EP.08 - Navigating a 9 to 5 and Publishing a Book with Teresa Wong

Teresa Wong is the author of the graphic memoir Dear Scarlet: The Story of My Postpartum Depression. I’ve known her for over 20 years and was thrilled to interview her about her copywriting career, the process of creating her first book while working at her day job, why graphic narrative is her medium of choice, and why THIS was the story she wanted to tell.

Transcription

Transcription created with DeScript.

I’m Karen Styles and this is the Intentional Career Podcast.

I talk to all kinds of people who take all kinds of paths to work they love.

I'm a career and life coach and owner of Flow +Fire coaching. If you’re ready to create your intentional career with the support of a coach, schedule a call with me. There’s a link in the show notes or go to intentionalcareer.co and click the blue “schedule a call” button. 

Karen: Today my guest is Teresa Wong. She's the author of the graphic memoir Dear Scarlet: The Story of my Postpartum Depression. She's a finalist for the City of Calgary W. O. Mitchell book prize and long listed for  CBC Canada reads 2020. Her comics have appeared in the Believer, the Rumpus and Event magazine, and she teaches memoir and comics at  Gotham Writers Workshop.

Hi, Teresa thanks so much for joining me today. 

Teresa: Hi, thanks for having me.

Karen: I should also mention that you and I have been friends for 20 plus years. I don't know how many.

Teresa: I don't even know how many years it's been. 

Karen: It's definitely more than 20. I think I said this to you about a million years ago that if I ever have a podcast, I want to sit you down and interview you. 

Teresa: Well now you do!

Karen: Yeah, now I am, so thank you for making this happen. 

Teresa: I feel lucky to be here with you.

Karen:  Well, I want to talk about your career path and how that came along. You've been a writer for a very long time and a published author for a couple of years, but how did it come about that you became a writer and have had this kind of ongoing career as a writer? 

Teresa: So I should probably clarify that I've been a copywriter for a really long time. Or I call it a marketing writer, which isn't quite the same thing as a writer.

Karen: Yeah. Why isn't it the same thing? 

Teresa: Well, I think it's because, you're doing it for someone else,  you're doing it to serve the purpose of a business or an organization. The writing I do in my day job and have done for the last 20 years is usually to sell, right? To sell something, whether that's the services of the YWCA or events like organ and piano competitions. Or,  the goings on at Mount Royal University. I worked there for a few years as a writer and I work as a copywriter in the digital space for a company called Critical Mass and write mostly for websites or social posts or things like that for our clients. And so the object of that writing is basically to either educate or communicate or to sell. 

Karen: Okay.  You call that different from writing? Cause you're kind of saying it's not real writing. 

Teresa: Well, I mean, it is real writing, but it's a different type of writing than writing for art's sake, to try to tell a good story, to try to see a world or an interior world. draw on a lot of the same skill set.  And I don't think that, I think my day job has fed into my abilities as an author, but I feel like they're two different 

Karen: Okay. 

Teresa: Maybe one is less commercial than the other, although, if you're going to publish a book, you have to be a bit commercial too, right. If you want that to sell. 

Karen: Oh, 

Teresa: but, 

Karen: I suppose that would have helped you a lot, like understanding like the creative side and then understanding you have to sell this thing. 

Teresa: I think so. I think I bring some professionalism to my creative writing career that I probably wouldn't have if I hadn't had this whole other career as a copywriter.  So writing my own query letters  and bio and, you know, book 

Karen: Yeah. 

Teresa: jacket cover and that kind of thing. I was way more equipped to do that as a copywriter than I think I would have been as just a creative writer.

Karen: So you have this career as a copywriter for 20 plus years. And then where does dear Scarlet come from? Where does the idea that you need to write this book? 

Teresa: Well, for the entire time I've been a copywriter, I've also wanted to be a creative writer. And so, even 20 years ago I was sitting down outside of work, trying to figure out how to write a book. Cause, I've loved books since I was a little kid. I read a lot and I wanted to get my story out there.

Back then I was working on prose, exclusively, and wanting to write about my parents who had had a hard journey to Canada from China.  And I worked on that memoir for many years. I'd say about maybe five or six and it just really wasn't going anywhere. I had a manuscript and it wasn't exactly what I wanted it to be, but I couldn't figure out how to fix it either.

