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

Alright, Karen thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Often the greatest growth and the biggest wins come right after a defeat. Other times the failure serves as a lesson that’s helpful later in your journey. We’d appreciate if you could open up about a time you’ve failed.

When my novels came out, I felt much anticipation for the glories that must follow. I’d done the magic trick. I’d published. In fact, my situation felt dusted with fairy tale magic from the beginning. Up was the only direction I could go–until it wasn’t. My books didn’t catch the thermals. Their wings didn’t work. Sales disappointed everyone. My publisher gave me four tries. How much faith and generosity that signified. But I couldn’t see that then. The only information registering told me I’d let people down. I had failed.

That feeling of leaden shame we lug around in the face of failure stayed with me for many years. It grew so intense that I stopped writing. Literary relationships withered. I was dropped by publisher and agent alike. That hurt like a new definition of hell, but what else did I deserve? I’d failed, and so I trudged on.

One of the great gifts of having reached the “wisdom years” of life is learning failure doesn’t exist. Failure is the story we tell ourselves when things don’t go as we hoped, when we need a reason why. The “I failed” narrative gives us a sense of control over that which we cannot control. Shame is easier to live with than the realization that it all comes down to the whims of chance like going to Vegas and guessing wrong at the roulette wheel.

I had made mistakes though. Many mistakes. I hadn’t learned my industry. I hoped for word-of-mouth to ignite sales without my doing anything to make readers aware of the books. I expected my publisher to handle all the marketing, as though making the book available wasn’t enough. Mistakes aren’t failures. Mistakes are lessons. After punishing myself way too long for not controlling the Universe, for not being good enough, I understood my biggest mistake of them all. I had turned my hopes into expectations. From there, I started unpacking the lessons needed. I had a lot to learn.

Now, better educated, better prepared, and a better writer, I’m continuing onward. Everyone loves a She Came Back story. I feel the more accurate name for such stories would be She Kept Going.

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.

I’ve never not been a writer. At age five, I was using my twenty-five cent allowance to buy paper and pencils. We had a working typewriter in our playroom. Words were my first best friends. This all led to a life-long pursuit of being the finest writer I could be at that point in time. This eventually led to publishing four novels.

Times change, and we all grow more experienced. No one is the same person two days in a row, and that’s why many of us cringe on reading words composed a mere twenty-four hours earlier. We wouldn’t write that today, and so we set about “fixing” our words while chiding ourselves for being “stupid” or “wrong” or “useless” on the page. None of those self-doubts are credible. We are only different. (Tip: Date and time stamp new writings to better remind yourself the next day that each writing is an artifact of who you were at that point in time.)

Writers–as with many other creatives–tend to be very hard on themselves trying to reach a perfection that doesn’t exist. For that reason, I’m developing an approach I call Compassionate Craft. The aim here is to learn to appreciate the unique music in the words we write as ourselves. Craft is first and foremost personal, a tool to steer meaning in the way we want it to get across. True, experience teaches us it’s best to learn the elements of craft as generally defined before using those elements as we want to give a shape to our intentions.

The non-profit writing school I work with here in Cincinnati, Women Writing for (a) Change, provides me the opportunity to teach this method of careful listening to oneself before listening to the rule-makers. My website, www.karennovakwrites.com, features many short essays about different applications of simultaneous craft and self-compassion. When I take on individual clients, those are the filters through which I read and offer feedback. In truth, I am more a “manuscript therapist” than an editor. My interest rests in the angled edges of the writer’s real, imperfect voice bringing their personal truth to light.

Nothing is more beautiful than watching a writer transform as their confidence grows.

I’d love to hear from you. To reach me with questions or for more information about classes and individual services, please use the Contact Karen link at my website.

Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

I wish that from the beginning of my writing life I’d been aware of the riches awaiting me in being an active member of the writing community. It took years of struggling in the mistaken belief that writers–real writers–worked exclusively in solitude. Trying to do so quickly proved unsustainable. And lonely. Writers are working toward rendering what it means to be human, and for that we need other humans in relationship. For many of us, writing does require quiet, undisturbed focus available only by working alone. (I can’t get meaningful words to sit on the page when trying to write in a coffee shop. I end up drinking too much caffeine and watching with envy those whose fingers are tap-dancing around their keyboards.)

Inevitably there comes a time, however, when I need help, be it commiseration or consultation on how to get out of corners I’ve written myself into. In these times, I need a community to lean on, a community of others who understand all too well what is meant when projects derail. People to talk through potential solutions to anything from a narrative cul-de-sac to the flooded-engine frustrations of writer’s block. Whatever I need, someone out there will have it or have a means to access it. Knowing that a huge community of others doing what I do has my back is, on some days, more satisfying that the writing itself. Being in community has made me a better writer, and a better person.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

To be a creative in these ultra-busy, AI-driven times is an unending exercise in resilience. I tend to celebrate the arrival of a new idea for a novel by painting my walls with symbols of protection. Not really. But the advent of real inspiration, the need to develop and explore new levels of meaning, implies a long-term commitment. Announce, out loud, “I’m writing a novel,” and the breathless feeling that follows those words is the Universe laughing the stars out of place. We’re not talking a project of months here. We’re talking years.

Life is going to happen. Obstacles will go out of their way to throw themselves in my path. Between the countless number of small distractions, I’ll encounter major upheavals of time and emotion–a death in the family, a rigorous surgery–upheavals that will demand my full attention for weeks. Yet, the novel continues even when I can’t get to my keyboard for days upon days. The totality of the story exists whole in my head and heart and gut. A real novel waits for me to return. It allows me to pick up where I left off. It may need to change as much as I have changed in my absence. Any change I make to it cascades into other changes. Writing doesn’t take resilience. Writing is resilience.

I am currently revising a novel that my professional book-reviewing friend called “perfect.” Why revise? During my lengthy recovery from extensive back surgery, I came to the conclusion that while I’d desperately needed to write that “perfect” novel, no one needed to read it. Five years of my life down the tube? No. I loved the characters and so sat with them until struck by a more interesting story with a more challenging way to tell it. That’s what I’m working on now.

Resilience is not the readiness to begin again. Resilience is the getting up hurt and tired in determination to keep going. Anyone who creates for their living–or their joy–will have experienced this because creativity is where resilience is born. Imagine a kinder future. Go make it real.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.karennovakwrites.com
• Email: [email protected]

Image Credits
Cal Harris Bloomsbury Publishing Tanya Bartlett Women Writing for (a) Change Karen Novak