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Steel Roses Podcast
Steel Roses is a podcast created for women by women. Social pressures for women are constant. Professionals, stay at home moms, working moms, we are here to tell you that you are not alone! This podcasts primary focus is providing real honest content shedding light on the daily struggles of women while also elevating women's voices.
All women are experiencing similar pressures and hurdles, and yet, no one is talking out in the open. If these topics continue to only exist as whispered conversations then we further permeate a culture of judgement and shame.
Join Jenny weekly as she discusses topics that effect women in a relatable, honest way.
Steel Roses Podcast
Writing Saved My Life When Everything Fell Apart Featuring Elizabeth Wilson
Elizabeth Wilson shares her transformative journey from forensic scientist to memoirist, revealing how writing literally saved her life after workplace sexual assault and divorce upended her world.
• Writing provided more personal growth than years of therapy
• Journals revealed the fallibility of memory and helped Elizabeth challenge her own cognitive biases
• Moving to a small Colorado town and rebuilding life as a divorced single mom while finding her voice
• Coffee on the car roof became a powerful metaphor for feeling overwhelmed and losing control
• Journaling helps release anxiety by getting troubling thoughts out of your head and onto paper
• Writing requires structure - "plotters" vs "pantsers" and how to find your approach
• Scene cards and Save the Cat Beats framework can help overcome writer's block
• Women's stories matter and deserve to be shared authentically
Visit Elizabeth's podcast "The Inspired Writers Collective" to learn more about her memoir writing course designed specifically for those who have powerful stories to tell but need guidance on structure.
Elizabeth's Podcast
The Inspired Writer's Collective
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Hello everybody. This is Still Roses podcast. This podcast was created for women, by women, to elevate women's voices. I am excited to introduce all of you to Elizabeth Wilson today. She is a fellow podcaster. Her podcast is called the Inspired Writers Collective. She's also a memoir writer and she's currently working on her debut memoir right now, and she also teaches a writing course. Elizabeth, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me, Jenny. I'm excited to join you today.
Speaker 1:I'm excited that we got connected in general, like in life, because when we first chatted you have this like spark about you that I think honestly, I have been thinking quite a bit about it and you do. You have this spark, and even my daughter just now. So, listeners, elizabeth and I were just kind of getting ourselves together and I had to get one of my kids into their bedtime routine and so when we walked away from the office she goes to me. That lady's nice, she's a nice lady. And she didn't even really get to. She was like she's very kind. I was like, isn't she?
Speaker 2:So I'm very happy to have you.
Speaker 1:I'm very happy to be connected with you, so I would love for you to share your story with the listeners. Let them know about yourself. I'd love for them to hear about how writing has impacted your life, because I do think it's very important for all of us to be pulling writing into our lives. So please introduce yourself to the listeners to be pulling writing into our lives.
Speaker 2:So please introduce yourself to the listeners. Yeah, thank you, jenny. Yeah, the word impact is just such an understatement. Writing has saved my life.
Speaker 2:So in my past life, before writing, I was a forensic scientist, I was a lab geek. I was going to crime scenes and my career just kind of imploded and blew up when I was sexually assaulted by my supervisor and all of a sudden I was see, at that point I was six months into being a new mom. I suddenly had a dead end in my career. I wasn't getting anywhere with the lab. I wasn't. I didn't know what to do, and so all of a sudden I had to leave my career, move my family and just start over. And it was terrifying. Like just absolutely like just blew up my world. I didn't know what to do about it.
Speaker 2:I journaled a lot through the process. I transitioned essentially to being a stay at home mom. My wife at the time took on the next job hunt and everything, and then we moved to a small town in Colorado that we had found on a map and Googled on Wikipedia, and that's kind of how we ended up here. And so then I was stuck in an RV because we moved in an RV with my then two-year-old all day long while my then wife was at work and I really turned to my journals. And then fast forward about six months and my sister was doing this writing challenge, this like 30 day thing, and she was like, hey, you should write a book with me. It's like a 30 day challenge for writing nonfiction, and I'd always wanted to write a book and I had a lot of time on my hands and I had nothing creative going on. So I said, sure, I'll do it. And so that's what really got the ball rolling in the writing of my memoir Lonely Girl, and it's gone through a number of iterations.
