Sheer Creativity
Step into the chill vibes of Sheer Creativity, your go-to laid-back podcast about creatives for creatives! Immerse yourself in dynamic conversations, insightful interviews, and performances, all centered around the creative experience. With me, Laraya, as your guide, we'll blend special guests, personal development nuggets, and engaging creative content to inspire and motivate you on your artistic journey.
Sheer Creativity
Therapy, Motherhood, and Writing (Oh My!) with Author Nathelie Zetrenne-Norman
After a career in the National Guard, Nathelie Zetrenne-Norman realized she wanted more control over her schedule, which led to the creation of her publishing company, Z House Publishing. In this episode, Nathelie and I discuss the influence of therapy on her new guided journal for Black women, Dear Beautiful, the impact of motherhood on her creativity, self-funded creation hacks, and more.
Follow Nathelie on IG: https://www.instagram.com/authornatheliezetrennenorman/
Nathelie's website: https://www.authornatheliezetrennenorman.com
Dear Beautiful on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Dear-Beautiful-365-day-introspective-mindfulness/dp/B0C7J55F8S/ref=sr_1_fkmr3_1?crid=EIKP70EW6TMH&keywords=dear+beautiful+nathalie+zetrenne+norman&qid=1688699597&sprefix=dear+beautiful+nathelie+zetrenne+norman%2Caps%2C90&sr=8-1-fkmr3
Haitians Who Blog: https://www.haitianswhoblog.com/post/breaking-tradition-understanding-why-haitian-parents-are-challenging-cultural-norms
SHEER CREATIVITY LINKS
Read Laraya's creative writing on Of Wisdom and Wander
Check out Laraya's website
Order Laraya's poetry collection
Welcome back everybody to the Sheer Creativity Podcast. The podcast about creatives for creatives. And today I have another author in the building. Her name is Nathelie Zetrenne Norman, and how are you today Nathelie?
Nathelie:Good morning. I am good. Thank you for asking. How are you?
Raya:I'm doing great. I'm glad that you're here and we can talk a little bit more about you. So give me the whole story. Tell me more about you, where you're from, your age, all that good stuff.
Nathelie:Yeah, so, um, I am 32. As of Wednesday.
Raya:Ooh, happy birthday.
Nathelie:Thank you. Um, I currently live in Birmingham, Alabama. I am a mom to three little children. I have a four year-old son, a three-year-old daughter, and a two month old son.
Raya:Oh, wow. You have your hands full,
Nathelie:very, very full. Um, but also full in a sense of like full of laughter, full of drama, full of like things to do. So it's just a smorgasbord of adventure over here.
Raya:Yeah. That's beautiful. So I was on your Instagram and I saw that you had actually been in the National Guard before you started your publishing company. So how did we get from being in the National Guard to then wanting to be an author?
Nathelie:Yeah, so the transition was pretty seamless, so I am a, at this point, two time published author. Um, and I joined the Alabama National Guard as a means to an end, not really because I wanted to join, but that would have been like a resource to get me in the direction of where I wanted to go. And so what ended up happening, long story short, was I was pulled for deployment. I left for Primo and was getting ready to head overseas. And then, um, during that process I was sent home for a medical condition that later allowed me to get out of the military, which I was like, Thank God. When I got back and even before I left, I kept telling, you know, telling like my husband and like my friends, like, oh my God, this sucks. I hate not having control over my time.
Raya:Mm-hmm.
Nathelie:I hate not being able to control, like, when I can do something or, um, how I can do something, the methods that I can do it. Because ultimately when you're in the military, they dictate your whole life. If you're active, you know, you have that schedule, you're getting up, you're going to pt, you're going to work, you're doing whatever. Your life is the military, with me being in the National Guard, my whole life wasn't in the military, but I was always going to be at risk. And I say risk because I, I think deployments are risky. You're always at risk for being deployed.
Raya:Yeah.
Nathelie:And so I, in that sense, I didn't have control over my time and so I was always, you know, trying to navigate like, oh, well this weekend I have drill, or this week I need to go and do something for this unit, or whatever the case may be. And so when I was able to get out of the military, there was no more excuse that I didn't have time. That was the main thing that I was complaining about, was like, I hate them telling me when I have to be somewhere and where you know, when I have to go and all of this. And now that I didn't have that experience anymore. It was like, this is the perfect time to do what I want to do.
Raya:Mm-hmm.
Nathelie:Which, if I'm already doing it, which I was already writing, but I just was doing a lot of volunteer freelance work. If I'm already writing, why not get paid for it? Um,
Raya:I know that's right.
