One thing stayed with me after my conversation with Joy Jordan Lake. She opened up to me about how a fear of failure as a writer prevented her from fully embracing it as a career. Don’t get me wrong, most authors have a challenging time making ends meet solely by their writing, but there’s a difference between having a day job and treating writing as a hobby vs. treating writing as a passion. It’s only after we really treat it as a passion that we have the possibility of finding any success as writers.
Meet Joy Jordan Lake:
Joy’s varied professional experience has included working as a college professor, author, journalist, waitress, director of a program for homeless families, university chaplain, horseback riding instructor, freelance photographer, and the job title that remains her personal favorite--head sailing instructor. She recently joined me on Uncorking a Story to talk about her latest novel, A Bend of Light.
How her love of reading fueled her career as a writer. Why elementary school teachers are the ones who “rock the world.” How investing in herself, by going to a writer’s conference when she had very little money in the bank, was a turning point in Joy Jordan’s life. The importance of vulnerability in the writing process. The importance of persistence and having thick skin while going through the agent querying process.
More conversations
Becoming Your Own Best Friend
Janice Erlbaum left home at 15 for New York City's shelter system. Twenty years after Girlbomb, she talks about owning her part of the story, the teachers who saw her, and why she tells everyone to keep writing it down.
Listen →
When Small Towns Censored Hollywood
Novelist Glenn R. Miller on the small-town ministers who once censored Hollywood's silent films, the family note cards that inspired his satire Rough Cuts, and why censorship is never black and white.
Listen →
Living Your Own Truth
Singer Machan Taylor, who toured with Pink Floyd and Sting, on the loneliness behind a glamorous life on the road, writing a memoir she never meant to write, and why holding the finished book finally let her let go.
Listen →