The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers

Jennifer Roig-Francoli, an international prize-winning violinist and certified Alexander Technique teacher, shares insights on the synergy between music and writing. She discusses how mindfulness of the body can unlock creativity and reduce performance anxiety. Roig-Francoli explores her journey from music to writing, emphasizing the importance of self-care and physical well-being for creatives. Listeners will find inspiration in her holistic approach to transformation, which connects confidence in performance to mental awareness and personal growth.

Dave Morris, an accomplished author and comic book writer with over 40 years in publishing, shares insights from his extensive career. He explains why maintaining creative control and owning intellectual property is vital for long-term success. Morris discusses how AI tools can enhance creativity and assist authors in world-building, brainstorming, and maintaining narrative continuity. He emphasizes the balance between traditional writing and modern technology, urging emerging writers to embrace adaptability and confidence in their craft.

April Rinne, a futurist, professional speaker, and bestselling author of 'Flux: 8 Superpowers for Thriving in Constant Change,' dives into embracing change in various aspects of life. She explores the 'flux mindset'—how to thrive amidst uncertainty and adapt career strategies. Rinne discusses the integration of AI in authorship, focusing on the future of audiobooks and copyright challenges. She emphasizes the importance of cultivating a portfolio career that leverages diverse experiences, ultimately encouraging listeners to embrace change actively.

Abi Pollakoff, an award-winning poet and editor, shares her insights on the intersection of poetry and prose. She emphasizes how poetic techniques like line breaks and punctuation can enhance prose writing. The conversation dives into the emotional power of poetry, the significance of page layout, and the nuances of performance in spoken word. Pollakoff also discusses the impact of community engagement on a writer's journey and the challenges poets face in the modern literary landscape.

Pia Leichter, an award-winning creative director and founder of Kollektiv Studio, dives into the transformative power of creative courage. She discusses how to navigate life's shifts, turning personal evolution into art. Listeners will learn about the significance of immersive research, the cyclical nature of creativity, and the balance between productivity and rest. Pia emphasizes the importance of community support in overcoming self-doubt and encourages everyone to reclaim their creative power—proving that life itself is indeed the biggest art project!

Dr. Rebecca White, an award-winning entrepreneur and author, shares her transformative journey from small-town roots to creative success. She discusses her 'See, Do, Repeat' framework, emphasizing optimism in entrepreneurship. Tips on overcoming fear of judgment in publishing and the importance of community support are highlighted. The conversation also touches on leveraging AI in audio publishing while retaining creative control. White's insights on navigating the evolving landscapes of writing and self-publishing provide actionable steps for aspiring authors.

Derek Slaton, author of the extensive Dead America zombie series, shares insights on leveraging YouTube and podcasting to boost audiobook revenue. He discusses innovative strategies like using AI for book creation and the importance of personalizing marketing approaches. Derek emphasizes the role of community engagement and effective audience feedback. The conversation highlights unique world-building techniques inspired by personal experiences and the financial benefits of treating audiobooks as podcast episodes, all while keeping creative integrity intact.

Tara Cremin, Director of Kobo Writing Life, shares her expertise on indie publishing and ebook distribution. She explores the evolution of self-publishing and details how Kobo Plus offers indie authors flexible subscription options. Tara discusses strategic pricing and promotional tactics to maximize earnings from ebooks and audiobooks. Additionally, she highlights the importance of curated recommendations and how Kobo’s innovative features enhance reader engagement. Practical insights make this a must-listen for aspiring authors!

