The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers

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.

Discover innovative book marketing strategies that blend audio, video, and text for a successful launch. Dive into the thrilling first chapters of 'Death Valley,' narrated by an AI voice clone. Explore the transformative solitude of the desert through the eyes of protagonist Casey Thornton, as she navigates the beauty and danger of her new life. Delve into the dynamics of staff and celebrity guests at a luxury resort, revealing the complexities behind glamour. Experience a thought-provoking discussion on balancing safety with adventure in an exhilarating desert setting.

T.D. Donnelly, author of the thriller 'The Year of the Rabbit' and a seasoned screenwriter known for hits like 'Sahara' and 'Conan the Barbarian,' shares his insights on the writing journey. He explores the differences between screenwriting and novel writing, tackling industry challenges like ownership and creative control. Donnelly also discusses marketing strategies for screenplays and the allure of special edition books, alongside the transformative role of AI in publishing. Listeners are encouraged to engage with their creative projects and explore the evolving landscape of storytelling.

Kristopher Jansma, an award-winning author known for his insightful work on literary fiction, discusses transforming rough drafts into polished novels. He emphasizes the dangers of comparing initial versions to finished masterpieces and dismantles myths around the concept of genius. The conversation also addresses the emotional toll of publishing and the importance of perseverance in overcoming creative barriers. Jansma shares personal anecdotes, reminding writers that struggles are a path to growth and success.

How can writing help you through difficult times, whether that's a change you didn't anticipate or an experience of grief? How can you differentiate between writing for yourself vs. writing for publication? Karen Wyatt gives her tips. In the intro, Amazon opens up AI narration with Audible Virtual Voice on the KDP Dashboard [KDP Help]; Voice Technologies, Streaming And Subscription Audio In A Time Of Artificial Intelligence; Spotify announces short fiction publishing for indie authors [Spotify]; Audio for Authors: Audiobooks, Podcasting, and Voice Technologies — Joanna Penn; Writing for Audio First with Jules Horne; Writing for Audiobooks: Audio-first for Flow and Impact – Jules Horne. BookVault.app is now printing in Canada, as well as Australia, UK, and US. Plus, Measure your life by what you create: 50 by 50; and Reykjavik Art, Northern Lights, and The West Fjords: Iceland, Land of Fire and Ice; Books and Travel Podcast returns this week; Writing the Shadow on the Biz Book Broadcast with Liz Scully; ElevenLabs speech to text for dictation. Today's show is sponsored by Draft2Digital, self-publishing with support, where you can get free formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Just go to www.draft2digital.com to get started. This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn  Dr. Karen Wyatt is a retired hospice physician and bestselling author of books about death, loss, and grief. She's also the host of the End-of-Life University Podcast and an inspirational speaker. 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 Different types of grief that we deal with throughout life Why write about grief and end of life? Using writing to deal with the complex emotions around grief The role of control in grief Transforming personal writing into publication How spirituality plays a role in the grieving process How to approach writing about family members You can find Karen at EOLuniversity.com. Transcript of Interview with Karen Wyatt Joanna: Dr. Karen Wyatt is a retired hospice physician and bestselling author of books about death, loss, and grief. She's also the host of the End-of-Life University Podcast and an inspirational speaker. Today we're talking about her book, Stories from the Dark Night: Writing as a Tool for Grief. So welcome back to the show, Karen. Karen: Thank you, Joanna. I'm so excited to be talking to you once again. Joanna: Yes. Now, it's been a while, so first up— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing. Karen: Well, like so many of your guests that you interview here, I've always been interested in stories. I started writing stories when I was seven years old. I wrote a three act play when I was 10, which my school ended up producing. So I guess I could say I'm a published playwright, my one and only play. I've always loved writing down my thoughts and ideas and telling stories and writing them down. I kind of got waylaid in terms of writing by becoming a doctor. So I had a number of years there of intense schooling, and then I was a doctor and a wife and mother at the same time. I had very, very little time for writing. It was precious time if I ever could just sit down and jot down a little story that was in my head. Still, the creative juices kept flowing, as I know you've talked about. Like, just ideas, ideas, ideas every day for stories or things I wanted to write, but I always had to put that aside. I was just too busy. So I finally retired from medicine early, and I was a hospice physician for a number of years. I retired early so that I could write because I'd been gathering all these stories while I worked in hospice. Amazing, beautiful stories from patients I worked with. I just knew it's time for me now to shift into writing mode. I retired early 15 years ago, and I started writing then. I hadn't really