Creative Confidence, Portfolio Careers, And Making Without Permission with Alicia Jo Rabins

Summary

The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers

Host: Joanna Penn
Guest: Alicia Jo Rabins
Episode: Creative Confidence, Portfolio Careers, And Making Without Permission
Date: March 2, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Joanna Penn speaks with Alicia Jo Rabins—an award-winning writer, musician, performer, Torah teacher, and ritualist—about building creative confidence, navigating portfolio careers, and the importance of making work without seeking external permission. The discussion delves into Alicia’s multifaceted artistic journey, her spiritual and creative practices, her approach to performance versus permanence, the realities of funding creative work, and advice to writers seeking their voice in a changing world.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Alicia’s Multi-Strand Creative Journey

[14:29 – 17:44]

• Early Creative Roots: Alicia describes herself as a "maximalist," beginning both writing and violin very young, thanks to a supportive mother and the Suzuki method.
• Musical and Spiritual Weaving: Music and writing interlaced throughout her upbringing, followed by a deep dive into Jewish spirituality and Torah study in college and post-college years in Jerusalem.
• Performance Expansion: Her interests in writing, music, and spirituality organically branched into performance, including theater and film.

“I sort of grew up being very immersed in both creative writing and music. … Having the gift of those two parts of my brain … and then … spiritual study … became the third. And they all interweave.”
— Alicia Jo Rabins [16:38]

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2. Portfolio Careers and Financial Realities

[17:48 – 19:55]

• How Alicia Pays the Bills: Nourished by privilege (no college debt), she supports herself primarily through teaching Jewish studies (50-70%), supplemented by performing, workshops, and grants.
• Welcoming Donations: Alicia took workshops on inviting donations and speaks candidly about adjusting to solicitation, recognizing how supporting creatives is meaningful for audiences too.

“I think some people enjoy fundraising … I have learned to think of it … as a privilege to give as well as a privilege to receive.”
— Alicia Jo Rabins [20:34]

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3. Creative Process: Instinct, Hunger, and Ritual

[21:29 – 27:12]

• Discovery over Planning: Initial project generation is always instinctual; Alicia rarely sits down to match ideas to forms.
• The Role of Mood: Her creativity is often triggered by emotional need—writing or making music as a response to feeling “discombobulated.”
• Absence of Rituals: While spirituality underpins much of her work, she does not use formal spiritual rituals for generating ideas.

“I don’t think I ever sit down and say I have this idea, which genre would it match with? It’s more like … I pick up my guitar and something starts coming out.”
— Alicia Jo Rabins [22:00]

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4. Adapting Spiritual Heritage & Collaborating with Communities

[28:05 – 33:48]

• Music, Faith, and Collaboration: Alicia’s projects like "Songs of the Matriarchs" with a high school choir, and "Girls in Trouble" focus on reclaiming and reinterpreting biblical women’s stories through music.
• Tradition vs. Innovation: Drawing on Judaism’s tradition of Midrash ("ancient fanfic"), she finds reinterpretation both traditional and welcomed; her approach with diverse audiences is to focus on the mythic and personal, not religious imposition.

“From a Jewish perspective … what I’m doing … is very much in line with actually a traditional way of interacting with text … the interpretive process … is part of how we show respect for the text.”
— Alicia Jo Rabins [29:46]

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5. Performance vs. Literary Permanence

[31:21 – 34:28]

• Ephemeral Magic of Performance: Alicia values the fleeting, sacred quality of live performance versus the lasting presence of books.
• Embracing Impermanence: She treasures both literary artifacts and on-stage moments, appreciating each format’s spiritual resonance.

“Being on stage … is a very spiritual practice … the most in the moment I ever am. The only thing that matters is what’s happening right then in the room.”
— Alicia Jo Rabins [32:32]

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6. Challenges of Memoir Writing vs. Other Forms

[35:02 – 39:59]

• From Poetry to Memoir: Transitioning from poetry’s brevity to long-form prose was challenging; Alicia spent 7-10 years developing her memoir.
• Memoir’s Focus: Unlike autobiography, memoir requires “choosing which lens to put on your story.” For Alicia, the focus was on spirituality and music, even when family or other personal topics were foundational to her life.

“When you put a limitation on your project, that’s when it starts to be a work of art.”
— Paraphrased by Alicia Jo Rabins [38:55]

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7. Choosing Traditional vs. Independent Publishing

[40:08 – 43:51]

• The Path to Traditional Publishing: Alicia’s initial interest in writing memoir stemmed from a suggestion about its commercial potential. She appreciated the possibility of financial sustainability and approached publishing strategically, querying with a complete manuscript.
• Maintaining Independence: She maintained creative control through the drafting process and embraced editing post-agent.

“I never felt like anyone was telling me what to write … I can’t imagine promising that I’ll write something because I never know what I’ll write.”
— Alicia Jo Rabins [42:20]

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8. Making Without Permission: Indie Film Creation

[46:00 – 51:06]

• A Kaddish for Bernie Madoff: Originated as a one-woman musical theater show, then was adapted into an indie feature film, thanks to serendipitous collaboration and self-funding.
• DIY Filmmaking Ethos: Alicia advocates for making creative work independently rather than waiting for permission or gatekeepers.

“I can’t imagine waiting for someone to give us permission or giving us a green light to make this. It was experimental and indie, … we just did it and put it out there.”
— Alicia Jo Rabins [49:47]

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9. Creative Confidence in the Age of AI

[51:06 – 53:36]

• Advice for New Creators: Alicia suggests creators lean into whatever feelings they’re experiencing, including lack of confidence, because vulnerability is uniquely human and artistically valuable.
• Letting Go of ‘Good Enough’: She references the idea that even great artists never know if they're “good enough.”
• Make Without Permission: The practice of creation itself is the heart of being a writer or artist.