Nathelie:So I'm like, Hey, like. My passion doesn't have to be my full-time job, um, but it can definitely help me bring in income. So if I have the time, why not do it? And so as soon as I was able to like get everything together and enjoy my freedom for a little bit, um, I then decided to launch Z House Publishing and um, it's been pretty fun so far. It's a fairly new company, but that factor of time was like essential. Mm-hmm. To me actually just jumping into it and getting started.
Raya:Yeah. There's nothing like being able to control your own schedule.
Nathelie:Yes.
Raya:I'm still trying to get to that point where I'm like, okay, I. I can do what I want to do in this block of time instead of deferring my time to somebody else or something else that I don't really wanna defer my time to, so,
Nathelie:Right.
Raya:Is Z House publishing like a, a book publishing company or do you also dive into different forms of writing as well?
Nathelie:So, great question. Um, I am still trying to figure out. What exactly I want to encompass with Z House publishing only because I feel like it's cool to be a jack of all trades, but I wanna be an expert at something.
Raya:Yeah.
Nathelie:I don't wanna be able to just do a million things. Well, I wanna be able to say my specialty is so right now, Um, I would love to be ghost writing books, children's books specifically. I've written probably five so far that have yet to be published. Those are coming soon. I would love to help like moms write books and dedicate them to their kids, things like that. Um, I also have been working on a lot of copywriting, which is what. We're doing right now specifically is, uh, copywriting for different brands. Making sure that, um, what is on their websites is going to encompass the brand. It's getting the engagement that they want. And if they don't have the time to curate their own blogs or articles or even just the information that's on the website, that's something that they can come to me for and I can do it for them. They can outsource me for those kinds of things. Also another thing that I've dibbled and dabbled with, which I really, really enjoyed was, um, speech writing.
Raya:Okay.
Nathelie:And so that was something that I never thought about. But I had someone in a professional space previously ask me, you know, I need help with this. I don't really know what I wanna say. I know what I need to be talking about, but I can't really put the words on paper and so I was able to craft a speech for, um, his speaking engagement and it was really cool to be able to hear the speech that I wrote, um, come from someone else. And of course nobody knows that I wrote it, but it just felt good that like, one, I was able to take that off of his hands. And two, it got a really great response. And so those are the three main things that I'm. Hoping to accomplish right now. Eventually, um, I'd like to get into mentorship and like one-on-one coaching with teaching people how to self-publish, um, and maybe even create a team, um, because I don't really see too many, especially like young authors that are self-publishing. But, um, Publishing in general is not a very diverse industry. Like
Raya:it's not.
Nathelie:You don't see too many black and brown people in that space. And so it would be really cool to kind of build that team and build that community and like help people be able to do that.
Raya:Yeah. And publishing is, It's very hard to start out in, like, if you really wanna publish with like Penguin Random House, if you wanna do Harper Collins, you gotta have an agent. You can't just be emailing them.
Nathelie:Mm-hmm.
Raya:So it's, it's a very hard, um, market to just jump into. Like it takes a lot of planning and talking to the right people. Yeah. So I think it's very beneficial to have a publishing company that prioritizes black and brown people, but also will give them the opportunity that a lot of these publishing houses won't give you.
Nathelie:Yeah. And literally, like I, I think a lot of people don't even realize they can self-publish.
Raya:Yeah.
Nathelie:Um, and so educating people on their options and what that looks like. And you might wanna write a book, but maybe you're not a good writer. Well, there's a option or you really wanna publish a book, but you've been getting all these nos. How do I do it? What are the steps? You know, things like that. Yeah. You can watch YouTube.
Raya:And how to market it like once you self-publish, one of the good things about publishing houses is that they market the book for you so you don't have to do much heavy lifting.
Nathelie:Yeah.
Raya:But when you self-publish, all of that weight falls on you so you have to know how to market that book.
Nathelie:Yes. Yeah. There's a lot that goes into it. So I, I definitely will be in the future narrowing down what it is I want to do, but tho those are the goals right now. Those are some of the things that I really wanna end up focusing on.
Raya:Yeah, I love that. And you also said that you are a two-time published author. Now I know about Dear Beautiful. And we're gonna hit that. Um, but talk to me about the first published book.
