Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Beverly Nault. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Beverly , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

I’d wanted to be a writer since I was little and I explored many avenues to make that happen. I trained as a technical writer and worked in the corporate world. Good training, but kinda dry and boring. But good for discipline! I also took several of those correspondence courses, as they were called back in the day. You know, the kind where they send you an assignment by snail mail, and you send it back, and a few weeks later, you get the red-penned teacher’s notes. I found one that was half snail and half online back around 2012. It was a two-year fiction and nonfiction course called What’s Your Story, run by best-selling author Jerry Jenkins. Toward the end of the course, the challenges were to write a fiction and a nonfiction book. That gave me pause! But one of their suggestions for a nonfiction book was to find a celebrity or someone with a “name” and ask if they would be interested in writing their book together.

At the time, my kids were working in Hollywood as background actors, and my son was taking camera acting classes from Mary McDonough, who was Erin on the popular television drama The Waltons. None of the cast members had ever written a memoir about the show. So I asked her if she was interested, and it turns out she’d been thinking of writing a book. Lessons from the Mountain, What I Learned from Erin Walton has gone into five printings! It took a lot of hard work, but I’d done my homework and became a published author!

I’d also been writing my fiction book, Fresh Start Summer, at the same time, and the two were released by different publishers in the same month! I called them my twins!

Beverly , 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 call myself one of the original word nerds because I adore anything that tells a story—books, articles, movies, documentaries, you name it. I entered professional writing as a proposal manager in an aerospace company. Tough to find compelling stories there, but I learned organizational skills, meeting deadlines, working with subject matter experts, and writing clearly and concisely. Excellent training!

When I branched out into creative writing, I knew how to plan ahead and organize my thoughts. As I wrote my own books, I began working for publishers and authors as a content editor, fleshing out ideas and fine-tuning their work, which is also an excellent way to increase one’s own skills. Another way to add skills is to network!

The advent of digital cameras and streaming services opened the world to independent filmmaking. At a writer’s conference several years ago, a workshop leader told a group of us fiction writers that screenwriting was a field always searching for new voices.

So, I started learning how to write screenplays. I joined the Phoenix Screenwriters Association and volunteered to write for their newsletter, which gave me the opportunity to interview authors, filmmakers, and actors about the industry.

I have always believed that if I wanted to accomplish something, as long as I researched and studied from mentors, learned as much as I could, networked, and put in the time, I could do anything.

Recently, I started my own production company to produce films. I reach out to anyone to learn and volunteer to help with their projects. One of my most recent accomplishments is that my screenplay, Perfect Misfits, won as a top-scoring script at the Showlow Film Festival. I met several people at that festival, and from networking there, I became an Executive Producer on My Life Between the Reins documentary, which will soon be released. I’m learning a new angle on storytelling for the visual arts!

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

Without pre-planning, but because I really believe this, all my projects have a variation of one theme: new beginnings. From my first published novel, Fresh Start Summer, the idea that we can start anew every day runs through the narrative. We have choices, and we can’t get bogged down in negative self-talk, not believing in our goals, or letting others tell us we can’t do something. I don’t call them dreams, I call them goals because dreams may not come true. But goals can! The theme statement of my screenplay, Perfect Misfits, is “It’s never too late to rewrite your story.”

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

I’ve even wondered what drives creatives because every artist, writer, and filmmaker I know, myself included, can’t help but be creative in some discipline or another. Our world would be boring without the power of visual and performing arts. What’s the first thing we do when our children are young? We read them stories. What do we do on the weekend to unwind? We watch television, go to the movies or live theatre to be entertained. Even Jesus used stories to illustrate truths. So I believe the arts, storytelling arts in my case, add to life’s texture, flavor, and enjoyment.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://beverlynault.com/
• Instagram: bevnault
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beverlynaultauthor/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beverly-nault-a7735a1b8
• Other: https://www.perfectmisfitsmovie.com
  https://www.imdb.com/name/nm11620067