PP 066: The Seasons of a Writer with Christin Taylor

Quick Show Notes: Christin Taylor

Christin Taylor and Kim Sutton chat about the seasons of a writer, the amazing accomplishments individuals can achieve (even when a parent) when goals are set, and more!

Connect With Christin Taylor

Christin Taylor’s Website
Facebook
Twitter

Resources Mentioned

Annesley Writers Forum

Episode Transcription

KIM: Welcome back to another episode of Positive Productivity. I am so thrilled to have you here and I’m also thrilled to have our guest today, Christine Taylor.

CHRISTIN TAYLOR:  Hello!

KIM: Hello!  Christine is an atheist  Writing Instructor and Author of Shipwrecked in LA, and I am so thrilled you are her, Christine.

CHRISTIN TAYLOR: Thank you so much, Kim. It is an honor to be here.

KIM: Would you mind giving a little bit about your background? I’ve already heard it,  I loved your story and we both know how inspired I was, but would you mind sharing about your background and how you got to where you are today?

CHRISTIN TAYLOR: Sure!  You mean as a writer, or?                  

KIM: Yeah, my questions are so vague are they?  Yeah, as a Writer

CHRISTIN TAYLOR: No worries. Yeah, so I kind of came into it unexpectedly. I had always loved writing as a kid but then sort of went away from it, you know, in high school and then I got big sparkly eyes set on the film industry, when I was a teenager and really believe that’s why I wanted to be where I wanted to work. So I went into University as a Film Major, but then my sophomore year I decided, you know, I think I might take a Creative Writing Class just for fun for one of my electives and I just,  that bursts sort of like a lifelong love for me of writing. However, I was still determined that I was in a work in the Film Industry, so I just added it as a second major. So I graduated as a Film and Writing Major. And then right after I graduated, my husband and I moved out to Los Angeles and it can then, then commenced sort of like a five year adventure ended up being seven years total, but a five year adventure of trying to work in the Film Industry. Eventually getting into the Film Industry, but then realizing it’s not really what I wanted to do, and then leaving and in that whole time I got my,  I knew I wanted to do something more with Writing, so I got my Masters of Fine Arts and Creative Writing from Antioch, University of Los Angeles. And right about the time I came to graduate I just realized, you know, I’m not, I’m not cut out for the Film Industry. I really don’t enjoy this work. So I quit that and then fall of 2006 started teaching. And so I have been teaching writing at different Colleges and Universities for the last 10 years, I also run my own Online Writing Workshops. They do a lot of sort of Personal Coaching and Editing. I’m the Editor for, one of my passion projects is the ANSI Writers’ Forum, which is an Online Women’s Publication dedicated to elevating Women’s Voices in the Spiritual Conversation we have about a group of 60 to 70 women that write for us. So yeah, that’s, that’s what I do now. I, I teach Writing and I am a Writer and I love it.

KIM: I love your whole story and I have to ask if you could go back,  and tell your younger self to pursue Writing instead of Film, would you or do you think you would let yourself continue on the same path that you, –

CHRISTIN TAYLOR:  – Ah, yeah, that is such a good question and I have gone back there many times and thought about that and, and ultimately the answer is NO, I wouldn’t because I feel like my husband and I really, that adventure right out of college shaped us and here we are, we have so many great stories from that time there. It was such a rich sort of dynamic season of our lives that I know made us who we are today and sort of set us on the course we’re on and I don’t think I would trade that for anything even though it did sort of set back my professional career as a, as an academic. But yeah, I think yeah, ultimately the story is so rich and so fulfilling that I would let it be what it is.

KIM: It’s funny, when I think about it, I wanted to be an Architect in Outer Space, I don’t know where I came up with that one, but I could barely make it through any Science Class so I know I definitely wouldn’t go back, but I did get my degree in Interior Architecture. However, if I knew that I would be in Marketing, now, I really couldn’t go back and tell myself to do it differently because Marketing as we know it, didn’t exist when I went through college.

CHRISTIN TAYLOR: Yeah, right, right, yeah you know.