What’s the difference between telling a story on screen and on the page? How does indie film production overlap with indie publishing—and what can writers learn from the world of filmmaking? Why might a producer choose creative freedom over big studio deals, and what does that mean when it comes to book marketing? Gretchen McGowan talks about her memoir Flying In: My Adventures in Filmmaking, navigating the independent film world, and finding her voice as an author. In the intro, NaNoWriMo shutting down [The Verge]; Amazon introduces AI-generated Recaps; Thoughts on the creative cycle; How to Write a Novel audiobook on YouTube; Mapwalker fantasy novels on YouTube. Plus, Death Valley, A Thriller Kickstarter and thriller writing class; J.F. Penn on The Adventure Story Podcast; Death Valley expert Steve Hall on the Books and Travel Podcast; My photos from Death Valley. 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  Gretchen McGowan is an award-winning independent film producer, filmmaking lecturer, and the author of Flying In: My Adventures in Filmmaking. 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 an indie film producer actually do? The isolation of writing a book vs. making a film The fear of underserving your audience Tools for writing the “truth” in memoir Seeing a new place for the first time through the eyes of a filmmaker The parallels of self-publishing and the indie film world Utilizing your network to help market your book AI tools being used in this democratization of film You can find Gretchen at GretchenMcGowan.com and GoldcrestFilms.com. Transcript of Interview with Gretchen McGowan Joanna: Gretchen McGowan is an award-winning independent film producer, filmmaking lecturer, and the author of Flying In: My Adventures in Filmmaking. So welcome to the show, Gretchen. Gretchen: Thank you so much, Joanna. It's a dream to be here. Joanna: Well, it's going to be so fun talking to you today. First up— Tell us a bit more about you and what you actually do in the indie filmmaking industry, and what even is that? Gretchen: Yes, well, I'm an independent producer. I come from a freelancing background in the independent film world. We make largely films that are kind of under $15 million, although that fluctuates all the way down to the really almost no budget kind of film. When you're a producer on those kinds of films, you wear many, many hats, because your footprint is small, your crew is smaller. So you have to be good at many things, or at least pretend to be. A lot of that is trial and error. So that's been largely my background. I'm now at a company called Goldcrest Films. They're based in London, but we have a branch here in New York, and there I oversee film. So I'm a little less hands on at this point with each film. We also do documentaries, and on those, I'm very, very hands on. Joanna: You said that you wear many hats, so just be a bit more specific. What are the actual things that a producer does? Gretchen: Sure. So in the early stages, you're, of course, approving scripts, making script changes with writers. You are casting with the casting director and the director of the film. Then you're location scouting at distant locations, even nearby locations. You are involved in really every decision that is made, and you're trying to help tell a story with your director. The director really is king in this case, or queen, and you're there to facilitate that. To make sure that their vision of this script is seen on screen by you. Joanna: Do you manage the budget, or is that somebody else? Gretchen: You do. That's one of the less glamorous things, but I still enjoy it because every aspect of that film is reflected in that budget. You have to make sure going into it, it's a little bit idealistic what your budget might be at that point, but it's based upon experience. So it's not a fantasy of what that budget will be. You'll look at similar budgets where you ultimately landed to create that budget, and to know what it takes to get the film actually to market. Joanna: Then once the film is made, are you involved in the editing at all? The actual sort of what happens after the filming? Gretchen: Definitely. To me, the editorial process is the final chance to write the script again. I come from editing, actually. I started out kind of through the back door, in the finishing process in editorial. So it's close to my heart, I would say, the editorial process. I feel like we can talk about AI and all the ways in which people make films now, but there's still like a gestation period to getting a film completed. It takes a little bit of time to find the story, to find the best takes, to edit out what doesn't belong, and to complete the film. Joanna: Then before we move on, after this film is finished, is your job done? Or are you then involved in distribution and marketing? Gretchen: Well, that'll depend on the distributor that we find for the film. Sometimes we have a distributor already when we're in pre-production, so we know what our deliverables will be, what the release date will be, what cast we need in place to go to certain festivals and that kind of thing. Often we are much more indie-minded, indie-spirited, in that we finish that film, we edit it, we do all the beautifying of it, and sound and picture and visual effects, and then we take it to a festival and hope to sell the film. Now, those days are kind of disappearing because there are fewer and fewer films being made and being sold for many, many reasons. In an ideal world, you would sell that film at a festival, and then they would say to you, “Here's the way in which we