Meet Julia Moellers

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Julia Moellers a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Julia, so glad you were able to set aside some time for us today. We’ve always admired not just your journey and success, but also the seemingly high levels of self-discipline that you seem to have mastered and so maybe we can start by chatting about how you developed it or where it comes from?

I used to think that I required a disciplined practice to get writing done on a regular basis, but I’ve found over time that it’s more of a compulsion than anything. So I feel much more relaxed about my writing now than ever before. If I’m not working on a novel, I’ll find myself writing essays, or letters, or journaling for hours – the writing will spill out somewhere, whether I make room for it or not. I have a reputation for book-length texts, ha. I also joke that no one chooses to be a writer – it doesn’t pay except for in a very few cases. Writing chooses you. I’m grateful it chose me. I no longer fear that it will leave me. It never has, from the moment I could write in Kindergarten.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I’ve always written stories since I was little, and I’ve kept journals since I was eight years old, but when I was deciding upon a career, I was trying to be sensible, so I studied interior design, hoping to make a decent career of something arts-related. It’s a story I tell often, but my final semester of college, I took a creative writing elective, and completely neglected my design thesis project so I could write short stories instead. It was a “Well, heck, I guess I should have majored in English after all,” moment.

So when my first child was born in 2008, I decided to stay home to care for her and write in my “free time.” I knew this was a bit of a fantasy! I did manage to finish my first novel and start querying agents, and I felt somewhat saved by blogging about a year after my second child was born. It felt like I could breathe again, once I started blogging in 2012. I still write at The Joy Underneath on WordPress.

I also finally self-published that first novel (after about ten drafts and one almost-contracted agent). It’s a coming-of-age love story set within a cult-like church in the 1980s-90s, called The Birthday Thieves, available on Amazon. (Find it here: https://a.co/d/2{6YVAP ) It
was quite the journey to finally get it out and available to the world, but so worth it. I felt that my beloved characters deserved it!

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

1. I think you have to love the work for its own sake, if you’re going down a creative or artistic path, because these interests often don’t guarantee any financial or critical or public success. So you have to make amends with the fact that you may never get these rewards, and just enjoy the work itself. If you don’t enjoy the work, it’s not worth it.

2. You have to trust your own instincts about what is good, or not good, about your work. You can’t depend entirely on outside feedback. There must be something inside of you that just KNOWS if you are on the right creative path, or not. Listen to that voice. It’s a critical but kind voice.

3. I don’t always live up to this standard in all of my writing, but I use it as my ultimate guideline: a well-known Arab proverb says, “The mouth should have three gatekeepers. Is it true? Is it kind? And is it necessary?” I think the best writing reflects these values.

How can folks who want to work with you connect?

Perhaps like most writers, I just want to write, and wish I didn’t have to think about marketing, the publishing process, or making industry connections – but then you will never have any readers! So this is my main concern right now. I would love to work with literary professionals, but it’s a very tough industry to get into. I am pretty burned out by many years of navigating the traditional book publication gauntlet, and am trying to be satisfied with self-publication, but I do question whether I should still be working towards finding a wider audience, or not. I did manage to get my novel The Birthday Thieves on the shelf at my local library, which was probably the most emotional moment for me in the whole process! And I am trying to think outside the box, in terms of gaining a wider readership. Again, I would love to partner with anyone who is truly invested in the publishing industry, because it’s very hard trying to do it all by yourself. (Side note: watch out for scam companies who reach out after you self-publish, claiming to be able to increase your readership a thousand-fold. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is!)

Contact Info:

• Website: https://thejoyunderneath.wordpress.com
• Instagram: @juliamariem
• Facebook: Julia Moellers

Image Credits

N/A – personal photos