Speaker 2:That's now two years ago, kind of about. I guess six months into the writing process, me and my wife got divorced. So now I was a divorced stay-at-home mom living in a small town trying to figure out how I was going to make ends meet, and that's why I say my writing really saved me. I really turned to my writing to understand my feelings around things. I looked back at old journals to understand some of the cycles that I had been repeating unknowingly. I experienced more personal growth in the time of writing my memoir than I had in years of therapy settings or anything else. I was in therapy at the time too, so that was very helpful for me with the kinds of things that I was wrestling with and dealing with. But, as my therapist then told me, she's like you're essentially giving yourself exposure therapy by writing at the same time, as you know, going through this process with me and it was so true and and I it it was so helpful for me to see things with some perspective I realized how faulty my memory was and how I was like rewriting the past. But then I would go to an old journal and see, oh yeah, our marriage wasn't always like that. There was actually a time where this was working well and that was working well, and we were on the same page and I had to check myself and be like, oh, you can't tell yourself those lies, elizabeth. It wasn't that or it wasn't. You know how you make it out to be now knowing how it ends. And so here I am, about two years into the writing process.
Speaker 2:The memoir manuscript has gone through a number of iterations, but I really landed on sort of a final detailed outline and format this past spring Once I put my own manuscript through my memoir writing course.
Speaker 2:So, as I was teaching the first iteration of the course, I put my own work through it and discovered that I wasn't starting the story at the right point. And once I shifted that timeline, oh my gosh, jenny, everything made sense. The mix was so clear. I mean, you could see the journey. You could see the journey, you could see the struggles, you could see why I, you know, was motivated to do the things I did and how it got me to the places it got me to, and it just really resonated so strongly that I was finally landing on the story I was meant to tell and the story that I know will help so many other people who find themselves in similar situations, whether it's an identity shift of motherhood, or the career change or having to move and build community for yourself again, or just feeling like you're just a one-dimensional mom and who else are you outside of that identity?
Speaker 2:I really wrestled with identity during that timeframe. But I had my journals and I had the work with the memoir to really help guide me and keep me grounded in all of it. So that's what I mean when I say that writing has saved me.
Speaker 1:You know, I've always been a creative writer. I lost, not lost. It went dormant for many years because I didn't consider it something that was valuable to me at the time when my parents, prior to my parents, separating. I love creative writing and I would just kind of go off on tangents and I would have my loads of notebooks and I would just sit and scribble and scribble and I remember my parents would be telling my brothers, like don't disturb her, she's inspired, like let her just get those thoughts out. And I carried that all the way until I was about 16. And when my parents separated, my dad left.
Speaker 1:I completely stopped and it was like the trauma of it at that time to me. I was like I need to work, I have to get a job, I need to help my mom, I have to help save my mom. You know, because 16 year old me was like I can carry the emotional burden for you and not realizing what that was actually doing to myself. And I originally had always said like, oh, I want to go into creative writing when I go to college, like I want to take writing courses, and I completely shifted my focus because of that singular.
Speaker 1:That situation with my parents impacted the trajectory of everything that I did and instead of doing writing, I was like well, you know I'm good at writing, but I'm also good at like communicating. Let me go into communications. Like, let me do something that I know I'm going to be able to make money, and forget the creativity. I need to make money, I need to be able to stand on my own two feet and ultimately, the bottom line for me was I can't ever have somebody be able to do to me what I saw happen to my mom and it completely story is something that I think is inspiring, because you had this trauma happen to you where you were assaulted and unfortunately, I don't know any woman who hasn't been and that's like such a sad but that seems like such a sad, but that seems like too low of a stat no-transcript.