thought about what it takes to publish a book, I didn't know that. I finally started delving into that, and through you and your podcast, I learned about independent publishing. I've been able to publish my books myself most of the time. Though, I worked once with a hybrid publisher and then most recently with Watkins Publishing from the UK. It's been a really fun journey for me of finally having a chance later in life to get into the writing that I started when I was seven years old. Joanna: That's wonderful. Just on being drawn to the darker side, I mean, obviously as a doctor, you could have gone into many different areas and ended up being a hospice physician, and— You're writing about end of life. Has that always been an interest? I mean, I guess I'm saying this from the perspective of someone, as you know, I have always thought about death. Like from a very young age, I remember thinking about death and dying. So it's always been on my mind. I wondered if that was true for you. Karen: I did have some interest in death and dying. A classmate of mine died when we were 16 years old, and that kind of really woke me up to the idea that, oh, my goodness, everyone dies, and you could die at any age. I started really contemplating my own mortality at 16. Like, you know what? Nothing's guaranteed. I could die at any time. So I will say death has been on my thoughts since a young age. Then early in my medical career, my father died by suicide, and I was really plunged into this whole world—and I call it my dark night of the soul, in a way—of grief after his death. This is what led me into working for hospice because I realized, even though I had thought about death, I didn't really know anything about it. I didn't know anything about grief, even though I was a doctor. I hadn't had any training in that area. So I started volunteering for hospice to help me understand what I was going through. What am I going through here as I'm grieving my father's death? Ultimately, I shifted my whole career to hospice because I found it was just a rich, very spiritual, sacred place to be. A sacred way to be a doctor with working with patients and families, and it was very powerful for me. So it was really grief itself that shifted my path as a doctor, initially. Then, again, as I said, I started gathering so many stories and learning so many things about this process of loss and how we navigate it and cope with it in life. I really felt inspired to start writing and talking and teaching about it because at that time, it seemed like a very taboo subject. I think it still is, in many ways. Joanna: It's so weird. You said there that as doctors, you didn't really get into the death side of things. It just seems so crazy to me because it happens to 100% of people, and it's like a physical process—obviously, much more than that. Why aren't doctors trained on death? Karen: It's so bizarre. I still can't wrap my head around why that is. It's partly because modern medicine focuses so much on curing illness and saving lives that death has become the enemy. So we don't want to think about that or talk about that because we don't want it to happen for our patients. It's ridiculous because it does happen. I think back to when a patient was approaching death in the hospital when we were in training, suddenly that patient was taken off our service. We didn't follow them anymore because, well, they weren't a good teaching tool now because they're going to die. We'll move on to the patients that we can cure because that's what we're here to learn about. It really doesn't make any sense, but it's part of why we have a problem with how we take care of people at the end of life. I think that's why I just felt inspired. I want to help do this differently, and that's why hospice was so appealing to me. Joanna: And why books and writing and talking about these things are so important. As you say, there's a lot of taboo, and perhaps even more taboo around the way your father died. Before we get into that, I just wanted us to talk about the word grief, because it feels like there are many forms of grief. It is not just if we are dying, or if our partner is dying, or our family is dying, or if someone is dying. What are some of the other ways that grief might come up for people? What might help them if they're feeling certain ways? Karen: I think it is important for us to recognize that — We feel grief whenever major changes take place in our life. I had a mom tell me she grieved when her child no longer used baby language. Like started talking and saying words normally, and they lost all the cute little expressions that their toddler used to say. When that was over with, she felt grief because it was a big change. Something shifted, and she lost something. So we can feel grief even in times of happiness, when good things are happening. If you think about it, life is one series of loss and change after another. So it makes sense, in a way, grief is kind of an emotion that's always present for us if we really look at it. Joanna: Is it a change that is out of our control, rather than something that we can control? I'm thinking, personally, I feel like when I went through menopause, I felt a lot of grief over losing a sense of who I was as a younger woman, I guess. Then I feel like a lot of anger, as we record this in 2025, there's a lot of political anger in different sides, and also anger around AI maybe taking people's jobs. All of these things are not choices that are made deliberately. They're things that are almost out of our control. How much does grief and loss of control go together? Karen: