We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kori Frazier Morgan a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Kori, thanks for joining us today. Let’s jump right into how you came up with the idea?

I’ve been on an interesting career trajectory for the last nearly eighteen years. I’ve earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing, taught college courses, worked as a freelance writer, and worked in marketing as a copywriter and content strategist. Along with all of this, I wrote a novel and had numerous poems, stories, and essays featured in literary journals and online publications. When you look at my resume, it all seems a little back and forth and random, almost like I couldn’t decide what industry I wanted to use my degree in. Little did I know, though, that all the pieces were eventually going to come together.

Like many creative people, the COVID-19 pandemic set a lot of things into motion for me. While I was laid off from my marketing position, I joined some online writing communities and took a creative writing class for the first time since graduate school. Being around these writers from across the country showed me how much I had missed in the creative writing world since working in marketing for the past three years. There were a lot of people who were interested in developing their craft and taking their work to the next level, but they lacked the resources to do so. They needed to understand what stage in the writing process they were stuck at and get the tools to move ahead creatively.

It finally hit me that I had all the necessary skills to help them do this. As a former teacher who had also participated in numerous writing workshops, I was gifted at explaining concepts and providing feedback on writing. I was a published author and understood the fundamentals of excellent storytelling. My marketing background would also help me with content creation and generating leads so I could promote myself.

I knew the kind of company I wanted to start, and I also had a model: the Inklings. During their mutual time at Oxford University, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, along with other friends, started a writing group where they would gather to share their work. What made the group so special is that all of them were believers in Jesus Christ, which brought an element of love to their collaboration. They cared not just about making the writing good, but about the spiritual and personal good to their interactions. I decided that I would adopt this same ethos to the way I worked with clients. We would be collaborators, equal partners in the work. While I would provide the best recommendations I could, the writers themselves would have freedom to accept or reject my ideas.

The mission of Inkling Creative Strategies is for me to help writers reach their full creative potential so they can impact and inspire readers. In following this model, I believe authors are more able to create a meaningful experience for readers as well as develop their talents.

Kori, 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?

Since 2006, I have been working as a writing instructor, freelance writer, marketing specialist, and creative writer. I received my B.A. in creative writing and professional writing from Ohio Northern University and a Master of Fine Arts in fiction writing from West Virginia University. I’ve worked with companies such as McGraw-Hill, Shmoop.com, and The Economist’s GRE preparation course, and have taught creative writing, composition, and communication at Bryant & Stratton College, the University of Akron, Malone University, and other institutions. My novel, The Goodbye-Love Generation: A Novel in Stories was published in 2020, and my essay collection Why I Dyed My Hair Purple & Other Unorthodox Stories is forthcoming this year from Calla Press Publishing.

Inkling Creative Strategies serves authors at all stages in the writing process, from new writers who are just getting started and need to find their voices to seasoned authors preparing to submit and publish books. Regardless of where they stand in growing as writers, my clients need guidance in overcoming creative obstacles such as a lack of material, self-doubt, and knowledge of the fundamentals of craft. I do this through writing mentorships, where we work one on one to explore writers’ interests and work toward a completed project, as well as services for developmental editing, line editing, and proofreading.

Since our founding in late 2020, Inkling Creative Strategies has helped more than 30 authors reach their individual creative goals. They have completed drafts of short stories and essays, submitted novel queries, had their work featured in literary journals, and independently published books. One thing that makes Inkling distinctive is that an author can go through the entire writing process with me, up to and including having me typeset their book for self-publishing. To date, seven authors now have books in print after working with me to develop the project and design the books’ interiors.

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

I ran into a tough period in mid-2021 where I almost quit. My husband and I were having some financial issues, my client list was low, and I was beginning to think that perhaps being an entrepreneur wasn’t such a good idea. As head of the household, my husband felt that it was a great idea for me to pursue my business and creative aspirations, and he maintained that by walking away, I was making a mistake. If I had listened to his assessment of my judgment, I would have been a lot better off. The lesson here is that if you are a creative person and your spouse tells you to stop it with your crippling self-doubt, your best bet is to listen to his or her wisdom.

Unfortunately, I was so far down the self-doubt continuum that I actually started applying for freelance writing jobs. At one point, a search engine optimization company hired me, and I started pouring hours into the trial period for my position, where I would write articles incorporating specific keywords. However, the cracks in this company quickly became evident—there was poor communication and inconsistent feedback, and I was extremely frustrated.

That was when I began to consider that I had been wrong to abandon my aspirations. I realized that my motivation was purely prideful. I felt obligated to contribute to our household financially, even though my spouse had told me that it was okay for me to press forward and make my venture a success.

Instead of giving up, I pivoted and came up with a new service: typesetting. Because I have a background in desktop publishing and had done the layout for my own book, I had the marketable skill of doing the interior layouts for books. Today, it’s one of my high end services as well as one of the most popular. Often, the answer to a challenge is not to quit—it’s to ask how you can do something different as a solution.

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

Two books immediately come to mind. The most important is Diana Glyer’s book Bandersnatch, which tells the story of the Inklings and what writing groups can learn from them. The Inklings were a writing group founded by C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and other authors at Oxford University when they were still aspiring authors, and, as one of the leading experts on their fellowship, Glyer mines their personal correspondence and writings for clues about what made the group so successful that they ended up producing two of the most beloved book series of the 20th century. She also provides guidelines that writing groups can follow to replicate the Inklings’ philosophy of wanting not just the best for the work, but the best for the person creating it. This is the philosophy that guides me as I critique my clients’ writing and provide them with feedback and action steps.

The second is Adorning the Dark by Andrew Peterson. As the founder of the Rabbit Room, an organization that exists to encourage and edify Christian artists, Peterson’s work has been invaluable to my own writing and entrepreneurial endeavors. In this book, Peterson lays out his philosophy and background in creating art as a believer in Jesus Christ, and how Christ’s atoning sacrifice for us should shape the way we identify and bring beauty into the world. My takeaway from this book is that the work I do in my business, for clients, and for my own writing has Kingdom significance. We are all filling the world with beautiful things even in its decaying, sinful state as we await Christ’s glorious return.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://korifraziermorgan.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/writerkori
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/korifraziermorgan/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kori-frazier-morgan-3868a913/

Image Credits
Headshot by Mary Beth Milchak