Speaker 1:Every single woman that I know has some type of assault in their background, whether it was incredibly severe or, you know, not as severe. But there is always something I have. No, I know no women that haven't been. And what did you say? The stat was One in four.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's what the stat is.
Speaker 1:Because it's unreported too. So like that's the thing, Like when you think about like stuff, like that, like all how many of us I didn't report, so I'm not part of that stuff, you know like it's wild.
Speaker 1:So I'm sorry that that happened to you, but I also do know that that happened and it almost puts you down this journey of like where you are. And I love that you used writing as part of your therapy and, like you know, going to therapy is incredibly important but self discovery through writing is huge. It's such a huge, significant thing Now when you started pulling together your memoir, so you used your journals as your like starting point to kind of pull the story together.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I didn't have journals from the entire time, but I did, pretty early on, immediately go back and write down what I could remember.
Speaker 2:Like I did a bunch of like journal prompts to help me remember what was going on around that time.
Speaker 2:And then, from about the move forward, I was journaling pretty regularly.
Speaker 2:So you know, I have my journals of, you know, a couple of months being into Colorado and deciding that I was going to get sober because holding on to one more toxic aspect that you know, it just didn't fit in my life, when I was clearly doing all these other things and going through all these other hurdles to remove toxicity and to make my life better and healthier mentally, physically, everything to hold on to alcohol just seemed silly at that point. And so, like, yeah, I have journals through all of that, through the struggles of showing, you know, showing up to this like large community wide Halloween event, this, the pumpkin patch, and knowing a bunch of people there, cause by then I had been there in the community for a year, but like I didn't have any friends still, you know, like they all just felt like surface level connections and I still felt really lost, yeah, and so, yeah, I do have journals from that, and so my journals have like serve as a bit of like a backbone or framework for a lot of the writing. I have more recently started to actually include excerpts from my journal into the manuscript because there's just something about all that internal dialogue in the wrestling that just there's no great way to capture it in a narrative prose. It's just so much better quote-unquote, you know, easier, more complete to just literally put pieces of my journal in there so that the reader can see how I debated or how I wrestled, or could watch me repeating patterns and trying to break out of cycles.
Speaker 1:You know I've I've interviewed quite a few authors for the podcast, so you're you're in season three. Like when this airs, you'll be my part of my season three roster. A lot of season two. I had a lot of authors come in and some of you, some of them I introduced to you actually, Some of them I've interviewed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, some of them I've connected to you because they're so fabulous and I love them, I love chatting with them. Majority of them have had said to me that when there was a piece missing or when it felt like their drafts for their books weren't really hitting that element, that something was missing. The people that they worked with said, like the one woman she said, her editor said like didn't you have journals? Like pull in some excerpts. And that was the thing that, like lit her manuscript up was pulling in that emotional element. Because when you're writing, if you're just keeping it surface level, we're not really hearing your voice and we're not really hearing your story and what's going to resonate with people is the authenticity in your words. And I think that's what you're getting point. They either had some sort of trauma that pushed them into writing and they used it almost as a cathartic release and then it turned into a book because, just like what you just said, they're like I'm going through this, I want to help somebody else. If someone else is going through this, I need them to know that they're not alone. So that's huge and I'm so happy that you're on that path, because we need more people like you. We need people to be raw, we need people to be real and to really show up and say, like this happened to me, I'm okay, I'm coming out the other side, you can do this.
Speaker 1:The other part that's interesting is that most of the writers had very serious jobs and when they went into writing, people were like they were corporate executives, corporate lawyers. They were nowhere near publishing and they just had this shift and followed the prompts in their life from like the universe and from you know, being in alignment, and it brought them to writing. So I want to point that out to you, that there's this amazing through line that I'm seeing with all these successful female writers, that you have something that happens. It pushes you to say I want to use my voice to help other people, and that's the success factor right there. And I want to point that out to the listeners too, because a lot of the premise for Still Roses was that we all have a story and we all. There is something in all of us, and to be able to talk with you, elizabeth, about your story and how you're going to be using that to help other women is such a huge deal. So I really I think it's wonderful what you're doing.
