We were lucky to catch up with Nancy Woo recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Nancy, thanks for joining us today. Earning a full time living from one’s creative career can be incredibly difficult. Have you been able to do so and if so, can you share some of the key parts of your journey and any important advice or lessons that might help creatives who haven’t been able to yet?
For the last two years, I have been “fully funded” by different organizations. Last year, I had a year-long project residency with Artists at Work, and this year I have a year-long project grant with the California Creative Corps. Both of these year-long situations pay me as an artist to do two things: 1) work with a nonprofit in order to create public arts programming, and 2) create art. It’s my dream come true.
It took about ten years to get to this point, and even now, there is no guarantee that I will get another grant like this next year, so I supplement with other streams of revenue. Still, grant money is a big part of how I am able to support myself full-time as a working artist. I have been through countless iterations of attempting to do this, and now that I’ve finally achieved it, I am happy to share the journey!
The first milestone in my career was receiving the PEN America Emerging Voices fellowship, a mentorship program that helps marginalized voices launch a professional literary career. We spent 7 months meeting with famous authors, being mentored, taking classes, giving readings, and even getting paid a little.
After the fellowship ended, I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do next. I was freelancing as a writer, editor, and project manager. I was working with a small marketing company, and that is the main way I was able to support myself as I pursued my artist’s life alongside occasional payments from small grants, fellowships, and teaching. I had also started my own donation-based poetry business. I was making do with all sorts of different streams of revenue. I was running my own business and volunteering my time with a few different nonprofits, and gaining all sorts of skills and experiences, like editing, content marketing, ghostwriting, event planning, marketing and promotion, grantwriting, facilitation, and even basic website and graphic design.
I also initiated my own projects, like a reading series at the Long Beach Public Library called “Off the Page: The Story Behind the Stanzas.” I did this out of my own free time without getting paid because I considered it an investment in the future I was building. My philosophy was to just make things that I wanted to see in the world. It was this initiative that started my relationship with one of the head librarians, Lauren Nguyen. She later helped me get a Community Conversations About the Arts grant, and she wrote me a letter of recommendation for Creative Corps. Giving my time for free was not necessarily a bad thing at first. I had to build up skills and experience. Having good relationships is one of the most important things.
With about eight years of experience building literary programming behind me, I got the Artists at Work residency in 2022, which allowed me a full-time salary. Full disclosure, it was a low salary, and I supplemented my income with my other revenue streams as well as a supportive partner–but having that regular paycheck really helped me achieve a level of creative abundance that I had been working towards for a while. This opened me up in ways I had never expected. Without the stress of having to find my next paycheck, I started painting, biking, collaging, and discovering other outlets for my creativity.
In looking back, what could have sped up the process for me would have been to be more clear and focused about building my own writing career. I spent a lot of time helping other people build their careers, and I undervalued my own work because I wasn’t sure that I really was an artist in the world.
Some kind of business class for artists would have been helpful! There’s a lot I didn’t know about running my own artist business, which was a very different lifestyle than my friends who had a more “stable” job. I questioned myself a lot, doubted my path, and moaned about how hard it was. If I could magically instill more confidence in me back then, I would!
I also needed to do a lot of healing. I would have told my younger self to stop with all the self-destructive habits and get myself to more healing spaces and more therapy. I also wish I could have told my younger self that it would be okay to take medication to manage depression and anxiety. I would have told her it was okay to not be okay, but it was important to seek help and resources. I would have told her to keep going to CoDa.
I chose this life because I am compelled to write and create. There is nothing else I would want to do more. I am so lucky that I get to be an artist and community organizer as my job and I am grateful that there are organizations out there who value the work of artists in their communities and provide the essential and much-appreciated funding and support, like PEN, the Arts Council for Long Beach, Artists at Work, and Creative Corps.
Nancy, 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 am a poet, organizer, imagination enthusiast, solarpunk, and eco-witch. Social justice has always been a core driving value of mine, and my first book of poems, I’d Rather Be Lightning, deals with themes of politics, environmental destruction, biodiversity loss, and climate change. I am a climate activist and have been involved with the Sunrise Movement, the Sierra Club, and other environmental organizations. My work is largely inspired by the magic and power of the natural world, and I am dedicating my life to protecting the earth and her creatures.