Nathelie:Yeah. So the first published book I published when I was in grad school, it is called, um, Invisible. I wrote that book during a stint of therapy. Um, it essentially started because of a homework assignment that I had from my therapist to write how I felt about my feelings regarding my father. And so that kind of turned itself into like a small short story. And then as I continued to write, I couldn't stop and more things started to be put on paper. And I started talking about other experiences that I had. Um, Then I, I only wrote like maybe one or two like true stories, but it was really, it felt really good to get it out there. And then once I started playing around with the idea of being invisible in all these different ways in relation to other people, I was able to kind of curate other stories as well. So essentially, it's a pretty small book. It's a short read, um, but it culminates about five, maybe six short stories and I task my readers with trying to figure out which, which ones are factual, the factual stories and so I wrote that in 2017. It's called Invisible. It was an emotional book to write, um, but it was. It was good. And I feel like that was the start of my journey with becoming an author. Once I wrote that book, I was like, oh, if I could write this, I could write another one.
Raya:Mm-hmm. It's definitely an addicting thing like now I wanna write another and just, yes, I love book writing. Now that you've, you've brought up therapy, how has the pursuit of therapy affected how you view the creative side of your personality?
Nathelie:Absolutely. So therapy essentially kind of just solidified what my values and my morals were. So I always knew that things like authenticity were important to me and like, you know, things like that. But, I didn't realize how important they were until I went to therapy and I was able to talk about the things that I was going through. And the main things were always like, oh, well, you know, that's not authentic. I don't wanna have to do this because that's not really me. And you know, things like that. And so when I started looking at that in terms of creativity, it's like, what exactly is it that you wanna do and why?
Raya:Mm-hmm.
Nathelie:And yes, we do these things we create, and with the hope that we're gonna get a check with the hope that we can make some extra income or turn it into our full-time job. Um, but I don't wanna be in the habit of doing things just because. I wanna do it because I want to, I wanna do it because it's important to me or it's gonna make an impact on the communities that I serve, or the communities that I'm involved in or attached to. Finding like the link between purpose and just creating was really important for therapy cuz I couldn't do the two if I didn't understand what my purpose really was.
Raya:Mm-hmm.
Nathelie:Or what I felt like my purpose was. So I, I enjoyed that and I ended up realizing that like, I don't wanna do anything just to do it like there's gotta be some kind of impact and it's gotta be authentic impact. Yes. I would love to make it, you know, a money making opportunity, but, Everything that you do doesn't, that doesn't have to be the purpose and being okay with that also.
Raya:That's a word right there I think. I think as creatives, I did an episode with a creativity counselor and she was talking about like the, how having a creative personality is different from other personalities and everything has to have meaning. That's a really big thing. Like if I'm doing something I, there has to be a reason why I can't just be doing it just to do it. It has to click, it has to have some sort of impact on the world. Cuz if it's not, then what am I doing this for?
Nathelie:Mm-hmm.
Raya:Um. And I think that because the way that we view creativity is a little bit different now in our world because creativity for money is relatively new. Right?
Nathelie:Right.
Raya:People didn't really equate being a creative to making money.
Nathelie:Not at all. When you go to college, like being the broke artist. Yes.
Raya:That's the thing.
Nathelie:Yeah.
Raya:It's like when you tell people you wanna be an author, they're like, oh, you wanna be broke. And it's like, and it's just now getting to a point where that is a normal thing.
Nathelie:Mm-hmm.
Raya:Um, but I think the, the flip side of what we're seeing now is that we're doing things for the money rather than doing things because it has meaning for us.
Nathelie:Yeah. And the money is just an incentive.
Raya:Yeah. The money is just a byproduct of my purpose. It's not the main reason why I do things.
Nathelie:Mm-hmm.
Raya:And I think that's where creatives now have to find the, find the balance and the flow.
Nathelie:Yeah. Absolutely.
Raya:Yeah. So, What is the origin story of Dear Beautiful? We've hit Inivisble. Mm-hmm. So how did we get from Invisible to Dear Beautiful?
Nathelie:Ah, okay, so dear. Beautiful. Also a byproduct of therapy. Yes. So my first stint at therapy was off and on, hit or miss. I did, you know, I was consistent for a little while, but then after grad school, you know, I'm living life, I'm moving around, I'm figuring out what it is I'm gonna be doing, um, as a newly graduated adult with a master's degree. So mental health wasn't a thing, it wasn't a priority of mine. Um, once I had children and I got married, I started to really think about those roles like being a wife, being a mom. What else am I? I don't want that to be the first thing that I always go to when I introduce myself to somebody is like, yeah, I'm a wife and I'm a mom, or I'm married to so-and-so, or I've got this amount of kids. Like, yeah, those are great aspects of me, but that's not my whole self. Um, and I found that because as a parent I'm constantly pouring into other people and managing a household and you know, just taking care of others. That's a lot of times, you know, we put ourselves on the back burner and so we don't pour into ourselves as much, which allows us, unfortunately to kind of lose ourselves in the mundane tasks that we have to do and in the roles and relationships that we're in. And so I didn't want that to be me. I didn't wanna become resentful, um, because I'm a wife and a mom.
