I have recently had the honor of completing my first stint as an interviewee! I will be a podcast guest on “Writing Your Resilience” with Lisa Cooper Ellison sometime this summer. First, Lisa’s podcast focuses on memoir writing, but her guests range from book coaches to editors to MFA professors as well as amazing authors, so there’s plenty of digestible content for writers of any genre. But more importantly, she opened her summer guest schedule up to “writers in the trenches” to share our questions, sticky points, and other trials and tribulations of crafting our personal stories. So, I jumped at the chance.
Ready for my close up
My challenge was knowing that Lisa conducts her interviews on camera, since she posts the episodes on YouTube as well as podcast platforms. So, not only did I wrestle with trying to sound like an informed writer who needed specific guidance (which is true) without coming off as a either a know-it-all (because then what would be the point of asking my question to the host/expert?) or an uninformed, newbie idiot (because, let’s face it, I’m still rather new to all this writery stuff), but also not to wipe my nose, or the sweat off my top lip when the office cabin heated up (because boat air-conditioning is a little too loud for voiceover work, ya know?), or not to look disinterested, or too interested and overly eagerly…not too much teeth and gums, and don’t pop the head, Cassie (for all my “A Chorus Line” fans out there).
It was fun. Illuminating. Terrifying. Educational. I hope it plays okay. And I can’t wait to do more…
Up next…
Don’t worry; I’ll let everyone know when the episode drops. Haha, look at me using industry lingo, as if I have a clue what I’m saying. But seriously, there will be links, and social media posts, an entry here, all the things to share my debut podcast embarrassment with all you lovely readers.
Looking forward to listening to your inaugural podcast performance!