plan to distribute it.” A producer is very, very involved in organizing that, in getting them all their deliverables and making sure the film really has everything it needs to go to market. That probably means going to a lot of festivals and being involved in the campaign as it's rolled out across the country and across the world. Joanna: It's incredible to me. I've really been learning a lot more about the film business. I think on the other side, obviously, it doesn't look so difficult, but there's so much that goes into a film. Even, as you say, “a smaller budget of under $15 million,” which people are like, what? That is a huge budget. Of course, it's not really, is it? Gretchen: It's true. In all these films, probably like any book that you would write, the life of it extends long past when you put your pen down. So you have several films that you're kind of in maintenance mode and continuing to push out there, even though you stopped filming many, many months ago. Joanna: So let's get into the book. So why did you decide to write a book after focusing primarily on the visual media? What were the challenges of writing a book versus making a film? Gretchen: Oh gosh. Well, it was all alone, that's for sure. I didn't have my team around me. I wanted to write the book because I felt like I was involved in filmmaking at this really special time in the 1990s and into the 2000s, a lot of it here in New York, but also around the world. Making films, we just did it in a slightly different way than we do today. I was afraid we were sort of losing sight of how we used to do things. I was teaching up at Columbia University a class in pre-production, and then a class in production for directors. I was having so much fun, and the questions that were coming at me made me think, this is really a book, isn't it? These are stories that they're enjoying. They're getting a lot out of it. They're still relevant. I feel like this could translate nicely into a sequence of stories that could be really entertaining. How is it different from working on a book? So working on the book, of course I'm carrying all these characters in my head, so I never feel totally alone when I sit down to write. It's just a completely different thing to be motivated for yourself to write a book, as opposed to these constant deadlines that are coming at you when you're making a film. You have a schedule, you must meet that. Other people are depending upon you. With a book, I was on my own. There was nobody saying, “You have to finish chapter seven by April 1.” It was just a made up scheme for myself. So the made up scheme continued to shift, as you can imagine. Joanna: That's so interesting because I chose to be a writer, one of the reasons was to be alone. I know people listening, I think we're all serious introverts in the sort of full-time writer mode, but that was the first thing you brought up there as a challenge, was being all alone. So do you think people who work in film are just much more sociable and enjoy the collaboration and the teamwork and that kind of thing? Gretchen: That's so funny because I feel like I'm a forced extrovert. I feel like I'm an introvert, like you, by nature. Being involved in the film business, I think many of us are just kind of forced into the world of an extrovert. There's a role on set called the first assistant director, the first AD, we call them. I always think of them as the extrovert for the director because the director doesn't want to be shouting out when the next take is and when we cut. They want to have this person by their side. So maybe it's just another version of my personality that I'm able to tap, but by nature, I'd rather be sitting at a desk or writing a story like you. Joanna: Oh, that's great. On that, you said you didn't have any contracts or anything. So you decided to write the book and then look at publication later? Because with nonfiction, you can look for a book deal first. Gretchen: Well, I'd never written anything long form before. I was a playwright in college, so I had experience writing. As far as a commercial venture to get something out, I said, let's see what we've got first. I took Marion Roach's class, and she was just really helpful to that end, as far as kind of setting a schedule, having realistic expectations. I took a couple of her courses too. I felt like those things helped me motivate my own schedule. Joanna: Marion's been on this show several times. A fantastic memoir teacher, so that's brilliant. So let's get into some more of the book. So you write in the opening about the fear you get as a filmmaker of underserving the film and the audience, which I really loved. Did you find that fear mirrored as you wrote the book? Gretchen: Oh, yes. I only know my own experience in making films, and it is varied. I've worked with so many different kinds of directors, so many different genres, but it's not going to be anybody else's experience. So as I'm writing, I'm trying not to have the fear of being judged, of someone else saying, “Well, that's not really the way it is,” or, “It was never like that for me,” and I’m sure I'm getting a lot of that as people read it and work through their own experience of making films. At the same time, I can only tell the stories that I lived, and then try to make it as universal as possible. So for me, that was the challenge. Okay, here's the core story—and this is something I learned from Marion in reading her book, The Memoir Project—how do I make that ripple out to be a story that's relatable on a universal level. For somebody who works in print advertising, or somebody who