Abandon the 'Shoulds' with Writer, Creative & Book Coach, Emily Krempholtz

In this episode, I sit down with Emily Krempholtz, a writer, creator, and an all-around amazing human that I have the pleasure of calling my book coach as I write my memoir. In her interview, she takes us through her life going from doing what she thought she should, to now doing what she loves. “I knew that writing books was what I wanted to do for a living. I knew that working with stories was what I wanted to be when I grew up. And even knowing that, it took me a really long time. I let a lot of people talk me into going to college for a major that was a lot more practical than what I wanted to be doing, which was creative writing.”

Emily believes in the magic of the world, infusing it into her books and passion projects while also acknowledging the need to pay the bills with her non-fiction work. While her work that pays the bills is compartmentalized in one half of her brain, her creative work is where her heart lies. “And it’s hard, you know. You put your book out there to say, “here is a little piece of my soul, I’m giving it to you,” and then to have someone come back and say, “no thanks, this isn’t for me.”

Inevitably, pieces of Emily’s life became woven into her novels and she shares how important it is for writers to give themselves the grace of being a human being. “So suddenly I was writing a book about grief when I was kind of actively grieving and that was really difficult. And so I poured a lot of that emotion into this book and then I also had to put it down for a little while. And that's something I think not enough writers talk about is sometimes, you know, it's okay to set something aside.”

Highlights from Emily:

“I think we have these points where, in a perfect world, we'd be able to go back and edit our lives and edit the way we did things in the past, but we don't have that. We are slaves to time in the real world in a way that we aren't when we're writing. And being able to take the hindsight, to take the lessons that we learned from that first draft of our lives, and take that breaking point and say, okay.”

“There is no one right way to write a book. There's no one right way to do something. There's a lot of different schools of thought about how to create a book, because it is, it's this huge thing. It is multi-dimensional, it is complex, and when done right, you should never be able to just sit down and spit out a book without, and say, okay, this is perfect. This is exactly what I intended it to be.”

“Let Perfect Burn means abandoning those shoulds—abandoning that sense of this is what I'm supposed to be doing to get to where I am, focusing on the things that you can control and saying fuck it to the rest.”

Don't Miss a Beat.
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 https://www.instagram.com/letperfectburn/


Emily’s Website:
https://emilykrempholtz.com/

Transcript

Tara Beckett: 0:24

Hi, I'm Tara Beckett. And I want to welcome you back to Season Two of let perfect bird. Hi, everybody, welcome back to let perfect burn. I'm Tara Beckett. And I am beyond pumped to have in studio, Emily crumples. And Emily is a writer, she is a editor, and she's a book coach. And she's my book coach, I landed seriously the best one in the business. For my memoir that's coming out, hopefully in 2020 to three, we're hopeful. And I couldn't be happier to have her and Emily, welcome.

Emily Krempholtz: 1:08

Thank you, thank you so much for having me on, it's been so much fun, kind of like following the let perfect burn, you know, experience for you. And I'm so excited to be here today.

Tara Beckett: 1:20

And Emily, I would love just to start off. So we can give everybody a really in depth view of how you got to where you are, you're in Denver, Colorado, and I would love to know professionally and personally, how you landed to where you are.

Unknown: 1:35

Um, it's, it's, it's one of those things where I kind of always knew where I was going. And it took me a really long time to get there. I have known that I wanted to work with books, since I was five years old, I was writing books, my mom still has them somewhere at her house. You know, they were they were very bad. A lot of them were kind of like poorly plagiarized versions of the movies that I loved and the books that I loved reading. Obviously, I grew out of that. But you know, as I got older, I knew that writing books was what I wanted to do for a living, I knew that working with stories was what I wanted to be when I grew up. And even knowing that it took me a really long time. I you know, I let a lot of people talk me into going to college for a major that was a lot more practical than, you know what I wanted to be doing, which was creative writing. And I then left college and took an office job that I thought was, you know, kind of the path that I was supposed to take I thought you know, okay, I'll do this. And I'll make money this way. And I'll work you know, create a career this way. And then I can write on the side. And then all of that fell completely to shit about that. I got laid off from this office job. I actually the morning I got laid off. I was walking into work, I was hungover, I was miserable. I have like a massive cup of coffee in my hand. And I remember thinking to myself, I just wish I could go home. And I got into the office, I turned my computer out of my boss said, Hey, can you meet me in the conference room, we have to chat and I was part of this massive round of layoffs. And so I did get to go home. It was not. It was not at all like I thought it was going to be but um, I kind of I thought I thought my life was over. You know, I was 25 and I thought it was like, oh shit, this is the end. Like I don't know what to do. Now. This was my plan. So I ended up taking my severance money and I left the country for a year and i i lived out of a backpack. I volunteered with families all over Europe, I worked at a site or farm I worked at, like a horse ranch in Croatia where we you know, took people on on tours when they came to visit. I worked in a grocery store in Luxembourg. I work at a hostel in Zagreb, I taught English in Poland. It was an incredible year that allowed me to come back to myself and figure out what the hell I actually wanted. And during that time, I started writing more I started you know, working on my my own writing my books, I started editing a little bit here or there because I very quickly realized that I needed money. So I started taking little jobs here or there. I started writing for like a travel blog and I started editing for, you know, people who were writing brochures and websites and things like that. And I eventually realized, no, this is what I've wanted to do my entire life. And this is finally an opportunity where I can start to do it. And so I started kind of building on that I started, you know, creating a business for myself. And by the time I got back to the States, I said okay, I'm doing this full time. And that was seven or eight years ago and Here I am.

