We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ania Ray a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Ania, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?
Too many women allow their fears, uncertainties, and doubts rob the world of exactly that which would heal it. I know it because I, too, was there. I wondered, “Who am I to think I could write a book? I’m ‘just’ an English teacher.” or asked myself, “Seriously? Who would WANT to read this?”
That debilitating self-sabotage didn’t go away; left untended, it festered. Once I was on the other side of it and saw what had made the difference, I knew there was something I could contribute to other women who write: solidarity.
Let’s say there’s a woman who wants to write a book about how a daughter learns to forgive her deadbeat dad in order to have a healthy relationship with the partner who is truly FOR her. But the weight of all this writer doesn’t know about writing or the publishing process keeps her down before she’s even started. Or maybe she makes it to the end of the first draft and then allows self-sabotaging thoughts to keep her from digging into the second draft. Or maybe she’s a wife and mother who keeps putting her family’s needs above her own, when spending just ONE hour on her work would make the difference in how present she is with her family once her own needs are met.
These are the women I think about on a daily basis. The ones who focus more on who might not enjoy their books rather than imagining the readers who will be so grateful that it exists. That’s where our writing community comes in. It’s my job – our collective effort – to empower these women all the way to the finish line – whatever that looks like for them.
Quill & Cup is a fiercely supportive writing community for women who prioritize their writing, who lean into personal growth with continued education on mindset and craft, and who make rest a non-negotiable part of the creative process.
The product of an all-girls high school education, I’ve always been passionate about empowering women to do what is both fulfilling and also serves the greater good. In a hustle culture where women are expected to handle it all and be “boss babes” to meet everyone’s needs and have it all together, Quill & Cup’s women are “I don’t know” babes who find support within on virtual community.
Though it’d be easy to overcomplicate, the answer to “Why does our community matter?” comes down to simple statements: “To empower women to write the stories that won’t let them go.” “To show women how to prioritize writing time in order to be more present with their family and friends.” “To make rest a non-negotiable.” “To give fear, uncertainty, and doubt the middle finger.” “To build integrity with self by showing up when you said you would.” We have seen the power of putting these principles into action and makes the daily work most satisfying and fulfilling.
Together with my cofounder and husband Cody, we have empowered thousands of women through our international writing community, Quill & Cup. Our writing community has championed hundreds of women at our virtual table as they make progress on their stories, helping them overcome writer’s block, defeat imposter syndrome, and receive continued education on craft and mindset. In a world of “boss babes,” we’re “I don’t know babes” who do the work to calibrate our egos. We have heard hundreds of success stories from these women – we call them our Hedgies (“Quill”.. hedgehogs.. It’s a thing) – that confirm our mission is not something we say; it is something we do. The ripple effects aren’t just published books that might have been stuck in an untouched drawer otherwise – they are healthy relationships with self and with others, women enjoying what they’re called to do and serving the readers who are grateful that book is now in their hands.
Ania, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I am the product of an all-girls high school education. As a student of Queen of Peace High School in Burbank, Illinois, I often heard what became our battle cry: “We are confident, competent, and courageous women of peace.” At my high school graduation, our parting words were the reminder that, out of everything we’d learned, this truth was most important: maintaining healthy relationships are the bedrock of every endeavor.
It’s this perspective that led me to become a high school English teacher on Chicago’s southside for six years. I planned curriculum and the most engaging ways to teach it, I chaperoned field trips and dances, and I did my best to show up for my students on a daily basis. I also taught private piano lessons in the evenings, and I led my church congregation in music ministry on the weekends. I wasn’t just a full-time worker trying to do it all; it appears I was playing the role of three very different people while also trying to maintain my marriage. I was also a writer brand new to novel-writing and publishing who spent as much time in debilitating self-doubt as I did actually making progress on my novels.
