Stacey Gordon: Building dual identities. Fiction author. Tech leader.

Stacey Gordon wanted to be a novelist since she was a kid. She loved reading and writing. 

However, as an adult she was juggling a demanding career in tech, parenting, work travel, and life...with nothing left over for her own creative pursuits. 

Stacey shares how she gave herself the space for writing and creating without sitting down to type or put pen to paper. How she continued her path through Covid, putting down a few hundred words a day in a small shed outside her house. 

In this episode, she talks about how she’s building a life of a fiction writer. And she's now working on her fourth book. (And, yes, she still has a 9 - 5 job).

She reveals the power of community and the importance of protecting your creative space — especially in the early, vulnerable stages.

Patience and persistence really pays off: her book The Pearl Farmers is out this fall, and she’s building her author brand and helping other writers alongside her day job.

Maybe your creative dream is just an idea now — but with small steps, it can become real.

Website: https://www.staceygordonauthor.com/

Her book: thepearlfarmers.com

IG: @staceygordonauthor

EVOLUTION OR REVOLUTION is produced by Courtney Kaplan.

Website: Iconic Leadership Coaching.

Follow me on IG @iconic_owl

Connect on Linked in @courtney-kaplan 

Music by Midwest Got It (IG: midwestgotit)

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to Evolution or Revolution. Evolution or Revolution is a podcast about making big changes in your professional life. Our guests give us the insight scoop about how they did it. We share the origin stories, the wins, the challenges, and we get generous advice that can help you in your own life. I'm so glad you're here. I'm Courtney Kaplan. I'm a coach and I'm a founder of Iconic Leadership Coaching. And I've always been fascinated by these kinds of transformations. Let the stories in evolution or revolution inspire you. Open your mind and build confidence that you can make the changes that you need to make as well. Thanks for listening. Hi, it's me, Courtney Kaplan. I'm a coach bringing people through transitions, navigating them into their next professional chapter. And today I'm so excited because my guest is Stacy Gordon. Stacy grew up in the foothills of Southern Ohio and began her career as a trade journalist, covering the pearl and jewelry industries, including visiting farms all over Asia, companies around the world. And then for the past number of years, she's been working in marketing and user experience content design at Meta, Google, and most currently, she's the UX content design leader at ServiceNow. So she's got a deep background in tech. But the reason I wanted to talk with her today is because she's just published her debut novel novel, The Pearl Farmers. It's going to be published this fall and coming out this fall, and it's already gotten some great uh notice. So I'm really, really glad to have you here, Stacy.

SPEAKER_00 1:47

Thank you, Courtney. I was so excited to do this with you. Um Courtney and I have, we go way back. So it's it's you and I have been um on a journey of s since our days at uh Meta together. So um I'm really excited to do this with you.

SPEAKER_01 2:06

One of the gifts of doing this podcast is that I've had the true gift of knowing people for a long time across careers and seeing changes, seeing people evolve and change or completely go do something else. So I love sharing these, I love sharing these stories. And Stacy, one of the things I wanted to bring up first was as I was researching you and kind of looking, kind of pulling together your intro and your bio and stuff, I saw your bio on LinkedIn, which was maybe the part of Stacy Gordon that I knew, right? Some of the tech backgrounds, the titles, the companies, what you've done professionally in that space. And then, and it didn't talk really about your fiction writing, right? That wasn't right really part of it. Then I saw your bio on a publisher's website, and it talked about your background as a trade journalist, the jewelry, pearl industries, the things that were related to the Pearl Farmers, the book you just wrote, and a lot more about your writing background and nothing about your technology work and marketing work. And I bring that up because isn't it funny? So many of us think we have to have like a personal brand that's consistent across all platforms. And to see, of course, we're all multifaceted, but to see this beautiful mapping of a set of skills and presentation on LinkedIn and a different presentation on a publisher's website was really cool. Just, you know, as we're talking about evolution or revolution moments.

SPEAKER_00 3:48

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I, you know, my I feel like my career has has been a little bit of a roller coaster. I mean, I graduated from college in 1996 with a magazine journalism degree, which I don't even think exists anymore. And um, the web was becoming a thing, and I learned how to write HTML and it sort of took off from there. But who knew that I would go from a, you know, a trade journalist covering the jewelry industry, which was not even really my intention. I just wanted to work for a magazine, right? And I and have a byline. Like that was the goal. Um, but I I got um immersed into this sort of weird, fascinating industry, um, which really taught me so much about business and um just so much about um, you know, the world and and how people um work and and do business around the world and everything. Um, all the way to Silicon Valley, uh which is where I've been for the last like 10 um, well, no, really more than that. I mean like 25 years, um, and in tech for the last 10 or so. Um, and it has been it, but the but the common theme through that has been writing and um and content. And so um I do, I do sort of keep this, the worlds a little separate. Um, I do have a mystery series I'm working on that's set in Silicon Valley. So I think my my the worlds might merge a little bit more when that starts to you know come out because I I feel like that experience that I've had working in the valley and and um you know getting to know all the personalities and all the characters. All the characters and all of the behind-the-scenes things uh will definitely um merge with my professional life.