KIM: Yeah, everything for a reason. The journey that you went through though, that ended up really contributing to your Shipwrecked in LA though, right?

CHRISTIN TAYLOR:  Yeah, that became my first book. I felt like it was a story worth telling and I thought, you know, I think this is a good story,  it’s interesting, you know, it’s got a lot of conflict and tension and drama, but also a lot of joy in it too. And so I knew I wanted to write it, at that same time I was starting to work on the manuscript. My husband went back to Graduate School and he studied College Counseling and Student Development. He’s in Student Affairs now, and he came to me over the course of his first semester and he said: “ You know Christine, I’m reading about all these Young Adult Identity Development Theories, and I think they’re like, they are talking about what you and I have experienced as an adult.” So there was one in particular by the name of Marsha Backstrom and Golda who sort of talked about the different social and economic changes that young adults are facing and how it was very different than 20 years ago, and it’s sort of creating these new identity, these new obstacles for young adults that are sort of causing us to come to our adult years in different ways. And as I read about, there was another one too, Sharon Douglas Parks, wrote about Shipwreck to Young Adults, Shipwreck in their Identity and then sort of put their identity back together again. And I was like, oh my goodness, that is exactly what I’ve gone through. And Dwayne has gone through and I could just sort of go down the list. And like named friend after friend after friend who’d read all graduated within two or three years of each other and we’re hitting those same developmental milestones together. And so that created really the background and the research that I wrote my narrative on so Shipwrecked and LA is, it’s, it’s a memoir, it’s narrative, it’s a memoir of five years. It’s my story, but sort of the spine of it is this young adult identity research and my hope was that people would read it, young adults would read it and adults, parents of young adults who read it and have sort of a language and a structure to sort of to name what they were going through.

KIM:  I love the whole concept in everything about your narrative and then thinking about my own children now we have, my husband and I, we have a total of seven and the oldest is about to graduate high school this year. and I see my parents encouraged my siblings and I to do whatever made us happy. However, we I know in my case have, is trying to do something that was glamorous, sort of like you in the Film Industry and I wasn’t really thinking about whether or not I would be happy about it and I think I sort of found out, well I know I wound up in the same type of situation. While it was glamorous and Interior Design Industry was not what I was expecting. I think part of it was because I wasn’t so much into the material materialism, they went into everything associated with it. But how would you recommend speaking to our children about choosing their goals in their life path and what they want to do?                

CHRISTIN TAYLOR: Yeah, I think it,  well, it requires a different kind of partnership I think, than in the past with the adult children and, and I think the trick, I mean, to have a nine year old and a five year olds, so it’s easy for me to talk about it abstractly. I’m sure when my kids get to me young adults, they’ll probably face a totally different set of circumstances and I will just freak out and feel last, but I think when I, when I watched parents who seem to have been most successful with this, they’ve managed to navigate that transition from being an authority in their kids’ lives, to being an influence in their kids’ lives as young adults. And I think that’s a really hard transition to make. It’s a scary transition to make because you really are letting go of control, but it’s a natural transition that needs to happen and I think it’s all rooted in relationship, right?

Like it ultimately comes down to the strength of the personal relationship you have with your children. And I really love how Marcia Backstrom and Golda talks about it. She has this image of like a tandem bicycle and she says, “ When kids are kids and adolescents and teenagers, they’re on the back of the bicycle and were on the front of the bicycle and we’re sort of steering the bicycle and we really are dictating the choices they’re making in some respects, the ways that they’re spending their time, what they’re engaged in, where they’re going, what they’re doing with their lives, but then when they become 18 and go off to college and become young adults, it’s time for us to get off the bike and switch places with them. They get to sit in the front seat and now we sit in the backseat and we are adding forward motion to where they’re going, we’re supporting them that way, but we’re also helping them reflect on the choices they’re making and helping them ideally have a stronger sense of an internal voice that’s leading them and helping them make those decisions. We’re no longer the external voice that are helping them make those decisions, but we’re hopefully helping them develop that internal voice that helps them make decisions wisely rather than always having to rely on people outside them to help them know what to do.”  So that’s how she talks about it. We’ll see how it goes for me, [ laughing ] I don’t know.