And then at the same time, I had children, which kind of blew up my plans for anything. 

Karen: May drastically change your life.

Teresa: Well I had three kids in five years. And so it was all about the kids most of the time. And I just felt like I had probably lost my chance. Like I was never going to be a creative writer or an author because, you know, having kids completely derailed everything.

 When my youngest was one year old, I got out of the craziness of having a baby again, a third baby. i finally sat down and thought, you know,  there's a story I want to tell here about having my first child and the depression that came with it and just all the confusion around being a new mother.

And I thought, well, you know, there's a story there. I think I'd like to get it out of me.  And then at the same time when I had kids, there was no time for writing, but I started to draw again.  I'd always doodled as a kid, but never thought that I was any good at it.

And so I never pursued anything art wise.  But you have a bunch of little toddlers running around,  they like to draw and they like you to draw things for them. And so, that kind of was where I restarted my interest in drawing and trying to depict things in a cartoonish way.

And so those two things happened at the same time. I had a story to tell and also I liked drawing and wanted to maybe try my hand at doing a graphic narrative. And so, sat down and did it I guess. Yeah, I had gone back to work after my maternity leave and on my lunch hours, I wrote out the script or the words for Dear Scarlet, the story.

And then over the next few months, bought a sketchbook and tried to sketch out my vision for it with the full intention of hiring or partnering with an illustrator, someone who could actually draw. And when I finished my first draft, I asked a friend who was an illustrator whether he would do this project with me. And I gave him the draft and he went away and a few days later we had lunch and he pushed the book back at me and said, "No, I'm not going to do this," and said, "You have to do it because this story is so vulnerable and so personal. And it has to come from your own hand."

And I said, "Are you sure? I can only draw like 20% better than what I've shown you. Like, this is getting close to the limits of my abilities." And he said, "Yeah, sure. Yeah, you've got to do it." So, I Googled how to make a graphic novel. [both laugh]

Karen: God bless the internet. 

Teresa: And found a great blog post done by the young adult graphic novelist, Raina Telgemeier.

Karen: Oh, love her

Teresa: Yeah. Yeah. She's great. She's absolutely the best.

Karen: I just read three of her books. And then I found out that everyone's like, "Oh yeah my grade five daughter loves it.” And I'm like, I'm 40 and I thought these were great. 

Anyway. 

Teresa: And she's a wonderful person too. I have since met her and she is a top-notch person. She had this blog post - where she detailed for kids - the whole process down to the pencil she used, the paper, she bought, you know, everything. And I thought, okay, I'm just going to copy her. So I went and bought the same tools basically, and got to work and that was about a little more than five years ago.

And you know, I don't love every drawing in the book because I feel like I've gotten better since, but it happened. You know, at some point I always expected an agent or a publisher or someone to say,"This is a good book but you need to get a professional to illustrate it." And no one did, so now it's out there.

Karen: You unintentionally became an illustrator as well as an author.

Teresa: Yeah. So I called myself a beginner illustrator because I don't pretend at all to know what I'm doing when it comes to the art side of things. I feel like I'm a writer who happened to draw this thing, but in the process fell in love with drawing and cartooning, comics, and just the whole graphic medium. I feel like it's actually where I belong. Going back to that memoir I'd been working on for years before I had my kids, I feel like maybe this is the solution to the problems that I had with that. And that's what I'm hoping to work on next.

Karen: Oh, that's your next thing? 

Teresa: I hope so.

Karen: So. I want to go back to that moment when your friend said, "No, I'm not gonna do this for you. You need to do it." Were you worried that it would never happen? Did it give you hope?  

Teresa: I mean, I was a little disappointed, but I also knew that I wanted to get this thing done, you know, at least as done as it could be. I felt confident that it was a story that needed to be out there. So I was gonna put whatever I could into it, I would do my best. So yeah, I wasn't upset with him at all. It was just more, a little bit scared of whether I could execute my vision, which I really couldn't. But it became what it became and I don't regret that.

Karen:  That's so interesting. How this new creative skill - not brand new cause you had drawn before - but it added or infused energy or possibility into this project in a way. 