I think definitely. I mean, I think the way we cope with grief or navigate grief has a lot to do with control. If we have any sense that I can control my surroundings, I can change what I need to change, that gives us a little bit more resilience and more ability to deal with the losses that we experience. When it feels outside of our control and there's nothing we can do, I think that is the deeper form of grief that's very hard to manage. As you said, because it's associated with a lot of anger. From the ego level, especially like anger, how is it that all of this can happen to me and I can't do anything about it? Joanna: Well, let's come in to writing then. When these feelings overtake us and we really just don't know what we're doing— Why is writing so useful when it comes to grief? How has it helped you, in particular? Karen: Well, I think grief, as we already said, it can contain such a mixture of emotions. We typically think of grief as just being sadness over a loss, but as you pointed out, there's a lot of anger within grief, and guilt and regret, sometimes resentment. Sometimes there's even relief. There's sometimes a joy that's present within grief. It's a very complex situation with lots of emotions bubbling up all at once, and yet, we don't know what to do with all of that emotion. So writing gives us a place to express it, to ventilate the emotion, and put it down on paper. We sometimes hesitate to express verbally to other people all of these things that are going on with us, this mixture of emotion during grief, because other people don't necessarily understand it and may not want to listen to it. It's why writing is our place to communicate all of these crazy thoughts we have and confusing feelings that we have. It's a safe, non-judgmental place. We can just put it down on paper and validate ourselves that we're going through this difficult time. It doesn't always make sense, but we can express it at least. So we can give voice to what otherwise can be hidden or repressed inside of us. Joanna: So with your father, how did writing help you? Like was it just, “Oh, things are bad. I'm going to write this essay or this poem, and then suddenly I feel better.” Is that how it worked? Karen: No, not at all. Joanna: Obviously not! Karen: I mean, I didn't even think of the idea of writing itself. I didn't even recognize that that could be therapeutic in some way. At the time of my father's death, I happened to be reading Julia Cameron's book, The Artist's Way, where she talks about doing Morning Pages every day. I had been intrigued by that idea before of doing Morning Pages. I found I was waking up early every morning. I couldn't sleep, dealing with this insomnia. I was actually really busy, as I was a mom and a wife and a doctor. I was so busy, I felt like I don't even have time to deal with grief or to deal with my emotions during the day. I'm just busy having to do all these things. I would wake up at four in the morning and couldn't sleep, and I remembered Morning Pages. I started just getting up early every single morning and writing. Morning Pages, it's stream of consciousness writing, where you just write down anything that's in your head. Much of what I wrote down dealt with, “I'm angry, I feel guilty.” I dealt with all these confusing, conflicting emotions I felt inside around my father's death. I didn't even know for sure that was all happening inside until I started writing the Morning Pages, and it was all coming out of me. It gave me a place to just, as I said, to ventilate and release those emotions. It actually became a place where I was processing grief without even realizing it, every morning, writing those three pages of stream of consciousness. So that's how I began with that type of writing, and I highly recommend it. I don't know if you've ever done it. I'm sure you've read the book, The Artist's Way. Joanna: Oh, yes. I've always kind of been a journaller, but I don't do Morning Pages like every day. When I got divorced, my first husband left me, so it was out of my control. It was not my choice. The three journals that I have from that time are full of—and it's so repetitive. You know, there's no point in me reading it back. Maybe it's the same with you. It's like that is just raw emotion that every single day sounds exactly the same. There is this period where that just happens. For a period of time, you can't really get past those initial emotions in your outpouring. Karen: No. There's so much of it inside of us that needs to come out. That's what I find, that I'm writing the same thing every day. Julia Cameron mentions about writing these Morning Pages, it helps us eventually get out of our logic brain. Which, in grief, the logic brain, she calls it, is always trying to figure out why this happened. It's always trying to figure out an explanation. It needs an answer for all the questions. Once you can move past the logic brain, you actually awaken the creative side of your brain, which can start to express things more in symbols and stories start coming alive. The creative brain is actually figuring out, oh, this grief experience, this is interesting. How can I use that in a creative way to make something else? I think, for me, when I felt that shift happen, that's when I started to move into a more productive aspect of working through my grief. That's when I was really able to start processing it better and get past all these ruminating thoughts that just came over and over again. Joanna: I think that's what's interesting in your Stories from the Dark Night. It isn't just that stream of consciousness grief. In fact, it's