Raya:Mm-hmm.
Nathelie:If I'm completely honest, and I know there's a lot of parents out there that probably think the same way that I think about it, but they're just ashamed to say it because it's. It's viewed as like you, you decided to be a parent, so deal with it. That's what you asked for. Or, you know, that's what you signed up to do. But in actuality, like, yes, I am a parent and I am a spouse, but I am also other things. I'm multifaceted. I'm multi-dimensional and why does my, in my individual self have to be limited to just those things?
Raya:Mm-hmm.
Nathelie:And if you don't give yourself the time and the space to, in, to investigate what all what else you all you are, then you, you get stuck in just those two things. Um, I didn't wanna do that, and
Raya:I get that.
Nathelie:I was like, I need to allow myself to be selfish. I. Selfishness is not a bad thing. Uh, we are taught that it is, but it is not. Um, selfishness allows us to preserve ourselves, and that's what therapy was for me. I needed to figure out who I was outside of breastfeeding and doing daycare pickup and drop off and cooking food like I'm so much more than that. And so when I did go to therapy and I'm still in therapy, but when I started going, I started to talk about things that I had never really talked to anyone about before cuz I never had the time to do it. I never, there was never really a setting to sit down and discuss how I felt because there was always something else going on that needed my attention. So therapy was my one space where I was able to do work on me and pour into myself. As I started talking to like my friends and other women, I was realizing that although I already knew I wasn't alone, I am definitely not alone. There are so many women who feel the same way that I do, and even women who are not parents, even women who are not in relationships. And we all have trauma that we have to work through. And our trauma, sometimes we have trauma we don't realize is trauma.
Raya:Mm-hmm.
Nathelie:And then a lot of times we don't realize that the trauma that we've endured affects our day-to-day life, the way we think, the way we feel, um, the way we behave. And so I wrote, Dear Beautiful, because I was doing homework in therapy and I was seeing so many different connections, and then I would talk to my friends about it. And I have some friends who are in therapy. I have some friends who are therapists. I have some friends who are not in therapy and probably will never go. And then I have some friends who are interested in therapy, don't know where to start, can't afford it. Scared, not ready, like whatever. And so we've had these conversations and it was like I would be like, you know, this is what we talked about in therapy today. This is so crazy. And being able to relate to them and see like our conversations turning on light switches for them and then them putting into practice something that maybe I said, or maybe something they heard someone else say. And so I was like, you know what? I need to put in a book because therapy is not accessible to everyone.
Raya:Yeah.
Nathelie:Um, and for every year you're alive, you need one year of therapy. And imagine going through a life of trauma and then you've never been to therapy, how different your life could be if you were able to work through some of those kinks. So I put it in a book. And it's a no pressure book. It's you open it when you feel like it. It's 365 prompts. Um, they're thought provoking, they're emotion evoking, like some of the prompts I wrote and I was like angry. I was able to recognize like, this topic frustrates me, this topic angers me. And being able to differentiate the emotions. Um, some of the prompts were like, oh, I can't wait to do this. I'm so excited. Um, I like that about the book because I like to say it's the journal that you didn't know you needed, running away from your therapist. Like when we think about therapy, we automatically think of crying and you know, all of this emotion and therapy. A lot of times when I leave therapy, I'm excited, I'm pumped. I'm like twerking on the way back to my car. It doesn't always have to be so sad and super, you know, emotional and not even that being emotional is negative. But we do equate being sad and anger and those things as negative emotions when they don't necessarily have to be. That's where Dear Beautiful came, came from. It's, and I wanted to make sure that, you know, if I knew it was helping me, I know it would help somebody else. And it's an opportunity to give someone the space and the grace to work on themselves without a time constraint because it's a book, you open it up when you feel like it. You don't have to go and sit in front of someone and wonder if their eyes are judging you because of what you're saying. You're just writing it out. It's like a diary.
Raya:Yeah.
Nathelie:That's where it came from.