Teresa: Yeah, it did. It felt new. It felt brand new to me, even though, knowing that I could draw a little bit. But there's a big difference between being able to doodle something you see and actually making a graphic Getting into all the technical aspects of it, even beyond just the drawing, but, figuring out how to get text in there and how to lay things out. And I didn't do that all myself. Eventually, I needed help from a graphic designer because I had made such a mess of the manuscript and the files I couldn't figure out how to solve it myself. so our mutual friend Ginny helped me. 

Karen:  Sometimes just getting help just can get you so much further.

Teresa: Yeah, absolutely. And I couldn't have done the really final product without her. 

Karen:  Because I've known you for such a long time, I know that you've had other crazy shit happen in your life.  Like, dramatic newsworthy stuff.  I guess I always wanted to ask you this and I have a guess about what the answer is. But in addition to dealing with being the mom of three kids and having postpartum depression, your house burned down. 

Teresa: Yeah. 

Karen: And, your husband had a serious health issue. Are you okay to talk about this? 

Teresa:  Yeah. He had two strokes and then a subsequent brain surgery, a craniotomy. And that was actually around the time, just before I started writing the book. 

Karen: Yeah.  And he was under 40 at the time. Right? So you’re young and you have a young family and you're dealing with all this stuff.  So why was Dear Scarlet the story that was important for you to tell when you had been through a lot of different things?

Teresa: Oh, that's a good one, I've never been asked that question. Possibly because no one else knows about all the other drama in my life. 

Karen: Sorry, I don't want to make light of it either. 

Teresa: No, no. It is interesting. I feel like maybe I will eventually write about some of those other things. However, I believe that you need to have worked through a lot of things and gotten some distance before you can really write about something with wisdom or perspective anyways. And so, I guess that was on my mind. Even though my husband had just had his strokes and surgery. But it was the thing that I could write about, that I had processed already, and kind of worked through to the end. Whereas everything else was still new.

Karen: Right. Okay. That's funny. I had a different hypothesis, so 

Teresa: I'd like to hear what you thought. 

Karen: What I thought was -  literally this question was rolling around in my head for a couple of years - so apparently I think about you... 

Teresa: You could have just asked, just sent me a text. 

Karen: I know, but now we're getting it on tape, so that's better. I wondered if it was because it was the story that people wouldn't know about, right? 

Teresa: Oh yeah. 

Karen: Like when your house burned down, people knew you needed help.

Teresa: Yeah. That's pretty obvious.

Karen: You talked about neighbors like coming by, dropping off diapers, like that day.  When your husband is in the hospital, like people can bring over casseroles, but like maybe no one knows when you're depressed. 

Teresa: Yeah, actually, that's a good answer. I wish that was the answer, but... [laughs]

Karen: [laughs] This is just, I don't know, life coach hypothesizing. It's what I do. 

Teresa: Right. 

Karen: Well I remember reading it, and I'm not a mom, I haven't had postpartum depression. I just had regular depression. But I just identified so much with it. And I could just see in some of the images... I don't know, I felt seen or understood, you know, in that odd way of when someone talks about something very, very specific about themselves, you can like, remember that feeling.

Teresa: Yeah, the universal. It's weird, but people talk about this all the time in creative writing that the more specific you get, the more universal it somehow gets too. 

Karen: Right. Yeah, And when you try to be general, it doesn't land with anybody.

Teresa: No. Yeah, exactly. Because there's no point of view.

Karen: So I just remember, I guess waiting and crossing my fingers the whole time too, going like this is going to help people. When you're depressed, it's really hard to read a book about depression to have one more thing to do. To feel seen or recognized in a way is such a gift.  When you feel like somebody else gets you, you know?

Teresa: Oh, thank you. I'm glad. And thank you for always being so supportive of that book. Because as you know, there were a lot of ups and downs through it, trying to get published and I always knew I had your support. Like, okay, some people believe in this thing, it's not just me.

Karen: No I was like, this is important for the world. Yeah.  And how long did it take?

Teresa: So I wrote and drew it for most of 2015. And then I got an agent in 2016,  and we tried to sell it to really big publishers in New York. And then in 2017, it hadn't sold and she dropped me. And then I went out on my own to try to just start sending it to indie publishers and smaller presses.

 And then finally in 2018 got a book deal with a smaller Canadian publisher. And then it came out in 2019.

Karen: Yeah, cause it takes a whole year, right? Once it's bought?

Teresa: Yeah, for me, it was a little less than a year. I kind of lucked out in a way because they had a last minute change in their spring roster, I guess. And so I got the deal in July - I signed with Arsenal Pulp Press, and the book was out in Canada in April of the next year.

