Unleashing Your Inner Storyteller with Autumn Karen
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Cathy:Welcome to Late Boomers, our podcast guide to creating your third act with style, power, and impact. Hi. I'm Cathy Worthington.
Merry:And I'm Merry Elkins. Join us as we bring you conversations with successful entrepreneurs, entertainers, and people with vision who are making a difference in the world.
Cathy:Everyone has a story, and we'll take you along for the ride on each interview, recounting the journey our guests have taken to get where they are, inspiring you to create your own path to success. Let's get started.
Cathy:Hello. I'm Cathy Worthington. Welcome to the Late Boomers podcast. Today, we're gonna talk about writing and storytelling. And we have as our guest writing coach and ghostwriter, Autumn Karen, who is also a filmmaker and college professor.
Merry:And I'm Merry Elkins. Many of you boomers out there, including me, are working on books or screenplays or memoirs. Autumn has a lot to say about her work as a ghostwriter and how she helps people create compelling narratives that resonate with audiences. Welcome, Autumn.
Autumn Karen:Thank you so much for having me, Marianne and Cathy.
Merry:I'm so excited to be here. Great to have you.
Cathy:Great to have you. And how has your own life experience led you to the work you're doing on film and with ghostwriting and with your writing students today?
Autumn Karen:Well, one of the big things about my own life experience is that, like, my I grew up we were just talking about my mom before we started recording, but I grew up with my mom and grandmother telling stories. So I grew up with single mom, and and my grandmother raised us. And they were forever talking to people, like, at yard sales, and they would invite people in off the street. And everywhere we went, like, as kids, we'd be like, mom, come on. We have to go.
Autumn Karen:And mom would just be listening to someone's life story, like, standing in line at the grocery store, and we would always just tug on her. And so that is where a lot of the storytelling for me comes from, and we, of course, sat around telling stories in the family. We had a really strong strong network of women in my family. So my grandmother was one of seven sisters, and the sisters, five of them lived in the town that I grew up in. So we would go, like, visit them every Sunday after church, sit on their couch and eat hard candy and hear stories about their lives.
Autumn Karen:And so that is really, like, where storytelling came from for me. Was like sitting on their their couches listening to them and my grandmother talk about their childhood. Oh, what a great way to grow up. It was a great way to grow up. Absolutely.
Cathy:Did they grow did they all grow up in North Carolina? Where did they all grow up?
Autumn Karen:They are all from North Carolina. So my grandmother grew up in a she was born in a little mill town called Oxford, North Carolina. And when the Great Depression hit, my great grandfather put them all in a truck. There were nine kids, two boys and seven girls. Two of the kids stayed in Oxford.
Autumn Karen:The other seven got on the truck. She was nine years old, and they, like, drove to Roanoke Rapids, which is where the cotton mills were in North Carolina. And they gave her a house, gave the family a house, which is the same house I grew up in. And then all the sisters lived there. They all worked in the cotton mills, so she had to quit school when she was 14 to go work in the cotton mills.
Autumn Karen:And Oh. And then I grew up in that same house. So they all all the sisters except for two had to quit school and go work on the cotton mills, and then two got to go to high school. And, and one actually ended up in LA. One of them, she Oh.
Autumn Karen:She was the youngest. She ended up going to art school and landed in Santa Monica and used to, like, do animation and, drawing work out in Los Angeles. So she's, like, the one who got away.
Cathy:Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. Very interesting. For me because my my mother grew up on a farm outside Greenville, North Carolina.
Autumn Karen:Oh. So
Cathy:Yeah. Girl,
Autumn Karen:that's right here and there.
Cathy:And her mother never left the state of North Carolina in her whole life. The kids went out, but two of the kids never left also. You know, there were eight kids that survived. So big family like that on a farm. So it's very interesting to me to hear that.
Cathy:But how did how did all of that it I hear you talk about the storytelling, but how did that lend itself to film and ghostwriting and the other things you do?
Autumn Karen:So ghostwriting was an accident. I started out college as an actress and, then decided that wasn't I wanna do something more meaningful. Ended up getting my bachelor's in women's health and then went on to get I know. Like, it's it I look back on it now, and I was, like, terrible. But that's what at the time, I was like, I have to do something that, like I was like, I wanna go join the Peace Corps.
Autumn Karen:I wanna, like, do something. Ended up getting my master's in special education and was working in special ed, but, I was the primary breadwinner. And, you know, my partner at the time, he's never liked having a job. Like, he's just never been his thing. So so I started doing work on the side because I had four kids and had to feed them.