It was good – until it wasn’t. Burnout led to a marriage in crisis. As my grandfather-in-law told me, “You can love something so much and still have it kill you slowly.” My husband Cody and I decided to hit “stop” on status quo living. We packed up all our possessions and put them in storage, albeit the necessities (including our cat), and moved to Costa Rica for a year. I no longer had a steady income, but I still had the desire to serve; more specifically, to create, mother, and nurture something since our dreams of conceiving naturally were not being fulfilled.
But I was a teacher who knew how to plan curriculum and create strong relationships with my students, and I had a desire to empower women – especially those who kept burning out because they kept putting their own needs on the backburner.
So we put all those things together and asked the question, “What would a writing community created specifically for women look like? What do they need that we can provide?”
Turns out it’s no different from a workout program — in an industry where writers are portrayed as suffering artists and martyrs, we remind writers that there is joy and sustainable groundedness to be found in the creative process.
I reached out to every writer, personally, through their Instagram DMs. Others warned against cold calling, but the women I want are open to relationship and conversation and can find their way through shallow self-promotion. We found each other, and it wasn’t soon until I heard, “Wow. This sounds amazing! It’s everything I’ve been needing!”
I’m proud of the fact that, within two years of existence, we’ve hosted four in-person retreats, give members an average of 5 masterclass opportunities per month, host 60+ hours of educational content on our member website, have a merch shop, welcomed many USA Today Bestselling Authors to our table to learn from them, and more. Cody and I never could have imagined that we would have over 115 members from all over the world who are committed to showing up for one another and the stories that won’t let them go. The women we attract are kind. Generous. Servant-hearted. They’re willing to calibrate their egos. Ready to laugh and have a good time and extra ready to hold each other accountable and get the work done, too. Eager to learn. Comfortable saying “I don’t know, let’s figure that out together.” .
Somewhere along the way, our virtual we became family.
Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?
At first, the ideal clients we reach out to via Instagram DMs – “Hiding Hedgies” – think we’re bots trying to spam business. By the end of the conversation, however, they feel genuine warmth, interest, and are eager to accept the invitation to give our writing community a try. But how?
We know our writers because we feel the same pain points and yearn for the same cathartic relief that the creative process yields. Ultimately, writers who are busy wives, moms, and/or in the work force want to know that they’re not wasting their time, effort, and energy writing a book. They want to know that their work can make a difference in the lives of their readers. Writers — especially those working on their first novels — often lack this conviction as they’re often writing in solitude, missing the validation and affirmation needed to keep writing when the rough draft feels especially rough.
Often, it only takes one person to express interest.
When we drop into a woman’s DMs, we are that person.
In a world where people caution against “cold calls,” we jump right into the water and go for it. We call our outreach to ideal clients “Operation: Finding Hiding Hedgies.” In addition to posting consistently on Instagram, we identify our ideal client by “scanning” their Instagram profile. If it looks like they’re the kind of character we’d like to invite to our table, we jump into their DMs and start a conversation. Many women think we’re a bot at first, but those who give a response a try find a genuinely curious and supportive person who wants to hear what they have to say about their books.
In two years, we have built a following of over 3000 women on Instagram – but that doesn’t count the number of people who remain engaged with us, depending on Quill & Cup content to sharpen their craft and mindset and remind them to rest and find encouragement and empowerment in our outreach. A year ago, we hired a social media manager – our first hire! – and work in conjunction with someone who knows trends, hashtags, and other industry specific metrics so she can tell us what to focus on and why, and we can keep building lead generation funnels in addition to those personalized DM messages.
The advice I’d give others starting their social media presence is to write copy as if its a letter to the ONE person they want to serve most — and the message HAS to come from a place of service instead of self-promotion. Identify the questions you wouldn’t mind answering over and over again and embed them within your messaging. Encourage your client. Know them so well that naming their pain points comes second-nature to you because you can authentically share how you, too, have been there and understand. And take days off! It’s true what they say: consistency is key – but you can’t be consistent if you’re consistently burning out.
