We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Crysta Coburn. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Crysta below.
Crysta, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.
I’ve always relied on my own judgement. I started out writing things that I liked, then I learned that other people liked them too. For a while, I started writing things for other people because it gave me inspiration and focus. I would never create something that I didn’t myself want to read or listen to.
But a lot of my interests are niche and don’t follow the popular trends, so it has always been difficult to get editors and so forth to pay attention. What has really helped me is making friends in the same boat as me, some a little further along in the journey, and learning what has worked for them. It led to important connections that opened up new avenues. Other creatives are not your enemies, they are your comrades, and you can help each other out without losing anything.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
When it comes to my nonfiction work — magazine articles, podcasts, etc — I try my absolute best to be accurate. I don’t like falsehoods. Just because something is a good sounding story doesn’t mean I won’t call it out. Maybe that seems odd for a fiction writer, but I keep the two worlds separate, perhaps because one of my first jobs was in a library, and these two sections were on opposite sides of the building.
Some of my favorite genres to write in are fantastical, but please know that I am well aware of the difference between fantasy and reality, and they each have their place.
I can really be a stick in the mud when it comes to popular folklore that is being passed off as true history, and I don’t feel bad about it. I do this fairly often on the Haunted Mitten podcast. Honestly, I think real history is far wackier than most urban legends.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
I have ADHD, which means my brain is constantly starving of dopamine. It’s impossible for me to focus on things that I don’t find interesting. I fall asleep. This made not only school difficult but a lot of jobs as well.
But when I’m doing something creative, I’m able to hyperfocus on that and get a lot of work done! I don’t want to sleep through life; I want to be engaged with it. And that’s only possible when I’m creating.
It’s also difficult for me to adhere to someone else’s schedule. I have chronic illnesses that make my energy level and ability to focus unpredictable. It’s an incredible relief when I can work on my own time around the needs of my body and brain.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
While there is nothing like seeing your name in print, probably the best part for me is in the making.
If I’m writing a script for Haunted Mitten, it’s unbelievably rewarding to uncover these little nuggets of mostly forgotten history that I can then share with people. I read through a lot of newspaper archives. Some people I know think that sounds incredibly boring, but for me, it’s a rush of dopamine. I do a lot of scouring for information when I wrote magazine articles too. It’s fun!
Contact Info:
- Website: http://crystakcoburn.com/
- Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/crystakcoburn/
- Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/crystakcoburn/
- Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/crystakcoburn/
Image Credits
Crysta K. Coburn