So it was very fast for publishing. Because normally I think it takes one or two years actually from signing an offer to actual publication. So mine was on a fast track.

Karen: Fast track after two years of feeling like this thing was never going to happen.

Teresa:  Yeah, fast track after working on this thing for four years straight. 

Karen:  Was there any advice or wisdom that helped you during that time to keep having faith in this thing?

Teresa: I don't remember anyone giving me advice. I just remember that enough people believed in this thing, including you, but you know, friends and other people who I had gone to for help, or hoping that maybe they might have a connection that would help move the book along. And everyone seemed to think it was a good thing. And so that was enough for me to keep going, because I certainly didn't have the confidence in it anymore. 

And I thought, well, in the end, if no one buys this book, I'll just shelve it. Other people were like, oh, you should do a Kickstarter, or self-publish. But the thing I kept saying back then was, you have to have self-confidence to self-publish.

Karen: Yeah. Yeah. 

Teresa: But yeah, but the fact that other people believed in the book, people who I trusted and I thought I had good taste. And that was enough to keep me going, at least until the point that I got the book deal.

Karen: That's interesting, the idea of recruiting or reaching out to a community, who maybe you could go to those people if you needed to and go,  are you sure this doesn't suck? And they can say, no, it doesn't. 

Teresa: Yeah. 

Karen: If you had never told anyone about this and it was just a secret thing, I don't know, maybe it would have not existed.

Teresa: For sure. But you know, that's actually a big part of the creative process is that if you're not willing really to show it to anybody, then it's probably not ready either, you know? 

Karen: Yeah. 

Teresa: When you have a manuscript, if it's so precious to you that you can't, you know, reveal it to anyone for anyone to give you feedback on it, and then you're not ready. It's only a complete work when someone reads it, right? So I mean, you're exposing yourself. Obviously, it's not the most comfortable feeling. I used to send it to people...I sent the first draft to a few people or gave it and basically that whole day before they got back to me thought, they must hate me! [both laugh] They just don't know how to tell me.

Karen: Oh, man. I feel like I had that thought last week. I'm creating a program, I think this is going to be great. And then the next week, this is stupid. It's dumb, nobody wants this.

Teresa: Yeah. And it naturally extends to not even just the thing, right? It's not that they are going to hate the book, or the thing that I made. It's like, obviously they're also going to hate me because I made that.

Karen: Oh, the mind games,  or just learning to live with your own mind is the human challenge.  

So, knowing that you've published this and it has impacted people and you're able to tell this story, what would you tell the 2018, 2017 version of Teresa?

Teresa: When I was crying in my car after reading my breakup letter from the agent?

Karen: Oh yeah I feel that.

Teresa: I guess, tell her to just keep going. There are a lot of good people out there who want to hear this story and it's going to find its readers somehow. I've been really lucky.  I don't think I've gotten a really bad review, really. Not that matters, and people have really resonated with the work. So yeah, I would just tell her to keep trying, which is what I did.

Karen: Like part of you knew that already. Taking the time travel to the other direction, do you think there's a future you, that has something to say to you today? 

Teresa: [laughs] I don't know. Probably the same thing, although I don't have anything new right now. And that's very scary to me because, I mean, it's one thing to Google, 'how to make a graphic novel,' and there's nothing I can Google anymore to figure out how to do this next book.

Karen: Okay." How to create a successful second book."

Teresa: Yeah, exactly. 

Karen: The sophomore project always...

Teresa: Yeah. It's very fraught. It is. Not that Dear Scarlet was a bestseller. You know, it did okay. It's done all right. But I'm proud of the reception I've gotten. And so now that has messed with my head a little bit. Like how did I even make that? I don't know. It was too long ago. I don't remember. [laughs]

Karen: It was a fluke...it wasn't.

Teresa: Yeah, exactly. That's how I feel. And it's like, can I even do it again? And I don't know if I can, but my ambitions are higher now because it was back then, it was just like, okay, let's just get published.  And now I want to make something bigger and better, something more true to myself out there. Not that, that wasn't true to myself, but it's different. 

Karen: Yeah. So your next project will be another graphic memoir? Will it be a memoir? But it'll be another graphic.