works in any other industry really, it should feel relevant, this experience and the arc of a producer story. Joanna: Yes, that fear of being judged, that is what I have, absolutely. Everyone's got their fears, and this one is a big one. It's tough with memoir. I wrote a memoir about pilgrimage, and it was kind of midlife and all of that. I was like, if I put this out there, everyone's going to know more about me. That's really scary, right? Do you think you're over that fear yet? Gretchen: Well, now is the interesting time, isn't it, because now people are reading it. People who I've worked with, people who I've been friends with for years, and they're having their own experience. The dialogue that's coming out of that is another book probably, too, because they'll say, “Oh, I read the chapter about having made Buffalo '66, and I got caught in that situation. Mine was a little different.” So then I get to hear all these wonderful stories and bring up these memories of what it was like to make films in the 90s. Joanna: Yes, which is cool. I mean, the 90s, such a great time. Before social media. Oh, could we go back? That's the question. Gretchen: I know, but it's great to sort of be sparking something in other people that they feel compelled to write me a note or text me and say, “Oh, this reminded me of something.” So that really was the goal of the book, to say, “Here's my experience. This is what I went through. What was it like for you?” Like your pilgrimage, everybody's had their version of a pilgrimage, and to be able to think, “Oh, the way Joanna climbed that mountain or surpassed that, that reminds me of when I did X.” That took a long time for me to figure out the universality of things. Joanna: If you're writing about decades ago, how did you tackle truth? In terms of, did this actually happen in this way? Did you keep notes? Have you got notes from back then, or journals? Or how did you recall those things? Gretchen: Well, I think I have the mind of a steel trap when it comes to certain stories that just are never going to leave me. I do have a lot of friends. Of course, I'm still friendly with a lot of filmmakers and crew members who I worked with back then. So we can sit down and we can reminisce, and things will come flying back, and I'll say, “Oh, I hadn't thought about that in a long time.” They're the ones that just stay with you, the stories you kind of tell over and over again, even if just to yourself. I didn't keep a journal back then. I just kind of kept all this tucked away. Then I think also, when you work on one film, of course, you're informed by that experience on the next and the next. So they get buried in you, and they get kind of endemic to your process, as far as how you proceed. I think about what I said about budgets, you don't go into the next budget of making a film, looking at the going-in budget the last one. You look at the cost report, you look at where you actually landed, what it really took to make it. Even though it's reduced to zeros and ones, that was the experience of that movie. Every line item there has a story. Joanna: Oh, I love that. I've never seen the line items on a movie, but I imagine there's some really random stuff on there that ended up needing to be used, or people who were hired. I think that's interesting in itself. I wanted to also ask you, the book has lots of different places, as you've traveled so much with the filming. I wondered, as a filmmaker—because you're always looking through a lens or you're thinking of how people are seeing it— How do you see a place for the first time? What do you notice? Then how do you turn that into writing on a page? Gretchen: Well, as a producer, when you land in a place, you're thinking like a location scout. You're thinking, honestly, what can be useful to the movie? What angles will be useful? Then, of course, when you've got the added challenge of filming an historical drama, you need to put greenery in front of certain standpipes and that kind of thing. You've got to think like, what's it going to cost to shoot in this direction? And if I turn the camera 40 feet to the left, what's going to be a problem there? So what am I restricted by is often what you're thinking about, too. I love the location scouting, especially with the director, because for them it's really when the film really starts to take on life. When we went to Andalusia to film The Limits of Control, a Jim Jarmusch film with Jim, we were at this beautiful site, looking at the ocean into the sea, but the house that he wanted was up on a hill on the opposite side. If you watch the film, you would never know the sea was across the road because that wasn't part of the story. So sometimes you forget, which is where your editor has to come in handy. They'll say, “You never did shoot the sea,” but we weren't intending to. We wanted it to feel like an isolated home. So to how that translates into the book, I'm trying to think about ways in which the location comes up. I guess, the thing that's important to me about filming on location, and what I like about the process of filmmaking, is it kind of ramps up. You location scout, your crew gets bigger and bigger. You're the constant. The script is the constant. You're the last one to leave, probably, too, but you're there for a good four or five months often. So if you go to Jordan, or if you go to Costa Rica to film, you're not like a journalist, for instance, or for other roles that might travel to these places for their vocation, you're not just parachuting in and out. You're there to tell their story as well. Many of those people will become