Creative Careerist: Desiree Roundtree

Desiree Roundtree is an only child, born and raised in Brooklyn, New York.

After high school, she launched herself directly into the workforce entering into the dreaded world of financial aid and becoming nothing short of a wizard at it, even though she hates math. Crunching numbers daily she found her struggle to put words onto paper overwhelming and you could find sketches of stories on random papers strewn throughout her life.

She is an adult college student now, taking online courses that she can fit between being the wife to a superhero and the mother to a warrior princess. She began to focus on doing what she wants to do with the rest of her life, not just doing what she has to do. A Creative Writing class really opened the gates for her even though she began writing at a very young age and her imagination got her in trouble many times throughout her youth.

She met her husband and they shared two beautiful years together before they welcomed a daughter into the world. They still live in Brooklyn.

Twitter: @timesinbklyn
Tumblr: The Bklyn Times
Blogger: Times in Brooklyn

What does an average day look like for you in your creative career?
An average day in my creative career looks like me picking through my purse for all the scraps of paper I scribbled ideas on during the day or piecing together notebooks, notes and journals for story starts or ideas to incorporate into things I am already working on.

How did you get to where you are now in your career? What key moments, decisions or circumstances brought you here?
To put it simply, I started writing. I began to take myself seriously as a writer and creative being. I started to realize that just because I wasn’t able to do it right now full time and have it be lucrative enough that I shouldn’t shelf my dream for the safety net of my bank account. I took myself seriously.

What excites you most about your work?
I love what writing gives you–sometimes it’s strength or much-needed weakness. With the pieces I have written so far I love looking at how my mind works from the outside in. Then I realize that I might be a little crazy and that excites me too since only the best people are.

What is its greatest challenge for you?
My greatest challenge is attempting to remain a fresh voice in a world where everyone wants a piece of this pie. Rejection is pretty hard too!

How do you get your best ideas?
When I decided that it was time to really do this I had a million ideas and they all fell flat. I couldn’t figure out what I was missing, why nothing punched, why I felt no connection to the words. Then I started reading and stopped writing. The more you read, the better you write.

What do you do when you get stuck?
It really depends on how athletic I am that month or how sick I feel (I have Lupus and Fibromyalgia). But lately when I hit a block I try to stretch, breathe, realize that being stuck doesn’t mean it won’t come, it will. Mostly I don’t give up on myself.

How do you make sure you make time for creativity in your life?
I write constantly. Like I said earlier, even if it is a million ideas on receipts or sometimes even my hand–I write.

What advice do you have for other aspiring creatives who want to follow in your footsteps?
Don’t give up. No one will have faith in your work if you don’t. You have to learn to be your own biggest fan. Sometimes that could be the hardest part, not letting the rejections get in the way of the acceptances you want.

Creative Careerist: Sheenah Freitas

A neek at heart, Sheenah Freitas has a love for the whimsical and magical. She looks to animated Disney movies and Studio Ghibli films for inspiration because of the innovative twists on fairytales, strong story structures, and character studies. When not writing, you might find her in a forest where she’s yet to find any enchanted castles. The first two books in her trilogy, The Chosen and The Number, can be found online in ebook and print format at all major book retailers. She also owns a small press where she publishes YA and fantasy works. You can find more about her at her website at: http://sheenahfreitas.com.

What does an average day look like for you in your creative career?
It varies from day to day. Having my own small press, I find myself working on different stages of production for books. I just started edits on a book this week, so for the next couple of weeks I’ll be editing. And then there are times when someone might contact me to do some freelance cover or formatting work and I work around that. In the evenings, I tend to work on my own writing projects.

How did you get to where you are now in your career? What key moments, decisions or circumstances brought you here?
Well, initially I wanted to work in pharmaceuticals. However, after failing miserably in my chemistry class, I decided I should do something else, but wasn’t sure what exactly. My dad suggested I pursue writing because it was the first dream I had when I was younger and writing was always a hobby, so why not? I took the plunge, managed to get signed with a small press and then about a few months with them I was notified that they were closing down their fiction side. Having experience in web and graphic design and a solid foundation on the ins and outs of the publishing industry, I thought I’d try putting out my own work through my own press.