SPEAKER_01 5:45

I love it. One of the questions I had was have you always been writing stories or fiction alongside your job and alongside your work?

SPEAKER_00 5:55

So I've always wanted to. I wrote a lot of fiction as a young person. I actually have been probably writing fiction actively since I was like 10. I wrote a lot of fiction in school. Um, I wrote, I took a lot of creative writing classes in college, and I have always had a passion for it. And I really had this childhood dream of like, I'm gonna write novels someday. Like that's what I want to do. And then I got out of college and I started working. And I always found a way to not do that. So it was like I would work and then I would do freelance on the side. I wrote some nonfiction books about design, um, for because, you know, it was like a uh write, write the book for a fee kind of thing, and I needed the money. And so, you know, I it was always this sort of like, I'm gonna fill my time with other things. And I and I carried with me all of that time a longing for writing fiction and talked myself into really believing that like I couldn't do it.

SPEAKER_01 7:01

I think that your story is a common one in that there are a lot of people that are very creative or you know, artists or writers or whatever, and maybe you're allowed that creative exploration in college. Um, and then it's kind of time to get serious and get a job. And so many of us that ended up working in tech or in marketing or in advertising really have a real creative side of ourselves that we apply professionally in some kind of compromising way. And I hear so many people say, oh, yeah, one day I'd like to write a book, or it'd be really cool to make a movie. I've started a screenplay, but I never finished it. So part of the reason I was excited to talk to you is that you've done it. You've kind of crossed into finishing um a fiction book, which I also think is different because to your point, a lot of people get that opportunity to write a nonfiction instructional manual or, you know, how to. There's a lot of those guides that I see written or published by people in the industry. I'm curious to know how you found the time to say, okay, actually I want to write fiction, explore this, and have the time, make the time, carve out the time to do that. And I'll get to that in a second. Okay. Because I think the other stumbling block for so many of us is these jobs are demanding. Yeah. Right? When you're working in tech, it's no joke. You're traveling, you're working a lot of hours, you're always on. There's not a lot of creative juice in the tank. I mean, did you experience that?

SPEAKER_00 8:36

Oh God, yes. Plus, I had a small child. Um backing up before I got into full-time tech, I I had my own business for um seven years. I was a consultant and I build it into a little boutique agency. And I also did an MBA during that time. Um, and I had a small child, and I was, you know, one of those um obsessive volunteers at the school. I mean, I I like filled my my plate to the max, and it was overflowing. And I I didn't have time for anything creative um for all of those years. And um then I joined what at the time was Facebook. I had the, we had the long commute, right? We were through the shuttle every day, and I would get home and I'd be exhausted and then have to like take care of my family. And so yeah, it was, I mean, I I couldn't imagine trying to do something like this. Um but I was working on it. I mean, I had I the idea for the Pearl Farmers came to me in 2010. When which was before I even started working at Facebook. I started at Facebook in 2015. So I wrote the beginning of the book in 2010. And then I would like pick away at it, but I mean, I maybe wrote three chapters. But I think all the time. Yeah, I thought about it all the time.

SPEAKER_01 10:04

Because of course people have ideas of and maybe even have a couple chapters or whatever, and then they think, oh, well, that'll never get, I'm never gonna have that's I never finished it. That's another unfinished project on my plate or whatever. In the Bay Area, there are a lot of people that live in San Francisco or Oakland, and a lot of the tech companies are about, I would say, an hour south. And so they have you may have heard of the shuttle buses that kind of pick people up and take them down to work, but in the morning commute hours, those commutes are hour and 15 minutes, hour and 20 minutes. There's an accident, it's closer to hour and 45, two hours. Yeah. So that's twice. This is before work from home and all of that. So that was twice a day getting on a bus for an hour and 15, hour and 20 minutes there and back. Yeah. And you might even say, oh wow, what a great time to start writing your novel on the bus. Those it wasn't, I never found it easy to do anything on those. I mean, you know, you're it's like writing on a boat. Uh, you don't want to write.

SPEAKER_00 11:06

It was a little bit, it was also, um, I mean, you're working because the jobs were so demanding. And so if you were getting on a bus early enough to actually get home in time for dinner, that meant you were cutting off the end of your day, which meant you were messaging, emailing, doing, you know, catching up on all the work you couldn't do because of all the meetings. Um, I mean, it was impossible. There was just no way to even think about it. But what I think about now, Courtney, is I would go on these long hikes up in the Oakland Hills. Um, and I I think about it now every time I go on a hike there because that's where that novel worked itself out. And so I would go on these hikes alone and I would think about the book. What do I want the characters, you know, to be to be? Like who are they? What are their problems? How do they all come together? It's a multi-point point of view book about three sisters. And so I was thinking about, you know, the sisters and their lives. And I spent years thinking about that book on hikes and walks and probably other times. Um, but I didn't, I wasn't writing it.