KIM:  I’m sitting over here chuckling a little bit. Oh my gosh, I never see chuckling except for when I’m on Podcasts, it’s so embarrassing. It’s just that our daughter who’s graduating this year, she actually decided she wanted to be a Tattoo Artist.

CHRISTIN TAYLOR: Aha, OK!

KIM:  She is apprenticing, she’s 17 and apprenticing as a Tattooer to straight now.  And in order to support her, we have each sacrifice, a piece of skin [ laughing ] already had tattoos, [laughing ] but we each have a tip. Oh, my husband has at least two from her with goals for more, but yeah. Um, yeah, you know, you get invested in College or you can invest in a Tattoo Apprenticeship.

CHRISTIN:  [ Laughing ]  I love it, that’s awesome!

KIM:   Yeah. All parents, I wouldn’t recommend this necessarily for everybody, but yeah, she’s following her dreams and she’s making her mark, let me say. I often have a 17 year old Tattoo Artist. Awesome. Yeah. So you, I remember hearing that you, you wrote, Shipwrecked in LA before, during, and after having children?

CHRISTIN TAYLOR:   Yes,  yes, I did!

KIM:   It’s so inspiring to me,  because I personally have five, and I’m trying to write a book, so I would love to hear more about that journey. What advice you have for anybody who is trying to write a book?

CHRISTIN TAYLOR: Yes. Well, first of all, each writer’s practice is going to look different from the other and each person functions on a different rhythm than another and I think we just need to put that out and understand that’s how it works because I think often for me, I always had the voice of. I studied writing out my Masters of Fine Arts when I was 26 and writing, and read lots of writers and a lot of published writers that talk about having you know, daily writing practices and that I think is really beautiful and there’s a lot of truth to that. If you just exercise that muscle every day, it will inevitably grow and you will get better and better and better. But I think that looks different, for especially for moms of young kids, and I think we just have to give ourselves grace for that life as a part of.

There are writing practice and the truth is I can’t, just go sit in a room by myself for eight hours a day and right. I need to live life. I need to be engaged in my kids’ lives. I need a filling up that creative tank, in order to then turn around and write.So one of my, one of my good friends, her name is Glenn Jackson, she’s just finished a book and it’s sold it to a Wesleyan Publishing House and it’s going to get published in the next year, but she talks about Life Rhythms and how each of us has sort of a different rhythm. Some people are daily, some people are weekly, monthly and some people are seasonal and that depending on your rhythm, you’re going to approach tasks and things different ways and she sort of talks about how to maximize that rhythm, and I am a seasonal person,I, I run on seasons and often people who run on seasons have sort of like banners for the season or like have one focus word for the season that gets them through. So for me, when I’m right, because I still have written, I read, I wrote two books, Shipwreck in LA and then sort of a sequel to that book and now I’ve written. I’m working on a third manuscript that I’ve been writing for these last two years and all, you know, so my kids have been growing up all during that time, and I’ve been sort of managing life at home with them, and teaching and writing. Um, and for me it really is so, you know, like every book has come about differently, but this, for this third manuscript that I wrote last fall or two falls ago, the kids were in school, we just moved to Canada. I was going through the Immigration Process so I couldn’t work right out of the gate. So I had the fall at home. Um, while the kids were at school and I decided this fall I’m going to write every single day. And I did and I generated the first 50,000 words of this third manuscript, but I couldn’t keep that pace up. And so I knew that was just for that season it would be a daily writing practice. And then for the next season the writing practice was going to be different and I was going to shift into another gear. So yeah, I say all that to say first I think we need to identify what kind of rhythm do we naturally fall into and then really play to the strengths of that rhythm when it comes to our writing. Secondly, I, I got my MFA in 2006. Noel was born in 2007,  I started working on that first book right out of Grad School and I was pregnant with Noel and I remember thinking: “ How am I ever going to get any writing done when I have kids?” I was really terrified. But you knew what Kim? What ended up happening, which is just so ironic is I actually did more writing once Noel was born and this is why, because suddenly my days became structured and suddenly I had to manage my time better. And so after that initial, like the first 10 months was sort of a blur of sleep and trying to get everything in place and recovering. Once that happened and she was sort of an irregular napping routine, I just knew everyday at 9:00 when she took her nap, I would sit down and write, and I didn’t have the luxury of waiting to feel inspired. I didn’t have the luxury of of sort of easing my way into it. I just had to as soon as she went to, but it didn’t matter how I felt, as soon as I laid her down for a nap, I would turn around and go to my computer and I would write for about 45 minutes and I wouldn’t edit as I went. I just got it all on paper, so that was again another season of the napping season. As the kids grew and thinking, they stopped taking naps. Then I started writing at bed times, when they would go to bed and then there was a season when I decided I really needed to push and get things done on the manuscript. I got up early, which is really hard to do and I don’t recommend doing it for young moms. You need your sleep that I got up early for a span of two or three months and wrote, and that was done.So I think motherhood and writing has taught me is, you can’t wait to be inspired, you really have to just dive in and commit to doing it, but also be gracious with yourself and know that there are some seasons where it’s just not gonna happen. So for example, summer months are really hard for me to write actually, because the kids are home with me all day and I don’t have that same sort of brain space to give to writing in the summer. And you would think in the summer. Oh, not working, not teaching. I’d have more time to write, but in actuality my creative juices are depleted because I’m giving so much to the kids, keeping them entertained, we’re running, we’re doing things and nonstop chatter talking: “ Mommy, I need this, I need that.” You know, so I don’t have the same sort of brain space to, to, to give to my writing. So I just know that summer months are quiet month. I may get one essay or one article written, but that’s okay. I give myself that permission to have that break. And then I know in the fall and the spring when the kids go back to school, I’m going to amp it up and try to get more work done.