Raya:I love that. But yeah, definitely. What I've learned a lot about adulthood and healing through trauma and all those things, a lot of what therapy is is going back to that inner child and telling your old self what your new self wish you would've heard. You know?
Nathelie:Absolutely.
Raya:And a lot of it is just going back to what you used to love.
Nathelie:Yeah.
Raya:And being able to heal that way. And I love that because therapy is not Really the most accessible thing. Not yet anyway. And especially when we are coming out of a three year pandemic.
Nathelie:Yeah.
Raya:Mental health is if it, I mean, it's always been important, but now more than ever, you need to get yourself a therapist. You need to get yourself, Dear Beautiful. You need to write down your thoughts because it's hard. I love the idea of giving someone a book and saying, maybe you're not ready for therapy right now, but this at least gives you a framework. This at least gives you a place to start.
Nathelie:Yeah, and it makes you think about the things that maybe you didn't even realize were bothering you. Like I have some prompts in there where I, I could say like, you know, write a letter below and the prompt below is, dear, 18 year old me.
Raya:Mm.
Nathelie:What are the things that you need to tell that girl? Because at 18, the things that I was going through at 18, I don't know that I talked very much about how I felt when I was 18. I don't even know if I was in a space to recognize how broken I was at 18, how stressed I was at 18. And a lot of times we, we say things like, you know, like you're, you're 17 years old, what do you have to be stressed about?
Raya:But you don't know what people go through. You don't. And I think now looking back, because we have social media especially, um, The comparisons that we make amongst each other. I see another 30 year old woman, or 32 year old woman, and I'm comparing my success to hers or back when Girlfriends was a show. Mm-hmm. And I loved it. That's like my favorite TV show of all times when I was Girlfriends is hilarious.
Nathelie:Yes. I love it. And when I was like maybe 14, 15 years old, I was thinking my life would be like that when I was 25. What?
Raya:And it was not, I'm still waiting for my life to be like that, like Living Single.
Nathelie:I'm like, I, I'm like, uh, so we have to like, you know, be able to go back and say, give yourself grace. Like, yeah, you're not where Joan Clayton was, but emotionally you might be in a better space than that character. Like just being able to literally give yourself grace and work through your expectations and in my case, lowering the expectations I've set for myself, because sometimes they're just not realistic.
Raya:Mm-hmm. Let me ask this. How do you balance motherhood and being a wife and also creation and Z House publishing in your life?
Nathelie:No way there is balance. That's not a thing. Um, I don't even know if you can hear that, but my kids are downstairs doing something and they're screaming. When that happens and I'm working, like the, the automatic thought in my head is like, okay, get up and go see what's happening. But my husband is downstairs. He can take care of it. Um, So that's a lot of it is like relying on the people that are around you. Like my mom lives with me, thankfully. I don't know how, I mean, yes, I have my husband, but I don't know how people have like three and four and five and six kids and they don't have help outside of their spouse. Um, having my mother here has been amazing. If I'm running late or if I simply just can't get something done, I can ask her and she, if she can help me, she will. Same thing with my husband. Um, a lot of the creative part of my life has, it's taken a back burner. I'm not gonna lie. It has taken a back burner to my daily life. Um, but that's just because I have so much to do. But luckily for me, we're in the age of technology. I have a cell phone, so the minute that I'm in the shower and I'm thinking of, I don't know, something really cool to write for a children's book, I reach my hand out of the shower and I write it down in my notes, and then I go back to take a shower. If I can't sleep in the middle of the night, I'm usually not scrolling TikTok, I just get out my notes and I write something. Um, and a lot of my children's books have come from. Not being able to sleep. So just utilizing the time that I do have. Um, I feel like the motivation for why I do what I do is because I want my kids to see that they can do more than one thing. Um, we tell people all the time, especially like our children, that like you have to get up and go to school and you have to go to college and you have to get that job and. But they can have more than one. They can go to college and study multiple things in double major. They can get out of college and, you know, have a rental property and be an engineer at the same time. They can. There's so many things that they can do. We shouldn't just limit ourselves to one thing and I want them to be able to see, um, that representation in the household, but then also I want them to be able to see the fruits of my labor. And so like, Books that I write, I want them to be able to see how those books have impacted them or impacted me or you know, other things like that. And so I keep them in mind when I'm like, you know, I really wanna write a children's book. Why? Because I want them to see that you can do that.
Raya:Yeah.
Nathelie:So it's hard to balance, but at the same time, we make time for the things that we want and there may not be time next week for me to sit down and write articles, but there may be a day where I have absolutely nothing to do and I can punch out five.
