We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Meredith R. Stoddard. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Meredith below.
Meredith, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you walk us through some of the key steps that allowed you move beyond an idea and actually launch?
My story is probably similar to a lot of other writer’s stories. The idea for my first novel, The River Maiden, came to me one day, and I just started writing. Before I knew it, I had fifty pages of a book with very little plan about where it was going or what I wanted to do with it.. Then life happened, and that first fifty pages sat in a drawer for twelve years. In that time, I had two kids, and built a whole career as a corporate trainer and instructional designer. I would analyze training needs, design the curriculum around those needs and create the materials. I was involved in the process from end to end, Then I got laid off from my corporate job during the Great Recession, and I decided to pick up my pen and start writing again. Eventually, I pulled those fifty pages out of the drawer and made a plan for finishing that book. I don’t think I could have done that without project management and publishing experience that I gained at my corporate job. The key difference from that early effort to finishing the job was making a plan not just for finishing it, but also for what I wanted to do with it.
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?
I talk to people all the time who say, “I’ve always wanted to write a book.” or “I started writing a book, but can’t seem to finish.”. I used my experience in the corporate world and the skills that I built there to create a plan for finishing and publishing my books. Now, I want to put that experience to work helping other authors finish their dream projects.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
We read books looking for connection. We want to connect with the characters, authors, other readers. We write books for the same reasons. We want to connect with readers, and other authors. We want to create characters that resonate with us and with others. The most rewarding thing for a writer to hear is that we’ve made that connection. When a reader contacts me and tells me that they love my characters, Sarah MacAlpin and Dermot Sinclair and that they have to know what’s going to happen to them in the next book, it’s magical. There are so many demands on our time and attention. When readers tell me they’re re-reading my Once & Future Series, I feel so gratified. And if I can help another writer find that feeling with their own work, there’s nothing better.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
While my corporate career taught me so much about project management and skill building, It also taught me to grind at a level that is not really sustainable for a creative field. Writing fiction takes a lot out of a person emotionally, a lot more than writing a training manual about software. I prided myself in my corporate career for never missing a deadline, and I had some aggressive deadlines. While I can churn out a training manual in a couple of weeks, I absolutely can not write a novel that will resonate with readers in that time, Writing fiction takes more patience, and stillness than that corporate grind allows. I had to re-learn my approach to goal setting when I switched to writing fiction. I also had to adjust my mindset to be more patient and forgiving with myself than what I was used to. Very often, the more pressure I put on myself to hit a deadline, the less creative I feel. So when setting goals, I have to build in time for exploring and being creative.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.meredithstoddard.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mrstoddard/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063837990684
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meredith-stoddard-60a3347/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuElezZ5Sxz7ZfSe4e5UryA
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@mrstoddard