Tara Beckett: 5:02

Yeah. And Emily, I would love to know, up until this point, is there a particular piece of writing that just really emulates what you're talking about that you're real and that you're honest and that you can put yourself out in the world? Um, you mean like my, like a piece of your own right? Yeah, yeah. So I'm currently trying to get a book published. It's called black thorn.

Unknown: 5:28

I write fiction. So that's definitely one thing I kind of learned along my journey is that I work with nonfiction for a living because it saves a lot of my energy towards writing my, my, my work, which is in fiction, but this book Blackboard was something that was born during that trip, I started writing it in a little I was living in like a little trailer on top of a hill in Wales that overlooked you know, this beautiful like mountain full of sheep and this angry little sheep farmer who every morning at dawn, you get out there and get on Drew brush strokes. Like little golf cart with his dogs. And it was it was idyllic. And it was beautiful. And we got to watch the you know, the sunrise every morning walk through kind of these beautiful, Misty mossy forests on the way to town and, and it was, it was incredible. And so I started writing this book that really, I think, speaks a lot to the magic that I want to see in the world and the the messiness of growing up and being in your 20s and trying to figure out who the hell you are, in a world that just keeps telling you, you fit in this box. And so yeah, it's it's a book about, you know, a group of women who live in a sentient house in a town where magical things happen all the time. And it speaks to kind of the the difficult relationships we have with each other, and the difficult relationships we have with ourselves and the magic that lives in and around and beyond all of that. So it kind of you know, I call it the book of my heart, it's something that really, you know, speaks to that something more that I have always wanted that I believe, you know, we all have always wanted, whether we know what it is or not.

Tara Beckett: 7:30

You know, just so we can pause on your book for just a second is like, before I worked with you, I had not a damn clue. effing hard it is to write a book. Right? It was just this like, I don't know, it just it felt flippant to me in some ways, like, you have an idea and you write a book. All right? Could you walk us through like, the book is the baby that's like the end like it is born? Can you walk us through your process to create this book that you love so much? Hmm. Um,

Unknown: 8:01

I mean, you've and you've heard this from me a million times, but you know, there is no one right way to write a book, there's no one right way to do something. There's a lot of different schools of thought about how to create a book, because it is it's this huge thing, it is multi dimensional, it is complex, and it when, when done, right, you know, you should never be able to just sit down and spit out a book without, you know, and say, Okay, this is perfect, this is exactly what I intended it to be. Because whether you plan it out beforehand, or whether you just sit down at a computer and bleed or you know, like it's, it's, it's a process, it's a discovery of the story you're trying to tell. And a lot of times, that's not the same story that you set out to tell at the very beginning. I am an outliner I love plans, I love being able to organize what I want to do. When I have an idea for a book, I generally start there, I start with this feeling in this this kind of a vibe of what I want. Sometimes, you know, it's, it's a sense of, okay, what's the theme of this book? Or, you know, what kind of message am I trying to get across? Or, you know, sometimes it's just saying like, wow, it is a dark and stormy night, and I want to write this weather and I kind of see what comes out of it. And from there, like, you know, you kind of expand on those ideas and say, Alright, you know, how do I build this into something that feels complete, but feels like it can stand on its own and really tell a story. I tend to break down my outlines into parts, you know, I'll say alright, you know, I go through the three act structure or a beat sheet of, you know, the hero's journey or, you know, there's a popular story outline called Save the cat writes a novel, which has 15 beats that every story has or whatever, and I kind of go through, you know, these points that a story needs, you know, it's kind of opening, you know, a turning point. Wait, rising action, inciting incidents, the climax of the story kind of the resolution and build the story from there, I get a feel for my characters, I get a feel for the world that they're in, I get a feel for what the hell they're trying to do and whether they are successful or not. And then I kind of fill in the blanks from there. And once I have an outline, then I sit down and start writing. And that is the process which I know you know, is, is a lot. And sometimes you know, I've in the past, I've I've written a book in 45 days as my record, and I have also taken years to write a book. Sometimes it's all at once, sometimes you got to take big breaks in between. But one fact drafting process is done. Once you have a book a draft, then you get to work on the editing. And you know, I always love to say editing is where the magic happens. There's a Anne Lamott wrote a really famous essay called the shitty first draft. That's basically just like, it's so it's so true. It's basically just saying, your first draft is just you getting it all out there. It doesn't have to look good. I think it was Terry Pratchett, who said that your first draft is just you telling yourself the story. And then editing and revising is where you start to make it happen, you start to make, you know, sandcastles out of the sandbox that you've just filled. And that process is again, it can take such a long time as you're finding out right now.