not that at all. There's all kinds of different sorts of writing. Tell us what happened when you moved into that productive side of it, and what are the types of writing that came out? Karen: Well, I started writing whatever came to me, and I guess the Morning Pages opened that up a little bit. After doing that for months and months, one day a poem came into my head, and I just wrote it down, and it happened to be about my dad's death. Another day, a story came to mind that I wrote about. It seemed that everything I started writing, even though I didn't think it was related to my dad's death, ended up being about my dad's death in some way or another, symbolically or in some way or another. Gradually, I just started having these creative impulses to write some little thing. I would write down whatever came to me. I was still doing the Morning Pages every day, but at other times of day, something else would pop up for me. I would write a story, or sometimes it was an essay. Sometimes I read a guided writing prompt that actually really helped me dive deeper into a subject. Some of the prompts were as simple as someone said, “Write something about the word ‘leftovers' and what that means to you.” I'd think of the word leftovers, like how is that inspirational? And yet, I ended up writing a whole piece on leftovers. It was just being able to get into that creative part of my brain and writing whatever came to me. I also then went on to more intentional writing. So I started writing letters to my dad and expressing some things that I didn't get a chance to say before he died, expressing some of the deeper emotions that I felt around his death. That was very therapeutic as well. Joanna: On therapy, I think this is really interesting, because when my husband left—I'm very happily married people, if you're listening now, I am on my second marriage—but at that time, I didn't see a therapist. Even though we're doing a podcast, I'm not a talker. I didn't want to talk about my issues. Writing it down, I feel like writing all of that over the years it was, really, and sort of recovering, helped me heal. So I didn't need a therapist, in some way. Where's the balance for people between writing helping with healing and maybe needing to see a professional? Karen: I'm much like you. I'm not much of a talker. I'm not always wanting talk with another person or looking for that kind of external help. I'm much more internally oriented. So I want to dive into my own psyche. I want to look at that. I want to explore it for myself. I think for certain, whenever someone feels like they are just stuck and not getting anywhere and beginning to have very hurtful thoughts going through their minds, or thoughts of feeling hopeless and that they may never be able to move forward, never be able to find a way through the grief. Then they might need an outside person who can come and help them reflect. For me, it's like my journal felt like a therapist to me. I guess I was, in some ways, dialoguing with my higher self in the journal and serving as my own therapist. I could read back through what I wrote and see, oh, here's something I hadn't thought about before, but it's right there in what I just wrote. So this insight is there for me, but some people may not be able to do that. They may not be able to access that higher wisdom or a different perspective through writing alone. They may really benefit from talking to someone else. So I always encourage people to seek out counseling, find a therapist, especially if talking is beneficial for them. Joanna: I think the other thing there is—I mean, you mentioned insomnia earlier—and I do feel like there is a period of grief that is closer to mental illness, which insomnia doesn't help, obviously. At one point, I think, in the DSM, grief was actually a mental illness, considered to be very bad, but then it was recognized as a part of the human condition. So I guess, just to encourage people, if you're feeling like it is completely, completely mad, then sometimes that is normal. It's just a case of how long that goes on for. I guess, a bit like insomnia. You have to get that sorted out at some point. Karen: Yes, because at some point it becomes destructive to your physical health. If you find that you're not thriving, and that you feel, in fact, that you're falling apart in many ways, I think it's really good to get input from an outside person and get help for that. It's funny, grief reentered the DSM this past year. They created a new category, pathological grief, that they defined so that they could include severe grief. I think they realized, first of all, it was a mistake to say any kind of grief is a mental illness because it is actually a normal part of all of our lives. Then when they took it out, they realized, oh, but wait, some people actually do get into a severe state of grief for which they need help. They may need medications, they may need therapy and counseling. So they made up a new diagnosis and put that back in. Joanna: I'm glad you brought that up then, because I thought it had gone, and now it's back. So, of course there is a difference. I think also some religious traditions, there are periods of time and ways of addressing mourning and death. Where it's like for a certain amount of time you are expected to grieve, and then at a certain point of time you are expected to—not forget it all—but to move on with your life. It's almost like those rituals of death and dying can help. In fact, you're a spiritual person, and you do put a Matthew chapter five, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted,” into your