“If a lack of confidence is arising, that’s a really powerful feeling to directly explore … AI can’t have that, right?”
— Alicia Jo Rabins [52:01]

“You’ll never know if you’re any good. If you have to know, don’t write.”
— (quoting John Berryman) [52:29]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Donations: “It is actually a privilege to give as well as a privilege to receive.” [20:34]
• On Instinctive Creation: “It’s almost a form of hunger.” [25:49]
• On Adapting Judaism: “I have to say, coming from the Jewish tradition, that is a core practice … wrestling with [texts], arguing with them, reimagining them.” [29:03]
• On Limitation: “When you put a limitation on your project, that’s when it starts to be … a work of art.” [38:55]
• On Indie Creation: “Make something, as opposed to trying to get permission … because really, unless you’re already in that system, it’s going to be really hard to get permission to make it.” [50:08]
• On Voice: “There’s never going to be a moment that we’re like, yes, I’ve nailed this. I am truly 100% a writer … everything’s always changing anyway.” [53:20]

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Important Timestamps

• 14:29 – Alicia’s creative background and braided career
• 18:05 – How she supports herself financially as a creative
• 21:56 – Her creative process and project generation
• 28:05 – Reimagining tradition and working with religious material
• 31:21 – Performance versus literary permanence
• 35:16 – Writing memoir as a poet; challenges of long-form
• 40:28 – Choosing traditional publishing; portfolio career logic
• 46:00 – DIY filmmaking: A Kaddish for Bernie Madoff
• 51:06 – Building creative confidence in uncertain times

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Where to Find Alicia Jo Rabins

• Website: aliciajo.com
• Instagram: @ohaliciajo

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Final Thoughts

Alicia Jo Rabins’s journey is a vivid illustration of how arts, faith, teaching, and business can intertwine into a vibrant, resilient creative life. Her advice to “make without permission” and her embrace of both doubt and discovery offer encouragement to all multi-passionate creatives.

Transcript

[A]