What excites you most about your work?
I think it’s exciting that I get to do something different every day. If I get bored editing or think I need a break doing covers, I can always switch gears and work on something else. Because trust me, there’s always something that needs to be done.

What is its greatest challenge for you?
Ensuring the work is the best it can be. I look at everybody’s work and I push them to produce the best writing that I know they’re capable of. My authors don’t know it, but I’m actually harder on myself than I am them.

How do you get your best ideas?
By everyday life. Sometimes I’m out and about and I see someone or I hear something and I think, “What if?”

What do you do when you get stuck?
Work on something else! For me, getting away from the problem helps clear my head and my frustration.

How do you make sure you make time for creativity in your life?
Creativity is everything to me. I love to create. Even in my spare time, I’m creating something whether it be working on a knitting or sewing project, making cookies, or painting a picture.

What advice do you have for other aspiring creatives who want to follow in your footsteps?
Just do what you love. Keep creating, keep dreaming, and one day everything will pay off.

Creative Careerists: Massimo Marino

Massimo Marino comes from a scientist background: He spent years at CERN and The Lawrence Berkeley Lab followed by lead positions with Apple, Inc. and the World Economic Forum. He is also partner in a new startup in Geneva for smartphone applications: TAKEALL SA. Massimo currently lives in France and crosses the border with Switzerland multiple times daily.

“Daimones” is the first volume of a trilogy, and is based on personal experience and facts with an added “what if” to provide an explanation to current and past events. It is his first novel. Watch the book trailer at: http://youtu.be/gqqn0YtPrrw. “Daimones” is the recipient of the 2012 PRG Award Reviewers’ Choice in Science Fiction.

He also writes short chilling, twisted, horror stories, sometimes while having breakfast. If interested in more details about Massimo Marino, please see his full profile on Linkedin: http://ch.linkedin.com/in/massimomarino. On Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/MassimoMarinoAuthor.

How did you get to where you are now in your career? What key moments, decisions or circumstances brought you here?
One word at a time. Key moment? I became indie-pendent also at work. Not that I looked for it. It happened. As many of my age, my work was the focus of my life. Then, I put my life into focus. So far so good.

What excites you most about your work?
It’s not a work, it’s a passion, it is an evasion, it is life within life. It is a wound that does not cure itself, and a story oozes out of it. If it was work, I would have acid reflux as I had before.

What is its greatest challenge for you?
I don’t know, what is yours? I started to write when I learned how to hold a pencil in my toddler hand. My challenge was that my stories had a life of their own, I wanted to go somewhere and characters went somewhere else. I wanted something to happen and it didn’t. When I realized it was not a challenge but a blessing, I stopped thinking I had a challenge.

How do you get your best ideas?
They reach me from anything. Remember Proust? The smell of a madeleine did it. Same here. A noise, a reflection, birds chasing each other, a flower vase falling, a dog barking in the night, a powerful wind coming from nowhere and stopping suddenly. People’s conversation, a girl silently crying while eating ice cream and throwing away a letter, a train crossing announcing a train that never comes …

What do you do when you get stuck?
I don’t get stuck, the story wants to simmer. Nuance. I let it do that, I don’t fight it. I feel there is something being set up. Soon the story calls me: she’s ready.

How do you make sure you make time for creativity in your life?
I never made time for creativity, I tried to make sure to make time for everything else. That is more difficult.

What advice do you have for other aspiring creatives who want to follow in your footsteps?
If you want to write, write. Don’t wait for “the idea”, the Muse to visit you, the perfect story to visit you. You will end up your life waiting and never write a line. Write, read, write, take notes, write about everything. You want the story and the Muse to find you while you’re writing, not watching TV, playing the XBox, or having dinner with friends. Write.

Creative Careerist: Robin L. Donovan

About the Creative
Robin Donovan is the author of the blog, Menologues, a humorous yet informative look at the trials and tribulations of menopause by someone who’s been there. Menologues is republished on two commercial sites: Vibrant Nation and Alltop, and has won regional honors for social media at the AMA Pinnacles and PRSA Paper Anvil awards. She is also the author of Is It Still Murder, Even if She was a Bitch?, the first novel in the Donna Leigh mystery series.