Teresa: It'll be a memoir. Yeah, graphic narrative is the way I like to phrase it now. I like prose, but there's something about the comics medium that really appeals to me in terms of storytelling. And, if I can do it, I'll do it, and I do really enjoy drawing. It’s a very peaceful and meditative thing for me to do. And so I want to pursue that even more.

Karen: It feels like it would be less, I dunno, tricky than writing. Like there's just so much self judgment that can happen with writing in the editing of your words and stuff.  I don't know. I don't think that it's easier necessarily...

Teresa: No, it's not. If you want to choose the hardest way to make a book is I think, basically a graphic. 

Karen: Oh really? 

Teresa: Yeah. It's painful. It takes so long.  Maybe it's just because I come from a writing background, writing is easy in a way. And all you need is your computer and you tap tap, and the words come. Yeah, sure you can fiddle a lot with it, but it's also easy to fiddle with it. Like, you highlight something deleted and shift around. Whereas getting like a comics page together is, so, again, it's a fraught thing because even just determining like how many panels or what the shape of the page will be. Is it going to be square? Is it going to be rectangular? How many columns will there be, how many panels will there be, how you want to depict something. And once you get that all down, it's really hard to revise too, right? Because you can't just insert a new panel, you have to redraw the whole page. 

Yeah, it's a lot of work. And there's a great comic out there by the cartoonist Kate Beaton. She wrote a book called Hark, a Vagrant, or it's actually a comic strip series, but she posted a comic to Twitter once about how, you know, she's slaving away on this book, and then she goes up and gets a cup of coffee while and chats with her mom, who's watching her baby. And her mom says, oh, I read that graphic novel you gave me, it only took me like 15 minutes.[both laugh]

And she's like, cool, cool. Because a graphic novel basically takes like four years to draw, but you can read it in a morning.

Karen: Right, yeah. I guess there's a difference in a novel, you're experiencing it over weeks or whatever, but a good point. Cause I wanted to say to people, you can read Dear Scarlet in...

Teresa: You can read it while your baby's napping! Which is great, except it just takes so long to make. 

Karen: Which is like, so perfect for the topic of postpartum depression, because it's not like, here's a book that you're going to have to read for three months. It's like, yeah, I can read this while my baby's in my arms, if I need to. But then you put your four years into it. 

Teresa: Yeah.

Karen: Okay. So let's talk about Closet Dispatch just to completely change gears. 

Teresa: Sure.

Karen: So I know what Closet Dispatch is, but for those who don't, what the heck is Closet Dispatch? 

Teresa: It is... hard to describe. So part way through the pandemic, in I think, the summer of 2020,  I was getting really sick of myself because I had wanted to start on a new graphic memoir. And basically, I couldn't write or draw anything,  I was also homeschooling three kids. But, I just had no appetite for narrative in a way. And I thought I had lost it forever. And it's like, okay, that's it. There's my career. 

Karen: That was fun. 

Teresa: Yeah, yeah, it was nice while it lasted. And I thought, okay, I don't want this whole pandemic year, or however long it's going to be a total bust in terms of making something. Cause I do like making things. 

And so I'd looked into setting up a newsletter through Substack and then at the same time I had been reading this book called Women in Clothes, which was written by Heidi Julavits, Sheila Heti, and Leanne Shapton. So two writers and an artist, well, they're all writers. But was this huge compendium of just stories from women in all different walks of life, all different types of women too, talking about what clothes meant to them. Some very specific and some more broadly. They had a section where, written about, or maybe interviewed, a Bangladeshi clothing manufacturer worker, who worked in a sweatshop, basically. They had trans women, they had a woman who only wore one dress. She had the same dress made over and over in different fabrics and just wore one dress, her whole life. And all of that was super fascinating to me, and also at the same time as that I had decided not to buy any clothes, as long as the pandemic lasted, because I just felt like at the beginning I was in a panic and I did some weird online shopping and, everything I bought was stupid. [both laugh]

And then I thought, why did I even buy new clothes? I'm stuck at home. No, one's going to see me. They're only going to see like my shoulders, and up and so the combination of those things just got me thinking about my own relationship to clothing and all the stories around the stuff that was in my closet.

