Don’t Wait for Perfection

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Susan
All right, well, welcome Courtney. I’m so glad to have you on the show today.

Courtney 

Thanks, Susan. I’m so glad to be here. Thank you.

Susan 

Of course. So for people who may not be as familiar with you and your work, I’d love for you to just tell us a little bit about your background and how you became interested in creative transformations and maybe even a little bit about your book.

Courtney

Sure, yes. So I am an author and a book launch strategist. And I started out on a very different path in my career. Early on in my career, I became a project manager in human resources for a technology company. And it was a really fun and exciting role. I was recently out of college and I learned a ton on the job and from mentors and I got to travel a lot. It was a really exciting and fun time. But as another decade passed, the job started changing and didn’t feel as fulfilling to me. And I think this is something that happens to a lot of people and something I talk about in Creating Space to Thrive, where you might start out at something in your career, but you over time you feel that maybe something is missing. And so that is something I explored in creating space to thrive. I, so what happened is, um, I got laid off after 15 years at my company. And so that was a huge wake up call and made me want to reassess my priorities and not go back and find a job that was similar to what I had. And where I was feeling like something was missing. So I started to get really interested in publishing and self -publishing at the time was starting to take off. And I reconnected with something from my childhood that I had loved, which was reading books and writing. And I thought, okay, this is crazy because I’m having so much fun doing this. And this was definitely something missing from my corporate job.

And so I just started reading everything I could about creativity and started to work on creative habits. And that really changed a lot for me. It made me realize what I really wanted to do with my time, that I wanted to change my career drastically. And it just made me realize how important it is for us to have creativity in our lives, no matter what we do. Yeah.

Susan 

Yes, so I want to unpack quite a bit of what you just shared because there’s so much there’s so many gems in there but also because I think there are so many things that are going to resonate with teachers and where they are right now. A couple of things one the idea that we’re in a stage where you may be not happy with where you are in your job. There’s a lot of teachers who are feeling that right now and they may be in a spot where they’re not sure where to go next.

You know, they may feel like, I don’t know if I have skills for something else. And it may be that something has happened where I know a lot of educators are unfortunately losing their jobs right now, right? Because as our funds are drying up that they had a job and now they’re losing it. And in your position, sometimes it’s the kick in the pants that we need that we’re looking at, you know, in a tough situation that there’s a light that comes, you know, close the door, open the window kind of scenario, right? That that allows for some creative options to come in that perhaps we hadn’t considered before. And also the idea that you’re bringing skills from a previous position into something new in a different way. So I think that’s really interesting. Can you talk a little bit about your project management skills?

And because I don’t think anybody in my audience really knows what project management looks like. My husband, by the way, was a project manager for years before he joined my team. And I didn’t know what project managers did until he came onto my team. And then when he came onto my team, I was like, oh my gosh, everybody in the world should have a project manager somewhere in their team because they’re amazing. So I would love for you to share, like, what were the skill sets as a project manager that you had that then were really useful in this new position, how they transformed in the way in your new position that you kind of cultivated for yourself.

Courtney

Sure. Project management is the art and science of getting things done and leading a group of people to accomplish things. And a project always has a start and an end. So it’s the planning around, okay, what does success look like? It’s the planning out of all the tasks that need to be accomplished and who’s going to do those tasks. And so it really is a lot of different skill sets and something I pretty much stumbled into where I had started out in human resources. I was a recruiter and I just had a knack for, especially for software systems and rolling, learning how to take a new software or a new technology and, you know, implement that into a corporation and get people using it. So that’s pretty much how I started with project management. And then I ended up getting a certification. It’s called a project management professional or a PMB. And it’s something I think that, especially for teachers who may be considering other, you know, other types of careers or taking your current skills and leveraging that into a new type of career. Project management is something that is definitely needed in many, many organizations. So looking into the PMP certification, which is run through the Project Management Institute, PMI .org. Especially if you like bringing things together, integrating, getting a lot of people to do you know, to get together and do things like that, that’s would be a great fit for somebody who wanted to become a project manager.