Welcome to the Creative Penn Podcast. I'm Joanna Penn, thriller author and creative entrepreneur, bringing you interviews, inspiration and information on writing, craft and creative business. You can find the episode show notes, your free author blueprint and lots [e-mail] and that's Pen with a double n. And here's the show. Hello creatives, I'm Johanna Penn and this is episode number 852 of the podcast and it is Monday 2nd March 2026. As I record this, it is officially spring here in the southwest of England as the daffodils and the crocuses are out and the blackthorn is flowering and I just put some pictures on my Instagram FPEN author of the Crocuses around my green man stone carving in my garden. The winter has turned once more and there's a lot happening in world, all the big things that are overwhelming and difficult. But we can find joy in the little things. And for me, the first crocuses of spring are part of that joy. So anyway, in today's show I'm talking with Alicia Jo Rabins about creative confidence, portfolio careers and making without permission. Alicia is such an inspirational, multi passionate creative who works with music and song and books and film to weave a really interesting career with some very big projects. So that's coming up in the interview section in Writing and Publishing. Well written Word Media has a great article about backlist strategy. How to sell more books from your backlist. Now, if you are a newer author, the backlist is basically everything you're not actively promoting right now, which is usually your front list, the books that have just come out or are coming out soon. So those of us who've been writing for years, we have lots of books in the backlist and that keeps growing. It's also a well known fact in the industry that the bulk of sales over time and the bulk of revenue comes from the backlist. So even if you make spikes from new book sales, the backlist keeps earning and that can make more money than the new book. One example being my Spear of Destiny, which was my book 13 of my arcane thriller series which came out last year and I did the Kickstarter which was for the front list. So the front list was the newest book. But I also sold lots of bundles of the entire backlist in print, ebook and audio. And I've been writing that series basically since 2008. And so when we promote book one in a long series that is also backlist promotion. So when you start out, you Always focus on that first book. You're like, oh, it needs to go gangbusters. But the reality of the author business is that after time passes and you write more and you grow readership and income and sales and more books, and the backlist is very valuable. So into the article itself from written word media, which starts with economics. So when you add more books, especially connected books that naturally lead from one to the next, you create the conditions for read through, which is one of the strongest drivers of stable author sales. And more does not only mean more novels in a series, it can also mean more books standalone. So for example, with my non fiction books, they're not technically a series, but I group them in a series of craft books and business books so that they're linked and you can find them, but they can all be read in whatever order you like. You can also have more formats, new editions, so special editions or omnibus. You can do companion products like workbooks and maps and law guides and all of that. The principle is straightforward. More ways to buy increases revenue per reader and that changes the economics of marketing. And this is so important. So how much money can one reader spend with you? Even if they are your biggest fan and they think your book is the most amazing book in the whole world, if you only have one book, they can only spend as much of one book. So in an ebook format, you're not going to get very much money per reader. So if a reader discovers you and buys everything you currently offer, what is the total value that is your maximum catalogue value. This is all from the written word media article. So marketing is not spend money, get money. Marketing is spend money to acquire a reader and then earn from that reader over time. Hopefully if they love your books, they can buy more. So if they can only buy one, then every promotion and ad is risky because there's no further purchases to help recoup the investment. So hopefully that helps you understand why the backlist is so important. And also this is why many of us say if you only have one book, don't go super nutso on spending money on marketing because it's very unlikely to break even. Readers also need time. So even if you do promote that first book, obviously maybe somebody buys it or downloads it. It takes time to read, to finish it, to decide to buy the next in the series. So think about other metrics. Are you gaining new readers? Is your email list growing? Are later titles moving in the weeks after promot? Are you getting reviews? So a great article on backlist author sales from written word media then I'm on the Novel Marketing Podcast this week talking about author business along with Thomas Umstadt Jr. And I always enjoy talking to Thomas. We have a lot of differences culturally and in our worldviews, but we agree on a lot of author things and it's so important to engage with people who you don't align with on everything, especially at this time in the world. We also genuinely get on. So we had a great chat and quite a lot of laughing. So if you want to hear us laughing and talking about business and marketing, we also talk about life stages. So when you might make different decisions around being more professional with your writing, when is it worth it just being a hobby? When is it worth being a business? Should you build a long term brand or use short term pen names? When Kickstarter might work? When you should just simplify and go with Amazon only, or when going wide and selling direct is worthwhile creative constraints, using AI to help you with a business plan, or acting as a co CEO doing data analysis and more. So that is over on the Novel Marketing podcast wherever you're listening to this and the other thing talking of kind of selling wide, selling direct and reaching more readers, the alliance of Independent Authors has launched the Indie Author Bookstore which has lots of books from indie authors in one place. So if you want to support more indie authors you can go to bookstore.allianceindependentauthors.org and you'll find lots of indie books there. It is an online discoverability platform designed to help readers discover the quality and variety of thousands of books published by independent authors across so many genres. All the books are by members of the alliance of Independent Authors and each of the purchase links can go to links that they choose, so that might be a major retailer or direct to their own website. So if you are member of the alliance of Independent Authors you can load yours up too. I need to do mine another thing on my list. But yes, go to bookstore.alliance independentauthors.org links in the show Notes as ever. In personal news. So Jane, my designer and I we finished the design for Bones of the Deep, the special edition and so I've ordered the proofs from Book Vault and I also ordered the paperback and the large print which have arrived, which are fantastic but the custom one will obviously take longer. But I always love to hold my new books in my hands and say I made these. So really pleased about that. I've also started working on the audiobook on Elevenlabs with my voice clone. I'm still thinking about probably after Easter for the launch. But yeah, who knows but jfpen.com forward/bones if you want to read more. I've also been doing lots of Claude code experimenting with translation which has been really interesting, so more on that once. I have experiments to report back on. So thanks for your emails and comments and photos this week. Saskia says thanks to you and Jack for this episode. When I saw the content line it wasn't sure it had much for me, but I listened and my experience is that all your podcast episodes have something from me. I found so much in it that resonated independence as both a strength and a weakness. The need for a creative approach to marketing dealing with change. I found Jack a very thoughtful speaker. I listened walking through the water meadows just across the river from my house with a fabulous view of a small Norman church, but I was so absorbed I forgot to take a picture. Thank you Saskia and Ben left a comment on the show notes for Jack's episode. I had to stop and leave a comment because last week I came across this idea that nostalgia is actually a form of grief. And just paraphrasing this, a lot of the anti AI feelings are grief and nostalgia for a world that doesn't exist anymore. We are definitely living at the crossroads where business meets the starving artist mentality and those two ways of thinking are like oil and water. All this to say I understand the frustration in your voice when you're talking about seeing the storm six years ago and trying to warn people and nobody paying attention. Thanks so much Ben. And Steve says listening on a walk on Blythe beach in Northumberland already added surface detail, which was one of the books I recommended to my pile and signed ebooks to my list of things to look into. And that's just the introduction. Overwhelmed face emoji and lovely picture. Gorgeous stony beach, huge sky. I I love Northumberland and we often talk about moving there at some point. You never know, it might happen. Julie said. I eagerly await the podcast every Monday here in Virginia, home to many interesting cemeteries, while visiting Beaufort, North Carolina. Maybe you call that Beaufort. I found the old burial, the old burying ground. I'm sharing a photo of the grave of a British office not wanting to be buried with his boots off. He was buried standing in full uniform facing east towards England. Beautiful white boards of that church as well. And Robin sent a picture of her dog Otto watching the sunset the other day across a snowy forest and commented on Kevin's interview that it's good to revisit the idea that we can't replicate the success or luck of others. And we shouldn't try. We should focus on what is possible for us at whatever stage we're at in our author career. Okay, so please leave a comment on the podcast show [e-mail] or on the YouTube channel. You can email me, send me pictures of where you're listening, or your favourite cemetery or churchyard. JoannaTheCreativePenn.com I love to hear from you. It makes this more of a conversation so today's show is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, the self publishing platform built by Authors for Authors. KWL is dedicated to empowering your author career and helping you connect with readers worldwide. Ready to amplify your book's reach and boost sales, Kobo Writing Life offers a powerful suite of promotional tools designed to put your books directly in front of eager readers, leverage strategic percent off sales, buy more, save more bundles, and prime homepage placements to drive discovery. On a personal note, I go into KWL every few weeks and apply for every promotion I can. Now I won't get all of them, but I get some of them. And talking of backlist bundles do really well in Kobo promotions and they also have opportunities for books in translation. They have partnerships with many independent stores in different countries, so if you want to go wide with translation, check out Kobo as well. Start promoting on kobo [e-mail] kwl and that page is a landing page with all my books on Kobo and ebook and audio and useful episodes of the Kobo Writing Life podcast, which you can also listen to wherever you're listening to this thanks to the seven new patrons who've joined over the last week and thanks to everyone who's been supporting for months and years. If you join the community, you get access to all my backlist videos and audio covering topics on writing, craft, author business and AI tutorials. This week I posted an article about how you need to revisit how AI tools can help your business workflow, going beyond basic chat to using projects, skills, cowork, Claude code and more for your author business tasks. And we'll talk about that more in our live office hours this week. Come along if you're a patron and I'll show you what I've been doing. The Patreon is a monthly subscription, the equivalent of buying me a black coffee a month or a couple of coffees if you're feeling generous. So if you get value from the show and you want more, come on over and join [e-mail] P-A T R E O-N.com TheCreativePen Right, let's get into the interview. Alicia Jo Rabins is an award winning writer, musician, performer, as well as a Torah teacher and ritualist. She's the creator of Girls in Trouble, a feminist indie folk song cycle about biblical women and the award film A Kadish for Bernie Madoff. Her latest book is a memoir. When we're born, we forget everything. So welcome to the show, Alicia.

[B]

Thank you so much. I'm delighted to be here.

[A]

Oh yes, there is so much we could talk about. But first up, tell us a bit more about you and how you've woven so many strands of creativity into your life and career.

[B]