book. How does a spiritual perspective help you in your life, in your writing, and for people who are grieving? Karen: It has been important to me, and it's one of the things I gained through my work, or deepened through my work in hospice. Observing people and families who were dealing with death in general, and how they all grappled with these universal concepts that I would say are not limited to any one religion, but actually present in all religions. Love and forgiveness and finding meaning and purpose in things. So I gravitated toward these spiritual concepts that, again, I'm not attached to any one religion, but I like the spiritual teachings and the concepts that are universal and apply to all of them. So those ended up being the things where I found the most comfort is being able to focus on love and just bringing more love into my life. Acting with love, through love, and finding ways to love myself even though I was feeling broken and in pain. Then forgiveness became especially powerful as well because I realized one thing that held me back in grieving my dad was not being able to recognize how angry I was at him and that I needed to forgive him for the choice he made to end his life. I was in denial of that for many years, and when I finally saw it like, oh, I'm hanging on to this really deep seated resentment toward him for the choice he made. I have to be able to forgive him, because for whatever reason, that's what he chose, and that's what his life came to. I'm hurting myself by not forgiving him. So that spiritual concept of forgiveness really changed everything for me. I work with that all the time now, remembering like, oh, don't hold on to grudges. Don't be resentful. Just get over it. Just find a way to forgive because holding on to that kind of anger can be really toxic. Joanna: Well, that is the other side of anger, isn't it? Anger is such a huge part of death and dying, no matter which side of it you're on. It's something I think about a lot. There's so much anger at the moment in the world, and I feel like some kind of forgiveness is so important because it is just so toxic when everything is angry all the time. I guess you would have seen that idea of a good death, where— There is acceptance of what's happening, as opposed to anger at what's happening. Karen: Yes, and I think the anger is normal and it has a place, so we need to accept it and embrace it. Yes, of course, we feel angry. Life didn't go the way we hoped it would, like we've lost all these things, but it doesn't serve us to stay stuck there if we can hold our anger, and then see a bigger picture beyond that. I guess that's the other thing, the spiritual perspective, for me, has become what I call it — The galaxy view of life. Where you step back and look at everything from a bigger perspective, like looking down on planet earth where we live. How does this experience I'm having fit into the cosmos, into everything that's happening here? How do I accept it as this is just part of life, of this vast mystery of life? I choose to move into curiosity sometimes, instead of anger. Like instead of doubling down and being angry about what's happening, being curious about how did this arise, and what will come of it. What will happen next? What will come from it? Then that puts me back into creative brain again. Once you're curious, you become creative, and you can find ways of making the best of the situation that you're in. Joanna: So we've talked a lot, I guess, about the writing we do for the self. You can put whatever you like in your journal, and it can be as repetitive as hell, and frankly, quite boring for anyone else to read. Then, obviously, you've published several books about death, and Stories From the Dark Night has personal writing, but it is not that repetitive original work, I guess. It's different. It's been transformed. So if people want to publish, obviously people listening are authors, how did you know when you were ready to share some of your writing about your dad and things that were difficult? How can people move from personal writing to writing for publication around these difficult topics? Karen: For me, I understood that I couldn't share this writing until I had clarity around it. I needed to be free of anger and blame. I understood a lot of the things I was writing early on were filled with those mixed emotions, but just ventilating anger and blaming other people, blaming everyone, blaming life. I realized that is not productive. I'm ventilating it. It's helpful to me to ventilate it. It's not productive for other people to read that. I want to get to that place of this higher view, where I'm not looking at it through the lens of anger or blame, I'm looking at it really more through the lens of love. How could talking about the pain that I experienced, is there a way that could be helpful to other people? How can I express that in a way that could foster healing and growth for someone else? That took me years to get to a place where I felt like I'm not writing out of anger. I'm not writing because I want to use my writing to hurt someone. If that makes sense to you, that's what I needed to get past. Making sure I had healed enough and I had enough clarity that I had the right reasons for putting my work out there. Then I chose very carefully what to share. There are lots of things I didn't share. In that book, I was trying to share examples of what I wrote. Not that the writing itself is great, but I wanted to share examples of different ways that I wrote that ended up helping with my grief, different stories or essays or poems that I wrote