Susan 

Yeah, so, and then how are you able to then leverage those skills in what you’re doing now? Because I think that’s really important to you, being able to transfer skills. Because sometimes that’s not as easy as we might think.

Courtney

Right. So, and I like in creating space to thrive, I kind of talk about a Venn diagram of, um, think of one circle as, um, what you, the things that you like to do. You have another circle that is, um, what you are trained on or what you, what your current career is. So in my case, it was project management.

Um, and then I like my likes were, you know, books publishing, and then you have a part of that overlapping circle is what can you get paid for? And so for me, I, I was getting really interested not only in publishing, but also entrepreneurship, um, when I, after my layoff and I actually went back to a project manager job, uh, at another, um, technology company.

And they wanted me to travel a lot. So that was, that actually didn’t last very long. Cause I just, I didn’t want to do a lot of traveling. And, um, what I ended up doing is I. I was looking for opportunities and I had a, uh, uh, uh, an acquaintance who was publishing a book and she had done, she had self published and done really, really well. And she was publishing her next book and she wanted to have a project manager.

And so I decided to leave my other job and just start, start fresh and take a leap. And I went freelance and became a book launch consultant. So I was project, I took my project management skills and was using them to help publish a book and do all the marketing and the planning and the strategy.

Susan 

Yeah, and it turned out really well, right? Because that’s what you’re doing.

Courtney 

It did. It turned into a business. Yes, it turned into a business and I had written Creating Space to Thrive and loved the process and I loved self -publishing because, and I still love self -publishing because I like to be in control and there’s a lot of moving pieces. And so it just makes sense for me to go that route instead of finding an agent and going through a publisher. And…

So it was really, so then I got really interested in, okay, I grew up reading tons of fiction, science fiction, and just loving it. And so I decided to try to write a science fiction novel. And so that was about seven, seven or eight years ago. And so I have, I’m doing that full time now and I have 13 published science fiction novels.

And yeah, and I’m writing more. It’s been a blast and I really enjoy it.

Susan 

It’s amazing. I love that. And I love that because I think so often our fear of what we don’t know stops us in our tracks from taking the leap. And you didn’t allow that to happen. You just kind of kept moving forward, not knowing necessarily what was ahead of you, but you just kind of took those steps one by one. And I mean, look at what happened. That’s amazing. I love that. So let’s talk about this book, Creating Space to Thrive, because I think it’s really important. I think…

That was the foundation for a lot of what has happened for you. And I think it can offer so many things for so many people. Tell us a little bit about how you’ve crafted this system for creative projects and deep work.

Courtney

Yes. And I love that you said deep work because I do, I love that book by Cal Newport. I would recommend that also for everyone. So for doing creative work, something I learned very quickly when I didn’t have a set schedule is that, wow, I needed to set some boundaries for myself or things like doing laundry or running errands got really tempting to procrastinate. And so a few of the things that have worked for me are having a dedicated physical space where you are, you’re using that space and it could be an office, a corner of your office. It could be a part, you know, a corner of your living room or going, even going to a cafe or finding a spot that gets you outside of what you’re used to and it’s a place to be distraction free and where you can really focus on that thing that you want to work on and that might be a book. For me, it was writing. I chose to use the first two hours, two to three hours a day when my brain was freshest to do my writing. And I will say, you know, it’s not always a smooth process, but we just try our best. There were days when I just said, you know, I can’t.

I can’t write today or nothing’s coming. But you just try to get as many of those days as you can. And sometimes you need a day off. So blocking chunks of time on your calendar, that is something that helped me a lot. And tracking your progress, I think, is also important. If you’re looking at a daily word count, that works for some people, not everyone.

And sometimes it worked for me, sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes it was just time, like, hey, I’m putting in two hours today, or I’m putting in 30 minutes today, and that’s what I’m happy with that. And also, I think just surrounding yourself with people who support your journey. So every morning I have two accountability partners. They’re also writers, and we get on a Zoom every morning, and we check in and say what we’re what we’re planning to do that morning. And then we put our Zooms on mute and we just work. And then at the very end, we check back in to say what we’ve done. And it’s just really nice to have, like to know that someone else is on that journey with you and to know that someone is there doing, you know, doing creative work as well.