Yes, well, I am a maximalist. And what happened in terms of my early life is that I started writing on my own just extremely young. I'm just one of those people who always loved writing, always processed the world and kind of managed my emotions and came to understand myself through writing. So from a very young age, I felt really committed to writing. And then I had the good fortune that my mother saw a talk show about the Suzuki method of learning violin. When you start really young and learn by ear, which is modeled after language learning, actually so much less intellectual and much more kind of instinctual learning by copying. And so she was like, that looks like a cool thing. And I was 3 years old at the time and she found out that there was a little local branch of our music conservatory that had a Suzuki violin program. So when I was three and a half, coming close to four, she took me down and I started playing an extremely tiny violin. And because, and because it was part of this conservatory that was downtown and we were just kind of starting at the suburban branch where we lived, there was sort of this path that I was able to follow where as I got more and more interested in violin, I could continue basically up through the conservatory level in some ways during high school. So I had a really fantastic music education without any pressure, without any kind of expectations or professional goals. But I just kind of kept taking these classes and one thing led to another. And so in that way, I sort of grew up being very immersed in both creative writing and music. And I think just having the gift of those two parts of my brain and trained and stimulated and delighted, so young, really, I think, changed my brain in some ways. And I'll always see the world through this creative lens, which I think I'm also just set up to do personally. And then the last step of my kind of multi Practice career is that then in college I got very interested in Jewish spirituality. I'm Jewish, but I didn't grow up very religious. I didn't grow up in a Jewish community, really. So I knew some basics, but not a ton. And in college, I started to study it and also informally kind of learned from other people I met. And I ended up going on like a pretty intense spiritual quest and going to Jerusalem and immersing myself after college for two years in traditional Jewish study and practice. So that kind of became the third strand of the braid that had already been started with music and writing. And so Torah study, spiritual study, and teaching became the third. And they all interweave. And the last thing I'll say is that just because I work in both words and music, and so naturally performance because of music, then it began to kind of branch a little bit into plays, theater, and film, just because that's where the intersection of words, performance, and music are. So that's really what brought me into that, as opposed to any kind of specific desire to work in film. It all happened very organically.

[A]

I love this.

[B]

This is.

[A]

This is so cool. And I. I do. We are going to circle back to a lot of this, but I have to ask you. So was there. What about work for money at any point? Like, how did this kind of come into it as more than just hobbies and lifestyle?

[B]

Yes, absolutely. Well, I'm very fortunate that I did not graduate college with loans because my parents were able to pay for college. That was a big privilege that I just want to name because in the States that's often not the case. So that allowed me to need to support myself but not also pay loans, which was a real gift. And so let's see, what happened was I went straight from college to that school in Jerusalem, and so that there I was on loans and scholarship, and so I didn't have to worry yet about supporting myself. And then when I came back to the States, I actually found on Craigslist a job teaching remedial Hebrew was what it was listed as. And it was essentially teaching kids at a. At a Jewish elementary school who either had learning differences or had just entered the school late and needed to be in a different Hebrew class than the other kids in their grade. And that was my first experience of really teaching. And I just absolutely fell in love with it. Although in the end, my passion is much more for teaching the texts and, and rituals and the kind of wrestling with the. The concepts as opposed to teaching language. So all these years while doing, you know, Performance and writing and all these things. I have been teaching Jewish studies and, and that has essentially supported me, I would say between 50 and 70%. And then the rest has been paid gigs as a musician, whether as a front person, you know, leading a project, or as what we call a sideman kind of playing in someone else's band, sometimes doing theater performances, sometimes teaching workshops. So that, that's how I've sort of cobbled it together. I have not had a full time job all these years, and I have supported myself through both earned income and also grants. And Don, I've really tried to cultivate a little bit of a donor base and I took some workshops early on about how to welcome donations. So I definitely try to always welcome that as well.

[A]

That is so interesting that you took a workshop on how to welcome donations. And I would say that because, like way back In, I think, 2013, I said on this show, I just don't know if I can accept people giving to support the show. And then someone on the podcast challenged me and said, but people want to support creatives. And that's when I started Patreon in 2014, and it was kind of when the Art of Asking by Amanda Palmer. Yeah, yeah. Came out. And it was this sort of realization that people do want to support people. So I love that you said that.

[B]

It's not easy. It's still not easy for me. And I have to kind of grit my teeth. Every time that I even put in my, you know, end of year newsletter, I just say, just a reminder that part of what makes, makes this possible is your generous donations. And I'm so grateful to you. And, you know, it's not easy. I think some people enjoy fundraising and I certainly, I don't instinctively enjoy it, but I have learned to think of it exactly the way that you're saying, which is, I mean, I love donating to support other people's projects. And it sometimes is the highlight of my day if I'm having a bad day and someone asks for help, either, you know, to feed a family or to complete a creative project. And I just feel like, okay, at least I can get give $36 or $25 and feel like I, I did something positive in the last hour, even if my project is going terribly and I'm in a fight with my kid or something. So I have to keep in mind that, like, it is actually a privilege to give as well as a privilege to receive.

[A]

Absolutely right. So let's get back into your various creative projects. So the first thing I Wanted to ask you because you do have so many different form formats, I guess, and forms of your creativity. So how do you know when an idea that comes to you should be a song or something you want to do as a performance or written or a film or whatever. So tell us a bit about your creative process because a lot of your projects are also long, longer term.

[B]

Yeah, you know, I'm not much of a. It's funny, I love planning and in some ways I'm an extreme planner. Like I really drive people in my family bonkers with planning, like family vacations a year in advance. But in terms of my creativity, I'm very planful towards goals. But in that early generative state, I'm actually pure instinct. So I don't think I ever sit down and say I have this idea, which genre would it match with? It's more like I sit on my bed and pick up my guitar, which is where I love to do songwriting. Just sitting on my bed cross legged and I pick up my guitar and something starts coming out. And then I just work with that kernel. So it's very nebulous at first, very inchoate and I, I just kind of follow that, that creative spirit. And often I don't even know what a project is sometimes if it's a larger project until a year or two in. So once things kind of emerge and take shape, then my planning brain and my strategy brain can jump on it and say, okay, we need three more songs to fill out the album and we need to plan the fundraising and the scheduling. And then I might take more of a kind of, of outside in approach. But yeah, at the beginning it's just all instinct.

[A]

So if you pick up your guitar, does that mean it always starts in music and then say, goes into writing? Or is that you only pick up a guitar if it's going to be musical?

[B]

I think I'm responding to like what's inside me. I'm like, it's almost like a need as opposed to like I'm going to sit down and work. I'm. I mean obviously I sit down and work a lot, but I think in that early stage of anything it's more like, oh, my fingers are itching to play something. And so I sit down and pick up my guitar and sometimes nothing comes out and sometimes the kernel of a song comes out or I'm at a cafe and I'm just. I often like to write when I'm feeling a little bit like discombobulated, you know, just to sort of like go into the complexity of things or just use challenging emotions as fuel. I really do use it also as just sort of a. I don't know if therapeutic is the word, but I think it maybe is. Like, I write often to. As I always have, as I said before, to understand what I'm thinking. Like Joan Didion said, to process difficult emotions, to let go of stuck places. So I think I create almost more out of a sense of just what I need in the moment. And. And sometimes it's just for fun. Like sometimes, you know, picking up a guitar, I just kind of like, have a moment, so I just sit down and mess around. And sometimes it's to help me struggle with something. Yeah. So it doesn't always start in music. That was a random example. But I might sit down to write because I have an hour and I think, you know, I haven't written in a while. Or I do have a kind of daily, informal, daily writing thing where I'll try to generate one loose draft of something a day, even if it's only 10 pages. And I mean. Sorry, 10 words.