SPEAKER_01 12:17

That's amazing because I think also we think if I have to do a creative effort, my write a screenplay, write my book, write a short story, I better have my booty in a chair typing out brilliant things. And to know that there are other ways to develop and further the idea in your imagination before putting pen to paper, so to speak. That's wild.

SPEAKER_00 12:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:43

So what finally happened, honestly, is COVID. So um I left Facebook in 2019. I started working for Google and I was traveling constantly for Google. I was probably in New York once a month for a week at a time. And again, you think like, oh, what great time to work in the hotel room. But no, I mean, long days, exhausting, spending time with people. I'm a I'm a super duper introvert. So I would just go and crash at the end of the night. There was no way to write a novel. Um, and I think it was a combination of COVID shut all of that down. Um, and so all of a sudden, all of the things that I had been like channeling my energy into were gone. We were stuck at home. I um I should probably just um say at this point, and we can talk about this more if you're interested, is I just got diagnosed last year with ADHD, which explains everything about my life and about this whole story that I'm talking talking to you about. But uh one of the things uh about that um condition is that I have to have a lot of things going on to think about. And, you know, I like to juggle a lot of plates and have a lot of projects. And so, but then also I have a hard time sitting down and committing to any of them. So it's the the you know, that sort of like irony. And so um when COVID hit, it was also coinciding with I started therapy again and um just before COVID, coincidentally. And so I think the combo of I had this this novel was like a little dirty secret. I didn't tell anybody that I was thinking about it or working on it. My husband knew, but like it was really just kind of a you know, a dream. And um I had a little tiny, we I turned a potting shed into like a little tiny office outside my house. And I started going out for at first, it was just go out for like, you know, write three pages a day, I think is the the commitment I made to myself. It's like just write three pages a day. And um I can't I thought back to the book uh Bird by Bird by Anne Lamont. Yeah, and how she talks about the shitty first draft, just write a shitty first draft. So I gave myself permission to write the shittiest first draft I could possibly write. I was like, just make it bad, but just make it like get it out there. And so um, I think that helped. So I was trying to really do a little bit every day and just telling myself the story. It's like just get it out there, get it out of your brain. Um, don't look at it, don't read it, don't like think too much about it, just write it. And at the same time, I was having these conversations with my therapist. I finally admitted to her, you know, I'm trying to write a novel, but I don't feel like I can call myself an author. And that was where it started to shift of her saying, but you are writing and you are an author, and you are doing this. And, you know, maybe you need to give yourself more credit. Um, and so that's been a whole journey, but like that's how it started.

SPEAKER_01 16:10

I have so many questions these days. Because first of all, you're still working full time, right? I was, yeah. So it's not, it's not, there was no sabbatical or no more work. You're still working full time.

SPEAKER_00 16:24

And you're my team at Google was responsible for I worked on like in the internal tools team that supported all Googlers with all of the software and the hardware that they needed to do their jobs. And we had to send 300,000 people home in a week to get back up and running, including engineers with their special setups and everything. And so it was a massive communications effort. And my team was like spearheading all of that. And so um it was really, I mean, I wasn't just sitting around twiddling my thumbs.

SPEAKER_01 16:58

Right. So the three pages a day was like what you could manage, but you can't manage. So my question about not telling anyone that you were writing the book, um, tell me about that decision. Because I think so often there is some trickiness in telling someone, I'm starting a podcast, I've written a little bit of a screenplay, I think I might write a novel. What are your thoughts on telling, not telling, and your decision?

SPEAKER_00 17:24

I think that I mean, this I've progressed since then because I was in my 40s at this time. Um, and I'm I am definitely a person who's always worried about what other people thought and um have always been like a people pleaser. Um I'm 52 now and I don't do that as much anymore. But back then I think I was I was really worried about sounding silly, you know. You know, I think that it's like you sometimes, you know, you hear people say, like, oh, I want to write a novel. And and I think that I always assume that people are just kind of like, yeah, right. Um, or you know, or you'll write it and it will be bad. Like I think that everybody just sort of jumps to that conclusion. And so I um and I didn't know if it was gonna be good or not. Um and that was the other thing is like I didn't believe in myself. And I think that's hard because it's like when you're first starting out, I know now that I had no idea what I was doing. Uh, you know, writing a novel is really hard. And um there's a there's an art to it, and and I didn't take the time to like stop and read all the books and figure it out. I just wrote it and then went back and figured it out later. And so I didn't want to tell anybody because I was like, this is first of all, probably never going to go anywhere, and I'm never gonna finish it. And then if I do finish it, how do I know that it's any good?

