We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Anastasia Zadeik a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Anastasia, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about the things you feel your parents did right and how those things have impacted your career and life.
Leading by example, my parents helped me and my siblings to understand that we could make a meaningful contribution to our family and our community, regardless of our age.
I was the fourth of five children born to my mother in quick succession. From an early age, we were given chores to do, both daily and weekly. Daily chores included washing the dishes, drying the dishes, setting the table, loading the dishwasher, and sweeping the floor (five tasks, one child per task), which rotated every week. Weekly chores, which were to be completed on Saturday morning, consisted of an A list and a B list; each child had to pick one task from each list—things like dusting and/or vacuuming the downstairs/upstairs, helping Dad with the edging of the lawn or weeding, or cleaning the kids’ bathroom. My mom made it clear from the start that chores were not a punishment or a burden but rather a contribution; no single person could do it all, and each of us was an important, integral, and valuable part of the family. While learning critical life skills, we were also learning that our efforts made a difference and that being productive felt good; it was satisfying to see a clean edge of grass along the sidewalk or to see the table set neatly for dinner. And we all came to understand that a family works best when everyone has a role in the family’s work.
My parents were also lifelong volunteers. Giving back wasn’t just for family; it also applied to school, church, our community, and, as we grew older, our world.
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’ve been journaling my life for as long as I can remember—starting with a little, puffy pink diary with a key I received in second or third grade (which I kept locked and hidden, sure that everyone, meaning my siblings, wanted to know my innermost thoughts), through the high school and college years of fabric-covered books that stored my coming-of-age angst, poems, and philosophical musings, to the decades of black Moleskines in which I documented career, marriage, motherhood, love, and loss. Yet, I did not share any of these with the world—and I did not identify myself as a writer.
During my twenties, thirties, and forties, when asked, “What do you do,” I’d answered with “I’m a neuropsychological researcher” for a decade, and then “full-time mom and professional volunteer” (think PTA board member, room mom, team mom, NICU baby holder). As I approached fifty, as children went off to college and I contemplated the empty nest years ahead, I’d begun taking writing classes. I’d written a few short stories and a couple of narrative nonfiction pieces, and I’d begun to write a novel, but, all the same, I still did not think of myself as “a writer.” Then, one day, I was sitting in my doctor’s office, completing pre-op paperwork for a medically-necessary hysterectomy, and I came to the blank line over the word “occupation. I sat there, thinking about how, for years, I had defined myself as a mother and how that part of my creative life was coming to an end. And then I realized that I had the power of creation of a different sort—the power to generate narratives and create lives and worlds through words—and I wrote “writer” on the line.
It would be lovely to follow that with, “and I never looked back,” but the truth is far more complicated. Writing is a lonely profession, it is also filled with rejection and its close companion, self-doubt. Fortunately, I quickly found a community of other writers with whom to share the journey. I joined a read-and-critique group, continued to take classes, and began attending events at libraries, bookstores, and open mics.
And I learned that there were ample opportunities to continue with the professional volunteering I’d learned to love. I became involved with three literary nonprofits as a writing coach, editor, board member, and operations director: So Say We All, an organization devoted to “helping people tell their stories and tell them better;” The San Diego Writers Festival, an organization with the goal of “Uniting San Diego, One Story at a Time;’ and the International Memoir Writers Association, which promotes cultivating, educating, and supporting memoir writers throughout the world. Working with these groups has allowed me to give back in a way that resonates with the girl and woman I once was, the one who hid her words away; it has given me the chance to encourage others to claim the “writer” within them and find the courage to share their words with the world.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
Though I had been on Facebook for years, I rarely posted anything. I enjoyed reading about the lives of others, seeing pictures of their significant others, kids, dogs, travels, and food (as the saying goes, “the food eats first”), and connecting with folks I’d lost touch with over the years, but I was frightened by the idea of putting something “out there” that could never be taken back. This fear is what kept me from venturing onto other platforms, like Twitter, Linked-In, and Instagram.