Tara Beckett: 11:36

Yes. Yeah, I don't think I ever anticipated like coming up on two years, and not even close to the finish line. Like there's just a lot of work that goes into really, especially creating something you're so sort of personally and like heart attached to you, right? It's like you want to get it right. You want to say what you want to say. Right? Yeah. And Emily, I just when you were talking about the first draft, I was thinking about even your story of getting laid off, right. And I can also really find that breaking point for me was like the hospitalization. And then I think of everything before that as my first draft, right? Like, like you said, putting it all out there pouring the sand in the sandbox, you're living your life, you just don't fucking know what you're doing yet.

Unknown: 12:23

And I think I think we have these points where, you know, in a perfect world, we'd be able to go back and edit our lives and edit the way we did things in the past, but we don't have that, you know, time we are slaves to time in the real world, in a way that we aren't when we're writing and, and being able to take the hindsight to take, you know, the lessons that we learned from that first draft of our lives. And, you know, take that breaking point and say, Okay, from this point on, I've, I've learned how I want to revise, I've learned, you know, how I want to edit this in the future and kind of move forward with that in mind saying, Okay, this is draft two. This is me to point out

Tara Beckett: 13:08

I know we've spoken before about something we share is like, you know, part of our life happening in upstate New York, right? Yep. And I would love to know, like, how an upstate New York girl gets to Denver, Colorado, right? Like, what what was that? You know?

Unknown: 13:27

So I again, it was it was a lot of weird shoulds in my life. I feel like after college, I went to school in Ithaca, New York, I love and Myka. It's a beautiful city. And you know, I lived there for a while after college, I lived there for another year. And then I ended up just feeling like I was treading water. I was working in restaurants. I was working at a barn where I ride horses. So I've always worked with with horses and farms and things like that. And I was just like, I'm not doing anything here. I ended up moving back in with my parents in Buffalo. And I was there for a year. And I thought, Okay, well, I love my parents, but this is not how I want to spend my life. So I looked at a couple different cities. I almost went to San Francisco, I almost moved to Boston. I ended up a friend of mine. She was moving to Colorado because her family had moved to Colorado and so she was going to move to Boulder and her dad ended up saying Oh, like you have a communications degree. I work for a telecom company, I can get you a job. And I thought okay, again, I should have a job. I should be doing something that's not bartending at a Mexican restaurant. And then I just went I had never been to Colorado before in my life. So I got my a friend of mine, I said, Hey, do you want to go on a road trip and she and I took a week and we drove out west and just I often saw some friends along the way, I went to a couple national parks. But my like little Chevy Cruze, just like packed full of everything that I owned. And then I ended up in Denver and a friend of mine, one of my roommates from college was living here. And she had another three weeks in her apartment before she moved in with her partner. And so she said, Well, I'll just move in with him early, and then you can just stay in my apartment. So I had three weeks in a studio apartment in the city that I knew nothing about. It was great. And then, um, I yeah, I got I saw my friend on the plane, so she could go back East. And then I immediately found another bartending job and just kind of found my own apartment. And I that was 2014. So that's amazing. And that's been there now. No, oh, God, no, no, no, I waited, I guess I think I have like $235 in my bank account. It was it was something it was, it was fun. I remember paying the security deposit for my apartment. And my first paycheck from the borrower I was working was going to come in that day. And I had like tip money. And I was like, okay, so I'll give her this first check. And then I'll go to the bank right after and hopefully the money will hit my account before she cashes this check. It was it was Yeah, the whole thing.