And I wanted to talk about clothes, even though I wasn't buying clothes, cause I kinda missed the shopping. And so, I started a newsletter, it's called Closet Dispatch. It's a weekly dispatch, from my closet. And it kind of started out just talking about different clothing items in my closet, but really has branched out into just whatever I'm thinking about for the week.  Always related to clothing, but really more, again, more memoir. You know, things that have happened in my life, stories around clothes that I’ve found meaningful.

And yeah, it's been an interesting ride. I didn't think I would have so much to say. I'm up 35, I think. 35 weeks of this newsletter and every week I think, well, I've probably run out. Like I had started calling it a limited edition newsletter, and I don't know how long it's going to go for.

have no clue, but as long as I have something to write and something to say, then I'll keep going. And it's an illustrated newsletter so I always try to make a little painting of a clothing item to go with it.

Karen: And it's so fun to read! Like in, in a world where everybody needs to have a newsletter especially like in business, as a coach, I have to have a newsletter and there are so few newsletters that are really enjoyable to read. So I love yours. 

Teresa: Well, thank you. 

Karen: It's nice because you're not really selling something. 

Teresa: I'm not selling anything. And  I don't also intend to charge for it. I know a lot of writers, use Substack as a stream of income. 

Karen: Oh, I wasn't familiar with Substack. 

Teresa: You can subscribe basically, and have a paid subscription, and get extra content. 

Karen: It's like a Patreon for writers or something.

Teresa: Is a little bit, Substack has been in the news lately, you know, with some controversy around certain people that they've recruited and paid, who are, transphobic or are profiting from really terrible opinions about things. 

I decided a while back, I'll stay on there, I think for the time being. It is a good platform in terms of ease of use and stuff.  I also decided I'm just not going to make them any money by not charging. As a result, I'm not going to make myself any money either, but that's okay. This is not for that. 

Karen: Yeah. 

Teresa: This for something else it's just a creative outlet, and also just practice writing long form, after doing all that graphic work and comics stuff to see if I could also just write prose again. So yeah, it's been fun so far and I get some nice comments or replies back. It's Interesting to see what resonates with people and how much people think about clothes too.

Karen: It's funny, cause I think, I always feel like I shouldn't think about clothes or shouldn't be obsessed. Which is also dumb. Like why is that? I don't know why that's a judgment in my mind.

Teresa: I mean, in one of my first news newsletters, I got into that because people paint an interest in fashion or style as being vapid or useless, but so much of how you dress - whether you care or not - it reflects your identity and how you perceive yourself and how you want others to perceive you that it is meaningful, think anyways and something interesting to explore.

Karen: I think at the beginning you were, well, I don't know if I'm remembering this correctly but, painting little pictures of things you wanted to buy. You're like, I can't buy anything, so I'm just gonna paint a picture of it.  like scratching your itch a little bit. And then there was one about Celine Dion.

Teresa: And that into ownership, right? Like, do you really need to own something, or is it more about, capturing it in a way, making it personal to you somehow?

Karen: Yeah. Or the desire of it, you know? 

Teresa: And then Celine Dion. [laughs]

Karen: Celine Dion, because like, there's so many things you could draw. And I also have loved Celine Dion since I was an angsty teenager. So I loved that one and everyone should go look at the " I love New York" one. It's called I love New York, or something about New York. That was one of my favorites. 

Teresa: Awesome. Yeah, no, the Celine Dion thing is funny to me because I did not really care for her very much when I was young. Like I had one of her albums when I was a teenager, but I also felt like she got really cheesy, real fast, you know?  But then in recent years,  have come around great respect for her because of, I guess just her unflappable, like optimism.

I have this theory now that everyone would be doing a lot better. If the voice in our head was Celine Dion talking to us instead of our own voice, you know? 

If I'm trying to get a creative project launched, or I'm just working on something and telling myself, "You suck this bad, like, you're never going to do this." I'd like to replace that with Celine Dion going, "You can do it! I believe in you!"

Karen: "Why can't you get that?” You know?

Teresa: "You a person of worth and value!" I could hear her say it. It's so clear in my mind.

Karen: Yeah.

Teresa: Yeah. We all need a bit of her voice, I think.

Karen: We do! You know, I had this experience, I went to a concert of hers before the pandemic. So it was February 2020.

Teresa: Oh, wow. 