[A]

I was gonna say.

[B]

No, no. 10 words. 10 words. I'm sorry. It's often poetry, so it feels like a lot when it's 10 words. And so I'll just sit down with no pressure, no goal, no, no. No intention to make anything specific. Just kind of open the floodgates and see what comes out. And that's where every single project of mine has started.

[A]

Yeah, I do love that. And I mean, I've talked before. Obviously, I'm a discovery writer and intuitive, same as you. I think very much this sort of. Especially you said when you feel, like, discombobulated when you'll write. And I almost feel like I need that. Like, I'm not someone who writes every day. I don't do 10 lines or whatever. It's that I will. I'll feel that sense of pressure, like, building up, like, this is going to be something. And I will really only write or journal when that sort of spills over into. I now need to write and figure out, like, what this is.

[B]

Yes. Yeah. It's almost a form of hunger. I mean, it feels to me similar to, like, you know, you eat a great meal and then you're good for a while. You're not really thinking of it, and then it builds up, like you said, and then there's, like, a need. And so it feels much less to me in some ways, like, at least the first half of creativity. I really separate my generation and my editing. So my generative practice is all openness, no critique, just kind of this, you know, maybe therapeutic, maybe curious, just wandering and seeing what happens. And then once I have a draft, my, you know, incisive editing mind is welcome back in, which has been kind of shut out from that early process. And that's a really different experience. But those early stages of creativity are. Yeah. Almost out of need, more than obligation.

[A]

Yeah. Well, just staying with that generative practice as well. Obviously you mentioned your study of and practice of Jewish tradition and Jewish spirituality as well. And I wondered because Steven Pressfield in his books has talked about his prayer to the muse. And I've got on my wall here. I don't talk this very often, actually. I have a muse picture a painting of. I guess I think of her as like a muse spirit in some form. And so do you have any spiritual practices around your generative practice and that phase of coming up with ideas?

[B]

I love that question and I wish I had like a beautiful intentional answer. And my answer is no. I. I think I experienced creativity as its own spiritual practice itself. And I do actually love individual prayer and meditation and things like that. But for me those are more to address kind of my specifically spiritual health and happiness and connectedness. And to me, I just am a dive in kind of person even, you know, as a musician I have friends who have elaborate backstage rituals and I'm always just kind. I have to have to do certain things to take care of my voice. But even that, it's mostly vocal rest as opposed to actively doing things. And I'm just sort of like. There's a bit of an on, off switch for me.

[A]

Yeah, that's interesting. Well then I do want to ask you about one of your projects, which is this collaboration with a high school on a musical performance. I was a desert Songs of the Matriarchs. And also you've got this Girls in Trouble songs about women in the Torah. And on your website. I had a look at this at the school, the high school and the musical performance. It was extraordinary. I mean, it was just amazing. I was sort of watching you in the school there and this is just extraordinary work. And it very much inspired me not to do it myself, but it was like, it was just so wonderful. I do urge people to go to your website and just watch a few minutes of it. And you know, I'm inspired by elements of religion, Christian and Jewish. But I wondered if you've come up against any sort of issues with adaptation, sort of respecting your heritage but also reinventing it. Like how has this gone for you? And any advice for people who want to incorporate aspects of religion they love but are worried about? Responses?

[B]

Well, I have to say, coming from the Jewish tradition that is a core practice of Judaism is reinterpreting our texts and traditions, wrestling with them, arguing with them, reimagining them. I don't know if you're familiar with Midrash, but just in case some of your readers aren't or you aren't, there's essentially an ancient form of fanfic called Midrash, which was the ancient rabbis, and we still do it today, taking a biblical story that seems to have some kind of gap or inconsistency or question in it and writing a story to fill that gap or to sort of recast the story in an interestingly different light. And so we have this whole body of literature over thousands of years that are these sort of alternate or added on adventures, side quests of the biblical characters. So what I'm doing from a Jewish perspective is very much in line with actually a traditional way of interacting with text. I've certainly never gotten any pushback, and especially I work in progressive Jewish communities. So I think if I were in an, you know, extremely fundamentalist community, that there would be a lot of different issues around gender and things like that. But the interpretive process, even in those communities, is part of how we show respect for the text. I mean, when I was working with the high school, I just want to call out the choir director, Ethan Chessen, who has an incredible project where he brings in a different artist every two years to work with the choir. And they tend to have a different cultural focus each time. And so he invited me specifically to do, to integrate my, you know, songwriting about biblical women with his amazing high school choir. And I was really worried at first because I thought like, they're, they're not, most of them are not Jewish, very few of them, if any. And I wanted to respect their spiritual, you know, paths and their religious heritages and not impose mine on them. And so I spent a lot of time at the beginning saying, like, this project has religious source material, but essentially it is a creative reinterpretive project. And so I am not coming to you to like, take the religious material to you. I'm coming to take the sort of, you know, myth of it, the shared Hebrew Bible myths, and then reinterpret those mysteries, myths through a lens of how they might reflect our own personal struggles. Because that's always my approach to these ancient stories. So I wanted to really make that clear. To the students, it was such a joy to work with them at Camas High School in Camas, Washington.

[A]

Yeah, and it's such an interesting project, that one. But also I find with musicians in general this idea of performance. So you've written this thing or this thing specifically with the school. It doesn't exist again. Right. You're not, I presume, like selling CDs of that. I mean, whereas compared to a book, when we write this book and we can sell it like forever, it doesn't exist as a performance generally for an author of a memoir like you or novel, whatever, it carries on existing. And so how does that feel with the sort of performance idea versus the sort of longer lasting thing? I mean, I guess that video's there, but you know what I mean, the performance itself itself happened.