Speaker 2:Thank you, yes, and I get to see that too, because on the Inspired Writer Collective podcast, I largely interview authors. I mean we do have some other, like people that are in the industry, like publishers and book designers and stuff, come on and talk, but it's a lot of authors, and the with the memoirist in particular. All of us have reached this kind of point At some point. A lot of it ends up showing up as physical illness and certainly lots of mental issues, whether it's sleeplessness and anxiety that keeps you up at night. Depression I mean I was like losing severe amounts of weight. I mean it was just it got really bad. And all the memoirs that I have interviewed talk about the fact that, like we just have the story inside of us that has to come out, and so that's honestly that's sort of my motivation for having the memoir course, because so many people come to memoir not as writers but, like you said, as executives with a story to tell, as a forensic scientist with a story to tell, as a stay-at-home mom with a story to tell, and they don't know how to write the story, they don't know how to structure it in a way that will be easily translatable to a reader and broadly applicable. But that's where I feel like I can come in and I can provide the emotional support that comes with writing memoir, unlike the more generic writing programs that you would find online, because I only utilize a small group course and it's all done together. It's not just a download and do it yourself, it is. You need support through this and I am here to offer that space. It is like three or four people and we're all at the same point. You know everyone's starting and we're identifying what that core message is that you're trying to portray. What is that core thing that you're trying to, you know, show throughout your memoir? And then what? What experiences in your life help develop that storyline? Because it's not an autobiography, it's not birth to death, it's not everything. You can make so much impact in the way that you choose what stories to share.
Speaker 2:Like I've got a story in my memoir where I was particularly frazzled because of what was going on in my marriage. At the time my wife had just applied to a job you know in like a couple of hours away and didn't even tell me that she had applied. She had just done it and I told her oh, we're not moving there Like we're not following this harebrained idea. So I was frazzled. I was talking to my sister while driving over to a house pet sitting and I left my coffee on the top of the car my fresh, hot Starbucks coffee. I had felt guilty about spending the money on it, but I did because I needed this as a pick me up.
Speaker 2:And I'm driving my daughter's in the back seat, in her car seat, and she's probably three years old at this time, and she says, mama, there's coffee on the window. And I'm like no, there's not. Oh my God, in that moment I had the realization that that coffee that I had been so desiring and needing as a support for myself and as a care to myself was gone, was all over the outside of the car. And I was on the phone with my sister telling her about this new thing when that happened. And I just start sobbing, jenny. I just start sobbing because it was just the pressure of everything and just feeling nothing was going right.
Speaker 2:And this one little piece of love I was trying to get my give myself that day, that I just needed for comfort, suddenly was spilled and I just it was like this whole existential like thing of like, how do we always end up in this spot? How is it that we can't ever make it headway in one thing or another? She's always wanting to change course and do something different. Are we doing the wrong thing? Are we just taking the unconventional path? At this point I wasn't contemplating divorce yet, but I was just feeling like my chain was constantly being jerked, and it was this one moment that I think really epitomizes that emotional struggle. And so, instead of just telling the reader and writing out, oh, this is how life went, we take that one vision of that fresh, hot vanilla latte, left and abandoned on the top of the car because I'm buckling in the kid and I'm talking to my sister on the phone. And then that, just that realization that, like I've lost it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, I, I especially like that story Because it's not always this huge dramatic moment. Sometimes it's a very subtle moment like that. And now, like to, anybody else listening is going to be like okay, well, you like you spilled your coffee or you forgot your coffee. Like you know, I forgot my keys up there one time and I lost them. It's like that was it. They're on the side of the turnpike in New Jersey somewhere, like they're not coming back, but it's those. It's like a buildup of little things kind of and it's what's that phrase? Like the straw that broke the camel's back, like there's only so much that a person can take. I will say this so I I write every day. Now I hadn't, I had stopped for a really long time and then I just got a blank notebook and I started journaling this year.