Karen: I had never seen her in concert before. And felt like I connected so much with that angsty part of myself. And you know how when you're 15, you can love something so much? Like it's just unbridled. I found myself, like part of me going, well, it would have been nice to hear a little bit more about... like, almost like tearing It apart, but it was like no, no, no, no. Tap into the like 15 year old Karen.

Teresa: Yeah, exactly. Just be open.

Karen: Just where you utterly love something completely. And I think, Yeah. I think what I got from her and that experience was the message that was something like, you're allowed to have what you want because I feel like a lot of my life I'd been told I wasn't allowed to. And even with music, like my parents were strict and it was like, you're not allowed to like that, you're not allowed to do that. And so this concert was Celine and some of her like amazing slash ridiculous, not really ridiculous, just amazing outfits and how that all goes together.

Teresa: Just over the top and just confident and be who you want to be. And yeah, I totally have total respect for that.

Karen: Yeah, so good. Speaking of, well, Celine is someone that I loved. But what about your career crushes? Are there people that you professionally have a crush on?

Teresa:  Yeah, very much so. On a local level, there's an author, she's a multihyphenate. She sings and creates music and just had a play come out a couple of years ago. And is an author of many types of books, including poetry and graphics, and novels.

Her name is Vivek Shraya and I just have total respect for her. Not just because of her talent and everything that she does in her own creative life, but how she brings other people along with her. And so now she's started an imprint, with actually my publisher but it's called V.S. Books.

And they put out calls for submissions, for people who are over the age of 50, who never had a chance to publish and finally now do or,  for  BIPOC writers, she's just a real champion of marginalized voices and just giving people opportunities that she obviously didn't have when she was young.

 But now that she's in a position of power is doing that for other people. And she was a real champion of my book too. Over Christmas,  Chapters -Indigo asked her to put together a list choose her favorite items and she put my book on her list. And she didn't have to, and it's just so,  generous and thoughtful. And so definitely her, and along the same lines Roxanne Gay, who is a phenomenal writer, does everything well, great speaker, everything. But also, is not content to just bask in her own talent, and reap the rewards, but very purposefully trying to open doors for other writers who need a champion.

So now she started her own imprint, through Grove Atlantic, I think. She's got a Substack newsletter where she sends out pieces by emerging writers that she's hand-picked and then just putting out there, basically using her platform to amplify their voices.

It's that kind of thing that I really admire someone who is, very clearly at the top of their game creatively. But also isn't only in it for themselves.

Karen: It’s really cool that we're seeing a new way of doing things now, it's not just about getting to the top and clutching to stay there, but you know, I'm here and who else can I open the door for?

Teresa: Yeah, exactly. The way I've heard it from a comics artist named Nicole Georges, and she said it used to be, you climb as a woman, at least.  She was using it in that context, climb, break through the glass ceiling and then you take the ladder with you.

You're finally there, but isn't it much better to leave the ladder, help other people out, so that there are more people like you in the room?

That's my hope, at least in whatever becomes of my career after this. I'm always trying to think, what in the future can I do? And I'm glad I have role models like Roxanne Gay and Vivek Shraya to look towards,  if I ever achieved anywhere close to their level of talent and power, it's to be able to bring others along with me.

Karen: So good. You just said, "whatever becomes of my career." I'm curious how, like becoming an author, how has that affected your day job...

Teresa: I mean, it hasn’t. [laughs]

Karen: [laughs] It hasn’t? As in, “I still need a day job” ?

Teresa: Yeah. One thing people should totally understand is that if you want to make money, you don't write books to make money. Because that's very rare. There are only a few people who really can make a full career out of writing and selling books.

And it takes a long time. And it takes a lot of luck and opportunity, everything has to work exactly right for you to get there. And the vast majority of authors who publish even many books, still have to teach on the side or you know, have other streams of income too. To make their lives work because they like to eat and they have children who like to eat.

And so, there's actually a great book about that, by the way. It's an anthology called, Scratch by Manjula Martin and it's about writers and money. And I remember reading it a long time ago. The author Cheryl Strayed - who wrote Wild - breaks down how her six figure advance for Wild, like basically only went to paying down her debt and just survival. You hear about people getting these big deals and it's always parceled out over time and it's very hard to live on,  as the writer. If you want to be a full-time writer, you do go into a lot of debt in order to make things happen. And then spend the rest of your life paying off that debt [laughs] until you make a big. 