SPEAKER_01 18:55

Yeah. Well, it's kind of an interesting mix there because on one hand, there's um, I don't want to say hiding, but there's something that was like a secret. Like, I'm not gonna tell anybody because what if it's bad? What if I don't finish? I don't even know what I'm doing. And on the other hand, I do believe that people need creative, kind of sacred space where you don't have to be accountable to everybody and telling everybody your business and sharing early drafts. Like you really need to protect those early moments of some creative idea or some creative expression of yourself because it's just so easy for people to say something careless and kind of trample right over. Who do you think you are? A novel, really? Yeah. Whatever it is, like those little offhand comments can like smoosh and shut you right down. So I think it's wise to not really feel like you need to broadcast, make a re Instagram reel, tell everybody at the family reunion, whatever, but keep things under wraps for as long as you want.

SPEAKER_00 19:58

Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I think, you know, now I'm working on my fourth book now, and I have a crit a critique group, um, two women who I found through a writing group, and we are sharing first drafts, chapters of first drafts with each other. And it is a very vulnerable, scary thing to do that because my first drafts are they're better than they were the first time, but they're still shitty.

SPEAKER_01 20:28

But you have a supportive group with appropriate rules in place or agreements in place of how you treat the material.

SPEAKER_00 20:38

That's right. And we trust each other and we are supportive, but also giving each other constructive feedback to make the second draft better. Yeah. Um, but I I would not do that with anybody. And um, I still keep a lot of my first drafts very under wraps. I don't necessarily talk to people about what I'm working on because especially people who aren't creatives.

SPEAKER_01 21:00

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 21:01

Um, because I get a lot of raised eyebrows, or there's a lot of like, do you really think you're gonna do this? Is this really a thing? Like, because people just don't understand, but that's okay because not everybody has to understand.

SPEAKER_01 21:15

So, okay, so you you're working full time, you're going on hikes, you're thinking about the novel. This idea came in, you know, long, long time ago, and you've kind of been holding it under wraps a bit. COVID starts, you're writing three pages a day. You have, I mean, all of us had all of our plans canceled. You have some time to kind of work on this and chip away at it, still at your job full time. And at that point, um, your daughter's a little older too, right? She's not young, a young child. So you're in a different way. Late middle school.

unknown 21:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:47

Late m middle school. Still a lot of mothering is going on. Still a lot.

SPEAKER_00 21:50

Yeah. Especially during COVID. Yes. You know. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And and, you know, I I should also mention we um She was obviously doing full-time school at home. And we decided to sell our house in the middle of all of it. And so we sold our house, moved out, and moved in with my in-laws for six months. So I was writing this book while working full-time, while mothering through cover COVID, and while living with my in-laws. In a house that was not meant for five people. So um there was a lot going on. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:29

Wow. Wow. That is a lot. It's a lot. So that's a lot. And so you what happens next? You finish your book, you decide it's a finished book, you edit it, you find an editor. I know there's so many ways to go about this, and I don't, we don't need to dive into all the particulars and options, but I'm kind of curious about when did you say I've finished my book?

SPEAKER_00 22:51

Okay. So this was also like, this was like the next step of the journey. Um, and I will tell you that I wrote the book, it was it was 200,000 words. I mean, it was long and very bloated and very, you know, just like it, I'm, but then, and so I basically printed it out and I like put it in the proverbial drawer for a few months. Wow. And then I got it out and I read it. And I was like, because I just was, I was dreading. I was like, oh, how bad is this gonna be? And then I got it out and I read it, and I'm like, this is actually not bad. There are parts of it that I really love. And I mean, Courtney, I can tell you that I remember the very last chapter that I wrote. I remember like exactly where I was when I wrote it, and it was like a Saturday afternoon, and I said to my husband, I'm gonna go write, I'm gonna go write the last chapter of the book. And I'm I was like sitting in our office at our house in Oakland, like crying because I loved the last chapter so much, and it just was like such a perfect ending. I I actually really didn't change the ending much from the first draft. So I it just felt like a perfect ending to this journey, but then that's just the beginning. And so um, without going into a lot of detail, it was long, it was, I had no, I didn't really know anything about structure or you know what makes a novel good. And so I kind of like, I think I sat on it for a little while and I wasn't really sure. And I I want to just give a shout out um to a mutual friend of ours, Frank Marquart, who was an old friend of mine, somebody uh you and I worked with at Facebook, uh, and is always just such a genius about um some of these like problems. And I was having coffee with him and I started telling him, I confessed to him, like I wrote a novel, and uh I don't know if it's any good. And I and he was like, Stacey, you know, we work in tech and we make like decent money. Why don't you just like hire somebody to read it and tell you if it's good?

SPEAKER_01 25:01

And I'm like, Yeah, I could do that. First of all, I love that you confess it like it's like a dark secret. Like, oh god, I have to tell you something. I wrote a novel. Love that. And then, yes, we are so slow to ask for help. I mean, God, me too, right? When it's suddenly like, just pay someone to edit it, just pay someone to take a look at it. There's tons of people that are super talented that do that stuff all day long that just kind of like leapfrog you to the next.