I think it’s really important to have dialogue about issues that can be challenging to talk about, such as race, class, and climate change. I want my work to spark inspiration and hope in young people and anyone who cares about the state of our world. My writing and my activism are intricately linked. As a serial entrepreneur, I have had a hand in starting a social justice literary press, directing a queer arts festival, starting a grassroots media organization, and facilitating a holistic womxn’s collective.
I have been building eco-poetry classes lately and I am passionate about bringing poetry and nature together. I have been teaching for a while now and I feel it is part of my life mission to help more people write poetry and connect with wild spaces, so I am grateful that I get to do that. I run a donation-based community writing space called Surprise the Line, and we offer generative and revision workshops. I am also bringing people into natural spaces like parks for poetry classes. I love creating unique, interactive events because I believe in the power of the arts to bring people together.
I am a solarpunk writer and activist, which means I believe in creating a future where humans, technology, and nature coexist in harmony, I converted my front yard into a garden and compost system (with the help of my partner and friends). I advocate for reusables over single-use plastic. I host socials for environmentalists in my city to connect. I volunteer to help restore native plant habitat. I’ve done clothing swaps, mutual aid funds, women’s circles, movie nights, panel discussions, and other community activities. I live my life in a way that I hope will build the future I want to see.
Connecting with others and with my Higher Power is a big part of my work. My spirituality is closely linked to my activism and writing. I consider myself an eco-spiritualist and find my spiritual connection in nature. I identify as a witch. I believe in using magic to heal the world. The universe responds to our heart’s true desires, and I feel I am here on this earth at this time to be part of the movement to stop capitalistic, colonial destruction of the planet’s ecosystems. Every time I listen to what I know to be true, I am pointed in the next right direction. So I just keep listening.
Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?
I think my life as a professional artist looks very different from what I thought I was “supposed to do.” Many people are used to having a structure or routine to their work life, like going into an office or being accountable to a team or a boss. I am accountable to myself. I am the Big Boss. Sometimes I have meetings with myself, for example when my Marketing Department (of myself) really needs me to do some promotion for an event, but my Domestic Happiness department argues that we really need to do the laundry, laundry usually wins. I don’t have set work hours, usually, so I create my own schedule, and while this can seem very freeing, and it is, it can also be extremely challenging when I have multiple projects competing for my attention and I need to prioritize and delegate my time.
I also think sometimes it can be hard to understand the “work behind the work” of being a creative. My job as an artist is not just when I sit down to the computer to write, but it involves all the music and art and literature that I read, all the experiences that I have, all the observations that I note down, and even times of doing nothing. There is an anonymous quote that goes “When it looks like she is doing nothing, the poet is actually at her busiest.” Inspiration often arrives in those moments when I am open and relaxed, so a portion of my work hours are often spent in yoga, meditation, quiet rest, or naps.
Emotional labor is also the “work behind the work.” As a poet, I am often thinking and feeling about difficult subject matter, such as climate change and social injustices, so part of my work as a poet is to be with and process my feelings. Crying is sometimes a part of my work day. Or walking my anger off. Or otherwise allowing myself to experience the full breadth of my feelings without suppression. And this is where the poems come from: the freedom I give myself to feel, think, breathe, and be.
How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?
The Artists at Work and Creative Corps programs have been hugely life-changing because they provide enough financial stability for me to live my life fully as a creative without worrying about scraping by. Artists often do a lot of unpaid labor, and are not always paid highly, so to have my work valued at a full-time financial level is massively supportive. I think there should be more programs like this that fund an artist’s operational costs (read: living costs) so that they are free to create without so much financial stress. These programs have given me the gift of financial stability, which has opened up my creativity in ways I had not known were possible.
Project grants are great, but full-time living salaries allow artists to perform their work the same as any person in a more “traditional” role. Artists are innovators, and so we are constantly experimenting, and we need the time and energy to take risks, take care of ourselves, and live a comfortable life. Artists should not have to sacrifice their livelihood in order to create their art. And I am a community-based artist, which means that I bring my ideas and my creative self into my community. I am better able to show up for others when I have the institutional support to afford to live.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.nancylyneewoo.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fancifulnance/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fancifulnance/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nancywoo/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/fancifulnance
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeesszBPyVvoNtQo6OqJDUw
- Other: my email newsletter: http://eepurl.com/dqxQQD
Image Credits
(C) Randy Shropshire / PEN America Vision 360 Media