that were helpful to me, just to inspire other people to do their own writing. Joanna: There are writing prompts within the book in each chapter. So, I guess the main focus is —  When we write for ourselves, it is all about us. Then if we're going to publish something, it has to be a focus on the other person. Karen: Yes, that's primarily what I was feeling. How will this impact others? Can it be a positive thing, if I share it, that could inspire someone else and make them want to do their own writing and do their own work? Joanna: So also in the book, you talk about lifelines, and I thought it was a great term. So what do you mean by that, and— How might people hold on to lifelines when they're going through grief or other life changes? Karen: For me, when I was really deep in grief, I had this image of being caught up in a tsunami, in a sense. Just like these massive head waves, like rushing over me and feeling like I was drowning at times, but somehow I would always come to the surface. There was always something I could hold onto, just some little thing, like someone had thrown me a rope. It was keeping me afloat, and it was helping me find my way back to the shore. Instead of getting lost and thinking about, “oh, I'm so overwhelmed with grief,” to thinking, “oh, what was it yesterday that helped me get through?” Then I would remember, oh, I heard that amazing song on the radio, and that reminded me of something Dad and I did together. Or I would find something. I found just a little note that my dad wrote to me when I was in college. I found it in a box somewhere, and seeing his handwriting, it was so touching to me. It actually brought me joy. That little moment was like one of those lifelines. I started just paying attention to all kinds of things that were happening. Oh, and another thing was a bird song. My dad loved the Meadow Lark. We grew up in Wyoming, and it's the state bird of Wyoming. I would, from time to time, I would see a Meadow Lark or hear a Meadow Lark sing. I started watching for those little things, those little, tiny things. I'd be paying attention to the bird song, and I'd hear the Meadow Lark, and that was one of my life lines. Like, oh, there's dad. There's a connection with my dad. When I started searching for the lifelines every day and just noticing and paying attention, every day there was something. Every day there was some kind of reminder that helped me feel connected to him. Those little things I felt like were just enough to keep me afloat, when it seemed like, “Oh no, here comes the wave again. It's going to wash me under,” but I would know there will be something. There'll be something I can hang on to that will help me get afloat again. Joanna: It's interesting because, of course, specifics, like the sound of the Meadow Lark, are what also bring our writing alive. So it's not just bird song. You know, I heard a bird sing. It's always the specifics and paying attention. I guess, again, that gives you an external. You're looking outside of yourself, not just being stuck in your head. Which can, again, just help you keep going. Karen: Yes, definitely. Looking for all the little symbols and little signs outside of myself that reminded me of dad, sometimes even in a painful way. Oftentimes it was just poignant and sweet, the little reminders I would find. My dad sometimes smoked a pipe with this cherry-scented tobacco in it, and the smoke always smelled like cherries. One day I smelled that. Someone was smoking a pipe with that scent, and I smelled it, and it was like, wow. It was amazing being transported, in a way, back into my childhood and being next to my dad. It's incredible when I started paying attention just how many little reminders there were. For me, they were always very positive. Some people describe that they don't like having reminders because it makes them feel sadness over again, but for me, I always felt a mixture. I always felt the sweetness as well. Joanna: Yes, that bittersweet, I think is the word. What about your family and other people who knew your dad? One thing that people worry about sometimes if they publish work about family members, a memoir or something, is that other people feel differently about the situation. So what are your thoughts on that? Did other people read it? Was that not a concern? What are your recommendations for people? Karen: When I started writing about it, the thing I was most concerned was my mother and how she would feel about it. Initially, I told my mom I had written some stories and they have to do with my dad's death. She said to me, “I don't want to read them. Don't tell me anything about it. I don't want any of that. Don't talk about it or tell me anything.” Then I was really worried, like, oh no, if this is out in the world and other people comment to her, or other people read it, it will be upsetting to her. Then the very next day, she called me, and she said, “Read the story to me.” So she had to get to a place of comfort. For me, it was a real dilemma. Do I put this out in the world if my mom can't bear it, can't bear that this information is out there? So I read her the story, and the story was just my story of my experience. That's what I told her. I'm not writing about what I think my dad experienced. I'm writing about my experience with grief when I found out my dad died and what that was like. So I really did keep it true and honest to my own experience, without trying too much to conjecture on what my dad felt, or what anyone else felt, or anyone else's actions at that time. I kept to writing about what I experienced. Anyway, I read the story to