KIM:  Can I call my season sport season? Hey Siri, open up my Google Drive and start cleaning for me, [ laughing ] driving down the road. Oh, did you hear that?

CHRISTIN TAYLOR:  She didn’t respond.  [ laughing ]

KIM : That was not intentional. I put her on silent, but I guess she’s still good about responding to me. So you do your practice is to sit down at your computer. Is there any other way that,  and I know everybody’s writing style is different, but is that the best way for you to write?

CHRISTIN TAYLOR:  Well, again, it depends on where I’m at in a project, if it’s if I’m in the generating stages of a project, was a book part of my writing practices reading. So for this third manuscript there were a lot of great books that I knew were going to inform my reflections. Not necessarily be researched, but we’re just going to start shaping my reflections on my experiences. And so part of my writing practice was dedicating like:  “Okay, I’m going to sit down for a little bit and be reading and trusting and knowing that they’re reading was going to be fruitful and turn into some good writing later.” Even though I wasn’t actually sitting there writing at that time. I also, I like to have a place outside of the house to write. So there’s, there’s a couple places that for me are very fruitful and I know I can just go so they have lots of natural light with Wifi and I know I can, you know, get a cup of coffee and go sit and do some writing there. And those tend to be better for me than if I’m at home sometimes. So yeah, that’s what it looks like for me.

KIM : I’m so happy that you addressed that seasons aren’t necessarily spring, summer, fall, winter of leaf season in season all weather season.