extras, many of the people you meet will become crew members or will lead you to a location. You're going to be going to their homes for dinner. So all these things, of course, are in the book. Everyone becomes a character in your story, and you in theirs for a longer period of time. Joanna: When you write a memoir, in the same ways you make a movie, you have to edit out a lot of it. You can't write everything. In the same way with a film, you can't shoot everything, but you don't want to because you're crafting this story. I always feel like with films, there is a sort of, “This isn't real. This is made up.” I guess you do documentaries and things, but you still have to edit for your own story. So how did you manage that with your book? Did you edit out the really bad stuff, or did you leave the bad stuff in? Sometimes we edit to make things more beautiful, I guess. Gretchen: I didn't do that. I would say I edited to make sure that the arc of becoming a producer is really in there, and that is the good, the bad, and the ugly. That's everything. If I told a story and it didn't quite fit, or I felt like I'd already addressed that in a previous chapter or wanted to later, then I had to cut it out, right? Maybe some bits of that got folded into a later story, but there was no use in telling it twice. We had to see this character growing as a producer and learning from all her ugly mistakes along the way. There's a lot on the cutting room floor, I would say. Joanna: Well, on that, how much is on the cutting room floor when you make a film? How many hours of film do you have compared to what's left at the end? Gretchen: We try to, especially in the independent world, because we usually only have about 25-30 days to shoot an independent film at these budget levels, maybe fewer. Two Girls and a Guy we shot in 11 days, with Robert Downey Jr, but that was also on one location with three characters. So there are exceptions to that, but you're very, very lean and very efficient when it comes to how many pages a day you shoot, and your coverage is going to be very limited too. So you need to make sure the way in which you cover a scene is enough for an editor to be able to do their work with. It's probably a ratio of around five to one, whereas when you work on a documentary—or five to one to ten to one, I would say, how much film goes through the camera versus what the 90 minute film becomes—but when you shoot a documentary, we could have 500 hours of film and whittle that down. Usually you'll need several editors to be able to pare that back. You'll get everything transcribed. You'll do a paper cut. There are all sorts of ways of trimming back on that, but these films take a long time to edit when you've got so much footage. Honestly, that's an interesting question you posed, because since digital, the camera tends to keep rolling a lot too. Rather than cutting, we'll keep going and go again, again, again. Often on a narrative feature even, just keep going. So the editor ends up with a lot more material than they used to. Not all of it is good, but they've got a heck of a lot more to wade through in order to find the gems. Joanna: I know there's a lot of the stuff on AI around that editing, which we're going to come back to that in a minute. Going back to the book, I love that you structured the chapters around film types. So like the urban fantasy, and the rogue movie, and the meet cute, which I thought were brilliant. So what were the challenges of structuring it, given the book spans a lot of time? Where did you get that idea for the film types? Gretchen: It's one of the kind of novelties of my career, is that I've worked across so many genres. So I thought it would be a fun idea to do that. I wasn't sure it was going to work. I moved the names around, and they're not always a spot on. What happens in each chapter is not always a spot on reflection of that genre, but it's close enough to have inspired what happens in the story, and as you say, kind of what didn't belong in that story too. So it was a fun kind of device to be able to play with. The stories, though, are largely sequential. Sometimes I'll pop in a relevant story from before or after, but only in as much as I say, as it helped with the arc of becoming a producer, becoming a more responsible producer in that character. You're seeing her evolve a bit. Joanna: Yes, and in your pitch email, you said, “The actual journey to getting the book out there is taking a lot of grit and perseverance, a lot like indie film distribution.” That made me laugh. So tell us about those parallel processes. Gretchen: So I'm working with a wonderful publisher, but they're not a big Simon and Schuster kind of company. They're a smaller company, and I enjoy that because there's a lot of freedom in it. Probably because I do come from the independent film world, I'm used to doing a lot of work myself and putting a lot of myself and my own kind of grit and sweat equity into the project. So that means I did hire—although they have their own in-house publicist—I did hire a PR individual to help me. He is familiar with film, so there's some kind of a nice crossover there. So there are out of pocket expenses that I kind of always knew I would have to put into it. I make a lot of films with Sebastian Junger, who will write a book for Simon and Schuster on commission, or what have you, and he'll have a lot of muscle behind that from, of course, the organization. I knew I wasn't going to live in that world, so I was prepared to put a lot more of my own kind of time and effort into it, just the way I am doing with several of