative Club. So tell us—

Where can people find you and the book online?

Pia: All the usual places. Amazon, Barnes and Noble, bookshop.org, are the three main ones. I am at Kollektiv Studio. So that's Kollektiv spelled actually in Danish because I currently live in Copenhagen. I lived in London before I moved here, and before that, many other countries. So Kollektiv.studio.

Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Pia. That was great.

Pia: Thank you so much for having me, Jo. It was a wild ride. I really enjoyed it.

The post Make Life Your Biggest Art Project: Pia Leichter On Writing, Creative Courage, And Changing Your Narrative first appeared on The Creative Penn.