We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Celia E Ochoa. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Celia E below.
Celia E, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?
Resiliency in definition is a skill that develops over time from lessons, experiences and challenges. For most it’s a slow build up as we get older. For me, by 7 years old, I was already resilient beyond my years. At such a young age, I had already been through more in my life than most adults. I had spent a year in hiding in communist Cuba, eighteen hours in the ocean, ten months of living in a detention camp, and then I was in a brand-new country where we didn’t speak the language and we had no one.
Now at 35 years old, I know that my level of resilience is and always will be a result of those difficult experiences early on in my life.
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
I am a self-published author. My first book is a memoir about my early years in Cuba and my families escape and subsequent detention in the Guantanamo Bay detention camps. My current work in progress is a romance novel.
I think the most exciting and special thing about being an author is having the ability to create different realities and to get completely immersed in that world you’ve created. As a reader, books are the escape that sometimes we need from our own daily lives and now as a writer I see that from a completely different perspective.
Writing and reading became a huge passion of mine from the moment that I could write and read the English language.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
I think the three most impactful areas of knowledge in my journey to self publish my memoir were:
1. The process of self publishing (this includes a wide range of steps like formatting, cover design, publishing platforms, ISBN numbers, etc.) This is the area that one truly needs to be knowledgeable in to be able to self publish your work.
2. Social media. This is a tough one for an indie author as social media can be difficult to navigate. There are so many factors that affect how successful you are in creating a social media presence and it can take time to find a ‘strategy’ that works best for you.
3. Marketing. Marketing your book and self marketing in general can be a bit daunting. It almost feels like a job on its own.
For anyone that is early on in their journey to self publish I always highly recommend connecting with other self published authors. They are a great source for tips, tricks, and lessons learned on things they would have done different in their journey, from publishing the book itself to their social media and self marketing. I also always recommend to be very observant and ask questions of those indie authors that have been successful in creating a strong presence and that have been successful in marketing their books.
To close, maybe we can chat about your parents and what they did that was particularly impactful for you?
Without a doubt in my mind the most impactful thing they did for me was the sacrifices they made to get us to the United States. Making the decision to risk our lives and journey out into the ocean in the hopes of making it to the U.S. was not an easy thing for them to decide to do. But it’s that very decision that gave me the opportunities I’ve had in life.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/readwithceo