SPEAKER_00 25:29

Yeah, it hadn't even occurred to me. It was actually really the beginning of a whole practice that I have built since then of like, I'm gonna I'm gonna surround myself with the right people to help me get from one step to the other. And that, and I just told Frank recently that conversation I had with you all those years ago was the beginning for me. And he didn't even remember the conversation. So it wasn't the way it goes. Yeah. It was so meaningful. So um, what I did was I had taken a writing, it was like not really a class, but I was part of this like writing group um many years ago. It was a woman named Erica Lutz, um, who used to live in Oakland, and she um is a very well-known writing coach and was a big part of the East Bay writing community, is a novelist herself. And um, and so I rich she I trusted her. And so I reached out and I said, Can I pay you to do a developmental edit on this? And just basically, I need you to read it and tell me if it's any good. Should I just like put it away and never look at it again? And she did. She read it and she was so encouraging. She's like, I love it, it's amazing, it's so good, it's a little bit baggy in the middle. And so she gave me a lot of feedback about, and so that was kind of the beginning. And then I basically I worked on on it for a long time. I mean, I I probably rewrote it um, I don't know, 10 times or something. And I got a lot of feedback on it along the way. I mean, I I shared it with other critique partners. I um I don't know, I went, I got a I got some readers who gave me feedback on the actual content of it. I mean, I I went through a lot of revisions um until I got to the final.

SPEAKER_01 27:18

One of the things I want to mark about this conversation is the tenacity. This tenacity of sticking with your uh original idea, building on it on the walks, committing to writing three pages a day. You've got a 200,000-page thing, and then you start a whole new journey to figure out what do I do with this. This and rewriting 10 times, rewriting twice would be a lot. Rewriting 10 times, workshopping this, working with this material, it takes so much tenacity and ability to stick with something. And I want to really highlight that in this podcast because so many listeners who might be beating themselves up for failing, dropping the ball, starting a million things and not finishing, whatever it is, to really know tenacity and kind of getting back at it is part of the evolution, part of the revolution that we have to go through. And so many of my guests, no matter what they've done, um the common thread is like this tenacity. They kept exploring, kept chipping away, kept working. And we're having an hour-long conversation about something that took 10 years or 15 years or you know, a lot of years in the making. And I think that that always doesn't come across when people are watching social media, hearing the highlights of like, hey, I published this. Let's celebrate amazing milestones that should be celebrated. But the amount of work and tenacity and sticking with something, picking it back up, we don't really look at that side of it. So thanks for sharing that finishing the book and getting saying, hey, I wrote my last chapter, that is like 5% of the journey done. There's still so much more to go. I know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:02

Yeah. And I mean, I definitely will say that there I had many, many, many low points where I almost just walked away from it. You know, I I queried it for a long time. And for the people listening who don't know what that means, just a super quick explanation. So if you want to get traditionally published by one of the big five publishing companies, you have to find a literary agent first. And that involves like writing a query letter about your book and basically pitching the project to them and getting them to see if it's a fit for their list. And um, it is the it's the most demoralizing thing in the world. I mean, if you get on any kind of like author community on social media right now, everybody is just like bemoaning this process because it's not just even rejections, like half the time you're getting ghosted and you're kind of like, you know, to am I worthy? Like maybe I should just stop doing this. And so um it was disheartening. Of course, I went into it absolutely knowing nothing. So I was doing everything wrong. Um, but I think the the points that kept me coming back to it, first of all, was I was getting a lot of different people to read it. And, you know, the some of the advice is like when you're writing a novel or you're writing anything, like don't let your friends and family read it because they're only going to give you positive feedback. Right. And that's fair. I pretty much like adhere to that. But I did my book, my book group really wanted to read it. And so I let my book group read it. And I was kind of like, you guys, I want you to be as brutal as you can. Like treat this like any other book we would be reading. Like be honest. And um, my book group loved it. And and I sh I think they loved it in part because they love me and we've known each other for a long time. I don't think they were being nice. I think they genuinely loved it, but I think they loved it in part because I wrote it. But I but it meant a lot to me because I was like, people, there are people reading this book who really love it. And I felt like every time I would give it to somebody, obviously they'd have feedback or they'd say, like, this isn't working or this isn't working. But overall, I was hearing from people that that it was really resonating with them. And I thought, this is all I care about. Like, I don't, I I want to read, I want to write books that people want to read. It doesn't have to be, I don't have to be Colleen Hoover, I don't have to be like, you know, the most popular author in the world in order to feel successful. Like I just want to write books that people like to read. And and so that kept me going.

SPEAKER_01 31:48

Yeah. To have your book in your mind now on paper, now people reading it and giving you feedback, that's gotta be hugely satisfying.

SPEAKER_00 31:57

It was it was scary and it was satisfying. I'm about to embark on the next chapter, which is like it's going out in the world and there are gonna be a lot of people who don't like it.