Speaker 1:Part of my journey personally that brought me to this, to podcasting, also included me discovering, rediscovering myself when I was about 37. Because, as you had mentioned, you know, once you you go through certain life experiences, you get married, you get. Once you go through certain life experiences you get married, you get divorced, you have kids. The kids factor was a huge deal for me because for the first five years of their lives. I was working crazy hours and then everything was them and that was it and I did not do a single thing for myself and my health was really in horrible shape. I had gained something like obscene like 200 pounds, like it was really. I was in a bad position and I didn't go to the doctor for like three and a half years, like I was not sleeping. I was only getting like two hours of sleep at night, like it was really really horrible and I started to slowly kind of get back to myself, actually during the pandemic, because we had time.
Speaker 1:So in 2020 was that was the year that I had started kind of cleaning up my act. It was like early. I think mid 2019 through and when I started looking into podcasting is when I really started leaning into meditation, like real meditation. Affirmations and writing and journaling and reading and doing all these little things that like were helping to enhance my day. So right now I journal every day, even if it's just a couple of minutes I will take time to just write down, even if it's just a page of thoughts and it's random. Most recently, through writing, I've been addressing anxiety that I have over money and finances.
Speaker 2:Girl me.
Speaker 1:I'm in the same spot. Yeah, because I grew up in a house of scarcity and I grew up in a house of lack and it impacted me quite a bit. I wish I had my notebook. I would tell you the phrases I wrote down, all the phrases that I remember hearing money doesn't go on tree, grow on trees. Money's the root of all evil. My household was very religious, so money's the root of all evil. You know greed is. You know people have money or greedy, they're bad people.
Speaker 1:Every single kind of negative messaging you could have around money Like I got that, that's what was. I was fed and regardless of the fact that I am very successful in my professional daytime job, I still would have this sense of scarcity and lack and it's not real and I was constantly struggling. So when we, for example, like the house that we currently live in, it took us like two years to get to being able to buy a house and it was the first week we were in this house and I remember almost every night for like months, I would lay awake at night trying to calm my anxiety down. Say like Jenny, you're okay, like you're okay, like you're okay, like this is okay, a team of experts have said you can be here, you can own a home, it's okay, and it has taken like quite a bit.
Speaker 1:So through the journaling, I was like kind of journaling out and I just started to like dump, brain dump everything in my head about like what I observed growing up with my parents how my father is with money, how my mother is with money, how they currently are separated with their finances and then I just started writing down everything about myself. I'm like Jenny, like you're okay, like this is okay and this is how you know you're okay. And look at all these things. And we just recently, like our heat went out and in New Jersey it's like 15 degrees this week. It's like horrible.
Speaker 1:And I said to my husband I was like you know, my whole life was always about like anxiety over finances and I'm proud to be able to say like we have a household emergency here and I actually have the money to pay for it. And that was such a moment of calm. I was like I need to journal about this, I need to write this down, I need to acknowledge this, and doing the journaling is really what's helping me to focus in on like the positive things that are going on and to maintain that momentum that I've already started to gain, this this year, well, 2025 is brand new, but you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I just did a journal review. I just spent January 1st and January 2nd reading every journal entry I wrote in 2024. Because in my mind I had built it up as again, you know the fallacy of memory I thought it wasn't that pivotal of the year. Because in 2023, I got divorced, I got into a new relationship, you know, like there was just all these massive outward, external you know shifts and changes. What I realized in looking back at my 2024, is I was building strong foundation again.
Speaker 2:I was building in stability, sustainability within my patterns and my routines, within my finances, within my new relationship.