Autumn Karen:And teacher salary is just not enough, not even close. So I started writing online. I started writing lesson plans, and then turned that turned into blogs and that turned into ebooks, and then I ended up working for a vanity press. So a lot of it was just necessity. Like, I found out that I was good at it.
Autumn Karen:And people ask how do you write so many words? It's like when you have to feed the kids, you can suddenly finish projects. Like, it's That's true.
Merry:For a lot of people. Well, tell us tell our audience actually what ghostwriting is and what it takes to get into this field of work because I know several people, that's their main career.
Autumn Karen:So ghostwriting is when you write in the voice of another person, and I jokingly call it professional lying because I write it and then someone else publishes it as though they wrote it. And, you know, it is a lot like acting when I teach ghost writing at the university level and in the book that I have coming out later this year on ghost writing, I really talk about it being the marriage of method acting and of creative writing and then of relational interviewing from anthropology, which I learned a lot about in my undergrad. And in that sense, I really see ghost writing as being a conduit in a in very anthropological, sociological terms That I am the conduit for someone else's voice who cannot articulate it in a way that it needs to be articulated. So it's almost like a a social sciences tango on ghostwriting.
Merry:I love that.
Cathy:It's yeah. It's a very interesting take on it. Yeah. Well, when you see
Merry:I just wanted to say, is it is it different when you're writing a book or a screenplay or adapting a novel to the screen, or is there any difference, or is it all basically the same process?
Autumn Karen:Screenplays are, first of all, gloriously different. Books are such long form content and we want to sit and simmer. Right? You want more detail. When I'm writing a novel, a memoir, that kind of thing, I want more detail.
Autumn Karen:So you're kind of digging deeper and deeper and pulling the words out. Screenplays are so fast, and you have to, like, get in and get out and you have to cut things. So I would say that in some ways, screenwriting is more truth maybe than than book writing because there's just not time. You have to just get to it, and I really like that. So when we talk about adaptation, adaptation is a real thing.
Autumn Karen:So if you go see, like, a book ad a movie adaptation of your favorite book and it's so different, that's because they're substantively different mediums. So you can't it cannot be the same and it shouldn't be the same. So, yeah, that's I think that answers your question, Mary. Yeah.
Cathy:Yeah. I know people always say, oh my gosh. The movie isn't nearly as good as the book. Well, yes. They have to cut, like, at least half of it, maybe more, to make it into a movie.
Cathy:It was like but when you sit down with a client as a ghostwriter, what is your process? Do you how do you work with people to produce a product in which you can both take pride? So
Autumn Karen:let me say, first of all, I really don't have an ego in it when I'm ghost writing. So a product that we can both take pride in, I don't really think of it that way. I really am a conduit. And it's kind of the same thing raising my own kids. Right?
Autumn Karen:I'm always telling my kids, I don't care what you do when you grow up, as long as you find something that you're passionate about. It doesn't matter.
Cathy:And so
Autumn Karen:I'm gonna support you in anything. And the same thing is with ghost writing. We can talk about form and content and we certainly I won't, like, push people towards let's get to the heart of it or I I'll I'm I'm working with a client right now. I'm like fighting for them to keep something in that's very vulnerable in their book. I'm like, I think that this needs to stay in.
Autumn Karen:I think it speaks a lot to your authenticity. But at the end, if they decide to cut it, that's their choice. Like that's completely it's their piece. It's not my story. So I'll I really I mean, I don't think that I'm parenting my clients, but in some ways, it's similar in that sense.
Autumn Karen:And when I start working with a client, we always start with goals. Like, what do you want out of this book? What do you when somebody puts your book down, what is the feeling you want them to have? Because they're driven by feelings. Stephen King talks
Cathy:about Great place to start. Yeah. Great place to start. Yeah. Is there a quote from Stephen King that you give to people?
Autumn Karen:Well, there's a there's a sentiment from Stephen King, which is that people engage with his reading with his books the first time to feel, and the second time they read them to think. So we want to engage them in the feeling place first. It all starts with emotion.