Tara Beckett: 16:19

Yes, yes, I did, um, after college, went to New York City. And I remember, I was in my cousin's place for a few weeks. And I remember I did the math, like, I was writing it off on a piece of paper. And I was like, even if I don't eat, I can't pay the bills. It's like, maybe because you're an artist, and you pick up and you go because your heart tells you to. And that's the right decision. And then you have to pay the bills.

Unknown: 16:45

Damn logistics giveaway every time. And that was really honestly, it was why I always worked in bars and restaurants because they would meet me. So then I didn't have to worry about groceries. And I could like at home leftovers and like eat on that on my days off. And it was it was an event.

Tara Beckett: 17:01

Yeah, it was. But it was totally worth it. Like that time you never get back when like you're a post college and you can just your I didn't really have any strings. And it sounds like you didn't either. No. And

Unknown: 17:10

it was really, it was kind of the first time that I took like a giant risk for myself. And I feel like it paid off so much. I love it here. I've become like the quintessential Colorado mountain girl. I'm like, you know, like, Oh, look at pictures of me, on top of a mountain wearing a flannel shirt with my blue hair. Like it's so like, I'm I'm such a basic bitch when it comes to Colorado. Yes, give me craft beer like that. Yeah, I remember before I moved out here, I was on the phone with a friend who I was kind of like taught like giving, you know, going over my options and saying, Well, I could move here, I could move here. But this just feels stupid. I don't really know what I'm doing. I don't have any of us. And she told me leap and the net will appear. And it's something that has always stuck with me. Because every time in my life that I've made a big leap. You know, when I moved when I moved out here when I dropped everything and went to Europe for a year. Even like when I met my partner, I feel like it was very much like, I just kind of threw myself into the void. And it worked out like it wasn't easy. And it definitely you know, I ran into roadblocks along the way. But those moments when we're kind of afraid to jump and we've realized I want to jump anyway, I think are some of the most important moments in our lives. Because it's those moments that your intuition is telling you like this is the right move and you just gotta be brave for a second.

Tara Beckett: 18:35

Absolutely. And yeah, I love I don't know, the like you were saying like the net will appear. Somebody told me something to the effect of I'm not gonna say it as eloquently, but that like your intuition and your knowing is in there. And what we do with all those like shoulds and life is that we pile it on top. And if you could just let that intuition be naked, you won't make the wrong choice. You just won't tell ya intuition nudity. Naked movies, intuition. That's really what it always comes down to boobs with us. Why is it always Oh, I feel like we need to get some context. Like, it's probably a good idea. Oh, yeah. Um, so I go back and forth between being like a really blunt, dirty mind dirty, girl. I don't know what the fuck to say.

Unknown: 19:29

You're hilarious and blunt and raw.

Tara Beckett: 19:33

Thank you so much. That's why she's my editor. But um, yeah, and then I sort of was ping pong with just very flowery long simile, metaphor, blah, blah, blah. And Emily would just write in the margins call a Boo Boo boop.

Unknown: 19:50

I don't like I don't remember what the original context was. You I don't know if you're describing like, I don't like breastfeeding or something. But you like you were talking about your boobs and your writing and it was like paragraph and a half long, and I was like, just say boop. So now it's become this shorthand, when when we make things too complicated for ourselves, it's just call a boo, boo boo.

Tara Beckett: 20:20

Emily, I would just be curious to know, you know, what are those roadblocks you're facing right now? What are those things that tend to get in your way of that, you know, sort of creative piece of you? Or where you want to be in the world? Like, what what are you up against right now. Um, I feel like,