[B]

I do know what you mean. Absolutely. And we did for that reason. We recorded it professionally. So we had the sound person record it professionally and mix it. And so it is available to stream. I'm not selling CDs, but it's like out there on all the streaming services. So if people want to listen to it. And I do have the scores, so if a choir wanted to sing it. But the main point that you're making is so true. That live performance, I think that's actually something very sacred about live performance is that we're all in the moment together and then the moment is over. And I mean, I love the artifacts of the writing life. I love writing books, I love buying and reading books and having them around. And there's piles of them everywhere in this room that I'm standing in. And I also love that sort of pure. I mean, I feel like being on stage or even teaching is a very spiritual practice for me because it's sort of, in some ways for me the most in the moment I ever am. The only thing that matters is what's happening right then in that room. And it's kind of fleeting as it goes. And I'm working with the energy in the room while we're there. It's different every time because I'm different. The atmosphere is different, the people are different. And so there's no way to plan it. The kind of micro precision that we all try to bring to our editing. You can't, you know, you can practice all you want want and you should, I guess, but in the moment, who knows, a string breaks or there's loud sound coming from the other room and it is just a basic one of those kind of. I love being reminded over and over again. Of the truth that we really don't control what happens. And the best that we can do is to sort of, you know, ride it, surf it, be, be in it, appreciate it, and then kind of let it go.

[A]

Yeah, I think maybe I get a glimpse of that when I speak professionally. But I'm very. I'm far more in control in that situation than I guess you were with. I don't know how many was it like a hundred kids in that choir? It looked pretty big.

[B]

It was amazing. It was 130 kids.

[A]

Yeah, 130 kids. And the. Yeah, I mean. And it was magic listening to it. And yes, of course, showing my age there with buying a CD, aren't I?

[B]

Well, I do still sell some CDs of girls in trouble on tour because I have a bunch of them and people still buy them. And I'm always so grateful because it was an easier life for touring music when we could just bring CDs. Now we have to be very creative about our merch.

[A]

Yeah, that's a good point because people are like, oh yeah, I'll scan your QR code and download your stream or whatever. But you don't that you might get the money for that. No, no time. And it might just be 5 cents or whatever.

[B]

As opposed to streaming is terrible for live musicians. I mean there's, you know, I don't know if you know the site Bandcamp, but it's essentially self publishing for musicians. And so Bandcamp is a great way around that. And a lot of independent musicians use that because that's a place that you can upload it and people can pay $8 for an ALB. They can stream it on there if they want or they can download it and have it. But yeah, it's hard out there for touring musicians.

[A]

Yeah, for sure. Well, let's come to the book then. So your memoir. When we're Born we forget everything. So tell us about some of the challenges of a book as opposed to these other types of performances.

[B]

Well, I come out of poetry, so that was my first love. That's what I majored in in college. That's what my MFA is in. And poetry is famously short. And I'm not one of those long form poets, so I have been trained for many years to think in terms of a kind of one page arc, if at all. You know, arc isn't even really a word that we use in poetry. And so to write a full length prose book was really an incredible education. I mean, I feel like writing it, which basically took. It took 10 years from writing to publication, so probably seven years of writing and editing. I felt like there was a sort of MFA equivalent process of the number of classes I took and books I read and work that went into it. So that was one of my main joys and challenges, was really learning on the job to write long form prose, coming out of poetry, and how to kind of keep the engine going and how to think about ending one chapter in a way that leaves you with some torque or, you know, kind of momentum, so you want to go into the next chapter. And how many characters is too many? Who gets names and who doesn't? Some of these things that are probably pretty, pretty maybe basic for fiction writers, but we're all very, very new to me. So that, that was a big part of my process. And then of course, poets don't usually have agents, so once it was done, I began to query agents and that was, you know, it was the normal sort of 39 rejections and then one agent really understanding what I was trying to do. And she's incredible. And was able to. To sell the book. Yeah. So, and the longevity of just working on something for that long, I. I have a lot of joy in that longevity. But it does. Does sometimes feel like, is this ever going to happen or am I on like a fool's errand?

[A]

Well, and I guess again, the difference with the performance, like you have a date for the performance and it's like it's done then. And I suppose once you get a contract, then for sure it has to be done. But memoir in particular, you do have to set boundaries because of course your life continues, doesn't it? So what were the challenges in curating what went into the book? Because many people listening, I guess memoir is very challenging in terms of. Terms of how personal it can be.

[B]

Yeah. Yes. And one thing I think is so essentially fascinating about memoir is choosing which lens to put on your story, on your own story. So, you know, I heard early on, like, the difference between autobiography and memoirs. Autobiography tries to give a really comprehensive view of a life, and memoir is choosing one lens and telling the story of a life through that lens, which is such a beautiful creative concept. So I knew early on that I wanted this to be primarily a spiritual memoir and also somewhat of an artistic memoir because my creativity and my spirituality are so intertwined. It started off being spiritual and also about my musical life and also about my writing life. And in the end I edited out the part about my writing life because writing about writing was just too solipsistic. So there's nothing in there about me coming of age as a writer, which used to be in there, but that whole thing got taken out, and now it's spiritual and. And musical. And I think, for me, it really helped to start with those focuses because I knew there may be things that were hugely important in my life that were absolutely foundational, that were not really gonna be either mentioned or gone deeply into in the book. And, like, for example, my husband teases me a lot about, like, how few pages and words he gets. So he's very important in my life. But I actually, you know, met him when I was 29. And this book really sort of of mainly takes place in the years leading up to that. There's a little bit of sort of winding down the first few years of my 30s. But this is not a book about my life with him. This is a book about earlier life. And he is, you know, mentioned in it. That story's in there. So I think having those kinds of limitations around the canvas, there's a quote. I forget if it was Miranda July. Somebody said something like, basically, when you put a limitation on your project, that's when it starts to be. Be a work of art. So whatever it is, if you say, I'm taking this canvas and I'm using these colors, and that's when it really begins, is that initial limitation. That was very helpful for me.

[A]

Yeah. And it's also the beauty of memoir, because, of course, you can write different memoirs at different times. You know, you can write something about your writing life. You can write something else about your marriage and your family, like, later on. It doesn't all have to be in one book. So I think. I think that's. That's actually something I found interesting. And I would also say in my memoir, Pilgrimage, my husband is barely mentioned either, so. Does he tease you too? No, he. I think he's grateful. He's grateful for the privacy.

