Meet Victoria Waddle

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Victoria Waddle. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Victoria, thank you so much for opening up with us about some important, but sometimes personal topics. One that really matters to us is overcoming Imposter Syndrome because we’ve seen how so many people are held back in life because of this and so we’d really appreciate hearing about how you overcame Imposter Syndrome.

Imposter Syndrome is recurrent. I work on keeping it in check as I move through each project. I think there’s a lot of pressure in any kind of endeavor to do something bigger or better the next time or we think we are failures. Instead of thinking of things that way, I try to remember that each project has its own heart, its own center.

One of things I find very helpful in keeping Imposter Syndrome at bay is to cut out anything that is based on ‘How do I make people like me?’ (Trying to garner social media likes, comments, and followers, etc.). That’s a way to produce stress, not a way to produce creative writing. Instead, I always try to focus on ‘What will I write that will help me gather with—be in conversation with—like-minded people?’ It’s a lot more satisfying.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

Focus is an interesting thing for me in that I’ve made a career in author-adjacent spaces. It’s easy to think of this as wasted time in terms of the creative life. That would be a mistake because my writing ideas don’t come from sitting at a desk in front of a computer. They come from my interaction with the larger world.

I spent many years as an educator in high schools. I’m a passionate reader, and, as both an English teacher and a teacher librarian, I was able to share my lifelong love of books. Some of my published stories are about what it’s like to help teens, mostly with issues unrelated to the classroom (e.g., those who are being abused).

Being in the library was particularly meaningful because I could bring a diverse collection to teens and meet them where they were at without having a required text.

To create a library collection that served a diverse student body, I had to read a lot of book reviews and a lot of books themselves. In doing that as well as in talking with the teens about what they wanted, I came up with the idea for my upcoming YA novel about a girl escaping a polygamist cult. The novel will launch in 2025. (Publishing is a slow game!)

The novel I’m currently querying is about book banning in a public high school. (Well, like all novels, it’s really about relationships, but it’s centered on book banning.) Book challenges and parents upset with curriculum choices are something I’ve lived repeatedly. My experience gave me the idea for the book.

What I’m saying here is that sometimes you do work that you might resent for taking time away from your creative journey. But it becomes part of your creative journey. It sparks the idea for the work of art or the story or the novel. It informs the story.

As for what I’m doing that’s new: I started a Substack weekly newsletter entitled “Be a Cactus.” (Creative people need to be a bit ‘prickly,’ I think). Querying my book-banning novel is a lot of pressure, so I wanted to have a low-pressure conversation with readers and writers about writing-related things, including publishing. And I also wanted to share weekly news on book bans and challenges happening in the U.S. As I mentioned in discussing Imposter Syndrome, it’s a focus on like-minded people.

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?

One skill and two qualities that are vital for writers are:

Distillation
Compassion
Endurance

I believe these three are useful not just for writing, but for any endeavor.

Accept all ideas before narrowing them down. But the trimming, the sculpting, is just as important.

Creative ideas are served by compassion. It helps the writer move work into a space that connects that work with others.

Endurance allows for overcoming failures. Publishing is a long game and repeated rejection is a rite of passage. But even before the publication phase of a project, endurance matters. There’s a saying among writers that ‘writing is rewriting.’ Over and over. In many creative endeavors, success is all about altering the pattern repeatedly.

Thanks so much for sharing all these insights with us today. Before we go, is there a book that’s played in important role in your development?

I love that you asked this question because—books!

The book that helped me develop as a girl was “Little Women.” While it’s a kid’s book and fairly saccharine, it introduced me to the idea that girls deserve to have their own creative space. It introduced me to a girl whose family was supportive of her efforts.

As a young adult, I read Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own.” It’s a more mature, deeper dive into the discussion of women’s status. While the educational opportunities for women have improved since Woolf’s time, the essential fact remains: a woman, particularly one involved in a creative endeavor (in her case, writing), must have her own money and space in order to create.

Contact Info:

• Website: Https://VictoriaWaddle.com
• Other: Substack (Be a Cactus) https://VictoriaWaddle.Substack.com