Unknown: 20:38

a lot of it is really a sense of, you know, it comes down to trying to make the magic happen. Um, right now, you know, I have a book, I love my book, I love the work that I've done on it. We're in a moment in the publishing landscape where everything's very competitive. And I know, this is something that you are going to discover very soon. And it's, it's hard, you know, to put your book out there to say, here's a little piece of my soul, I'm giving it to you. And then to have someone come back and say, No, thanks, this isn't for me, is really difficult. And that rejection is something that, that it's not easy to deal with. And it you know, you have to, they say, you know, develop a thick skin and whatever and learn to love rejection and learn from your rejections. But sometimes, unfortunately, there's not much to learn from rejection, sometimes it's a matter of timing, sometimes it's a matter of, you know, the stars aligning, and you hitting somebody's inbox at the right time, on the right day, when they're in the right mood, and they have had their coffee this morning, and whatever. So that has definitely been a roadblock, you know, hearing No, for something that I care about so deeply, and something that I stand by, you know, so much, I believe in this book, I believe in my writing, I believe that this is what I'm put here to do. And having somebody you know, reject that that's difficult. And that's something that I think every writer deals with every artist deals with. My sister's an actor, I know, you come from theater as well, you know, it's, it's very much like, you gotta get used to hearing No, and after a certain point, you have to stop taking it personally, or at the very least learn to distance yourself from it. So that's definitely been a struggle. And I think the way that I've kind of been approaching it is, is looking at, what can I do what's in my control, because so much of this process is out of your control, and it's relying on someone else to make decisions about you and your future and your abilities and your talent. And so I have been just trucking forward working on the next book, working on, you know, my next project, trying to distance myself a little bit from the heartache that comes with that No, by saying, all right, I'm investing myself in my future. And the only way that I can. A lot of the joy for me of writing fiction is that we, we, we sow the seeds of truth in stories, whether those stories are real or not. And real, I think is even the wrong word here, because to me, that's what stories do is they are all real, they all speak to something very real within us. And, you know, there's there's absolutely timely fiction, you know, there's fiction that takes place in a modern era, that's very easily dated, you can read a book written in 2008, and be like, This talks about my space. I know, and this was written, you know, the stories that that book is trying to tell, have probably aged in their own way. And a lot of times the joy of fiction is that it still speaks to that truth. Because I think somatic truth in in literature, in movies in you know, a stage production in any kind of story that we're engaging in. Those those themes are things that go beyond time, those themes are things that you know, are still true, you know, years and years later. And even if they're not, they don't mean the same thing to you. They still mean something to somebody. I'm currently working on a book called long the way it is about a treasure hunt. And it's about sibling love. It's about a woman who lost her brother and kind of goes on to search for this local treasure that he you know, disappeared looking for. And I like to speak to A kind of idioms and turn them literal. So, you know, I wrote a book about demons that was really, it was very much the the play on words was battling your inner demons. But you know only literally and this one is about being haunted by the ghosts of your past only you know, because I write fantasy. I take the ghosts a little bit literally. So it's a book about grief. It's a book about love and it's a book about, you know, letting go and being able to move forward with your life. And it is a book that has honestly started as like a light hearted rom com and has now turned into like this, I don't know, supernatural horror elements, like makes me cry half the time when I'm working on it. But it was really interesting too, because I, I was writing it, I was doing really well. And then I said, you know, I said I work with horses. My horse died earlier this year. And it was really hard for me. So suddenly, I was writing a book about grief when I was kind of actively grieving. And that was really difficult. And so I ended up I poured a lot of that emotion into this book. And then I also had to put it down for a little while. And that's something I think not enough writers talk about is sometimes you know, it's okay to set something aside and say, I'm not ready, and then come back two months later. That's totally okay. Because we are still humans, we are still people who feel emotions. And sometimes those emotions are messy. And that's, you know, that's okay. That's, that's perfect. That's wonderful. Um, but yeah, so I let it go for a little while. And I came back to it. And you know, I feel like I came back to it with the hindsight of, of why I dropped it for a while the hindsight of everything I've been experiencing emotionally, and then I, you know, jumped back in both feet and feel like I'm better for it.

Tara Beckett: 26:56

Your horse? How did you become a horse lover? And how did you? How did you find her.