But then, during the year before the publication of my first novel, I signed on with a public relations firm to assist me with my “launch.” As part of that work, my PR guru arranged for me to consult with a social media expert, a woman who gave me excellent advice:
One—you don’t have to do it all at once. Pick the platform that works best for your style of communication and start there. Then, as you get used to putting yourself “out there,” you can (but don’t have to) move on to other platforms. She suggested I start with Instagram because it is image-based, and I love taking photographs. She gave me tips for how to
Two—take advantage of hashtags. Use tags like #mondaymotivation and #throwbackthursday and #sundayfunday as anchors when you don’t have time to (or don’t want to) write a bunch of text about the image.
Three—define your limits. You don’t have to share everything about your life. You can choose how much you want the public to know about you and you don’t owe anyone to reveal more than you feel comfortable with revealing. You don’t need to post about your significant other or your kids if you don’t want to. You don’t have to post about your internal struggles (though sharing these can be helpful to others, your privacy matters too, and if you want to keep private that you take an antidepressant or are in the middle of a divorce, you have every right to do that).
Four—be authentic. This does not negate #3 above. I like flowers, gardening, reading, art, and traveling. So I post lots of pictures of flowers I see on hikes or gardens and museums in places I visit. I love my dog (as do so many folks on social media), so I post pictures of my dog just being a dog—walking, sleeping, playing with other dogs, being cute.
Five—reach out to others on social media. Like their posts and stories. Leave comments. Tag them. As strange as it may seem (it seemed strange to me at the start), it is really about building relationships. I now have a few relationships that are solely on social media—people that have become forms of support in ways I never imagined.
Six—don’t equate increased social media with increased sales. I don’t know if I’ve sold any books because of my social media, but if the marketing rule of seven still holds, and it takes seven “touches” for someone to engage with you and your business, it stands to reason social media would be a good source for some of those touches.
It took time for me to get used to having a social media presence, and it took time to get over the fear of my words and images being “out there,” but I’ve gotten used to it—and if I can do it, anyone can. The more you post, the easier it gets. And while there are plenty of negatives, there are also positives: I’ve learned how to use Canva and create my own graphics; I’ve learned how to create reels; I’ve reignited passion for old music lurking in the recesses of my mind and discovered new music I never would have found were it not for the “adding music” options. I’ve even begun to tweet.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
Reading is, hands down, my favorite thing to do and always has been. I was that kid with the flashlight under the covers and the young college student that hung out in the library on a Saturday night instead of going to a party, randomly pulling books from the stacks and sitting on the floor to absorb whatever had been chosen. I am the older woman that often retires early in the evening only to find herself reading until the wee hours.
One of the earliest readers of my book wrote that she’d wanted to skip a dinner party to finish reading it. Another wrote a review saying she’d missed out on a good night’s sleep because she couldn’t stop reading until she reached the last page. The idea that someone might avoid a social gathering or stay up until the wee hours reading my words is still hard to wrap my head around.
But what is most rewarding is writing itself. There are times when the words flow from some mysterious place that exists between my brain and my fingertips, and there are times when I struggle to put together a sentence but refuse to give in. There are times when I hear my characters interacting with each other as I go about my daily life, and there are times when I question if I am doing them justice as I record their lives—wondering if they are as three-dimensional on paper as they are in my head. There are times when I am editing a story and suddenly see how it is all going to fit together, and it’s revelatory and glorious. And then, there are those times when I read something I wrote long ago and don’t remember writing it and find myself pondering the mystery of the creative process and how lucky I am to be engaged in it. Whether it is composing a piece of music or painting a vase of flowers or writing a novel, it is a gift to spend time making something out of nothing.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.anastasiazadeik.com
- Instagram: @anastasiazadeik
- Facebook: @anastasiazadeik
- Linkedin: Anastasia Zadeik Hipkins
- Twitter: @anastasiazadeik
- Youtube: https://youtu.be/xwWXJ3nFylY
Image Credits
Captured Forever Photography (headshot)