SPEAKER_02 32:06

Right.

SPEAKER_00 32:07

And so I'm trying to prepare myself for that. Um, and I think that I think at this point it's sort of like as soon as this baby is out in the world, it is no longer my responsibility to worry about how other people receive it. And so I'm trying to sort of get that, get myself into that mindset.

SPEAKER_01 32:26

So um I I in part of my research, I looked at your website, Stacy Gordon Author, or um I'll include the URL in the show notes if people want to see Stacy's work. You've got a blog, you've got your books, you've got articles, you've got stuff. What was it like to shift your identity from someone who is writing to an author or a writer or writing a separate bio that doesn't refer to any of your other professional success and experience? Was that a moment or did it just happen?

SPEAKER_00 32:57

It's been a little bit of a moment. I mean, I I feel like, first of all, it's just something I knew I had to do because building the platform is such a really big part of publishing a book. And I do come from a marketing background. So I know the basics. It's like you've got to have a website, you've got to have social, you've got, you know, you've got to have people like interested in your quote unquote brand. And um, so I mean, I think that was that was something that I built a couple of years ago because I knew that this or I hoped that this was all coming. It was coming, yeah. It was coming. Um, but I think it's also just been um, it's been fun to play around with that brand and like what's my voice beyond just the fiction? Like, what do I have to say about my journey and my writing? What how can I help other people? Um, I think Courtney, um, my favorite part about all of this is that about a year ago, I took myself to a coffee shop and I said, I'm gonna create a plan for how to build a proper writing practice, which means working on multiple projects at a time, having a long-term roadmap. It's almost like creating a product, right? And it's amazing. Yeah. Having a long-term roadmap, having multiple things in flight, having like a whole set of goals and a plan toward achieving those goals. But a big part of that has also been about creating community and like giving back to the writing community. And so I'm I'm doing that on a couple of different levels. We have a really active writing community here in Alameda, um, where I live now. And um, I'm gonna give a shout out. It's called To Live and Write. It's actually no longer just an Alameda group. So um there's an online presence that basically anybody can be part of. Um, but there's a woman named Bronwyn Emery who um just talk about tenacity. I mean, this woman is just every day there's some way to like engage with other writers, do a write-in, do a late night write, come to a mini retreat. And and she had a um um, she used to host these things called Alameda Shorts at the Books Inc. on Park Street in downtown Alameda. And I submitted a piece and I got accepted. It's a really big deal. This was just like a year ago, year and a half ago. I was like, oh my gosh, my thing got accepted. And I went and I read and people clapped, and um, I that was that was it for me. I was like, this is what I want to do forever, you know. And so um I have been I've gotten really involved in that community. I have my crit group. I've been thinking about how do I give back to the author community online and um talk about my journey. And so that's what I'm actually doing on my Substack is like, what am I learning along the way? What am I thinking about? I'm very um I'm very candid about my whole like thought process. And and so that's what I'm basically trying to do right now, and we'll see where it goes.

SPEAKER_01 36:08

I love it. I mean, what I'm hearing is a few things. One, as you're stepping into this identity of an author, there's a whole world out there of support, editors, writing groups, you know, all kinds of people that are there also interested in this world. And that in itself must be incredibly exciting and validating to be able to kind of geek out with your people that are doing the same.

SPEAKER_00 36:32

It really is. It really is. And honestly, switching back over to the sort of professional identity for a little while, like um our friend, our mutual friend Frank, and a few others of us, um, back when content strategy was starting to become a thing, we started a meetup group and then and became this whole community here in the in the San Francisco area. And there were there was a big online community, always has been. And um, I just think that it is so rewarding to spend time with like-minded people who are thinking about the same things, who are going through the same struggles, um, and to just support each other and um to learn from each other. It this is a very lonely proceed.

unknown 37:19

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 37:20

And not a lot of people understand it. You know, I mean, I can't talk to my parents are excited for me, but I go to visit my dad and he's like, Why are you on your laptop all the time? And I'm like, Because I can't stop.

unknown 37:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:32

I love it so much. Okay, I was gonna say, in a good way, or is it just consuming? In a good way. And it, you know, and it's like I have some downtime at my dad's house, and so I'm gonna work on editing a manuscript or whatever, and it's not a bad thing. Um, and my dad understands because he's the same way about other things, but it's I think that it's the the other writers who just who really get it.

SPEAKER_01 37:55

Yeah, absolutely. Or the other whoever, whatever you're pursuing. Yeah. There's groups of people for whatever you want to pursue that love to talk about the intricacies and the process. And I also really appreciate that you said you had to step back and kind of say, this isn't a one and done. Okay, I got this book done now, I now back to my old identity. This is a new identity where you're contributing to the community. You found multiple ways to engage in this community. You've got a plan for yourself over the long run. Speaking with you right now, I can see and feel that you're very this is a very exciting, energy-giving, life-giving pursuit that this is giving back a lot to your own life as well.