Unknown: 27:03

So I grew up at a summer camp, basically, my mom and my sister did like a weekend Girl Scout horse camp thing. And my mom really connected with the owner of the camp and the people that worked there and ended up she took the job at the camp for the summer so that all four of her children could come to camp for the summer. And what started as like a one year for two weeks kind of thing turned into most of my adolescence. And I started going every single summer for eight weeks, um, with all my siblings, my, you know, my mom was there, my dad would come and like help out some times, like, during the school year, I would go there on the weekends. And I would teach those same girl scout clinics that my you know, my mom and my sister had originally been to, and and I grew up riding horses at this camp. And, you know, I learned basically from scratch and kind of came up through the ranks and I started teaching lessons, you know, learning more and more about horses. As I went to college, I started getting involved with a bar in their eyes. And when I moved out to Colorado, I ended up getting involved with a therapeutic riding center. So doing a lot of work with animals, I think is super healing and super great. But one of the horses at this camp was her name was Maria and I met her when I was I think like 12 or 13 years old. And she was like this wild little thing who had been born on a wild on an island. And she she was ridiculous. She had like the biggest mane you've ever seen. I always you know made jokes about her. You know her name is Maria. So maybe she's born with it. Maybe she's Maria believed. But um, and yeah, I throughout my teenage years, I fell in love with this horse. And then after college, the camp shut down. And so I said, Okay, well I'd like to buy her so I bought her for like 600 bucks. It was like the only I had to pay it in like installments of like, I don't know $600 But this is a great idea. Not even thinking about the fact that I have to like pay rent for my horse for the rest of my life, you know? Um, but yeah, so I I bought her I kept her in Ithaca at a friend's house and we just kind of like alternated doing barn chores because it was like in her backyard. And then I when I moved back to my parents house, I moved her back to Buffalo and kind of, you know, had her there for a while and then I moved her out to Colorado and she she's she's very she was very well traveled.

Tara Beckett: 29:46

And I she has a passport. Yeah. And

Unknown: 29:50

then when I left the country and went to Europe, I moved her back to New York, and she stayed with my mom's horse. I at the barn where she kept her horse, and then she was used as a lesson horse there, it was really cool. I got to like, see her being loved by little kids in the way that I had always loved her and see, you know, I fell in love with this horse when I was like a child. And so to see like, another little 12 year old girl fall in love with her and like, give her nicknames and like, buy her like cute little pink, like, she'll like, like little bows and stuff for her bridal and stuff. It was, it was so cute. And it was really nice to like, kind of come full circle there. And then, during the pandemic, my parents decided that they their pandemic project was going to be to clear a huge part of their land and build a pasture. And so they brought home my mom's horse and my horse, and she lived there very happily until last June, she fast, but

Tara Beckett: 30:51

I love that story. Like know a little bit more about her just because I do remember what you were posting about her and it's cool to get her story.

Unknown: 31:01

Yeah, yeah, so I always joke, you know, she was she was the great love of my life I the longest relationship I've ever

Tara Beckett: 31:10

been. Yeah, yep. Yeah. And then, you know, there's the, I just feel like animals are an unconditional love. And that's really, that's not able, you cannot find that in a lot of human relationships. But no,

Unknown: 31:24

and I think it is, it's so it takes the complexities of love and just makes it simple

Tara Beckett: 31:42

what would be your advice for them as they start that career,

Unknown: 31:46

it takes time. I, you know, I'm a big proponent of I think you have to invest in yourself in your life, in one way or the other. And I think two of the biggest ways to do that are money and time. And you have to, you know, find your balance between those, those, those two components. And unfortunately, a lot of times, they are very much related. I was super fortunate in that I started my career as an editor and, and a writer during a time when I had a lot of time, you know, I had, I had the ability to take on a couple jobs here or there and I was working editing jobs for like 10 bucks, like it was I was I was just desperate for experience. And that sucked. But you know, I wouldn't have been able to do that if I had to pay rent at the time, you know, if I had to, you know, provide for all of my utilities if my student loan payments weren't on hold, you know. So, in that way, I was extremely fortunate, you know, I was also like traveling the world and like living with people in Europe. And that was really cool, too. But, um, but like, that time allowed me to build, it allowed me to start, a lot of people who I know who go into editing or go into any freelance field, really, you know, they either start working more corporate, you know, they'll start for a big publisher, or they'll start for like, a big, you know, firm doing whatever. And then they kind of go on their own eventually. Because they have that established experience, they have an established client base, they have a name for themselves already. But doing it on your own doing it, you know, starting from scratch and saying, Alright, I'm going to do this means you need to build up. And for a lot of people, that means that it's a side hustle for a long time. And you know, there's I think we live unfortunately, in a hustle culture, where we're expected to be busy, a lot of the time, we're expected to be constantly working on ourselves and constantly, you know, building something, and we're Americans. So we're in a society where we're like, bragging about how much we work. And that's dangerous. Like, that's not that's not great. And it does mean that it's really difficult than to build something like that for yourself. I mean, I'm sure you experienced that with, with photography of with having to kind of build and build and grow. And I feel like it's it's fighting tooth and nail to make people believe I'm good at this. I'm worth this, like, please hire me.