CHRISTIN TAYLOR:  Well yeah, and I think, I think especially for women, we have to sort of like claim back the narrative of what a writing practice looks like because I think we can really get defeated if it doesn’t look like what we think it should look like. And I think there’s no wrong way. You know, these, these people who are writing professionally and in talking about everyday at 9:00 I sit down and I write that is beautiful and is absolutely fruitful and useful, but if you’re a mother with young kids, 9:00 is right when things start picking up and you need to be going to the park and having your kids run around and get their energy out, it’s just not going to happen. I remember too, after he had written the first manuscript for the first book, I knew I was going to have to rewrite it again. I had written the whole thing and then I went back and looked at it and was like: “ Oh.” And I had, I had given it to one of my mentors who’s has impeccable taste and she read it and was like: “ Well, the voices sort of wrong and the chronology is wrong.” And I was like: “ I’ve got to rewrite this whole thing from scratch.” Um, and so that was my, my daughter Noelle was three, and I was pregnant with Nathan, and we had put in a while. I was, we had just moved to Bellingham, Washington and I wasn’t working, but we put, decided to put Noelle in preschool for six hours a week, and that’s how much we could afford for her to be in preschool. And so I had one of my writing mentors lived there who I loved. She just was wonderful, wonderful writer. She’s a single lady and she had had me over for lunch with one day with Noel and I told her: “ You know, I’ve got to rewrite this book and I have six hours a week to do it.” Six hours a sort of regular scheduled time to do it. And she looked at me and said:  “Well, I don’t know how you’re going to do it in six hours a week. And I was like: “ Oh, just like a kick to the gut”, you know. Meanwhile she had taken me to upstairs. She had refurbished her, her attic and into this beautiful meditation writing room with a desk and she had like a yoga mat and everyday she would go up to her room and write. And I remember just feeling so defeated because I was like: “ Oh, I don’t have a meditation room like that.” I can’t give everyday to writing. How am I ever going to rewrite this book? Well, I did. I did it! I was on six hours a week and then at bedtime and nap times, and I remember calling one of my good, good friends whose name is also Christian and who is a Writer. And I was sort of like whining and fussing to her about: “ I don’t, can’t write this book on six hours a week.” And she looked, she listened, and then she sort of kicked me in the butt was like: “Christin,, you have the time, you have the right and you’re going to be a better writer for it. “ And it sort of brought me up short and I was like: “ That’s right, I have, I just need to take what I have, and make the most of it. And you know, Kim, I did it! I rewrote the book and the idea a little over a year on the time that I had, and it, and now it is what it is. So, and I’m pretty proud of it given that season of my life and the age that I was at when I wrote it. So.-

KIM :  I have to ask, how many books have you started and not completed or ditched?  Is it countable or uncountable?

CHRISTIN TAYLOR:  That is a good question because, oh goodness, I don’t know. I don’t know. I, I actually, um, each book idea I’ve had, I have, I have done, but that’s only been three and I am, I haven’t had a surplus of book ideas. I have had a surplus of article and essay ideas that I’ve had sort of kept a pipeline for. And so many of those are just sort of withered up and fallen by the wayside for sure.

KIM :  I’ve gone so far as to get book covers designed.

CHRISTIN : Oh yeah.

KIM : As I started reading, and are now somewhere buried in my documents folder on Google Drive,  it’s comparable to my GoDaddy URLs that I’ve purchased. I’ve never done anything with someday they may come to fruition. But that goes back to chronic idea disorder. I want to tell that down a little bit.

CHRISTIN TAYLOR:  Yeah. Well ideation, ideation, and if you’re familiar with strength finders, ideation is actually one of my top five strengths. So I’m surprised that I haven’t done more of that honestly. But yeah, for whatever reason, the book ideas I’ve had, I’ve only had three and I have written those. But yeah, it’s probably largely more my ideas and article ideas that I always have brewing at the back of my mind. And who knows if I’ll actually get to that one or not.

KIM :  So you’re driving down the road and you get an idea? How do you record it?

CHRISTIN TAYLOR:  On my phone, yeah.

KIM :  We won’t say her name again right now because I don’t want her to put any more to the Podcast. [ Laughing ]

CHRISTIN TAYLOR:  Yeah, I do. I pick it up and we’ll just sort of do like a Voice Memo.

KIM : I’d love to circle back around. Sorry. This is no segway whatsoever. Trying on professors would not have been impressed and I would love to circle back around to Ainsley Writer’s forum and what it is all about and what you do there and and yeah.