Donovan was born and raised in New Jersey but lived and worked in Connecticut for a number of years before moving to Nebraska in 1999. Starting her career as a high school English teacher, Donovan moved into advertising in the early 80’s. In 1999 she accepted a job offer from Bozell, an Omaha based ad agency. In late 2001, she and three colleagues purchased Bozell from its New York based parent company.

Donovan lives with her husband and three bulldogs, Jasmine, Roxi and Sadie.

What does an average day look like for you in your creative career?
My “creative career” is a weekends and vacations only scenario since I am otherwise employed on weekdays. As such, on writing days I run around trying to get the chores out of the way so that I can focus a large chunk of hours on my writing. I get comfortable at my writing desk, on my favorite leather chair with a laptop desk or out on my deck and I just start to write.

I don’t sit down unless I’m feeling the urge to write—I never force it.

What usually happens is that I look up, at some point, and I’m stunned at the number of hours that have gone by—the writing is more fun than I would ever have guessed. If I’m still writing at 5 p.m., I pour myself a glass of sauvignon blanc and just keep going!

How did you get to where you are now in your career? What key moments, decisions or circumstances brought you here?
I majored in English in college and taught high school English for a few years, that, combined with the fact that I switched over to an advertising career and then went on to buy into an ad agency gave me the background for writing and the ability to handle promotion—both so important in today’s world of an author.

My blog on menopause had been picked up on Vibrant Nation and Alltop, suggesting that a book with a menopausal protagonist could have something of a built in following.

The fact that social media is such a large part of my ad agency life and that it has enabled the average person to achieve widespread awareness without an outlay of cash was an enormous factor in my decision; if I was going to create this work I wanted it to have a chance at broad reach. Before social media it took a miracle to get the kind of exposure that’s now possible.

The fact that a publisher became a client of my ad agency and enabled me to get answers to some of my more pressing questions created the perfect storm.

When I added all of these factors I knew it was now or never.

What is its greatest challenge for you?
The fact that everything takes time. Editing, proofing, scheduling engagements, getting interviews, selling books. Patience has always been a challenge for me.

How do you get your best ideas?
My best ideas come from almost anywhere. Sometimes I think of what other authors have done and I try to think of something very different, very unique. Sometimes location inspires me. I was writing a segment that would involve a conflict taking place on the side of the road in Connecticut. Having lived there it occurred to me that the yuppy/preppy crowd is all about beautification and the state flower is the Mountain Laurel—which is protected by law. It seemed only natural for the altercation to take place between two overzealous yuppies fighting over whether or not to plant Mountain Laurel in the roadside turnabout. That would never have occurred to me had I been writing about North Dakota or Texas!

Sometimes I think back on things I observed throughout my life, either in person or in the movies.

Whatever the idea, I always try to put my unique spin on it.

What do you do when you get stuck?
I force myself not to sit down to write. On days I’ve earmarked for writing this is difficult for me; I am determined to let a day pass rather than to force creativity if it just won’t come.

So far, this has been very effective. If I had thought about starting to write at 11 a.m., but I’m just not feeling it, I do a laundry, water some plants or answer a few emails. So far, this delaying tactic has worked very well; the few times I’ve had to use it I’ve been able to get started with my writing within a half an hour or so. I think it just takes the pressure off so that the creative juices can flow freely.

How do you make sure you make time for creativity in your life?
Since I started writing novels in January of 2010 there is almost no time when I do not have a book in progress—in fact, I think June and early July of 2012 may have been the only time so far. While I don’t have set deadlines, I do have interim deadlines in mind. That enables me to plan my weekends around writing. If a weekend is particularly full, I often choose not to write since I never want the writing to become a burden. In that way, the next weekend—one that can be devoted to writing—becomes all the more precious.

The creativity process, however, is never out of my mind. I keep notebooks as I write. I use them to ensure that I leave no clue unaccounted for and it also serves as a repository for ideas and thoughts that come up on non-writing weekends or during the week.