Tara Beckett: 34:17

Yes. And I would say, you know, I don't have my business anymore. But, you know, due to the pandemic, I closed it down, when obviously, nobody wanted their picture taken in large groups. But I do remember, always having, you know, even within one business, having the corporate stuff that paid my bill so that I could go over here and do the work that really spoke to me in my heart, but you the idea that oh, you just get to do the things that feed you artistically all the time. If that's your case, that's awesome. It's not for most people. So I sort of had to compartmentalize my brain, right?

Unknown: 34:56

I think that compartmentalizing is really important in no matter what kind of field you're Going into I think, for me, like I said, you know, I focus professionally on a lot of nonfiction I work with, you know, memoir writers like yourself I work with, you know, people who are reading personal development books or business books or, you know, book proposals. And then that allows me to compartmentalize so that I don't burn myself out creatively when I want to sit down and work on my novels. And I think, you know, to some extent that you know, whether it whether it's what you're doing, how you're doing it, you know, you need to be able to compartmentalize, you need to be able to say, Okay, I'm, I'm taking off my hat of this, whatever this job is, and then putting on this one instead. Yeah, I feel like because even if you know, if you're working, if you're freelance job if you're you know, your dream is your side hustle for right now, you got to be able to separate those two things, or they're both just gonna burn you the book out

Tara Beckett: 36:12

it seems like a creative outlet when I go to your Instagram. Can you talk us through em bakes books?

Unknown: 36:18

Yeah. Um, so, I've always loved to bake I, um, you know, I grew up in a family where food is our love language. We we're, you know, constantly baking, constantly making good food for each other. If I go home for a weekend, and there's a Buffalo Bills game on, the entire family gets together. And there's like, three different folding tables full of chips and dip, and of desserts. And, you know, like different things to try. And we have a crock pot full of chili or barbecued hamburgers or something. It's just a whole event. We love to feed ourselves, we love to feed each other. We love to try out new recipes and like obsess about our old favorites. So food has always been so important to me. And honestly, I don't even know how I started with the bookcase. But like, I don't know, I don't even remember what my first one was. But like, I just started for a book club that I was in I was Oh no, here's what it is, I was doing a baking challenge that I found on Reddit, where every week they gave me a new challenge. And it was it was allowing me to try out, you know, baked goods from different parts of the world and baked goods like some of the the prompts were like a recipe from before 1900 Or like, you know, like a recipe using floral flavors or something with the color purple or you know, like it was it was different every week. And so it really made me stretch my boundaries as a baker. And one of them I don't remember what it was. But I decided to take the design of cake and turn it into look like the book that we were reading for book club that month. And everybody loved it. And I had fun with it. So I made another one the next month and another one the next month. And it turned into this thing I was calling it have your cake and read it too. It was you know, it turned into like this fun hobby of of taking a book, and matching the flavors to what fits the story. Um, you know, and then and then designing it to look either like the cover or like something, some element of the book. And it just, I don't know, it started as just kind of like this weird little passion project. And now it's something that like, if I show up at book club, and I don't have a cake, everyone's like, Oh, I mean, like, I'm not mad, because I know that it's like a lot of effort. But also like I was really looking forward to it. So it's kind of expected but but it's a lot of fun. And you know, I've done things, I have a friend who's a teacher who did a project with her kids last year where she showed them my Instagram and then had them all design and conceptualize cakes based on their favorite book that they read in English class this year. And so she sent me some of their pictures. And that was really, it was really cool to kind of see that take on a life of its own. And the way she told me that like, these kids were thinking about their books differently, because they were thinking okay, but like what flavors are mentioned in the books, what flavors do I think would fit kind of this genre of book? Yeah, it's just kind of a cool, a cool project that took on a life of its own. And now it's just a lot of fun.

Tara Beckett: 39:23

That's awesome. I always I always wait for your book club, like Instagram drop, just to be like, what's it gonna be?

Unknown: 39:30

It's definitely like a weird balance too. Because like I I, you know, I want to be able to, like, showcase this in the best way possible. And I think unfortunately, there's not a lot of way to be an artist right now without having to do all your own marketing. And so there is kind of like a weird, that weird component where you have to be strategic about how you're posting things and when you're posting things and what you're saying about things and it's hard because to me Like, that's not my passion, my passion is creating my passion is you know, writing books, it's baking cakes. It's you know, being a goofball, doing whatever and like, having to then be strategic about how I share those things with the world and sharing things about the world that I probably normally wouldn't is a weird aspect of art that I think is is probably goes along with one of those roadblocks that you mentioned. You know, I, it's, it's a lot.