Speaker 2:There were some bigger things that happened. I totally forgot that a short story of mine got published in a magazine and therefore that was the time I became a published author. I totally forgot about that happening in 24 until I looked back in my journals, but what I could really appreciate was all of the internal belief shifts that I had been working on, whether it came from like beliefs around people pleasing or beliefs around like how much I was willing to like push myself towards burnout, whereas, like, I was always like an inch from burnout in my former life and I really did such a good job of protecting my energy in 2024 and advocating for my needs, which was a huge thing for me to really ask for what I needed from people and if they couldn't give it to me, I was gonna give it to me. So once I sat down with my journals, I was able to really see the growth and, like I said, just that foundation building that's gonna carry me forward in a really positive way.
Speaker 1:I think it's wonderful that you did that, because it's and you mentioned it a few times like our memories are faulty, like they truly are as time and this is like. This is science. This isn't like us, just like, like this is literally science. Like, as time progresses, details become dull, you start to forget things, some stuff I want to forget and I'm cool with it, but like but then there's details that you really don't want to and that, and as you mentioned, like, you had some really pivotal strong moments and being able to revisit in your journals what you were thinking at the time. Like you're showing yourself, look at all this work that you've done, like, look at how far you have come. That's a huge, huge deal. And that was, I mean, part of me even wanting to pick up the journaling again was because I'm like at when I started journaling last year, in 2024, it was in like the fall-ish area.
Speaker 1:It was because I was going through a tremendously stressful period. I was really stressed out about my job at the time. I was very unhappy and I was using the journaling to just help me get my mind right in the beginning of the day and at the end of the day, and even if it was just a couple of paragraphs, to say like my anxiety is through the roof. I'm trying really hard to keep it in check. I was doing all.
Speaker 1:My anxiety was so bad in the fall because of what I was going through that I was doing all these things to try to keep it like balanced during the daytime. If I got anxious at work I would. I said to my husband I was like I literally got up and did squats for 10 minutes and then sat back down, Cause I was like I was trying to get a visceral like reaction out of me because of the anxiety and I think the I'm. I'm looking forward to being able to look back at what has happened since I started journaling. The other piece to it too. Sometimes, like when you're in your own head about things, it loops and it loops and it spins and it spirals out of control, and to get it onto paper is almost like getting that energy out of your soul and putting it someplace else, and that in itself is a huge, huge thing.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of power in being able to take something that's bothering you, put it on paper and even like lighting it on fire, something that's bothering.
Speaker 2:You put it on paper and even like lighting it on fire and for me, like it's that's helpful for me when I have a like potential conversation that I know I need to have with someone, say with a significant other, and I'm ruminating on the conversation and the points I want to make sure I make, that's when I'll sit down and I'll just write it in my journal so I can free my mind from feeling like it has to remember all these points right, because otherwise I'm just going to sit there and be like I don't want to express this and I want to express that.
Speaker 2:For me, I really am the most expressive and the best at expressing myself through writing. I feel like when I'm trying to talk to someone and tell them how I'm feeling, then I lose track of where I wanted to go or I get stuck on some one little thing that I know is little and that wasn't the real point. The real point was something bigger, but now I've lost it or I've forgotten the example and I just I don't. I don't feel like the conversation moves where I want it to in the moment, but by being able to relieve myself of the fear that I'm going to forget my point. You know, I can just put it in my journal and write all those things and maybe I bring them up in the conversation. Maybe I realize that they're kind of petty and silly and it's not really what I'm mad about. Oh, and then we can have the deeper conversation about what you know. Maybe I'm overwhelmed and I feel like I'm taking on too many responsibilities at home and I just need help. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I've done the same thing, and even like and I will say this from like a corporate standpoint too, because I work in communications like a large part of what I do for corporate life is that like I will write everything out. If I know I'm doing a presentation, I'm writing a script for myself, I don't look at it while I'm presenting, but to be able to have it in a solid place like that's a, that's a tool that I've always used to help get me to remembering my points. One thing that I wanted to ask you about so I had actually started, one of the authors that I sent your way kind of inspired me a bit to like start writing again. And I cause I told her I had always wanted to write a book and so I had started down the path of just writing and I was like, let me just see. Like I know, I kind of have a story and I have an idea of what I want that story to be. So I just kind of just started like really roughing. It was like, oh, let me just write some, some thoughts out and start building out characters.
