We were lucky to catch up with Louise Keating recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, so we’re so thrilled to have Louise with us today – welcome and maybe we can jump right into it with a question about one of your qualities that we most admire. How did you develop your work ethic? Where do you think you get it from?
The concept of doing one’s best was around me from an early age. My parents have always shown up and “gone the extra mile” in everything they do, and I soaked that up from them. But I also think that one’s work ethic can be intrinsically tied to our beliefs about ourselves. On my own journey, I’ve learned that fear can be a powerful driving force. Fear of failure, of not being enough, can make for what, on the outside, seems to be a strong work ethic, but not a healthy, happy one. I know it’s not always that easy, but it’s important to do whatever it takes to push through that fear, find something you’re passionate about and go for it. Then, in a way, work ethic isn’t really a thing, it’s just naturally there, because you’re in the flow, doing what you love. In secondary school, my art teacher was an elderly nun named Sr. Christina. When she wasn’t reminding me not to lose the expensive paintbrushes she’d let our class use, or telling my sister to let my parents know that I’d come to class again without my eraser and my ruler, she instilled in me the sense that when you think you’ve done your best, you probably haven’t. Dig deeper, you can do better! She said I had ability, but I seemed to keep it in my feet, and that it had to be dragged up and out of me! At the end of each exercise, she’d say “You can do more. Do it again.” Each time she sent me away to do it again, I came back with something better. A valuable lesson that has never left me.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
Growing up in Ireland, one of my favorite things to do was to climb a tree with a book and a packet of potato chips. Any day that involved me eating potato chips while reading was a very good day! I loved spending time in the lands I encountered in books. And when I wasn’t “Bookland” wandering, I was off in some other world in my head. When I was six, I became convinced that there was a land through a mousehole in the wall under my bed. (I’d like to clarify that there was no mousehole. In this dimension anyway!) But in my mind, I could clearly see the mousehole, and a land full of characters that were so loved by me, and felt so real, that I wrote about them when I was older. They became my first, yet to be published, book, Mattie and the Moon Monster. As a child, I saw magic in every corner. There was a fine line between what was real and what was imagined in my world! They intertwined at every turn. As I got older, I felt a deep need to bring the lands and characters that were wandering around inside me out into the world, but I didn’t know how. In Ireland, I obtained a Batchelor of Education, taught primary school briefly, then couldn’t believe my luck when I landed a job as first an inker and then key assistant animator on The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, at Murakami Wolf Productions, Dublin. This was the start of a fabulous run in animation. I went from Dublin to London, where I worked at Steven Spielberg’s, Amblimation, (Amblin Entertainment) on American Tale: Fievel Goes West, We’re Back, and Balto. They were fun years. When Amblimation moved to Los Angeles, and Dreamworks was formed, I went too and got to experience the company’s heady beginning days, working on The Prince of Egypt, El Dorado, Spirit: the Stallion of the Cimarron, and Sinbad. When computer animation was introduced, things changed for me. I loved the drawing part of animation and found that without that I was not so enamored. For me, animation was all-consuming, a lifestyle rather than a job. Deciding that a less time-demanding occupation would give me the chance to write and give voice to the world of creatures milling around inside me, I jumped the animation ship. After working as a character artist for a few years designing baby books for Bratz Babyz packaging (loved it!) at MGA Entertainment, I dived into waters that felt murky and unsure, and discovered that entertainment work in general is pretty all-consuming. Like many of us, I’m not the kind of person who can happily do a job I don’t love. So, I stayed with entertainment, found work as a movie restoration artist, joined the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI), studied with The Institute of Children’s Literature, and continued to hone my writing skills when I could. Then, during a particularly challenging time in my life, I started to create in a different way. Feeling very down one Sunday, I took up a pen and with my mind in zone-out mode, I started to scribble. That’s when the first of the Scribble Creatures was born. Somehow, finally, that world inside me had found a way through. Since then, my friends, the Scribble Creatures, have been coming in on a regular basis. I’ve built a website, so they now have a home where I can post them. And, as they let me know who they are and where they’re from, I’m slowly writing their stories.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
Fear isn’t usually seen as a quality, but in a way it is. Because to me, overcoming fear and insecurity brings us to its opposite, which is confidence, and being comfortable with who you are in the world. My fear and insecurity around my creativity has meant that it’s taken me a lot longer to get to the point I am at now, where I’m happy with who I am and ready to share what I have to offer. But those years of fear have been invaluable. I have a depth of compassion and wisdom that I wouldn’t have earned if I’d had the confidence to move forward more quickly. I also think that everything happens when it’s meant to. In 2014, my children’s middle grade novel, Dear Nosy, was nominated for The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrator’s Most Promising New Novel award. It’s now 2023 and I’d like to say that I got on it and found an agent, submitted to lots of publishers and got it published. But that’s not what happened. I did get on it. I worked and worked on that novel, and got it ready for submission, but I haven’t yet gone all out to find an agent. And that’s okay, because if I’d gotten the book published before now, my energy would have gone into that, and the Scribble Creatures might not have been able to come in. I wouldn’t have heard them. So, while we may wish things to be different, and to happen faster, everything comes at the perfect time. As my grandma used to say, “Patience and perseverance will get a snail to America”. (Hopefully, the snail wanted to go to America!) I think the important thing to remember is that’s it’s not about the goal, it’s also about the journey and the experiences along the way. Don’t beat yourself up for being scared, or insecure. But don’t let it stop you, or at least not for too long. Reach out to others who have been where you are. Join groups, take classes. Find your people! We all have to start at the beginning, and no one needs to journey alone.
How would you spend the next decade if you somehow knew that it was your last?
Finding time is a big challenge for me. I haven’t managed to track down the pot of gold at the end of rainbow yet. Being Irish hasn’t given me any advantage in the stampede for rainbow gold! Leprechauns don’t seem to give a flying fogglehoot where you’re from, their gold is their gold. Though I don’t know why they care, seeing as they’ve rigged it so that the gold turns to leaves anyway, if you do manage to get hold of it! In the absence of rainbow gold, I have to fit working on my art and writing around the demands of life and full-time work. The Scribble Creatures are real beings to me. They’re my friends and they’re great, but so far, they haven’t offered to do a thing around the house, or to drive me to work or cook dinner. And they have a rather irritating habit of waking me up at 4 a.m. because they’ve just landed from whatever planet or dimension they’re from, and want to come through to Earth immediately, and it just can’t wait until morning.
I tend to work in spurts. I’ve tried making scheduled times for sitting and working but that invariably goes by the wayside as other things come in and I get sidetracked. So, I take things as they come, giving myself goals and deadlines and loosely scheduling working times that I try to stick to. I work when I can, even if it means a mad dash as the deadline gets closer. Of course, if I find a way to finagle some gold from the leprechauns, that’ll leave me lots more time to spend with the Scribble Creatures!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.louisekeatingcreatures.com/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/louise-keating-22b2033/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/louise.keating.9