Tara Beckett: 40:30

Yes, it's so yeah, I mean, you and I share that. Kind of like, Oh, my God, tick tock videos. Like, I mean, yeah, it's like, sometimes I have a really good time making them. But I think that like, the thing about being a writer is that you don't get to just tick tock video, post, whenever you are inspired, right? There's this like, do it daily, do it multiple times a day, do it this way, use this hashtag. It's like, all of a sudden, you're like, Oh, well, this is not art at all. Yeah, totally different beast.

Unknown: 40:59

And it's, it's really hard. And I think it's something that, especially in nonfiction has come to be expected of authors, because you have to have a platform before a publisher will give you the time of day. And it sucks. Because how many amazing stories are we missing out on because the publisher is saying I don't want to do the marketing work, I want them to do the marketing work themselves. And I think that's really difficult. And that's not to say that I don't have fun with it. You know, I every once in a while, like, I'll, you know, like, sit down and like make like 10 Tick Tock videos and be like, Okay, that was a blast. And they had some great ideas and whatever. But a lot of times, it feels like a second job. And it feels like a job that unfortunately takes you away from the creative process and takes you away from the book that you should be working on. You know, the art you should be making the movie you should be producing like it's, it's something that it's just a layer of extra.

Tara Beckett: 41:51

Yes, absolutely. And like, Yeah, I mean, there's not really much more to say about it. Crap. Oh, crap. Right. That's, I mean, that is true. It's like, and I think how it is today for writers and memoir writers is that, like you said, it feels like they're far more interested in the person, which, yes, that's fine to be interested in me. Sure. But it's the story. Like it's the story. It's Yeah, well, like, I'm not important, if that makes any sense, right. So

Unknown: 42:24

as those stories are, that's, that's what should be selling these books, it really should come down to is this a story that speaks to people? Is this a story that like tears, open your chest and looks inside your soul? And says, Yes, I feel connected to this. And, you know, like I said, I, I worry sometimes about the future of the industry, because I feel like we are losing out on so many stories that have that impact, and have that potential to have that impact all because, you know, it's easier to publish a book by an influencer, who's immediately going to be able to sell 50,000 copies or whatever. Right.

Tara Beckett: 43:00

I agree. And that's, you know, that is, most definitely my one of my biggest challenges, right is like, I'm nobody, right? And like, I have to do all that work in order for anyone to care when that copy comes across their desk. Yeah. But I mean, that's the work right?

Unknown: 43:17

Got to do it is but I think there's, it's, it's and it's also it's one of those areas where like, we don't talk about, like the unpaid labor that comes along with art. You know, in the same way, we don't talk about the unpaid labor that comes along with motherhood in the same way we don't talk about the unpaid labor that comes with, you know, being in a society and being a human being like, there's there's so much behind the scenes of anything that you're seeing of any small business that's putting themselves out there any individual artist who's trying to make something work, there's so much going on behind the scenes. And yeah, all you're seeing is, you know, an Instagram story.

Tara Beckett: 44:03

So Emily, this has been so awesome to have you. And I think that these two for you might be intertwined somehow, but if not, we'll do it in two steps. But um, I would love to know what you would say to your 18 year old self. And what let perfect burn means for you.

Unknown: 44:23

I think, to my 18 year old self in college for a degree she doesn't really want and, you know, trying to figure out where she is in the world. I would want to tell her, you know yourself and you know what you want. And it's time to tune out the noise from the other people who are telling you, you know where you should be, and how you should be moving and what path you should be taking. Because you know, that even if there isn't a clear path before you to get to where you want you know the destination you're trying to get to and it's not going to be an easy road, but you're gonna get there and then

Tara Beckett: 45:03

for you what lit perfect burn needs

Unknown: 45:07

um I think it really means abandoning those shoulds abandoning that sense of this is what I'm supposed to be doing to get to where I am focusing on the things that you can control and saying fuck it to their chest.

Tara Beckett: 45:23

Yes that's amazing and I feel like fuck it to the REST call a Boo Boo boop. Then what is it? Intuition nudity? Are we Yeah, but those I mean

Unknown: 45:36

honestly like I feel like this is this is a whole new way of life. We're starting here and this is absolutely

Tara Beckett: 45:44

and look for T shirts sold by let perfect burn with those three things on it so that it can pay for our unpaid labor. Emily, thank you so much for being with us today and Emily cramp holds and definitely in the show notes. Check her out her website and ways to find her. I'm so fucking grateful that you're my book coach and we have a lot of work to do in the new year.

Unknown: 46:14

Yes, we do. And we're gonna get there. It won't be easy but we will get there. Thank you so much for perfect