Episode 2: Cuppa Creativity in the Literary Lounge

The speaker, Kenda Faith, discusses her passion project, Faith Publishing Inc., which supports new authors in their writing journeys. They provide assistance with the creative process, book covers, and writing summaries. The company accepts all genres of writing and works with writers of all levels. Their goal is to support authors and hone their skills, eventually offering writing scholarships and fellowships. Kenda also shares a personal story about facing challenges and finding perspective as a writer. She emphasizes the power of words and encourages writers to embrace their unique voices. I love having a cup of joe that has a little bit of creativity in it. This is a cup of creativity in the literary lounge, a place where writing doesn't have to suck. My name is Kenda Faith. I'm your host today and I would like to talk about maybe a viewpoint. Let's talk about like an either or viewpoint and how maybe it should be an either or and and viewpoint. But before I start it, of course, I want to give a shout out to Wichita's Advanced Learning Library for providing this amazing podcast setup. And I also, of course, want to highlight my passion project, which is Faith Publishing Inc. We are a nonprofit publishing company. We're best known for supporting new authors through their writing journeys. Right. I don't want we don't want you to just like write and then we're going to touch it to the side. We want to be there for everything. Right. We want to help you out with the creative process. We want to help about with the book covers. We want to help about what you write as a summary. All of us, we aim to foster the art and a craft of writing by providing support to authors and providing them larger audiences for their final product. Also, we take all genres of writing. We work with all levels of writers. Our books include poetry, short story collections, anthologies, novels, reference books, coloring books. And we're even starting to tap into a children's story. So I'm kind of excited about that. Most importantly, though, why we are different than everyone else. One, we want to support the author. And two, we want to hone the skills of our writers. And we want to eventually promote this with writing scholarships and even writing fellowships. So that is super, super cool. All right, my loves. Next is our mantra. I know. I know you're looking forward to it. So don't forget. So a mantra is something that you just say over and over and over again. So this helps in your concentration. This helps beliefs. Boost your self-confidence, et cetera. So remember, we put your hand on your heart or you stand or you yell it or you maybe you can say it in a different language. I don't know. Say it to your dog. Say it to your cat. I don't know. Our cats are always excited about it. So here we go. Today, I will face fear. Today, I will be brave. Today, I will struggle. Today, I will grow. Today, I will get through this. Today, I will embrace this experience. Huzzah! Jazz hands. Yay! All right, my loves. Now you know how it goes. I have a story to tell you. And this is kind of what inspires what topics I'd like to talk about. So I'm going to just call this the story of either, or, and. It all began when my beloved spectacles fell into vegetable soup. Yeah, it sucked because I had it on top of my head. You know, I wasn't like wearing my glasses like you're supposed to. And I'm looking down. And so maybe you are wondering why a person would allow her to have her precious spectacles bathe in this comforting broth next to like some very suspicious looking green beans. And carrots and potatoes. Anyway, my story begins. So, once upon a time, last week on a Tuesday. No, not really. Here's the words. The words that kind of come to mind when I think about what happened to me is that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Now this phrase is usually addressing like wrongdoings or like evil actions that are often undertaken honestly and maybe sincerely. But lately I've begun to believe that this adage really maybe addresses some good faith efforts and that those efforts have unintended consequences. So I'm having a week. I've been having a lot of them lately. And there are some small victories like I'm connecting with some up and coming writers. I am finishing up some addresses for a fundraising. And of course, I also have some losses, you know, like income taxes not being correct or having to provide or contact my service provider and insurance and being in that god awful pew for what seems like an eternity. Yeah. And instead of changing the whole, you know, instead of charging me correctly. Anyway, I will spare you the agony of hearing that. Needless to say, the losses in it kind of tips the emotional scale. And my positive outlook, my bubbly, bubbly self, it was kind of hanging in the balance. And so I decided to seek comfort like everybody should. Right. So I'm thinking that Mother Nature is just going to love me. Right. I just want to be embraced in her arms. So, of course, I have on my favorite pair of overalls and I decided to go to my backyard because it's been a while and it's been a heck of a winter and I have got leaves everywhere. So Mr. Green Jeans and I, that's the name of my lawnmower, because, you know, everything is named. And so if you don't know who Mr. Green Jeans, he was actually a character from Captain Kangaroo. So my young audience members, look it up. Is it cheesy? Yes. Do I care that you like it? No. But it makes me smile. Anyway, I decided to spend some quality time picking up leaves because I just thought that this