We were lucky to catch up with Cassandra Medcalf recently and have shared our conversation below.
Cassandra , appreciate you joining us today. I’m sure there have been days where the challenges of being an artist or creative force you to think about what it would be like to just have a regular job. When’s the last time you felt that way? Did you have any insights from the experience?
I just had a conversation with my sister last night, who’s currently struggling with her job. She works for a small business, and has reached a point with her position that she can’t “move up” any more. The owners can’t afford to pay her anymore, yet she’s struggling with some health issues that are demanding she have either health care or a higher wage in order to afford the care she needs. She’s been asking me for advice. And one of her questions was, “Are you happy doing what you love?”
And it was a difficult question for me to answer. Because, some days, yes! I’m extremely happy doing what I do, acting for a living, getting to read books or write books and make money from art. But of course, it isn’t that simple. Maintaining any business is expensive and thankless; I often pour in more hours a day than I would at a typical 9-5, skipping meals and weekends when projects demand it. I am grateful for the flexibility to schedule my own hours, but I also struggle with getting paid late or surviving weeks or months without paychecks when publishers delay releases. Not only that, my success is a direct result of the countless unpaid hours I spend marketing myself and networking at significant expense, both financial and mental.
In the end, I think it’s important to remember that one’s job is NOT one’s identity: even when one is a creative. I crave free time to enjoy other people’s art, to take walks and touch grass, to spend quality time with my loved ones and enjoy hobbies without seeking a profit from them. It’s taken me years to get to a space when I can allow myself ACTUAL free time that isn’t directly tied to networking, marketing, or some eventual work-related payback, but the more I do it, the more grateful and happy I am.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
Hi there! Thank you for taking the time to meet me and read about my passions and pursuits! I am an audiobook narrator/voice over professional and author. These careers definitely play off of one another, as I narrate the books that I write and get inspired by the other authors I work with as a narrator.
As a kid, my dream was to someday become an actor- but I didn’t fit the ideal of “leading lady,” according to the adults in my life that had control over my opportunities to act. So I ended up having to find my own opportunities, and was fortunate to have parents who were willing to drive me to community theatre auditions and rehearsals and help me find camps, competitions, and programs where I could still hone my craft.
But even they couldn’t protect me from the slashes to arts programs after the 2008 financial crisis. Despite getting into my whole list of dream schools for acting, I couldn’t afford a single one, and wasn’t able to secure scholarships to pursue acting. So I went to a safety school for English instead (which, for some reason, donors were willing to fund scholarships for), and ended up double-majoring in English and Audio Production.
After school, I primarily worked in live events: mixing concerts, managing venues, and building sound systems- all skills that used my technical degree. It wasn’t until I met an audiobook narrator by happenstance and helped recover some files she lost on her laptop that I learned I could make a career in voice over from my tiny home studio.
So for the past decade I’ve been building up that business, and during the pandemic I officially retired from live sound and events to pursue voice over full-time, in addition to helping new narrators setup their home studios so they can pursue their dream, too.
I’ve always loved to write. It’s been a hobby of mine for as long as I could remember. But just like with acting, teachers and mentors dissuaded me from pursuing writing as a career because “so few people find success.” But after meeting so many independent- and successful- authors through narrating their books, I decided to give it a try.
I write the world I want to see: laugh-out-loud funny rom coms with kind protagonists overcoming the personal traumas that have held them back from embracing their true selves. I write queer and straight characters interacting together, and communities in which everyone accepts that love is love, and all are worthy of it. My characters each explore a nugget of myself and something I’ve struggled with or am working through, and I revel in writing adventurous, intelligent scenes that fulfill my own wildest dreams: whether that’s through red-hot sexual tension or ridiculous chapter-long banter, knowing that I’ll get to act out any scene I write in the audiobook. My favorite thing is bringing my stories to life, live with my fans on social media: whether that’s on my TikTok (@cassandramedcalfvo) or on my discord, which is free to join through my no-cost Patreon tier: patreon.com/cassandramedcalf.
My next book, Fowl Play, is my best work yet, and a direct result of all that collaboration between my fans, communities, and fellow authors. I absolutely cannot WAIT until it’s released!
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
I had to unlearn what “bad writing” is.
In high school, I worked on my school’s creative writing magazine, and took a bunch of creative writing electives. I’ll be honest: I learned A LOT in those classes, and I don’t regret those experiences at all. In college, all the skills I learned there served me well, and I continued to educate myself about writing as an English major through literary analysis and close reading.
But something that DIDN’T serve me was the judgmental attitudes around pop fiction: works like fanfiction, romance, YA fantasy, and independent publishing. In academia, self-publishing is viewed as “the easy way out” for writers who aren’t “good enough” to get traditionally published. And that’s just not true.
Even books I personally do not enjoy aren’t BAD. This has taken me a while to internalize, but it has shaped the way I write reviews and interact with other readers. The fact of the matter is, every writer has a voice. And each voice resonates with a specific audience. Finding readers who enjoy similar voices to the ones you enjoy is an amazing thing, because it allows you to connect with each other on such a deep and personal level. But readers and writers who enjoy different styles of voices are not inferior or weird or dumb.
They’re just different. Equally valid, different voices.
This has become super important to me as an author, because it has shaped the way I tell stories, and informed the way I process reviews and criticism. Learning the difference between grammar, story, and voice has been essential in finding my way as an author, and it’s helped me rediscover reading for pleasure as an adult.
What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?
This one’s easy: universal health care and universal basic income (or adopting housing as a human right).
The “starving artist” makes for a great story, but it’s far less romantic in real life. What’s more: starving artists don’t make their best art.
The human experience is inspiration for all creative endeavors, but pain doesn’t equal greatness. Pain and suffering occurs independent of poverty all the time. Why do we insist on instilling excess suffering on those without means? We’ve found in studies time and time again, that when people have financial freedom, they’re able to create amazing things and move society forward. Spending mental and physical resources on basic survival, when society has the means to afford your most basic needs for you, is holding us back: not just as creatives, but as humans.
Vote for change. We can do better.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.cassandramedcalf.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/cassandramedcalfvo
- Facebook: facebook.com/cassandramedcalfvo
- Other: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/21516067.Cassandra_Medcalf https://www.amazon.com/stores/Cassandra-Medcalf/author/B09PZPPMFV https://www.patreon.com/CassandraMedcalf