So I've kept my day job, I work part-time at my day job and have managed to pick up more jobs too. So as you said at the beginning, I'm teaching a little bit for Gotham writers' workshop and also selling shorter comics to different publications and things.  I like to joke to my husband that I'm not really close to retiring and it seems like I'm just gonna end up having all the jobs instead of just one job. [both laugh]

Karen: 20 years into my career, I now have more jobs than ever.

Teresa: Yeah, exactly. It's absolutely true. Yeah, teaching workshops, doing little speaking engagements. But I  do have a job coming up that's going to be a big change.

Karen: Oh?

Teresa: Yeah.  So, I'm going to be the writer in residence at the University of Calgary. It's through their Canadian distinguished writers program starting in the fall.

Karen: Wow. Amazing! Congratulations -  I'm tearing up, I’m so excited for you.

Teresa: Oh thanks. So I'm going to take a sabbatical from my day job. And it will be, I guess, the very first time in my life where I'm going to be paid to write, do my creative writing, and have the time and space in which to do it. And also do some community outreach, like doing some manuscript evaluations, maybe doing a few workshops and events through the U of C.

That's what's coming up for me and probably the biggest change that has come out of publishing a book will be that. Because otherwise, my life hasn't really changed that much, be back. 

Karen: That's a big change.

Teresa: Yeah. I'll be back at my alma mater, where I haven't really been on campus in 20 years. I'll have an office.  When I wrote Dear Scarlet, it was all at the kitchen table, at night from 8:30 to 11:30 every night. And so I'm not used to having a space where I don't have to clear everything away so that breakfast or dinner or whatever can be served on it. And so, yeah, it's going to be a huge change and I'm looking forward to it, but also a little freaked out.

Karen: Yeah. I guess it's almost like you have the summer to shift how you think about how you create now. Is that fair to say?

Teresa: I think so. I've always made things in the in-between times.  Whether it's, while the kids are at school or, during lunch hour at work or at night while they're, while everyone's sleeping. And so to have the luxury of having day time, hours to work on something of my own choosing is amazing. 

Karen: That's cool. It's kind of like winning the lottery. 

Teresa: Yeah, in a way. 

Karen: You said the money doesn't all pile up and then you're set for life, but you know, like it's an opportunity that You wouldn't have had, if you hadn't gone through those years of trials.

Teresa: Yeah. It's one of those overnight success things where you see everything that has led up to this point. 

Karen: Yeah. Yeah. 

Teresa: My biggest fear though, is that I'll waste the time somehow. Cause I'm really good at wasting time. [laughs]

Karen: We're all good at wasting time.*

Teresa: I've gotten really good at it this year.

Karen: I don't know, like it's tricky, right? Because with all the pressure of what's going on in the pandemic.

Teresa: Yeah. I, and I tell myself that a lot too, you don't have to be productive in a pandemic, you just need to survive, but if you're a creative person there's always that urge in you to do something and make something. And so you have to honor that too.

Karen: Yeah. So, do you have a goal for what you're working on? Was it what you mentioned about your parents? 

Teresa: Yeah, that's the main thing I'd like to work on is, the graphic memoir. Maybe less now about my parents' story, exactly, and more about my story growing up as their kid, a child of immigrants. I think that's where I've landed. But again, you don't know what you're making until you're making it. It's just a matter of weaving in the right thing at the right time and also, understanding that their story is not necessarily my story to tell. So, yeah, it'll be interesting. I really don't know what it is yet.  And most people who start books don't, right? You start feeling around and trying to figure things out and it's like you're designing or building a building without knowing what it's going to look like.

Karen: Yeah. Well, I'm so excited to hear that you have that opportunity. 

Teresa: Thanks. 

Karen: Maybe it just gives space for that project in a different way, and it'll be so interesting to see what it becomes.  Thank you so much for being here with me today. So awesome to get into this all with you 

Teresa: Yeah. No, thank you. And thanks for all your thought provoking questions. 

Karen: [Laughs]No problem. 

Thank you so much for listening. It means so much that you spend part of your day with me. If you enjoyed this episode go to Apple Podcasts and leave a 5 star review. It helps other people find the podcast, and my hope is that if more people find the Intentional Career Podcast, then more people can create their Intentional Careers.

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Episodes are released every second Wednesday, so I’ll see you in 2 weeks for more of the Intentional Career Podcast!

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