How we interact with ideal clients changes from Hedgie to Hedgie; we might check in with writers on a quarterly basis or make notes on when to reach out if an ideal Hedgie says she’s not ready to join us just yet. It has been an ongoing effort of trial and error (what language to use that helps Hiding Hedgies feel our authenticity) but it truly works in keeping in touch with clients and fostering brand loyalty. Our writers become proud members of the Quill & Cup Hedgie House because they know that someone genuinely cares about the progress they’re making — in turn, they become that “one person” to someone else who comes to our virtual table later!
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
I am a recovering people pleaser. Let’s start there.
The fastest way to throw me into a shame spiral is to tell me all (or at least many of) the ways I didn’t reach the mark of your expectations – as a person, as a friend, or as a business owner.
Let’s rewind to February 2023, when we were marketing one of our virtual retreats for Quill & Cup members. We promised a dang good time with your Hedgie sisters, sharpening your Enneagram knowledge so you could apply it to character – and community – building. I love planning retreats for our writers and was confident we’d have a powerful experience together.
The Saturday finally arrived and, for four hours (with an accidental fifth in there because I messed up my time zone conversions ), we got REAL. Hedgies opened up about their life experiences. We WENT there, and it was a powerful experience. Brad Stulberg had just visited the Hedgie House to talk more about his work, The Practice of Groundedness, and had mentioned important vulnerability is to building true blue community – the kind we want and value in Quill & Cup. From my perspective, we were fulfilling that intention.
We always ask for feedback following our events. After this retreat, most of it was positive. The ones that were negative, however, really stood out and cut deep. I respect all my writers and wish to serve them well, so to hear that they were not served in the way they expected to be really cut deep. I took all of the feedback personally. I mean: cold sweats, conflict-aversion shakes, shame-spirals… the whole nine yards.
I remember putting my head in my hands wondering, “Maybe we should just throw in the towel. We had a nice run.”
Even as I thought it, however, I knew I couldn’t give up. In fact, I’ve often believed that, when you’re REALLY close to a good thing, you’re thrown some manure that, though it doesn’t smell good, becomes a foundation for growth. This was the fertilizer that helped grow me as a leader of the community and a business owner in general.
What kept me resilient? I stepped away from the community on Sunday, muting messages and silencing notifications. I began to do what I needed to in order to start thinking clearly – to get out of my emotional brain – in order to decide how to address the feedback. I called my trusted circle for wisdom – the kind that holds me accountable and is also gentle with me when I need to hear hard truths. Together, on the Monday following retreat, I spent over eight hours crafting what became our very first Public Relations statement. It was well received and, over time, the stress did fade, the memory of almost giving up getting farther and farther in the rearview mirror.
When it was time for the spring retreat, I was really nervous, so I spent twice as long and quadruple the energy planning it and curating it according to what Hedgies had shared in the previous retreat’s feedback. I leaned in with intellectual humility, approached with a trial-and-error mindset, but also aligned with how I wanted the Quill & Cup Hedgie House mission expressed. We made sure the winter retreat was extra extra on time, that the topics were what the Hedgies really wanted, and that they would be presented in a way that would help writers feel they spent their time, effort, energy, and treasure in a way they felt was worthwhile.
I’m so glad I didn’t give up when the going got tough; if I had, we wouldn’t have had an incredible in-person retreat in Chicago that summer or met so many new writers from all over the world. Many books wouldn’t have had as much progress made on them than they would have had Quill & Cup stopped existing. And, perhaps most importantly, I learned that my perspective has a limit and it is worthwhile to have a team of trusted advisors who can point out my blind spots. It’s up to me not to see those blind spots as a weakness but rather as a reality of my humanity — and work with others in community to serve in a way that’s authentic, vulnerable, reliable, and resilient.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.quillandcup.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/quillandcup/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/quillandcupwrites/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ania-ray-33126550
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@quillandcup
Image Credits
Ania Ray