would make me feel better. Because, you know, at first, like my emotions were extremely raw. And then I just decided to like, oh, I'm just going to enjoy the shade. Right. And I'm hearing birds and it's chirping. And then maybe it's like, hmm, this is kind of nice and calming. And it's kind of creating some kind of order within my chaotic, like Tetris mind. And then I turned around and I wanted to scream. Why, you ask? Because as soon as I picked up a pile of leaves and put them in a pile and tried to put them into a bag, I turned around and the backyard trees decided to shower down more leaves right behind me. What the hell, Mother Earth? Seriously? I just get a freaking break. So instead of this like loving embrace from Mother Nature, instead of encouragement and relief, I kind of felt like Mother Nature kind of like threw water on my face. I mean, maybe stood at me. I don't know. I try to not think about her sitting at me. But, yeah, maybe she just threw some cold water on my face to like wake me up. And at the time, I only became angrier. Right. I needed to cool off, obviously. So I decided to retire from yard work. And I decided I just needed a nap. Because, you know, a little bit of sleep always changes a person's perspective. Right. But after turning and tossing for like the better part of half an hour, I just turned to comfort food. So, yes, comfort food. Yes, this is exactly what I need. This is going to do the trick. But the trick, of course, ended up with my glasses landing in a bowl of soup. I laughed quite a bit until I cried a little. Right. And I attempted with all of my might to have this like, I don't know, like give myself like the inner pep talk. Right. So I have a family. I am a fourth generation teacher and coach. And so everybody in my family has taught or has coached something. And so I think it's a family thing that we all have to have, you know, the big pep talk, the whole do it for the Gipper. I know you guys aren't good at that reference. It's OK. It's an old movie. Rocky theme song. Yeah. Right. Or hell yeah. Whatever. Whatever works. So I decided to give myself a pep talk and there was nothing like nothing at all. My brain was completely blank. And usually like I can come up with scenarios to change this. Right. Like I try to change my perspective. So, you know, some of my family will recognize this. So I decided to change it. I'm like, I bet the Donner party would have been thrilled to have soup with eyeglasses in them. That should definitely make things better. Right. Or would I really be upset if the Nazis were chasing after me? Probably not. Or a famous one that's actually in my family's verbiage is you put this pain in your pocket and just move on with your day. None of these words of wisdom actually work. And then it dawned on me. I don't have to have either an amazing week or an awful week. I can have a pity party and not feel like a total loser, which leads me back to intentions. So people as writers and creators, we don't have to box ourselves into that either or game. Right. We are so much more than that. I mean, sure. I mean, people ask according to their intentions because of their virtuous people. But Lady Karma can come around and she can just shove you down a flight of stairs because you're not paying attention. Other times she's just going to just nudge you a little bit. Right. So did I need to have a meltdown because my glasses fell into my soup? Probably not. Did I need the proverbial shove down the stairs to remind me that I've got some writing to do? Yeah, I did. So I did. I did that. I did just that. But I also enjoyed some chocolate cake. Now, why on earth do I mention all of this? Because I think all of this has to do with their writer's mindset. Right. And a writing process. So why on earth do we write? What's the right mindset? There's a couple of reasons why we write. It could just be for ourselves. Right. We don't have to write a bestselling New York Times book. We don't. But it feels really, really good to finish something, I can tell you. Right. How can you change people with your work or change with your writing? I will tell you that I think that creating and sharing is the bravest act a person can do. We all have to take some kind of risk when talking to somebody, when dating somebody, when loving somebody. But there's an extra, I don't know, obstacle perhaps is when you create and then you open yourself up. You open your vulnerability and you show people what you create. Now, I think that words are the most powerful force available to all of humanity. And I think how we use that and how we show that is an amazing ability. So when you think about writing, think about what you can write that nobody else can. Remember, you are the only person that knows your world. I don't know it. Like I'm an empathetic kind of gal, but I don't know everything. I can infer and I can guess and I have a pretty good read on people. But you are the only person that actually knows you. You are the expert in you. You are the expert in your voice. So think about what makes your writing unique, right? How come nobody else can tell this story? How come nobody else can tell me how you're feeling or what your thoughts are on, I don't know, AI having sentience or how cats are the serial killer of the pet world. You can go all over the place. So definitely think about how you can write and that nobody else can tell that story. Another thing to think about is how can you connect emotions to your story or to your poem or to your prose. There's a great quote by Robert Frost that says, No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. So this