Raya:Yeah. Would you say that you are a, like ideas come to you spontaneously or do you have to sit down and like really mull over what you wanna do creatively?
Nathelie:Spontaneously, which is why immediately after I notice the idea, I have to write it down. Because if I let it sit in my head too long without writing it down, I will forget.
Raya:Mm-hmm. I'm the same way.
Nathelie:I am trying to piece together these ideas and I'm like, it didn't sound as good as the way it sounded in my head an hour ago. I should have just got up and wrote it down.
Raya:Yeah. So how do you picture literary success for yourself? How will you know that you've made it and you're proud and you've done all that you wanted to do?
Nathelie:I picture literary success for me... it's, it is, it varies. So in terms of Dear Beautiful, because it is, you know, a journal for black women. I've hit the pinnacle of success when I'm able to go on a mindfulness retreat or a yoga retreat for black women and be a panelist on why self-care and therapy is important. And no, I'm not a therapist, but the book that I wrote is a book that is full of prompts that my therapist had had me do before I realized how important they were to my growth. When I'm able to make those collaborations where the books that I write are making such an impact that people are wanting me to be present in spaces that I probably would've never been in had I not written the book, that's when I know that I've like reached the pinnacle of success. But honestly, even if I'm not a panelist, even if it's like someone writes, reads the book and says, You know, I didn't ever think about going to therapy prior to getting that book and there was something in that book that made me break down into tears, and I realized I probably needed some help. I probably needed to talk to somebody. That's success to me. It just looks different for every, every type of book.
Raya:Yeah, that makes sense. And I feel like you could probably do one of those mindfulness things yourself. You have therapist friends, you could do a little panel. I'd go there.
Nathelie:Definitely, definitely.
Raya:So kind of switching gears a little bit, because I see that you do a lot of like blog writing as well for um, Haitians who blog. So how does your identity as a Haitian woman affect your creativity or what you create?
Nathelie:That is such a good question. So essentially I write a lot of the content on like Haitian culture, traditions, history, things like that. My experience, um, as a Haitian American woman, because I wanna get away from the negative spotlight that Haiti as a country and its people has so mainstream media. We'll never show you the beautiful parts of Haiti like Ocap and Jacmel, but you definitely will see Haitian people rioting in the street in Port-Au-Prince. Why?
Raya:Yeah.
Nathelie:They don't showcase all of the great things about the country. And I think now the generation that I'm in, where we're starting to get into, um, navigating spaces the way we see fit, as opposed to just following the orders of the people who've always told us what to do. It gives me an opportunity to show not just millennials, but also people from other generations who are Haitian and are not Haitian, that there's still so much beauty in the culture, and then to educate people because there's a lot of miseducation going on.
Raya:Yeah.
Nathelie:So it allows me to kind of tap into it and it forces me to be creative because what I'm writing, I'm writing for two different audiences. Even though Haitians Who Blog is a platform for Haitian people, um, there are so many American people who have no ties to Haiti who are reading that information, and we want it to resonate with them.
Raya:Yeah. I myself don't know much about Haiti, but I would say reading your blogs, I definitely am more enlightened about the country so thank you for writing those. That's amazing. In a perfect world, what does your ideal creative life look like in the near future?
Nathelie:It's still being constructed. I, so, you know, we're in this like era of like, follow your dream, quit your job. Would it be amazing to just write full time? Absolutely. I would love that. Um, however, I think that puts a different kind of pressure on me specifically. Um, if I'm solely making money off of my work as a writer and as an author, I am nervous that I would eventually lose the passion for it and kind of like resent myself for taking on so much to be able to provide for my family. So I'm not particularly sure that I would ever quit my daytime job because I actually like my job. I'm very comfortable and I can admit that I'm very comfortable in the fact that I know as long as I get up and I go to work and I do what I'm supposed to do, I'm always gonna have a check.
Raya:Mm-hmm.