Speaker 1:And I got really overwhelmed super fast only got. I only got through and even do a full chapter. I only got through the primary character and introducing her and then her kids, and then I kind of like stopped. I only it was maybe like three pages in and I was like, is this even right? Like is this the right way to start? You know, like am I supposed to start with like an outline of characters? And then I stopped completely because I found the process so intimidating that I was like who do? I think I am writing a story, so I want to tell you that, to see, like, what your thoughts are and for somebody who's listening, that's like I'd like to write a book or I have a story to tell. I know that you have a course that you will help coach people, but if somebody was like I just I wanted to get started. I'm not really sure where to go, like how would I?
Speaker 2:how would I get the ball rolling? Well, I mean, there's two. There's two different modalities, and, particularly for fiction writing, I think both are equally legitimate. You've got the plotters and you've got the pantsers, meaning the people that write by the seat of their pants. And some people really love that because they can get into the creative flow and they don't always know where their characters are going to get up, but they have a general idea of where they want the storyline to go and they're fine with that. Now you, as someone who likes to script your own presentations, I'm going to guess that you would actually do better as a plotter.
Speaker 2:So I think that that amount of freedom is actually too scary for you, and it would be for me too. Um and so because then that freedom is actually just feels to us like uncertainty, and that doesn't feel like a fun place to?
Speaker 2:be yeah so, yeah, there's tons of stuff online you can do. You know these character outlines. Yes, certainly get to know your characters. So much of the time, regardless of what style you use plotter pants or wherever you begin, more often than not what you begin to write is, honestly, for you it's like it ultimately ends up being sort of background information for you to get to understand your characters and know what their struggles are. Because where we, as a reader are going to want to jump in is not when you're introducing this mom and her kids. It's going to be. We're in the grocery store with them. This kid's running that way. She's trying to get stuff together because she needs to get dinner ready before her hubby comes home and blah, blah, blah and like just throws us into the mix before her hubby comes home and blah, blah, blah and like just throws us into the mix. But you still have to understand your characters to even get us to that point. So a lot of what you've probably written is is background for you and you can keep doing that and you can keep exploring the characters.
Speaker 2:Stephanie, the co-host of the Inspired Writer Collective, writes in fiction and she does what she calls these character coffee chats, so she pretends like she's sitting down at a coffee shop across from her character and she's thinking about like what kind of questions you would like want to know about someone? Like it's not just like what's your occupation, what's your whatever, you know what get into like different, like what's their belief system, what they value, what's their like goal, what are they trying to achieve, what's their feeling about money and finances, what are their beliefs around loyalty and trust? Because you and I could have totally different feelings and worldviews on different categories like is trust earned? Is trust freely given? Where does your character fall on that spectrum? And there is.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of background that can go into, you know really strong character development and there's no wrong or right way. But I particularly love following some of the classic structures and formats, like the save the cat beats, which is a writing template that has been used by by writers, and it's what I use in my memoir course as well, and it maps out exactly where you need to hit these different points. So your first few scenes are your setup and then you have your like inciting incident and then you have a debate section where your character is debating about whether they're going to take this new journey or not, or how they're going to address this sudden thing that's happened in their life, and that kind of structure for me as a writer is really helpful. That's what kind of corrected my manuscript, because I realized I was writing too much setup and taking too long to get to my inciting incident. So long story short. There's no wrong way to write, but it sounds like from what you've told me about yourself, that plotting would be more conducive to the way that you are used to operating, more conducive to the way that your mind works. Yeah, and then you can remove any sort of like. I don't know.
Speaker 2:I find it very hard to just jump straight into storytelling, because then I'm like how do I even write dialogue? How do I even do whatever? You know, you can even put blocks of like conversation. That accomplishes this goal. There's also another process that I've used. That is what's that book?