her. We cried together. She loved it. It was actually this incredibly positive healing moment for the two of us because we hadn't been able to speak so deeply about our grief together in all these many years since my dad had died. That story is what unlocked it for us. Joanna: Oh, that's wonderful. Sometimes it can be a way to bring you together. I mean, again, we both said we're not really talkers. I sometimes feel like I wish my family could read my books, or would be interested in reading my books, so they might understand how I feel. I wouldn't be able to say it out loud, whereas I can say it in writing. It's funny because I used to write a lot of letters, like up until a decade ago, or maybe two decades ago now with email—gosh, time flies. I used to write so many letters in my teens, and then when I was backpacking in the early 2000s. I feel like maybe that's something we don't do so much anymore. Karen: Yes, that's so true. Like you, I think talking is difficult sometimes. To talk together about a painful subject, it's sometimes really hard to find the words. We're in our left brain all the time try, and we're censoring ourselves constantly when we're trying to talk. It's hard to have a really deep conversation with another person, but you can just write with honesty and integrity, and be real and raw on the page, and put it down. Again, for me, it's like I described before, I waited a long time before writing the story and then sharing that story. It was until I knew I did not write this to try to hurt someone, to try to blame my mom or hurt her, or my brother, or cause them any pain. I made sure what I was writing felt pure to me. So I think that's why it had a positive impact for her. Joanna: Well, we say we would rather write, but we both have podcasts, and as we come towards the end, I wanted to just ask about your End of Life University Podcast, which I've been on. So tell people about that and— What can people find on your End of Life University podcast? Karen: I started the podcast after publishing my first book, 7 Lessons for Living from the Dying, and realizing nobody really wants to buy a book about dying. People don't talk about this. Nobody wants to hear about it. I realized it's not enough to write a book, I have to do something else to try to change this conversation around these topics. So I got the idea then. I started listening to podcasts myself, and thought there needs to be a podcast on this subject. So I started doing interviews, and I discovered your podcast shortly after that. I loved your style. I love the fact that you have a more eclectic podcast, that you go in lots of different directions, and you're just interested in everything. So you have lots of different guests, a variety of guests with a variety of topics. I decided that's what I'm interested in, too. So I kind of modeled my podcast after yours. Inviting lots of different guests and having different types of conversations, thinking whatever we put out there should be helpful to someone. The more people are able to hear conversations about difficult topics, the more comfortable they may get with having these conversations themselves. So I've been doing it for, well, I actually started in 2013 with my first interviews back then. So it's been a while, like you. Not as long as you have been, but a while. Joanna: That's amazing. You do have so many different interesting topics and angles and different kinds of people. So has the reception been what you wanted? I mean, you've obviously been doing it for so long, it's still of value to you and your community. Karen: Yes. I don't really even know what I expected in the beginning. At first, I only attracted people who already worked for hospice, people who were already in the field and already had an interest. Over the years, I've attracted more and more people who are just being themselves introduced to grief and death in their own lives. I've received some amazing feedback and wonderful stories from people. One young man told me a friend of his was dying, and he drove across the country to be with his friend. He listened to the podcast all the way there in the car so that he would understand death and dying and grief. He said it made all the difference. He said, “I came to his bedside and I knew what to say, and I knew how to be with him and how to be comfortable with my own pain and grief because of all the interviews I heard.” It was like, oh, wow, that's why I'm doing this. That's why I'm doing this, so —  It's a resource for people in a time of need who need to learn about something and want information. So when I get feedback like that, it tells me, okay, this is why I'm doing it. It keeps me going, really, because it's actually hard doing a podcast. It's such hard work. Joanna: Wow, you gave me goosebumps there. I know people listening will be affected by that because every single person is going to be affected by grief at some point. Whether it's ourselves or other people, it's going to happen. So I absolutely recommend your podcast and your books. Tell people where they can find you and everything you do online. Karen: If they go to the website, it's EOLuniversity.com. EOL stands for end of life, but EOLuniversity.com. A link to the podcast is there, and to my books, and pretty much everything they need to know about me. Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Karen. That was great. Karen: Thank you, Joanna. I've really enjoyed it.The post Writing As A Tool For Grief And Dealing With Change With Karen Wyatt first appeared on The Creative Penn.

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