Susan

Yes, yeah, and I think I like this pivot point because one of the things that I really enjoyed in this book is the ways that you’re dealing with negative people. Because I think negativity can quickly squash creativity. So can you give us some of the examples from the book on how you have found to be helpful for dealing with negative people?

Courtney

Absolutely. Yes, this was definitely something that came up and comes up for so many, well, comes up for every creative I know. So especially like, yeah, let’s just say, the simplest example, you want to write a book and you start mentioning that to people. And I think that sometimes the fear comes from a place of maybe a lack of understanding or not that person not wanting change. So.

You know, something in creating space to thrive I talk about is using, you know, we all have the same amount of time in the day. We can’t create more time, but we can maybe subtract time from maybe scrolling on your phone or watching Netflix. So for example, if your partner is not understanding, you know, I want, I don’t want to watch as much TV in the evening because I want to work on my book.

And that could be a fear of, okay, something’s changing and I don’t understand why you’re doing this. And when is this phase going to end? I think that in that case, what I recommend is telling, you know, having a conversation about why these goals are important to you and why you’d like this time. And maybe it’s not every night, maybe it’s, you know, a couple of times a week, but you know, just having that open, honest conversation and letting them know this is important to you. And I think another thing that is tough, and I don’t have kids myself, but I’m an aunt, so I totally understand how much work they are, and it’s a lot of your time. You know, maybe it is, and I know this is a challenge when you have young kids at home, that sometimes it’s, you know, maybe, could someone watch the kids for a couple of hours while you go to a cafe and work on your book, or you may have to kind of try to find those times around the edges of things to work on the thing that you wanna work on. And I think, and I’ve had family members and colleagues who said, especially early on in my writing ventures that said, you know,

Publishing there’s no money in publishing. You’ll never make it as an author and I just It does hurt it hurts your feelings but I just kept going and I I felt like it was something I had to do and couldn’t stop like and I feel like that something in creating space to thrive that I want people to have that feeling of finding something, whether it’s music composition or it’s painting or being a yoga instructor, like having or teaching and organizing afterschool activities. It’s something that is so, it’s such a thing that’s part of you that you can’t not do it and you’ll find the space to do it.

Susan

Yes, and I think that was something that resonated with me that even if it’s, and that’s truly, I think that’s where your passion meets the project, right? And I think for me, that’s how I started my business, that it was, this has grew out of the passion for arts and innovation that I was doing in my classroom all the time. And I couldn’t stop it. It was just, and it was something that I wanted to share with people and.

And again, as I started my business, people were like, are you crazy? Like you have no money to start this business. You’ve got no investors. There’s you’re just going to bootstrap this and you’ll go out of business in like six months and you’re going to be back in the classroom like broke. Um, and, and I thought, well, if I am, I am, but I, I literally am not, I can’t stop what I’m doing. Like I feel so passionate about sharing this with other people. Um, and that was 10 years ago.

So, and so it’s, yeah, right? So I feel like it’s something, and that’s one of the reasons I resonated so much with your book as well, with the Creating Space to Thrive, is that when you find something that you’re passionate about, it doesn’t matter, the money doesn’t matter, the money will come, right? The money comes, the pathways work themselves out, because it’s the thing you’re put on the earth to do.

Right? And so I hope that for our teachers who are listening, that is teaching and that, and if it’s not in a classroom, it’s in some other capacity. If that’s, if that is teaching for you, wonderful. If it’s another creative endeavor, and even if it’s just a hobby for you, if it’s not something, a way to make a living, if it’s just a hobby, that’s awesome. I want you to live in a way that like, that, that fills your cup, right? Because that’s how we should be living on the earth.