Speaker 2:I forget the name of the book that's going to come to me in a minute, but the author uses scene cards and her book is focused really on character development and the scene cards are basically a two by two square and your top is your cause and effect of the plot and the bottom two squares are basically your character development, like what, what's happening, how is it impacting their internal world?
Speaker 2:And then what conclusions are they taking away because of that? And so I took each scene of my outline. Once I did my outline and I broke it down into what needed to happen in that scene, both the action but also the internal stuff. And once I did that, now I get to sit down at my computer and I get ready to write a scene. I know exactly what needs to happen in that scene. I'm not sitting there wondering if this is just going to end up on the cutting room floor. I have a template and I know why this links to the next scene and how that moves the story forward. So I know that this conversation needs to show between me and my ex-wife and that I need to come to this conclusion from it and that that's how the story is going to move through this scene.
Speaker 1:That was really helpful because I was literally like I had started the ball and I started it and, as you said, I got part of the way through it. I'm like, is this even interesting? And I stopped and I was like, where am I going from here? What I find interesting is that when I was younger and I used to write and I would do short stories, I would just go and I didn't. There was never a hesitation. It would be fine and I guess because obviously I'm older now I'm on my tour my brain is wired.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Everything's different for me now and I'm like no, I need a, I need an outline, Like you said, I need a plot, Like I need something to tell me like these are the people that are you know you're introducing here. This is like the, this is the catalyst or this is what's happening. Like I need something that's a little bit more solid so I can look at it and say, okay, I know where I'm going from here and let me put pen to paper.
Speaker 2:So that was very helpful, I appreciate that, yeah, that's the I finallyrohn is the name of the book that does the scene cards and she walks you through how to like she like uses one of her client stories as an example, and it's really well written. There's a lot you can pull from that. And then, yes, the Save the Cat Beats by Blake Snyder. That's the one where you have like the distinct catalyst, and then it goes into this step and this step and it describes all the different points to hit in a classic kind of storytelling arc and those I find to be very helpful. I've taken these are written sort of for fiction and I've taken them and adapted them for memoir for my course, but essentially that's what I walk people through is like you can just go read those books and do it for yourself.
Speaker 1:Or I have digested it for you and I can help you walk through these steps and, you know, provide some pointers along. This is so wonderful. I think you're you're really providing a fantastic service here, because we have these stories within us. Like women specifically, we have been silenced, in my opinion, for so long and put on the shelf for so long, and been told that our lives are insignificant unless you hit these milestones. You have to get married, you have to have children, you have to do these certain things, otherwise you really don't matter.
Speaker 1:I'm so happy that that storyline is starting to shift a little bit. I have my daughters and I have incredibly high hopes that by the time they get to their forties, there will be other pathways open for them and that they won't be, hopefully, pushed into the corner as much as we all have been. So it's what you're doing, I think, is is so incredibly important, not even just for yourself, but for other people that you're engaging with to help them to shape their stories. It's such a big deal. Elizabeth, thank you so much for being on the podcast and sharing this information. I'm going to listeners. I'm going to link all of Elizabeth's information in the podcast description so you can check her out. If you're interested in writing, you can reach out to her for support. I think the small group setting is fabulous because you can ask questions, it's more one-on-one and it's more intimate. Elizabeth has already done a lot of the legwork for figuring out these methods.
Speaker 1:So you know, working with someone to help craft your story. Again, every author that I've interviewed has worked with someone to help craft their story. Nobody ran solo. They always end up pulling someone in for support at some point, so this is really important.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you for saying that, and we'll be continuing our sort of conversation over on my podcast. We're getting ready to hop off here and have Jenny in the hot seat talking about things, so if you want to continue to hear our conversation, we'd love to have you over at the Inspired Writer Collective podcast. Thank you again, jenny, for creating the space for women. It's so important that we do have spaces to share our voices, and I really appreciate the way that you fostered this environment.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much. Well listeners, thank you for hanging out with us today and we will catch you on the next one. Take care.
