Meet Stephanie Willing

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

Stephanie, appreciate you making time for us and sharing your wisdom with the community. So many of us go through similar pain points throughout our journeys and so hearing about how others overcame obstacles can be helpful. One of those struggles is keeping creativity alive despite all the stresses, challenges and problems we might be dealing with. How do you keep your creativity alive?

For years I made fun of myself for being someone who had a lot of interests. Anything I enjoyed, I wanted to learn how to do However, for a long time I didn’t see that as a good thing. I thought that my shifting attention meant that I would never learn how to do anything well enough, but shaming myself never worked as a strategy to refocus. As I’ve gotten older I’ve learned to ride the wave of my excitement and trust that it’ll come back around–and it does! I’m really trying to live by K. C. Davis’s advice in “How to Keep House While Drowning” –“Anything worth doing is worth doing partially.” It’s actually okay if I create a four-panel diary comic once every few months, instead of every day like that little voice in my head tells me I should. It’s okay if my bullet journal gets utilized once a week. It’s okay if writing happens haphazardly instead of on a set schedule.

Releasing control about how often I do things and the idea of mastery keeps creativity flourishing. It’s when I try to force myself into a set schedule or regimen that everything comes to a screeching halt.

So, I take a lot of classes. I just learned to knit and I’m really enjoying looking at patterns and watching people knit online so that I can learn new techniques. I’m in ballet class as often as my kids’ schedule allows (typically twice a month), and yes, all this means I have half-finished journals and sketchbooks, art supplies, yarn, baking pans, power tools, and instruments scattered all over the house. Yes, there are stacks of cookbooks of cuisines I want to learn how to make, and yet I’ve only made one recipe in each. But it makes for a rich life where there’s so much still to discover.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

I really have two of the coolest jobs in the world. I’m an audiobook narrator, and I’m a published children’s book author. I was that kid who got in trouble for reading too much, so having a life now where I’m either creating my own worlds or bringing someone else’s to life, is a really wonderful congruence.

As a narrator, I have a younger sounding voice, which lends really well to middle-grade, YA, and literary fiction with younger characters. I also narrate a lot of new adult romance under my pseudonym, Avery Caris. Once in awhile I get to do a little animation or video game work as well, but I spend the majority of my time with audiobooks. Something I’m proud of is that I started a group for other audiobook narrators who struggle to stay focused in the booth. We “body double”, which is a technique neurodivergent people use, especially those with ADHD, where you simply have someone else with you while you do your tasks. We keep an online room open 24 hours a day, and a lot of us pop in from all over the world to do this solo job in the company of other femme-identifying narrators.

Balancing writing with narration is an ongoing challenge. I have two young kids (ages 6 and 3), so my workday is built around their daycare and school schedule. There’s an ideal version of myself that gets up super early to get everything done that needs doing in a day, but she doesn’t actually exist. I take comfort in knowing that since I’m in a caretaking role, and that role happens within community, my day is never going to look “perfect.” It’s never going to resemble a business man’s “get up an hour earlier and all your problems will be solved!” because I promise you, when I get up at 5am, so does the 3 year old. Somehow he just KNOWS I’m up and feeling ambitious.

I try to write stories where the real and the fantastical sit so close beside each other that you aren’t sure which is which. In West of the Sea, my debut MG novel, a young girl begins seeing dinosaurs in her family’s wheat fields, and then she sees her mother looking reptilian before her mother vanishes completely. In searching for her mother, she triggers her own shape-shifting, and she has to go on a road trip across Texas to find answers. I was able to use real prehistoric creatures that were native to the area, while mixing in some Celtic folklore about the FinFolk. It was also a way of talking about mental illness in a loved one, and how you aren’t always sure which version of a parent you’re going to get.

My next book is a middle-grade botanical horror novel set at a ballet conservatory where the teachers promise they can take any student into the perfect girl by the Nutcracker performance. It’s Stepford Wives meets Suspiria, but make it middle-grade! I’m excited to write about dance, friendships, flowers, trees and fungi–basically all my hyper-focuses.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

I always think back to my friend, Courtney. We were working together in Texas in a used bookstore and became close friends. When she was pregnant, she told me, “I know you want to have a family some day. You won’t want to be working a retail job. Find something flexible that lets you support your family. ” Now before you worry about Courtney, don’t! She moved to her favorite place on earth and opened her own bookstore, Quiet City Books, where she fosters cats and brings queer, witchy joy to everyone who enters. She’s doing amazing.

I took her words to heart, and by having the ultimate goal in mind–do something I love that will be flexible enough for a family–it guided every job choice I made after that. I became a Pilates instructor so that I could pursue acting, dancing, and writing while living in New York City. When I became a mom, that work sustained me and allowed me to be flexible while I built a voice over and narration career.

Especially as an artist, the experiences you have feed the art. The ten years I spent onstage gave me the skills I needed later to be an audiobook narrator. Acting also gave me a strong sense for natural dialogue, which strengthened my writing. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that acting is a waste of time!

Writing also made me a better actor as I applied everything I knew about motivation, pacing, character arcs, and relationship dynamics to the characters in the audiobooks.

The advice I’d give for writing is the same that I’d give for voice acting. Yes, get all the training. These are skills you can learn. Take classes, hire a coach or seek out a mentor, and practice practice practice. But you–your heart, your specialness, your quirks–are your strengths. Don’t worry about whether you’re too old or too young, too anything. Your unique view on the world is what’s going to make your writing and your performances stand out.

One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?

As an audiobook narrator, I am always hoping to connect with authors who want someone to bring their books to life. There are many ways to narrate a book, and I always let the text itself dictate what kind of style it has, but I really love a voicey writing style where I get to really inhabit the character. This is one reason I’m such a good match for Young Adult and romance novels–these are stories where feelings are huge, and there is nothing removed or distant about the experience. That’s when I”m having the most fun as an actor.

As an author, I love connecting with readers. I just participated in World Read Aloud Day where I read from West of the Sea to two groups of 5th and 6th graders and then answered their questions. There’s nothing better than talking to kids about writing, dinosaurs, and folklore. Best question I got: “does your book have a megalodon in it?” No, but it does have a mosasaur.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.stephaniewillingsays.com and www.stephaniewillingwrites.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stephanie_willing_says/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephaniewilling/
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@swillingsays

Image Credits

Anna Ty Bergman for all professional photos