Nathelie:I'm gonna get a check every two weeks no matter what but when you jump into being a creative a hundred percent full time, you don't know if that check is really gonna come. I mean, I've had clients before that thought they processed my payroll, but they didn't. They're entrepreneurs too. You know, people make mistakes. It's easier for a large corporation that you work for to fix the mistake as opposed to the entrepreneur. They still got so many other fires to put out. So I just don't know what that would look like for me. I know that I will always be writing. I feel like I will always, I will always have my daytime job. I think once I get to a point to where I'm able to not have to work a full-time job, like maybe when I retire and writing, then at that point may become a full-time gig for me. That will be solely upon what I wanna do. I can say, well, yeah, I don't really have to make this amount of money each month, but I do wanna make some, so maybe I'll only take two clients, or maybe I'll only take four clients and whatever. Um, it'll be more flexible when. Being an adult financially and like having a whole bunch of things that you need to pay for isn't super pivotal. I do think that in the future I will work my way towards speaking engagements. I want to help other people write. Um, I was an English major in college and I had no idea that I could do this. Mm-hmm. Um, when I was, I thought, oh, I'll be a teacher, or I'll go to law school, or I will be a journalist and I'll write for a newspaper. But being a creative and like having someone say, Hey, I need you to create copy for my website. This is my product. I need you to write the descriptions and maybe create a email campaign for me. Da, da, da, da. Those things are things that I never would've thought would've been possible with an English degree because it was so linear. My, my path was so linear. Yeah. Um, I didn't realize how broad you could take it. And so, mm-hmm. I think eventually, um, getting into like a space where I can mentor people, talk to other English majors and especially people of color, black men and women and kind of just showing them and teaching them like, this is something that you can do with this English major. You don't have to go into politics, you don't have to, you know, be a lawyer. Look at all these different avenues of things that you can do, um, and normalize that, that your path doesn't have to be those super. Strenuous straight paths. You can do so many different things. So I'm leaving it open to the universe to drop ideas into my head. Like I always, but I know that I am going to always lean on the fact that I have to keep my full-time job or else I can't do this, I can't do this way.
Raya:Yeah. I think one of the things that people kind of take for granted when they're creative and wanna be an entrepreneur and they're like, I'm quitting today, is that fulltime job gonna fund a lot of things.
Nathelie:Oh my goodness.
Raya:And I mean, you should definitely do something that you like full-time. Yeah. Like definitely don't stay anywhere where you hate it there.
Nathelie:Right.
Raya:Because that's a, you spend 60% of your life at work but you really should not hate your full-time job because that's going to fund a lot of the creative ventures that you do.
Nathelie:Yes.
Raya:Um, so yeah, that's one thing. And then also I love the idea of success not being linear and also a path not being linear so being okay with the flow of life and really the flow of creativity in your life and how sometimes you have to put some things down and pick them back up again whenever you can. Do you have any tips for the audience about being a self-funded creative, since we're on this money train right now?
Nathelie:What? Oh my goodness. The first tip, which I established recently is so when you are looking at the projects that you are going to try to finish and you're mapping out how much it's gonna cost, set aside a specific amount of money, like I write my budget. I don't have a budget for the month. I have a budget for each paycheck and each paycheck based off of whatever project I'm working on at that time, I set aside a line item. I create a line item in in my budget with a specific amount of money for every single paycheck. And so until that project is done, and so that money can go towards either going into an account for the project or it's going towards getting the project up and running, so Dear Beautiful. I was setting aside about a hundred, I would say about$125 um, per paycheck to get things done for my book and so I was utilizing all the resources I could.$125 it goes. It goes really quick when you have a lot of things to pay for, like ISBNs and a website and business cards and all of these different things. So, you know, setting aside that money and making it a line item, make it a bill for yourself, it's gonna be automatically coming out no matter what. The second thing I think about is not compromising your vision. So, For money. Um, you may have an idea of something that you really, really wanted. Um, like for instance, for Dear Beautiful, I was like, I want a hard cover. I think it would just look better. I want it to feel like a book of substance. You see those big textbooks? I mean, I'll, I'll show you. The book is thick, and I wanted it to feel like, Ooh, this is gonna be good. This is gonna be heavy. Then when I started going through the publishing process, I was realizing how expensive it was gonna be to create the hard cover. And although I did a lot of the work myself, you still have to pay for the book to be created. So when I was looking at the price, I instantly got discouraged and I was like, nobody's gonna buy this book. It's gonna be so expensive to make. I'm not gonna make any money off of the book. And I was like, even though I didn't create the book to make money, I still spent so much money making the book that I would at least like to recoup what I spent. And um, I tried to change the dimensions of the book to fit paper back and