We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Joan Gelfand. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Joan below.

Joan, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What was the most important lesson/experience you had in a job that has helped you in your creative career?

Before I left the corporate world to write full time, I was in B2B Sales. I worked for a company that designed space saving storage facilities for large companies. The most important lesson I learned was persistence. As an English major living in California, I didn’t have many options to work for a magazine or a media company – at the time I graduated those businesses were centered in New York so I really wanted to make this career successful. I had a lot of disappointments starting out but I also learned that success breeds success. Once I began to be successful I could leverage that success. And now, this is what I teach my aspiring writing students. This career is very competitive and challenging and it’s very easy to get discouraged and give up.

Joan, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I started out as a poet. I have a BA in English/Creative Writing and a Masters in Fine Arts. I knew early on that short of pursuing academia and a teaching career, that I needed a few ‘life skills.’ I met someone early in life who mentored me on becoming an entrepreneur. At 30, I started my first business to moderate success. That first experience was a big life lesson in that I realized: A: I had the people skills to run a business and to sell products, and B: I was much happier being self-,motivated than working for someone. These skills served me well when I decided to write full time. When I started out my writing career, I knew how critical it was to be published; I was never a writer who wrote just for the pleasure. Along the way, I met writers who taught me how to build a fan base, how to work with literary organizations and how to build up a publications resume. I took everything I learned and put it into my book, “You Can Be a Winning Writer: The 4 C’s of Successful Authors.” The book became an Amazon #1 best seller and was a great complement to my creative writing. I gave classes, took on clients and became known in the literary community. I am now at work on a second edition of Winning Writer. What I realized sets me apart from other writers is that I always show up 100% prepared, professionally dressed and coifed! What I am most proud of is that through some very rough times – I had a novel that had 3 publishers, 2 of whom cancelled my contract! – I persevered and now have seven traditionally published books, the most recent one to significant critical acclaim.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

The lesson I had to unlearn in my creative journey was about trusting credentialed advisors. Early in my journey I had submitted a manuscript to a NY agent. I received a note, paraphrasing here, that “it was clear that you are talented and this work is compelling. The second half falls down. Please get back to us.” I quickly took my manuscript to a teacher with whom I was taking an Advanced Fiction class with. This teacher had won a Pulitzer Prize. She discouraged me from working on my book. “Many writers learn how to write by writing their first novel. What else are you excited about?” I was excited about something else that I was sure was going to set the world on fire. I abandoned the manuscript, taking the agent’s note as a polite rejection. I have since learned that It was not a rejection. I have learned that while men take notes such as these as invitations to begin a dialog, women see them as rejections. I have regretted my decision to not work on that book and with that agent to this day.. Engaging with an agent is a big deal and it was a bird in the hand. The lesson was also to keep my own counsel; to not bow to someone who is further along the path than I am.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

After working on a book about a Silicon Valley startup for three years, I was having a hard time placing it. The dot com bust of 2000 had turned NY agents off on the tech world; the media pronounced it dead. I was crushed. I had a coach at the time who advised me to go back to basics: poetry. She considered me a strong poet who could establish a reputation in the literary world. I threw myself into writing and publishing, had three books published with respectable, albeit small presses. But I was building a fan base, and a reputation. One year, I had three dreams about Lawrence Ferlinghetti. After the third dream, I decided that this was a poem. I wrote “The Ferlinghetti School of Poetics.” It was published 12 times, a colleague made a film of the poem. I submitted the film and was accepted to 20 international film festivals including Cannes. The film and the poem have won many awards and the YouTube video went viral. After about five years I went back to my novel and finally placed it.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://joangelfand.com
• Instagram: @joangelfand
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/joangelfandofficial/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joan-gelfand
• Twitter: https://x.com/JoanGelfand
• Youtube: @joangelfand3497
• Other: bluesky

Image Credits

headshot: Terry Versiel
all of the images belong to Joan Gelfand.