our films right now. Joanna: So, I mean, you mentioned Sebastian Junger there, and I've recently read his In My Time of Dying, and read several of his books. They're really interesting. You have contacts like that, you have lots of contacts in the film industry. I mean, you presumably could have pitched to a bigger publisher. Did you always just want to have more control? Gretchen: Well, I found an agent pretty quickly, but she was realistic about, you know, this isn't the indie film world. This isn't Hollywood. This isn't like a tell-all kind of story that exposes certain characters. That wasn't what I was setting out to do. Although she loved the writing, she was excited about the book, she felt like the more realistic option is probably going to be going with an indie publisher. I heard that, so we gave it a little bit of time, but when we didn't hear back within a month, I said, you know what? Let's just switch gears and go indie because I know I can make it work. I didn't want to spend a lot of time falling down that rabbit hole of waiting, the waiting game. I'm an impatient person. Joanna: Oh, that's so true. I mean, but— Then you still went with the small press instead of self-publishing? Gretchen: Yes, I did that. It's interesting, I've been thinking because I am working on something new, I'm thinking that it would be so much fun to—because I listened to your podcast, and I'm highly motivated by all your stories and your guests—and I would love to try publishing the next book myself, but I'd have to finish writing it first. Joanna: True, but it's interesting to think about that. I think you'd do great. I mean, with your attitude, I think that's the point. Also having impatience, which I think is a hallmark of so many of us in the indie community. Gretchen: That's great. I mean, how do you get that next podcast? How do you get that next gig? I'm going out to Seattle in June to do sort of a mini tour there. So how do you make that happen by depending on a large behemoth of an organization that has so many more important authors to pitch and that they can make so much more money from? So you really, like a producer, you really just kind of must do things yourself very often. Joanna: Yes, exactly. I guess if we think about the budget as well, and about how you make money, if you make a movie for 200 million, and it costs 200 million, you have to do a lot more in order to make the money back. When you have a smaller budget, you know… So I feel it's a bit like that. People say, oh, you don't make as much money as an indie author sometimes, although a lot of people do make a lot more money. The point is that your costs are so much lower as well, so you can make more profit. In the end, it's about profit, right? Gretchen: Absolutely. You've been so smart to kind of create this audience who keeps wanting to come back for more. I'd love to be able to do that, to be able to cultivate an audience that knows where to find you, and is saying, what's next? Joanna: Well, I think that's definitely something you can do. Let's come back on the marketing because you said you hired a PR person. So what are some of the things that you're doing about book marketing? Anything you've brought over from the indie film promotion world? Gretchen: Well, podcasts have become so big as a means of reaching an audience that you maybe otherwise wouldn't reach. A crossover, if you will. We do a lot of that in the documentaries that we make, especially to reach an audience, to make people aware of it. Then with a lot of the docs that we do, we tour them. So it is reminding me of what I'm doing upcoming in Massachusetts and Seattle and hopefully down in DC, and I did here in Brooklyn, and will be doing in Manhattan. Just kind of independently showing people what it is. I cut a trailer for the book that shows people a lot of behind the scenes fun of putting together a movie. So that's a lot like a teaser to show people what's to come, right? What you're about to read about and what's fun about it. To be able to get that out on a website and use all those tools that we do in the filmmaking community, by creating an audience, by getting the digital aspects of things going. Then physically getting out there, and getting the word out, and listening to people, and doing the live Q and A's. Also, really listening to other people's journeys about what they're doing, because everything is copy, isn't it? Joanna: So you mentioned a tour there. So what are you actually doing with that? Have you booked venues, or what are you doing for that? Gretchen: Well, I'll be going out to Seattle in June, and I kind of connected with a lot of old friends who happen to be in Seattle. That will be like an audience. It's a theater. The International Film Festival there has their own venue there. So it's a connection with the local International Film Festival Seattle, which is a big, one. Big, big film festival. So that's a good opportunity for crossover, isn't it? When we're making a political film at Goldcrest, we're crossing over by connecting with the senators, with the Congress people in DC, and bringing them into the fold. Here I'm doing the same thing with the film world and the book world. I'm going up to Massachusetts to talk to a couple schools, including the school that I went to high school. They have a new initiative there that's like a trailblazer initiative to get students more involved in their future as they're in high school. So they're doing externships and they're learning about various careers. So I'll be going up there to speak with them, and I'm looking forward to that because that's