I was having such a hard time. My husband couldn't figure it out and he was like, just, just leave it at hardback. Leave it at hardback. And I was like, no, I think I need to change it. And one of my really close friends, she told me, You wanted a hard back book for a reason. Do not compromise what you want because you're afraid that it's not gonna sell because you wanted it for a reason. There's a purpose for it. And so she was like, you have to remember that whatever it is that you wanted, the people who find value in it will get it regardless. And so I stayed with the hard back and when I got the physical book, when it was all said and done, and I got the books in, I was like, oh my God, I'm so glad I didn't change it because it looks so much better, even though I never even saw what it would look like in paperback. I'm in love with the fact that it looked so good in hardback. So don't compromise because you want what you want for a reason. You might not be able to articulate why, but like your vision is your vision. So get what you want, even if it's gonna push back your release date, even if it's gonna cost you a little bit more money, don't compromise anything that you have planned. And then the last tip, utilize every resource that you can. I was like, okay, I wanna go and start doing popups and go to events and like do tablings and things like that. And, I am self-funded, so I don't have a company writing me a check and saying, here, this is what we're gonna give you before your sales come back. I don't have that luxury. Mm-hmm. And so I was like, okay, what are the things that I needed? And so I wrote down a list of all the things that I needed and I started writing down where I could get them. I was seeing people online, they were advertising that they do pop up. Uh, Popup shop like packages where you can get a retractable banner and a table cloth branded and like your acrylic QR code to your website and make it all cute. And like those packages were like$350, 400,$500. And I was like, oh my God. Like everything is just so expensive. And I'm like, If you know how to do anything, you know how to get something for a budget. And so I started utilizing like Alibaba and Ali Express and Oh yeah. I mean, yes, read your reviews please. Um, But I was able to get my branded tablecloth for$55, including my shipping and handling, and it, you know, took about three weeks to get to me. But when I got it, I was still so impressed and happy with the quality of the product. I feel like I would've been distraught if I spent$450 on a tablecloth and a retractable banner when I could've went on Alibaba and got it for cheaper. So think about all the things that you need and try to find a way to get it done. On a budget. If you have a friend that makes T-shirts and they're willing to make your t-shirts for you for cheaper and all you're doing is paying for the vinyl and bringing your own shirt, instead of paying another company 200 bucks, do that. Utilize your resources. Everything does not have to be expensive to be good quality. Mm-hmm. Um, and I think we have to get out of that idea that everything is supposed to cost us so much money, cuz it doesn't have to. Yeah. Wow.
Raya:You just spoken to my life. Thank you. I've been going through that same exact thing, so thank you for saying that. But we are nearing the end of this podcast, and this has been a good time. Thank you for sharing your insight, your journey with us. And my final question for you is, what excites you about creativity in your own life?
Nathelie:What excites me about creativity in my own life? I think it allows me to be free.
Raya:Mm.
Nathelie:Creativity is a different sense of freedom. When we're kids, we think of adulthood as freedom, but creativity allows your mind to turn off and step away from everything that's going on in the real world. And you can make your own thing. It's your opportunity to be whoever you wanna be, do whatever you wanna do on your own terms. And that's exciting because we live in a world where that's not always possible.
Raya:Yeah. I love that. Well let everybody know where they can follow you, where they can get Dear Beautiful. Like, give us the details.
Nathelie:I'll definitely do that. So Dear Beautiful is available on Amazon. I also have it on my website, Author Nathalie Zetrenne Norman.com, and you can follow me on Instagram at author Nathelie Zetrenne Norman. Um, I also have a TikTok, which is at Katwian, K A T W I A N, and I will be posting all of my, uh, z house publishing things there as well as like mom content and just day in the life of everything that a human does on there as well. So, Instagram, TikTok, my website. I'm taking pre-orders right now for Dear Beautiful, and I'm taking those pre-orders on my website right now, so definitely hit up my website and get your copy.
Raya:I'm definitely gonna order dear. Beautiful. I'm very excited.
Nathelie:I'm excited. Anytime someone is like, oh my God, I didn't know you wrote a book, I'm gonna order it. I just get so excited. Cause I was so nervous that people would not be interested.
Raya:We're interested, we're inspired, and we're gonna get it.
Nathelie:I'm excited. I hope that everyone who purchases the book, um, enjoys it just as much as I do.
Raya:All right. Well it was great to meet you and thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I hope you guys have enjoyed today's episode. Nathelie was amazing and make sure that you guys get her book, Dear Beautiful. Everything that she mentioned at the end of the podcast will be linked in the show notes. So definitely check her out and while you're looking at her Instagram, also make sure you're following Sheer Creativity. Make sure you're following us. Make sure you're getting all the updates on new interviews, new episodes, and all those good things cuz we have a few exciting things coming up. Also, make sure that you sign up for our newsletter, which will also be in the show notes below. Have a wonderful day and I will see you guys next week.