What advice do you have for other aspiring creatives who want to follow in your footsteps?
Never underestimate the pure joy of the writing process. There is so much work connected with being an author, but the writing is incredibly fun! Evanovich wrote a book about writing and promoting books. One of her FAQs was “what happens if I write my book and nobody will publish it?” Her response was “stick it in your dresser drawer and write your next book, we don’t write books for money, we write for the pure joy of writing.” She also went on to comment that once they get a book published it’s likely that the dresser drawer book will also be deemed worth publishing.

And do your homework early on—there are tricks and tips that can help if you know them right up front. If you wait too long it can be too late. I didn’t find out until after my book was published that in order to be reviewed by the library publications you have to submit your manuscript three months prior to the release date. By the time I found that information—it was too late for my novel.

Creative Careerist: Janice Hardy

Meet the Creative
Janice Hardy always wondered about the darker side of healing. For her fantasy trilogy THE HEALING WARS, she tapped into her own dark side to create a world where healing was dangerous, and those with the best intentions often made the worst choices. Her books include THE SHIFTER, BLUE FIRE, and DARKFALL from Balzer+Bray/Harper Collins. She also blogs about and teaches writing at The Other Side of the Story. You can visit her online at www.janicehardy.com or via Twitter @Janice_Hardy.

What does an average day look like for you in your creative career?
I’m lucky that I have two creative jobs and they both let me work from home–author and graphic designer. I get up pretty early (about 6 a.m.), and spend my mornings as a writer. I write until lunch (anywhere from 500 to 2500 words depending on the scene), then in the afternoons I put on my graphic designer hat. If there’s no graphics work, then I might continue writing or working on book-related things. In the late afternoons, I read blogs and check social media and do the business/marketing aspects of writing.

How did you get to where you are now in your career? What key moments, decisions or circumstances brought you here?
Lots of hard work and trial and error. The big turning point for me as an author was when my friend found the Surrey International Writer’s Conference and suggested we go. It was my first big conference, my first time pitching to an agent, and my first time getting out there as “a writer.” Between a disastrous pitch session (I totally flubbed my pitch), and a master class on pitching where I realized my book was seriously and irrevocably flawed, I was pretty demoralized (tears were involved). But the fantastic workshops the rest of the weekend stressed original ideas and gave me a great idea of what I needed to do to write a book I could sell. I came home feeling inspired, dug through my old ideas file, found an old outline for a book, and turned it into my debut novel, The Shifter. Had I not gone to that conference, I don’t think I would have ever gone looking for old “original” ideas and written that book.

What excites you most about your work?
Getting caught up in a story. There’s always a moment where things click and I see connections and layers I never consciously planned. The story takes on new life and meaning and becomes more than I anticipated.

What is its greatest challenge for you?
Endings. By the time I get to the end of a story I’m ready to be done, so I rush it. It comes out flat and more summary than story, and I always have to go back and rewrite it at least once. I’m working on fixing that now, so fingers crossed my new process works.

How do you get your best ideas?
I think it’s important to give yourself the freedom to brainstorm and think about cool ideas even if they don’t look like they fit the story at first. My subconscious is a much better writer than I am. I let things simmer in my brain and it finds cool links and ideas and then springs them on me. Sometimes the best idea comes from things my first instinct was to say no to.

What do you do when you get stuck?
Take a shower. It’s almost a cliché now, but it’s true and it works. Doing something where my brain can work while I’m paying attention to something else always lets the answer pop into my head. I’ve had more a-ha! moments while drying my hair than you’d believe.

How do you make sure you make time for creativity in your life?
Being an author and a graphic designer makes creativity part of my daily routine, so it’s easy. Creativity pays the bills (grin). My mother was an artist, so she made sure I had crayons and paper as a child, and encouraged me in all kinds of creative activities as I grew up. Creativity has always been a part of my life and it’s become part of my identity.

What advice do you have for other aspiring creatives who want to follow in your footsteps?
If you love being creative, do creative things. Make it part of your life and not something you feel forced to make time for, like it’s a burden. I write because I love it, and even if I never sold another book I’d still write. I get the urge to draw so I grab a pad and pencils and draw. Whatever creative outlet works for you, dive in and have a great time. You never know where it’ll lead you.