[B]

That's why I keep saying you should be grateful.

[A]

Yeah. You really should. Like, maybe stop talking now.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. I know. Marriage, memoir, those words should strike fear into his heart.

[A]

They definitely should, for sure. But let's just come back. I mean, you mentioned the agent there. Now, when I kind of look at your career, you just seem such an independent creative. And so I wondered why you decided to work with a traditional publisher instead of sort of being an independent. And how are you finding it as someone who's not in charge of everything?

[B]

Yes, well, it's a great question. The origin story for this memoir is that I was actually Reading poetry at a writing conference called Bread Loaf in the States. And this was 16 years ago or something. So I was at a poetry reading, I was giving a reading. And afterwards an agent, not my agent, an agent came up to me and said, you know, you have a voice. You should try writing nonfiction because you could probably sell it. And back to your question about how I support myself. I mean, I am always really sort of like hustling to make a living. It's not like I have some separate, well paying job and the writing has no pressure on it. So my, my ears kind of perked up. I thought, wait, getting paid for writing? Because poetry does not. There's, it's literally like not in the world. You know, it's just not a concept for poets. That's not why we write and it's not a possibility. So I sort of like a little, you know, light turned on in my brain. I thought, wow, that could be a really interesting, you know, element to add to my income stream and it would be flexible and it would be meaningful. And so for a few years I thought, what nonfiction could I write? And I came up with the idea of writing a book about biblical women from a little bit more of a scholarly perspective, because I teach that material and I study it. And I went to speak to another agent and she said, well, you could do that, but if you actually want to sell a book, it's going to have to be more of like a trade book. So if you don't want to have an academic press, which wouldn't pay very much, you would have to have like some kind of memoir stories in there to just sort of sweeten it so it doesn't feel academic. So then I began writing a little bit of spiritual memoir. Just I thought, okay, well, I'll write about a few moments. And once I started writing, I kind of couldn't stop. The floodgates really opened. And that's how it ended up being a spiritual memoir with interwoven stories of biblical women. So it ended up kind of becoming a hybrid in that sense. So I knew from the beginning that this project, you know, for all my saying earlier to you that I never plan anything and I only work on instincts, I was thinking, as I said, that that cannot be true. And I was thinking of like counter examination examples, but you know, this, I actually thought, wow, what if instead of coming from this like pure heart focused place of, of poetry, what if I kind of thought like, began writing with the intention of potentially selling a book. And the way that my fiction writer Friends talked about selling their books. So that was always in my mind was that, like, I knew that I would continue writing poetry, continue publishing on small presses, continue putting my own music out there independently. But this was a bit of like an experiment of what if I tried to interface with the publishing world in part for financial sustainability. So that, that, that was actually in there from the beginning. And because I had a full draft before I queried, I never felt like anyone was telling me what to write. You know, I think it would have. I can't imagine personally selling a book like On Proposal because I do need that kind of full capacity to just swerve, change directions, be responsive to what the project is teaching me. So I can't imagine promising that I'll write something because I never know what I'll write. But I think for me, writing at least a very solid draft, I'm always delighted to get notes and make, polish and rewrite and make things better. But I kind of took care of that freedom in the first seven years of writing. And then I interfaced with the agent and publisher.

[A]

Well, I was going to say, I mean, given that it's taken you seven to 10 years, years to do this, and I can't imagine that you're suddenly a multi millionaire from this book. So, I mean, it probably hasn't fulfilled the hourly rate that perhaps you were thinking of in terms of memoir, like being paid, I guess, for your work. I think, I think some people think that everyone's going to end up with the, with the massive book deal that pays for the rest of their life. But I guess this does just fit into the rest of your portfolio. Career.

[B]

Yeah. You know, one of the benefits of these long arcs that I like to work on projects is one of them, and probably the primary one is that the project gets to unfold on its own time. So I don't think I could have rushed it if I wanted. But the other is that it never really stopped me from doing any of my other work, you know, so it's not like, oh, I gave up months of my life and all I got was this advance or something. It's like I was living my life. And then when I had had a little bit of writing time, and I will say, like, it impacted my. Like, I haven't written as much poetry because I was working on this. So it wasn't like I just added it on top of everything I was already doing, but it was a pleasure to just kind of switch to prose for a while. And so it was, it was just Sort of woven into my life. I. I appreciated having this kind of side project where no one was waiting for it. There were no deadlines, there was no stress around it because I always had have performances to promote and due dates for all kinds of work. And it was just this really lovely arena of slow growth and play. And when I wanted a reader, I could do a swap with a writer friend or something, but no one was ever like waiting for it on deadline. So there's actually a lot of pleasure in that. And then I will say, I mean, I think I've made more from selling this than I think I've made probably close to 10 times more than I've ever made from any of my poetry, you know, so on a poetry scale, you know, it's certainly not going to pay for my life, but it actually does make a true financial difference in a way that, you know, much of my other work is a little more sort of like bit by bit by bit. And it actually is a different scale.

[A]

Well, that's really good. I'm glad to hear that. So I also want to ask you because you've done so many things, it's like there's so much stuff to ask, asking, but I'm fascinated by your independent film, A Kadish for Bernie Madoff, which, and I have only watched the trailer now. You're in it, you wrote it, directed it, and it's also obviously got other people in and it's fascinating and it's about this particular point in history and, and I think so many of us like, I've written quite a lot of screenplays, sort of adaptations of my novels. Some, you know, I've had some very various amounts of interest, but the whole film industry to me is just a complete nightmare, far bigger nightmare than the book industry. And so I wondered if you could maybe talk about this because it just seems like you made. You made a film which is so cool.

[B]

Oh, yes, thank you.

[A]

Oh, and it won awards.