CHRISTIN TAYLOR:  Yeah, so I’m the Chief Editor for the Writer’s Forum. As I said, we have about 60 to 70 women who write for us and our whole goal is to elevate women’s voices and the spiritual conversation. We know women have not always been equal members at the table, when it comes to faith and church and we luckily come out of a faith tradition called the Wesleyan Denomination, which is a part of the Methodist tradition that has always affirmed women as full members of the Church and leadership and ministry. And so the ANSI Writer’s Forum is a sort of natural fruition of, of that heritage and wanting to really bring women to the table and give them voices in the spiritual conversation.

KIM :  Could you share more about what Wesleyan is?  I mean, I’m Christian, but I don’t really understand and I’m sure some of the listeners don’t, either.

CHRISTIN TAYLOR:  We’re partnered with Wesleyan Publishing Houses, sort of why I say that, but the Wesleyan Denomination is sort of under the Methodist sort of movement and um, we have a really radical awesome history in the late 1800 of Abolition and Women’s Rights and would that sort of what we grew out of,  that’s how we sort of became who we are. The very first Women’s Suffrage Convention was held at a Wesley Chapel and the first woman to ever be ordained in Christians are modern Christian history was through the Wesleyan denomination. It was a real short staffed. We were started as Abolitionists, which is why we got kicked out of the Methodist Church other than Methodist Church came back around again because our founders are saying: “No, you know, there should not be any slavery, there should be nothing that keeps people from serving God to their fullest potential,  um, and then it was a real short step to say, well, women have also been given a spirit as well and they should have freedom to serve God. So anyway, we have this awesome radical sort of history. However, ANSI, ANSI Writer’s Forum was birthed because in recent decades, our numbers do not match our radical history and especially like the Wesleyan Publishing Houses, mostly publishing men, but we had like a woman General Secretary and things. So we were sort of saying: How can we?” It’s not that there’s a lack of talent in our movement. We have amazing, powerful, gifted women in our movement, but there’s, as there so often is in leadership, there’s sort of a breakdown of the pipeline that cultivates that talent and invest in it and mentioned it and then delivers it to the proper places. So um, I am adult. Yeah, so I’m a Writing Professor that’s sort of vocation my day, my day job, and so as well as being a Writer, so that sort of what I brought to the table was I’m working with these women and investing in them and giving them the skills and tools they need to grow as Writers and Speakers and then be able to turn around, not only to the Wesleyans, but really to the, to the whole world and say:  “Do you need some women writers who they are? Do you need some women speakers? Here they are, they have been practiced, they’ve grown, they’ve exercised those muscles and they’re ready to step out and yeah, and share.” So that’s really what the ANSI Writer’s Forum sort of was birthed out of. You don’t have to be a Wesleyan to write for us, you have to do Wesleyan to read for us, but it’s, it’s sort of giving a nod to that initial radical heritage we have, that allows us to be able to do the work we do now. So –

KIM :  Wow! So considering there is a faith aspect of ANSI Writer’s Forum, is that the sole focus of the writing or does it go a lot more beyond that?

CHRISTIN TAYLOR:  That is the central sort of Lens that everyone writes through. Now we, we write about everything right about money, and sex, and beauty and I mean all different kinds of things, but always through this lens of how do we as women of faith who sort of have this other perspective on our lives, interpret these things. And I’m so proud of our women writers. They write fearlessly. I, I love that we avoid cliche. I mean I feel like there’s so many Christian Women Publications or you know, things where I think it’s easy to fall. I mean especially when we talk about his faith and spirituality, it is riddled with rhetoric and cliche and we are not the ANSI Writer’s Forum all about putting a pretty bow on things. However, we do want things to sort of be redemptive, but our women write about their struggles with in fidelity, and anorexia and divorce, and all sorts of real life things that we deal with, as women. But knowing that we’re sort of rooted in the whole, the whole time rooted in a faith that, that gives us a sense of life and purpose and so that is the perspective,  but the topics are wide ranging.

KIM : I love that on multiple aspects. Number one, that the writers are sharing their faith, and number two, that there’s “No Holds Barred”  is that the right expression? It’s all approachable. And even my spiritual journey has been interesting. I was raised Catholic and, and as soon as I left for college,  I stopped going to church because I just really didn’t understand. I think any listeners will understand. I mean, and now I go to a Methodist Church, there couldn’t be anything, any two denominations that are so different. I mean, they’re both rooted in Christ, but I mean the service alone is just completely different.