Courtney

Absolutely. And I think that’s an important point you just made about this doesn’t you don’t have to blow up your life. You don’t have to quit your job and become something else. It’s it’s you can have a hobby that is creativity, art related. And that’s super important, I think, for whatever you do, even even as you’re, you know,

I feel like it’s, there’s, um, for, you know, first phase of careers now, and then a second phase and then third, and that we’re going to be probably living to ages where there are fourth and fifth stages of your career. And it, having hobbies is just, it just adds to what you’re doing. It helps you. Gar, you know, something like gardening on the weekends is puts you in a different space and it, and it gives you creativity, it gives you a meditative kind of state, and that helps everything else in your life. And so…

Susan 

Yeah, I mean, it’s like the salt to everything else. It’s the flavoring. It’s the salt that you add to everything else to your, to your life, right?

Courtney 

One thing I wanted to mention, I talk in the book about just even 15 minutes a day of creativity and that could be journaling, it could be just sketching. There was a study that I referenced in the book that talked about, they took two groups of people and they had one group go to an art museum and observe the art. And then they had the second group go and actually make art and they measured, stress levels and emotional well -being and that group that made art actually scored higher on, they scored lower on stress and higher on emotional well -being. And I just find that so interesting. And like sometimes it’s just get messy and do something even if you’re really bad. Like I can’t draw at all, but I’ll grab a coloring book and have fun and just like relax.

Susan

Yes, it’s about the process, right? It’s not about the product, yeah. So as we’re heading into these summer months and teachers have a little bit more time, that they can explore some of these hobbies and passions and pursue some of these things. What are some things that they can start to do if they start to feel a little overwhelmed, like with the possibilities that are out there, or on the flip side, if they’re stuck and they’re like, well, I have no idea what to do or where to start. What are some ideas that maybe they could choose from?

Courtney

Sure. So I think one thing is to, if you’re feeling overwhelmed, what I like to do, and I do this with task lists as well, just, I got to get them out of my brain and onto a piece of paper. So I’ll just brain dump and do a list of here are the things that I was thinking about doing, or, you know, taking this class at the rec center or going to this library event or, you know, all those things. And then start to, look at them and look for themes. Maybe there’s something that you’ve been putting off for a number of years that like maybe this is the right time to do. And just choose one thing to start on. And I think that’s really important. If you, I do feel like if you’re overwhelmed and you start trying too many, too many different things, you’ll get kind of scattered. So it’s been really helpful for me to just say, okay, I’m going to just choose one thing and.

For example, when I started getting interested in reading and publishing, I started to listen, I sought out podcasts and I started listening to podcasts about writing and self -publishing and I started reading books on the topic. And just to learn and start to get your head into that space and find out what it would be like to go into that area if that’s something you’re interested in pursuing.

And then on the flip side, if you’re kind of feeling stuck or uninspired, I feel like it’s always helpful to look at what were the things you like to do as a kid. Maybe there is something like reading that you, or maybe you wrote poetry when you were in high school and you haven’t done that in a while. Maybe it’s time to try that again. Or sometimes trying something completely new, going and signing up for a workshop or going to a museum you’ve never been to before. And I think just giving ourselves some permission to play, to have fun with it. And it’s, yeah, just have fun with it. And maybe it’s something you think of. Maybe you go on an artist date with yourself. So this, that’s something from Julia Cameron, who I recommend all her books, where she talks about taking like once a month, you take a date with yourself. It’s called a creative, creative field trip and you can seek out something new. Like maybe it’s a photography museum or it’s a lecture somewhere or even just going to a new park or going on a new hike. And you use that to kind of fill your, your creative well.

Susan 

Yeah, I love that. And I agree, Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way, all of those things give so many great ideas that if you’re still in stuck, it’s a great way to kind of get unstuck. That idea of the artist’s date is a wonderful starting tip. So now shifting gears just a little bit, you do coach book authors, and that is a part of you write, of course, and you are an author yourself, but you also coach book authors.

And as I’ve shared on the podcast, I am writing a book right now and I’m working through that process. So I also know a lot of teachers who are very interested in writing themselves, right? So as a book coach, what would be some tips that you would provide to teachers who maybe want to use the summer to explore writing and thinking about writing their own book? What would be some suggestions for them?