SPEAKER_00 38:39

It really is. It really is. Um, and it has coincided also with being an empty nester. So my daughter went to college two years ago. I have a lot more time now. And a lot, and you know, and I work from home. My knee job, I have a I don't have a commute. Um, I have a job that's pretty nine to five. And so I get up early in the mornings and work on it. I work on it after work. Um, I I tr my biggest challenge right now is making sure I'm not working too much. Um, because I because I also, you know, I have been through burnout. I don't want that to happen with this. I I never ever want to get to the point with this writing journey or whatever we're calling this that I'm burned out. So I'm trying to really be careful.

SPEAKER_01 39:25

So it's really interesting that there's some different life conditions you have in play right now. Um, definitely uh Empty Nest is a whole new chapter in itself. And um, to have a professional role that's a little bit different without the commute, without a lot of travel or a lot of the stuff. So with that in mind, Stacy, if there's someone listening out there, I know there is, who is has a creative dream of some kind. They want to write, they want to write a screenplay, they want to write poems, they want to make a short film, they whatever the heck it is. What are your thoughts or what what advice might you have for them to help them get started or um kind of inner integrate this part, this creative part of themselves into their life?

SPEAKER_00 40:16

So my advice is show up regularly, um, do it regularly. It doesn't have to be every day, but car belt time, even if it's just a half hour. Like I had a a friend who is a very prolific writer of fantasy novels, give me some advice at the very beginning of this. She said, if you write a hundred words today, it's a hundred more than you had yesterday. And it's it sounds so obvious, but to me it was like, oh right. It adds up over time. And then it becomes easier to write a hundred words. So you write 200 words, and then eventually you're writing a thousand words, which is right now it's kind of my goal on each of my projects is I try to write a thousand words on each book I'm working on a day.

SPEAKER_02 41:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:04

Um, and also I should mention, I'm not writing first drafts of multiple books. I'm working on like a first draft of one book and editing another. But anyway, the point being, just show up and do something. Even if you're just if even if you just carve out a half hour to think about it or write a paragraph and don't worry about whether it's good and don't self-edit. Just do it. Um, especially if you're writing, tell it, tell yours or you know, tell yourself the story first. Like it it's about almost like mining for the gold or mining for the diamond, to use my jewelry industry metaphor. Um, like you have to dig through a lot of dirt to get to it. And so it's like that just carving out that time to just think about it, like focus on it. Um, and do it regularly. Like do it, you know, make an appointment with yourself to do it three times a week or sit down for a couple hours on weekends. Um, but just try to do it regularly. So that's like the number one thing. And then I think that it's just about like um ed like starting to read, you know, about the art of what you're trying to do. Um I have a ton of books. I've taken some courses, I learned something from each one, but then I also try to not let it stymie me. And and it's not like, oh, I have to be perfect before I can start this. But I I try to just apply everything I'm learning to whatever I'm working on so that um I'm you know, I'm getting better a little bit better all the time. Um, but I'm not like waiting until I'm really good. Cause there's no way to get better at it and unless you just do it.

unknown 42:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:49

And I also like what your therapist said at the beginning, when, you know, the writing was such a secret that actually like give yourself a little credit. I feel like so often in these endeavors, we won't even give ourselves a chance. We just shut it down so early. When even if you're really busy and um, you know, your job is too busy to really sit down and do your creative thing, to think about it, to dream about it, to aerate it a little bit, keep it alive, at least in thought, um, until you have the time to sit down and do a a bit of project or take a weekend workshop or whatever it is you can do to integrate it more into your life. But so often we just stop ourselves of like, it's never gonna happen. I don't have time for any of that. Yeah. Um, and over invest in our professional identities at a paid job. Um, in my mind, that happens a lot. It sure does.

SPEAKER_00 43:50

Yeah. And I think that um I did that for my entire career. I mean, my job, my work was my identity. Um, even when I had a child. I think that was true. And I mean, I especially when I had my own business, I was my job, I was my work. Um I think um that's changing for me because I think of age. Like I think the late 40s were a big shift for me in that regard. Um, and I just uh I just don't identify with my career as much anymore. Like there's so much more that's important to me. I mean, I like I am grateful for my job.

unknown 44:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:30

And you you've achieved a lot professionally.

SPEAKER_01 44:32

Like you've kind of done it.

SPEAKER_00 44:34

Yeah. And I mean, I think I've done it. I, you know, I hit a I hit a moment a couple years ago where I'm kind of like, I don't really want to get more senior. I'm, you know, working in corporate, there's a ladder, right? And I'm I'm at that threshold of like, if I go higher than this, which I don't expect to ever, but if I become like a VP or something, that's it. That's my life. I mean, we the the VPs I work with work so hard and all the time. And they think about they think and eat and sleep work. And I just don't want that for myself.

