coffee with a creative: amanda
When asked to describe her creative soul in one word:
Magic. I know you said one sentence, but I didn’t need that many words.
This week’s guest on Coffee with a Creative is somebody that I hold incredibly dear to my heart. I’ve been lucky enough to meet a lot of people in my 25 years on this planet, but this is somebody that has made a huge impact on who I am and how I’ve grown as a person since my father’s passing. I met Amanda online just a few months before he passed away, and she quickly became somebody to lean on through everything. I often hid my emotions in real life, but she encouraged me to express them to her and not let them go unheard. She’s been a constant in my life since then, especially as a lot of friends came and went during my dad’s sickness and after his death. But Amanda was never a friend out of convenience, or somebody that just happened to be around. Our friendship was forged out of similar interests, moral beliefs, and the fact that we were on opposite sides of the country and always made an effort to keep our conversations going. Even over five years later, she remains one of my best friends. I suppose that makes me the perfect person to pick her brain.
Although creative in many ways, Amanda’s heart and soul reside in her love of books and writing. A twenty-six-year-old New Jersey native, she has had the opportunity to view the world through so many different lenses because of her passion for storytelling and everything that encompasses it. She received her Bachelor's of Arts in Creative Writing and has since worked as a writer on multiple different platforms. At the moment, she works as a freelance writer while she figures out her next step. “I have a lot of passion projects waiting to take flight, but I can only focus on one thing at a time, so right now I’m trying to pick which creative road to travel down.” While she continues to navigate the world as a 20-something living in its current state, Amanda does have one ultimate goal: “I want to publish a series of books. That’s the ‘I gotta have it’ goal.”
“The stories I am most passionate about telling have always been Fiction,” Amanda tells me as she relays the moment she first fell in love with books and storytelling. “I remember having to read Lois Lowry’s ‘The Giver’ for a summer reading assignment when I was in elementary school. At first, I couldn’t stay focused. I was frustrated, because how was I supposed to write a book report for a book I didn’t want to read? That summer, my mom read the book to me, chapter by chapter, and somewhere in the middle of the story, I fell in love - not just with the book, but with the beauty of storytelling.” After that, everything slowly began to fall into place for her—the innate need to tell stories that make people feel everything all at once. Writers are much more than just the words they put on paper. They are creators and storytellers and visualizers and everything more. A good book sticks with you because of everything the author put into it. “There’s something so magical about telling the kind of story you can experience with all 5 senses using just words.”
Some writers have specific genres they focus on, or a niche they are most interested in. There is nothing wrong with that, of course, but Amanda has a very different approach. It is one that helps keep her inspired and motivated to create whatever is on her mind. “I think boxing yourself into any specific niche can be creatively limiting, so I’m fluid in the spaces that interest me,” she relays to me, intrigued by all spaces and genres she can be part of, “I could easily write fiction based in reality, but I also love to write science fiction and horror.” Similarly, her writing style is not just tied down to one or two descriptions. While Amanda thinks of her style as detailed, humorous, empathetic, and inclusive, the beauty of writing is that it is interpreted by the reader in ways the author may never expect. “What a reader feels about my writing vs. what I intended them to feel can be two very different things. We can experience different styles because we are reading it through different eyes.” It is a thought that, as readers, we don’t think about often. But writers are always aware because they are writing in the hope that somebody will read their work and develop their own thoughts and feelings toward it. I suppose you could translate that to any form of art because it is always subjective no matter what you do.
“My work ethic is simple: do what you love and love what you do,” Amanda states, and I can’t help but smile because she’s pretty much said that same statement to me when I’ve struggled to find my way. “I wish I had an ‘ah-ha’ moment where it all made sense to me at once, but the process was more gradual than that. I fell into the realization that it’s possible for me to make a career out of the thing that I love very most, and eventually, I took a leap of faith and committed to pursuing a career in writing.” While she works towards her goal of creating a series of books, Amanda works for many different publications. Journalism allows her to write about things she’s passionate about, while still getting to utilize storytelling. “I believe that journalism and narrative writing both have the same goal, and it’s to tell a story. The framework for each avenue is different, but at the core, the writing I do journalistically and the writing that I do for fiction are told as stories.”
Amanda has worked from home even pre-quarantine. There is a lot of self-discipline that comes with that, and I think we’re all discovering that for ourselves. There isn’t one way to maintain your sanity while working from home though, and it takes a while to find what works for you. “Usually I work in the morning/early afternoon because that’s when I’m most productive (and when I can have my coffee),” she tells me matter-of-factly. “I used to feel like my workday needed to be super structured and look a certain way to be considered valid, but I’ve realized that the beauty of freelancing is that I can make my own schedule. Though I’ve found a loose routine that works for me, I like to work at my own pace. It can be easy to compare your productivity to someone else’s, but everyone works differently, you just have to figure out what works best for you and your lifestyle.” I’ve learned a lot through my friendship with Amanda (she is so very wise), but one of the things that always sticks with me is her ability to focus on her own successes and her own path. While she does understand the importance of her own success and goals, she isn’t blind to the issues and changes she’d like to see in the writing industry. As we’ve seen in many industries, the lack of inclusivity is huge. Female authors used to, and still do, use male pseudonyms because of the misogynistic values society still carries. Similarly, “success” in the writing industry continues to be male-dominated and white. “I’d love to see stories written by women acclaiming fame in genres that are more male-driven. I’d love to see more BIPOC achieve the same successes as their white peers. I want there to always be space for representation in creative industries as a whole.”
The writing community has grown substantially with the help of online publications, but it does come at a cost. We’ve seen bookstores and libraries close due to lack of funds, and online retailers like Amazon continue to grow because of convenience and prices. However, these online retailers are the ones directly killing these bookshops and libraries. As a future novelist and book lover, Amanda is one of the people fighting to keep these places alive. “There’s nothing quite like the experience you get when you buy from an independent bookstore. Some of the lures of reading are the way you’re able to choose whatever it is that you want to read, and that journey is so fun to go on with physical books at your fingertips,” she admits to me, her own collection of books ever-growing and her library card well-used. “I like to believe that bookstores and libraries will always stand strong because as much as we have entered an age of digital literature, there’s value in a book that you can’t mimic in any other way.”
I had to throw this photo of the two of us in here. Amanda visited me in California and it was an absolute dream!
It hasn’t been an easy road to get where Amanda is today, but it is something she is so proud of. Hearing her talk about her passion for books, or about her novel and her freelance work just reminds me how lucky I am to know her. I encourage you all to look at the people around you and really listen to those with so much passion. It helps light up your own life and inspires you. Amanda’s final words are not a quote from anybody, but rather a culmination of things she believes. Things she reminds herself to stay passionate and hopeful for her future. “Maybe I’m an idealist, but I don’t believe any dream is ever too far fetched. If you want something with your whole heart, it’s valid and worth pursuing. I joke with my friends and family about whether or not I’d “make it” on Broadway - the general consensus is no, but I believe otherwise. I think that if I put in the dedication and work, I could find success on Broadway. Sure, it sounds ridiculous, but just because something sounds ridiculous doesn’t mean it is ridiculous. Chase what you love and I promise that the rest will fall into place.
Thank you all for your continued support of my Coffee with a Creative initiative. Bringing my friend’s stories to light and showcasing their incredible talents is such a blessing and I really hope you consider keeping up and supporting these wonderful humans. As explained in my original post, I have created a Ko-Fi account for this series. On there you can donate (literally just buy a creative a coffee if you’d like) and express who the donation is going to. All the donations will go to the creative you name, and help support them and their arts, as well as simply a way to show them you believe in them!