Courtney 

Yes. Well, first of all, congrats on starting your book and being in the process. Amazing. And yeah, actually my number one piece of advice is to just start. And I feel that, and this is something I struggle with. I feel that many of us kind of wait for things to be perfect. Like, Oh, I’ll write that book when I’m done with XYZ. Um, and the reality is that a lot of times, it’s not going to be perfect. So just starting to write a little bit every day, even if it’s just starting with journaling and getting whatever ideas that you have floating in your head for, whether it’s a memoir or a novel or nonfiction, just starting to get those ideas out on paper. And that can be that doesn’t have to be a lot. It can be 15 minutes, 30 minutes. And so it’s just little by little and day by day. So there’s a great book you may have heard of called Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. It is such a great book. It’s just about it’s exactly this concept of just getting a little bit out a sentence here a paragraph here. And I think and what something I struggled with at first was feeling like when I wrote and got words down on the page that it had to be perfect. Like you’re not going to write perfect prose on your first, when you’re first starting out. And the best thing is to get, get, you know, get rid of the blank page, get words down because you can’t, you can’t actually edit a blank page.

The editing process is when people, that’s when authors smooth out all their writing, they polish, they organize their thoughts and reorganize it. And I think a lot of people who maybe haven’t written before just think authors can just sit and write and it’s like start from start, you know, point A to Z. It’s not like that. It can be all over the place.

Susan 

Yeah. So do you suggest that people start with like an outline? Should they just kind of brain dump? Should they just start writing paragraphs? Like when you say start writing, what should they start with?

Courtney

It really, that comes down to the individual because there are some people, I’m one of them who love an outline. I like to know where I’m starting and where I’m going. And, but there are other people who do what’s called writing into the dark. And there are books on this, a lot of information out there on it where they start, they just start writing and do or it’s called discovery writing and they just go with it and they don’t they don’t actually outline. So there is there’s there are different schools of thought on that. And I really think try both, you know, and one thing that’s that really helped me as well was going out and looking at books on Amazon on, you know, just Googling where and go. There’s a feature on especially on Amazon where you can read part of a sample of the book and you’ll oftentimes you’ll see the table of contents and that’s especially for nonfiction. Look at the table of contents and look at how they’re organizing the book and what they call the chapters and even though you don’t you don’t have to read the whole book but you’re getting a sense of okay this is how this author is organizing that this around that topic. That that was really helpful to me early on as well.

Susan 

Wonderful, wonderful, that’s great. So before we close out, if there’s one thing that you would like educators to know about creativity, what would it be? I would like to answer this, ask this to everybody.

Courtney 

Yes. So in the book, I wrote about the importance of mindset and being creative, having creativity in your life is important. It matters. And I believe as that educators can instill that knowledge into students and showing them that your own creativity matters is inspirational to them and shows them it’s important. I remember in college, I had a Russian, my Russian literature professor complimented me on a short story I wrote. And he went on and on about it and said how, you know, he had specific points about why he liked it and why it was, it was well written. And I just was kind of blown away. I’d never really had a professor really react like that. And, you know, that kind of encouragement for students, I think is, it’s everything. Those words matter and they’re important and that’s a gift that you can give to young people.

Susan 

I totally agree. I totally agree. It starts with us. It starts with us. It really does. Okay, so where can people learn more about you, stay in touch with you, and grab your book, Creating Space to Thrive.

Courtney

Yes. I have a website called helpingauthorslaunch .com. And so they can find out more about me there and they can contact me through there. And then Creating Space to Thrive is available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and bookshop .org, pretty much online where all books are sold.

Susan
Fantastic. We will put all of the links to all of those places on our show notes so everybody can go ahead and grab those over there. Thank you so much Courtney. It was such a pleasure to speak with you today. I learned so much from you. I really appreciate your time.

Courtney 

Oh, thank you so much, Susan, for having me.

 

Helping Authors Launch

Creating Space to Thrive on Amazon