[B]

Yes, yes. It really for. For an extremely low budget indie film. It went far further than my team and I could ever have imagined. So I will say I never intended to make a film film. Like most of the best things in my life, it really happened by accident. So when I was living in New York. I lived in New York for many years and I was living there when the 2008 financial collapse happened. And I happened to be. I had an arts grant that granted a bunch of artists a workspace kind of studio space in essentially an abandoned building in the financial district. It was an Empty floor of a building. Not the whole building, but the. The floor had been left by the previous tenant. And so there's a nonprofit that takes unused real estate in the financial district and lets artists work in it for a while. And so I was on Wall street, which was very rare for me, but for this year I was working on Wall street, even though I was working on poems. And you know, the financial collapse happened around me. And I did get inspired by that to create a one woman show, which was more of a theater show. So that was already a huge leap for me. Cause I had no real theater experience. But it was sort of experimental and it was kind of growing out of my poetry practice and my music. So it was a musical one woman show about the financial collapse from a spiritual perspective, apparently, basically. And so I performed that, I documented it. And then a friend who lives in Portland, Oregon, where I now live when I moved here, said, why don't you. I'm a theater producer, I'd like to produce it here. So then I rewrote it and did a run here in Portland of that show. And essentially I started to tour it a little bit. But I got kind of tired of it. It was too much work and it never really paid very much. And I was like, this is impacting my life negatively. I just want to do a really good documentation of the show. So I hired. I wanted to hire like a theater documentarian to just document the show so that it didn't disappear like you were saying before about live performance. But one of the people that I talked to actually ended up being a filmmaker, like an artistic filmmaker, as opposed to a document or a film documentarian, theater documentarian. And she watched the archival footage of just single camera of the show and said, I don't think you should do this again and film it with three cameras. I think you should make it into a feature film. And in fact, I think maybe I should direct it because there's all this music in it. And I also direct music videos. And we kind of had this mind meld. And so I never intended to make a film. But she is a visionary director. And I had this kind of piece of IP essentially, and all the music and the writing. And so we adapted it together. And I will say that we did it here in Portland. We did all the fundraising ourselves. We did not interface with Hollywood really. And I think that would be. I just can't imagine. I mean, I love Hollywood, but I'm not really connected. And I can't imagine waiting for someone to give us Permission or giving us a green light to make this. It was experimental and indie, and so we just really did it on the cheap. We had an amazing producer who helped us figure out how to do it with the budget that we had. We worked really hard. Fundraising, crowdfunding, asking for donations, having parties to raise money, and then we just did it and put it out there. And so I think my. My main advice, and I hear this a lot on. I love listening to screenwriting podcasts, and I often hear them so say just make the thing. Like, make something, as opposed to trying to get permission to make something, because really, unless you're already in that system, it's going to be really hard to get permission to make it. But once you make something, that leads to something else, which leads to something else. So even if it's a very short thing, or even if it's filmed on your phone, just actually make the thing. And that turned out to be the right thing for us.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, I feel like that is what underpins us as independent creatives in general. And, you know, as an independent author, I feel the same way. It's like, I'm never asking permission to put a book in the world. No, thank you.

[B]

Exactly, Exactly. We have a vision and we do it, and it's harder in some ways. But that sort of, you know, liberation of being able to really fully create our vision without having to compromise it or wait for permission. I think it's such a beautiful thing.

[A]

Well, we're almost out of time, but I do then want to ask you about. About, I guess, creative confidence, which I feel I'm getting sort of a lot of sense about this at the moment, with all the AI stuff that's happening. And I feel like when you've been creating a long time, like you and I have, we know our voice and we can lean into our voice, and we are creatively confident and we'll fail a lot, but we'll just push on and try things and see what happens. But newer creators are struggling with this kind of confidence. How do I know what is my voice? How do I know what I like or how do I lean into this? So give us some thoughts about how to find your voice and how to find that creative confidence if you. If you don't feel you have it.

[B]

Yes, I love that. I mean, one thing I will say is that I always think whatever is arising is powerful material to create from. So if a lack of confidence is arising, that's a really powerful feeling to directly explore and not just try to Necessarily ignore. Although sometimes one has to just ignore those feelings, but to actually explore that feeling, because, I mean, AI can't have that, right? AI can't really feel a crisis of confidence, and humans can. So that's a gift that we have, that those kinds of sensitivities. So I think to. To go really deep into whatever is arising, including the sense that we don't have the right to be creating or we're not good enough or whatever it is. And then I also always do come back to a quote. I think it might have been John Berryman, but I'm forgetting which poet said it. But a younger poet said, you know, how will I ever know if I'm any good? And this famous poet said something like, I'm paraphrasing, but something like, you'll never know if you're any good. If you have to know, don't write. And that has been really liberating to me. Actually, it sounds a little harsh, but it's been really liberating to just let go of a sense of good enough, like, there is no good enough. And the great writers never know if they're good enough. And it's coming back to this idea of just making without permission. It's actually the practice of doing the thing is being a writer and caring and trying to improve our craft. That's the best that. That we can have, and that there's never going to be a moment that we're like, yes, I've nailed this. I am truly 100% a writer, and I have found my voice. Everything's always changing anyway. So I would say either go into those feelings. Feelings, or let those feelings be there. Give them a little tea, you know, tell them, okay, you're welcome to be here, but you don't get to drive the boat and then kind of return

[A]

to the practice of making absolutely great. So where can people find you and your books and everything you do online?

[B]

Yes, well, everything is on my website, which is aliciajoe.com, a L I C I A J O dot com and also on Instagram at O Alicia. Joe. O H A L I C I A J O. And I'd love to say hello to anyone who's interested in similar talk topics.

[A]

Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Alicia. That was great.

[B]

Thank you. And I love your podcast. I'm so grateful for all that you've given the writing world to.

[A]

So I hope you found the interview with Alicia inspiring and interesting. And while I am not intending to write a musical performance based on my Masters in Death. I love how Alicia is weaving her faith and culture into these huge creative projects as well as writing books books. This kind of creative ambition is a wonderful thing. So let me know what you think. Please leave a comment on the podcast Show Notes at the creative pen.com or on the YouTube channel, or email me joannathecreativepenn.com also send me pictures of where you're listening or your favourite cemetery or churchyard next Monday. I'm talking about writing, emotion, discovery writing and slow sustainable book marketing with ros material Morris. In the meantime, happy writing and I'll see you next time. Thanks for listening today. I hope you found it helpful. You can find the backlist episodes and show [e-mail] podcast and you can get your free Author [e-mail] Blueprint if you'd like to connect, you can find me on Facebook and X at the Creative Pen or on Instagram and Facebook. FPEN Author Happy writing and I'll see you next time.