just the kind of audience I love. Joanna: Oh, that's great. So you're basically sort of melding it with your existing work, which makes sense because of the topic of the book, and also using your network. I think people underestimate using your network for book marketing. Of course, it has to be done in an appropriate manner, but sounds like you're tapping into a lot of things from your film background. Gretchen: Absolutely, and it's hard to know when you are talking too much about the book. You don't want to overwhelm people with those stories, but I like to kind of bring people into the fold and make them a part of it. Joanna: Then we've got to get into the AI and technology, because in the epilogue of the book you say, “We make films differently now with more digital and technical support, and you can shoot a live action film in your pajamas, edit it, market it, and distribute it without leaving your apartment,” which I thought was fascinating. How has technology made things easier and cheaper? What do you think about the potential of AI? Gretchen: Oh, I think it's really exciting. AI has presented so many opportunities already. I think largely they will be positive, and there will be some that will be negative, but that's like any tool. We've seen the handwritten ink-to-paper evolve into a laptop, and that's been a tremendous change. I never would have been able to write this book without that. Then when it comes to filmmaking, there's the great democratization of making a film. As I say, somebody can do it on their own, virtually create a movie on their own. I've always liked the team aspect of it. AI probably means that could be getting slightly smaller because there are certain tools that can be employed in the editorial process. As we say, maybe 500 hours could be pared down a lot faster. The human element is always going to be necessary for telling stories. We're not going to be able to remove ourselves entirely, to me anyway, if the stories are compelling. Joanna: Well, and I don't think it's about removing us entirely. This is kind of the thing. People say, “Oh, it's an AI-generated thing,” and it's like, well, no, it never is. Or not until they're sentient in some way, and have their own ideas. These are our ideas and our vision, our creative vision, and then we use the tools to help us make the vision. What tools have you heard about that are being used in this democratization of film? Gretchen: There is a tool—and I'm not sure I'll know the names of all of these—but there is an editorial tool that will help you with a lot of sound editorial, with voices and being able to do a temp voiceover for someone. I know there's been a lot of controversy over that with regard to the Screen Actors Guild, but they will be protected is the idea. It could be a good temporary solution as you're just trying to get the film screened and approved by the studio, or what have you. There are editing tools that will cut back on the workflow process, and have already cut back on the workflow process. From getting the film in camera, all the way to the cutting room for what we call the dailies process. That's already being employed so much of it. Even just across being able to shoot, the cameras are now digital, the lights are a lot cheaper and a lot lighter. So even just like the physical aspect of being able to make a film has been simplified. If going in, you haven't fine-tuned your story, you haven't looked at all your options, did you run it past ChatGPT? Which isn't an option I had when I was writing this book—but is there an idea that might have come out of that that would have inspired eight more ideas that you could actually look to employ? I think that's the exciting part of it, is it will only elevate everybody's work. Joanna: I'm so glad you feel that way. I also agree. I think the more I use it, the more I feel I am getting better. I feel like the potential is so much more than it ever could have been. What did you use to make your trailer? Gretchen: Oh, I worked with an editor on that. An amazing woman named Jen Wolin. I'm on the board of New York Women in Film, and she cuts all our sizzles for the highlight reels for the muse honorees that we have each year. Joanna: That's good. I imagine you have all the contacts possibly needed. I made a trailer with RunwayML, which is a generative AI tool, which was a lot of fun. Did you use lots of photos and things from history? Gretchen: Yes. So I went back and I pulled all the behind the scenes work from each of the films that had them. We didn't always have that kind of crew shooting behind the scenes. It's something I really encourage filmmakers to get because they will regret it later. Even on the busiest day, or even the most mundane day, it's good to have a crew following you because that's going to be your memory of having made that film. I used a lot of photos from the set, a lot of images, and I did an interview as well. Joanna: Fantastic. Well, we'll link to those in the show notes. Where can people find you and your book online? Gretchen: Well, I have a website. It's GretchenMcGowan.com. It's G, R, E, T, C, H, E, N, M, C, G, O, W, A, N. So everything's there. It links to where you can buy the book online. It's available as an ebook, and hopefully someday soon it will be available as an audiobook, but not yet. Also at GoldcrestFilms.com. Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Gretchen. That was great. Gretchen: Thank you so much.The post Writing Memoir From A Life In Film With Gretchen McGowan first appeared on The Creative Penn.

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