We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Claudya Martinez a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Claudya , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?

I think that in order to be successful, you have to become intimately acquainted with failure and rejection. You have embrace them and the discomfort they cause as part of the process that leads to success. Before I became a writer, I was an actor. Actors have to learn not to be phased by rejection. You aren’t going to get every role that you audition for and that’s OK. I taught myself to treat auditions as a performance in and of themselves. Even if I didn’t book a role, I still got to perform and hone my craft.

Claudya , 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’m a writer and I love it, but I never dreamed of becoming a writer. When I first started getting paid to write, I would tell people that if felt like I was living a dream I never even knew I had. I never pursued the dream, the dream found me because I’ve always considered myself an artist whose medium is her life.

See what had happened was I was an actor, not anyone you would have heard of. I’m a bilingual Latina and did Chicano theater, voiceover work, industrials, and print work. I also worked side gigs to support my acting habit.

I’d been acting since I was a teenager and then in my later 30s, I decided to become a mom. Suddenly, the parts of acting that I didn’t like—last minute auditions, long hours, evening rehearsals—were no longer something I wanted to do, so I stopped.

Once I stopped getting my creative fix through acting, I had to find another way to be creative and connect with an audience. For me, acting was always about connecting and communicating. I had a baby to take care of and needed to nourish the part of my soul that did around my baby’s schedule. I had no idea what I was doing when I grabbed my laptop and started a blog.

I began writing anonymously. Much to my surprise, I liked writing even more than I liked acting because I was forced to use my own words and own them. As an actor, it was always hard to find material that I really connected with because, let’s face it, the industry is not synonymous with diversity.

A few months after I started writing, online publications and brands started reaching out and asking if I would like to work for them. I couldn’t believe that anyone wanted to pay me just to be myself and express my opinions.

I went from feeling isolated and lonely because I spent my entire days with a newborn, who frankly did not get my sense of humor at all, to connecting with people online who not only got my perspective, they shared it. I could be my whole self in a way that I had never experienced before and I was hooked.

Learning the “business” part of being a writer was something I had to do along the way. I’m glad it happened that way because I might have talked myself out of even trying if I had approached it as something I was going to monetize.

What makes me a great writer for my clients is that I am their target audience. I am the Latina, who grew up speaking Spanish at home, mostly speaks in English as an adult, loves herself some Spanglish to get a particular point across, and is never shy about making a joke.

As a creative entrepreneur, I’m proud of myself for being open to opportunities that I never imagined for myself; for saying “yes” even when I’m scared: and for trusting that when I write honestly, it will connect with the right audience.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

For two years, I was a full-time staff writer at an online publication. I had never had that kind of stability as a creative. I was doing great and had only ever gotten positive feedback, then seemingly out of nowhere I was laid off. Budget cuts, blah, blah, blah. I was floored.

This happened on a Tuesday. By Thursday, I had three clients who wanted to work with me as a freelancer. I had been toying with the idea of going freelance because the structure of the full-time schedule I was working was extremely draining, but I had been too scared to let go of the secure paychecks.

What I learned is that I am so much more than any given job I’ve ever had or may ever have. I have skills and talents that can never be taken from me and that just keep developing over time. Going freelance allowed me to try my hand at being an online community manager, write Valentine’s Day e-cards, and even do some ghostwriting.

I also learned that relationships are everything. I was able to get clients so quickly because of the relationships I had cultivated along the way.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

I believe that diversity is a strength and that one of the great things about the internet is that it gives a voice to people whose voices have traditionally not been amplified. I never considered becoming a writer when I was a child even though I was an avid reader because I never read anything by someone like me. When I got older and came across authors like Sandra Cisneros, I was mesmerized and so grateful. She spoke my languages literally and metaphorically.

I also never read articles in magazines or publications written by someone like me until Latina magazine came on the scene in 1996. I was legit one of their very first subscribers. Little did I imagine then that decades later I would get featured and praised in one of their issues alongside other talented Latinas for my accomplishments as a blogger.

I want to live in a world where diversity is celebrated and seen as a strength. Period.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/byclaudya/