CHRISTIN TAYLOR: Oh yeah!

KIM :  And I mean even I didn’t have a relationship, but even though I was raised in the church and I did work at the church rectory, I didn’t even know God until I was 13 and divorced. So-  -yeah. And I was even scared to talk about my faith in my business because I didn’t want to offend anybody, I didn’t want to lose clients. And that was such a sad experience, you know, being afraid to share who you are. I mean that would be like being afraid to share that you’re a woman or what race you are or, or that you’re even a mother, you know, some people don’t even share the fact that they’re a mother, when they’re talking to employers, prospective clients, because they don’t want to be cast aside. – yeah – So I love that it’s all being addressed. So you’re the Chief Editor at ANSI ,Writer’s Forum, what are you consistently looking for and what is the biggest focus for you all right now?

CHRISTIN TAYLOR:  The biggest focus for us is developing these women who write for us. So we’re looking, so they do have to have sort of like a formalized a certain amount of times a year, a certain amount of times throughout the seasons. But really our focus is to develop these women who are writing for us. So we’re not asking for women who are trained or who have a background, but if you have a heart for writing, if you feel like you have a story that God has put on your heart that needs to be shared, if you feel like this is something that is in your future, uh, then we’re really here to help you. And again, it comes out of that, that mission of elevating women’s voices in this spiritual conversation. And we have seen the breakdown and when we see it in leadership, we see it out in like sort of business and so many different places. The sort of the breakdown of the, the, um, pipeline that takes women, develops them, mentors them and delivers them to the platforms where they belong. And so that’s trying to stand in that, in between place and that gap and take these women who have the talent and have the giftings and the vision and offer them the sort of substance and resources and support they need to deliver them to the platforms where they belong. So that’s really, that’s our heart and that’s our focus.

KIM :  When we talked a little bit, pre chat, yeah pre chat, you mentioned that there’s this subscription program for the freelance, is freelance an appropriate word, or – –

CHRISTIN TAYLOR: – Yeah, so if you go to our website, which is www.annesleywriters.com and we can maybe put it up in the notes. It’s A-N-N-E-S-L-E-Y writers.com. You can subscribe at the top of the page. It’s a subscription to a mailing list, not to actual website, so you don’t get notifications every time  articles go out, but once or twice a month we send out like in a Web Magazine, we deliver sort of a magazine to your inbox. That is a is a combination of the articles that have been published to that point on the website so you can sort of skim through and read the ones you want to read and share. Share the ones you want to share

KIM :  Oh yeah, definitely listeners, I forgot to mention this before. I’m sorry, but all the show notes will be at [inaudible]  TheKimSutton.com/PP066 for Episode 66. Christin, where can listeners find you and connect with you online?

CHRISTIN TAYLOR:  I’m at my website, which is ChristinTaylor.com. Drop me a line

KIM :  Christine, I just want to thank you so much again for being here today,  it’s been an absolute pleasure. Do you have any last words of advice or wisdom or inspiration that you would love to share with listeners?

CHRISTIN TAYLOR:  Oh, thank you for having me. I love, love talking to you and love talking about writing for sure. Um advice, I think my biggest piece of advice to anyone who’s interested in writing, is to understand that all of us have an internal critic that is sitting on our shoulder and for whatever reason we don’t know why this internal critic exists, that internal critic is there to shut down our creative process. The thing that is tricky is the internal critic sounds like us, or they sound like a teacher from our past or a friend from our past or family member from our past choose red and said, who do you think you are? That you’re going to be a writer or you’re not really that good or you’re just don’t want to be it, right? And we can often just not even noticed that that critic is they’re sabotaging our creative process, so my one piece of advice would be identify that critic, kick it off your shoulder, and let yourself just create without evaluating what you’re creating, without judging it, just to let yourself right, and guarantee once you do that, you’ll turn around a few days later, look at it and surprise yourself.