SPEAKER_01 45:10

No, I mean, executives are a different breed, and we don't really talk about that explicitly, but it is a real commitment of your life to to your profession. And everyone's like kind of climbing, hoping that they get to a certain level, but we don't often think about what's the right fit for what you want in your life.

unknown 45:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:30

And that's a big revelation. Um, because you know, I I I think you get into the corporate world and you do, you're like higher, higher, higher. Like, I want a promotion, I want this, I want this. And um, even when I was at Google, there was this clamoring to become a director. Everybody wanted to be a director. And finally I had uh a boss who was like, Cece, you don't want to be a director. He was like, trust me.

unknown 45:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:57

And I think that was quite that was also like a moment where I'm like, actually, you're right. I really don't.

SPEAKER_01 46:03

Well, if you're ambitious and you only have one area where you're putting all your life energy, right? That's where it's going.

SPEAKER_00 46:12

But so this is how I'm channeling that energy. And and to be really honest, it's like, you know, I'm 52 and I'm not close to being ready to retire. But the dream is to be able to do this fiction writing full time. Um, and so I am thinking a lot about, you know, how can I, or maybe it's not full-time, but it's maybe this plus some freelancing or something, so that I just don't have to do that rigid nine to five corporate life forever. And um, that might be several years away, but um, I'm thinking already about, you know, I'm writing in different genres. And so I'll have a mystery series and I have a romance coming at, you know, that I'm working on. And so like I have all these different projects. And so what would it look like to have this sort of publishing empire?

unknown 47:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:04

Of different titles and different, and maybe even different identities if I publish under pen names and stuff. And so um there are a lot of people who are making a living doing that. Um, and I such a beautiful idea.

SPEAKER_01 47:19

Such a beautiful illustration of opening up new possibilities for your future. Yeah. Right? Like a lot of times we don't get really imaginative of what else is possible and how else your writing can express itself instead of like, oh, the next Stacy Gordon novel is here, the next Stacy Gordon. It's like it could go all kinds of different directions and to explore that and think long term where you want to kind of direct your ship there is it has such huge payoff, I think. So that's another thing I would encourage people to think about. If you've got these little inklings of ideas, what does that look like expressed over 10, 15, 20 years? Maybe you aren't going to publish your book in one calendar year, but over 10, 15, 20 years, you could be in a completely different life.

SPEAKER_00 48:15

I want to second that. Um, I see a lot of memes because now I'm on, you know, I'm basically on author gram. So I get all the author like inspiration memes. And I keep seeing one that comes up that's something like, you know, you a year ago would be amazed at like where you are now. And it really is true. It's like if you if you move forward with intention, um, everything changes and it and it doesn't take that long. Um, and so I um I've actually been pretty like astounded at how much that's true. Like it really can change more quickly than you think. It doesn't feel fast, but it, but it does happen.

SPEAKER_01 48:57

That's amazing. That's amazing. Stacy, any last words or thoughts? I mean, I think that that's such a beautiful testament to what I'm trying to do with the podcast of helping people really see how much power they have in their own lives, not only to do what they're doing day to day, but open to a new future that's the best fit for them.

SPEAKER_00 49:19

Yeah. I mean, I guess my my advice is just um, you know, kind of going back to what my therapist told me, um, it's okay to identify with what you want and to say, like, I am a screenwriter, I am an author, like, and um not worry about what other people think. I mean, I think that's the that was the big aha for me, is just I don't have to wait for permission to try to be the thing that I want to be. Um, I'm I I don't need validation. I don't need someone to say, like, oh, I believe that you are. Um, you just are. And so I think that would be my big, my big piece of advice. So there is, there are so many um paths forward. You don't have to sort of wait for someone to say, like, yes, I think you're an author, or yes, you're anti-point. I believe you're a good poet. Yeah, like you can just do it. And there are so many different ways to get your work out there and um and also just to connect with other people who are doing the same thing.

SPEAKER_01 50:24

So that's fantastic. That's fantastic. Well, I'll put um some of the resources you mentioned in the show notes. So if people are interested specifically in some of the things that you mentioned, I'll include those in the show notes. And I'm so excited to be able to have this chance to catch up with you at this moment in time as the Pearl Farmers comes out this fall.

SPEAKER_00 50:45

Thank you, Courtney. I'm so honored to be part of this. Um, it's been amazing talking to you. And um, yeah, I uh I love what you're doing and I love talking about all of this. So um fun, isn't it? Thanks for having me. It's really fun.

SPEAKER_01 51:01

Yeah, you're so welcome. Talk to you soon.

SPEAKER_00 51:03

Okay, thanks.

SPEAKER_01 51:06

Thanks for listening to Evolution or Revolution. If you're interested in learning more about my coaching work, please go to my website at iconicleadershipcoaching.com to read more about how I work partnering with people like you to become more grounded and reconnected to their peace and power. Do you have a friend who could benefit from this podcast? Please share it or leave a review. It helps people like you find us. Check out the show notes for more resources and more information.