essentially shows me how I can vicariously live through your words so I can understand what's going on in that brilliant brain of yours. And then finally, we have like the writing process. In the last episode, I kind of talked about as a teacher, we don't really have time. And that's a completely lame-ass excuse, I'm not going to lie, that we just don't have time to teach it. I try, try my best to discuss it in my creative writing classes. So here's your idea. First, you have pre-writing. And this is kind of just you need to figure out what you want to say. How do you want to say it? Maybe you can think about who's going to read your writing if you are more of the entrepreneurial spirit. Like, oh, I have to write this book because I want to do X, Y, and Z. That's not really my motivation, but if that works for you, awesome. So that's your pre-writing. You just kind of gather ideas, and you kind of figure out like how it's going to look and kind of the story that you want to tell, despite if you have a poem or a children's book or whatever. We all have a story within that same little piece of work, right? Then you have drafting. Drafting is going to be when you actually get your stuff organized. Now, I am a sticky-note queen. If anybody has seen my classroom or even my study, it kind of looks like an Office Depot went crazy in there. Like I have got sticky notes everywhere, right? Because I'm very visually oriented, and I need to see things. I need to see how things flow. So whenever I'm drafting, that's kind of how I develop how my story is going to happen, right? And then I can kind of read through it, and I can kind of like get some ideas. Finally, once you've actually written some things down, then you can start revising it. That's when you're starting to add or you can take out parts, right? That's when you'll look for – I call them GRR words, which I will address in a different episode. GRR words are the things that are cliché. They are used – these are words that are – they're not bad words, per se, but they are overused. Like I will tell you – I'm going to go off on a tangent here. I greatly dislike, borderline hate, the word very. Now, do I use the word very? Yeah, yeah, I do. When I'm talking, I use it quite a bit, right? When I'm writing, no, just don't. Please don't. Don't use very. Don't use good, bad, sad. A lot. Good. They're just vague, right? Just stop being selfish and just tell me what's in your brain already, right? It's not like I'm having a good day. Uh-huh. And? Oh, he was very smart. That doesn't really tell me anything, right? So give me something, right? Be specific with your language. So that's kind of what you'd be looking at whenever you're revising. And then editing. Editing – my students have like a love-hate relationship with me. I get a little psycho bonkers crazy when I edit. I love editing because I think it's a great big giant puzzle. I look for, of course, I look for punctuation and capitalization and complete sentences and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and spelling. But I also get a little psycho when it – I love the power of threes. Threes. Everybody loves threes. It makes us feel better and we like it, right? Life, liberty, justice, the whole three, three, three, three, three. So I look for those kind of things when I'm editing. And then finally, the final thing is when we publish. And, of course, like I said, in my classes, my English classes, we don't have time to go through all of it. Sometimes I'll go through editing depending on how big a paper is or how big a project is. But then, of course, why you have publishing is that you actually need to have a neat copy, right? I have a love-hate relationship with formatting, which is funny, but page numbers will be the death of me. But this is what you need to look at, right? Does it make it clear? When you print your words, is it clear to your audience? Do we know specifically and everything that is in your brain? Can you change anything else in there? So here's what I have. Here's my call to action for you. One, you need to write. If you would like to have prompts, I have got a bajillion of them. With the either, and, and, or, think about your viewpoint, right? Think about does it have to be either you do this or you don't, right? Maybe it should be I either do this and I do this. Maybe we can add some more instead of the all or nothing kind of viewpoint. So when you're writing, pick, I don't know, whatever comes up in your brain first. Now, I will tell you, sometimes you're going to write something and it is going to be amazing, amazing. And then other days, and I don't know about you, I have these days where I am brilliant and everything I write is awesome. And then there's other days where like the word thorough or though or even the word the, right, the, the. Like I'm sure it's missing another like letter or something. It just doesn't look right. And it's okay to have those days. The important part is that you are establishing a practice. Writing is a practice. Writing is a skill just like walking, just like driving, just like reading, just like thinking, right? If you don't use it, you lose it. So if you're writing a little bit every single day, even if it's just like a line or two, a phrase, then I think that you're doing a great job, right? So with that said, I challenge you, I challenge you to write from a different viewpoint. I challenge you not to do an either or. I challenge you to do an either and. That's what I got. So this is Kindred Faith again with a cup of creativity in the literary lounge. I look forward to reading your work. Until next time.