Cathy:Mhmm. That's
Autumn Karen:why I start with clients and then we kind of back out of, like, what story do we want to tell because it is not your whole life. Like, I am sorry. As long as books are, I'm always like, we can write more books, but we can't put it all in the first one. It just won't fit. So
Cathy:let's not start. I get it. I get it. Even with the
Merry:memoir, you can't do that either. But, well, but how do you first of all, my question to you would be, do they always have, like, an outline or have they written something before, or do you go in when they they call you and say, I'd like to write a book about, please come help. How does that work?
Autumn Karen:It completely depends on the person. So I have done every possible iteration of this. I have a more recent client who I wrote nothing. They only wanted me to be there as a standing board, and that really becomes more developmental editing and writing coaching. So I do that where I don't write any words.
Autumn Karen:I wrote a I wrote a book for a client who left, like, a really famous cult a few years ago. I mean, he was like, oh, Netflix and all those things. And I wrote every single word of that book. Like, they were not really involved in it. It was completely
Cathy:fascinating.
Autumn Karen:Turnkey and, I've had clients like that where I just invent, like, whole swaths. Wow. I recently finished a book for a client when we were towards the end and, they were actually not the one that hired me. Someone else hired me, and they passed away right before we were done. And so I'd they had given their blessing on most of it.
Autumn Karen:Right? But the last few chapters was really me and their family, like, wrapping it up. So Oh. You can work with kind of anything. I do I've done had had it happen a few times where I have had somebody come to me with a book that they had paid somebody to write previously and they weren't happy with it, and then I will rewrite it.
Autumn Karen:So in that case, I have, like, a whole lot to work with. It just we can do anything.
Merry:Yeah. Well, how but how do you stay how do you balance staying true to someone else's story, their real life story, and and at the same time, create a narrative that's engaging and dramatic that'll capture the reader's attention?
Autumn Karen:I think it's more about arranging puzzle pieces. I don't believe, generally, in memoir, especially in writing Cradle to Grave. So we are not gonna start with your birth and, like, end with where you are. It's not how it's gonna go. I do tend to have like, I wanna open strongly with any kind of book.
Autumn Karen:So whatever is a really impactful moment you know, I've started books with, like, a client's spiritual experience or suicide or, like, the birth of a child or something. Like, we wanna open the book. So, really, where that comes in is more structure because voice is a different thing. Mhmm. Wow.
Autumn Karen:And so we structure things in a way that really speaks to them. And I will be honest that I don't I don't really believe in, like, rigid morays and writing. I I'm not I mean, I'm an English professor. You know? I don't I don't believe in, like, this is how books have to be.
Autumn Karen:So I always experiment. It's like, what what sounds good? What feels good? I worked with a client on a book last year. He is he just retired from Boston Ballet and he has a tremendous life.
Autumn Karen:And we ended up structuring his book through intersectional identity based on the work of Audre Lorde. And so it was like, we're gonna retell the chapters of your life through the lens of being a dancer, being a Vietnamese man, being a gay man, being a father, being in love, like and so you kind of retold the stories because that's how he talks.
Merry:Oh, I love that.
Autumn Karen:So it's more of, like, let's capture how you tell your story and then put it through the lens of of something else that kind of helps us to structure it. But how do you actually talk about your life? Because that's really interesting.
Cathy:Sure is. Yeah. That it's a really great way to look at it and, you know, the retelling. But if you're what about if you're writing fiction, but you use conflict from real, like, real life stories? Like, how do you weave fiction around those stories?
Autumn Karen:So that is, like, my favorite way to write in film, especially. I have a feature film in preproduction called nineteen ninety nine that is based on my life growing up in in Roanoke Rapids in a little small town and how my journey with my best friend, we kind of grew apart in large part because of, like, racial dynamics in our hometown and kind of that transition from high school to college. And and then it's all told through the lens of the films of 1999 because that's when, like Oh. And, so
Merry:All really are love it.
Cathy:Remind us what some of the films from 1999
Autumn Karen:Yeah.
Cathy:Are that you would mention.
Autumn Karen:It is, like, the best year in film, y'all. It's like the matrix and American Beauty. Although, I mean, American Beauty is problematic these days, but Fight Club, Sixth Sense, Wild Wild West. Oh gosh. There are so so many Varsity Blues, Cruel Intentions.
Autumn Karen:I mean, it was a huge year in film. Blair Witch Project. So it's kind of told through the lens of these girls, like, going to see movies and being obsessed with movies and then how do their lives diverge. And then we tell that through film as well. So, so there's that and then I currently have it in production.
Autumn Karen:I'll get started talking now.
Merry:When is death coming out? I wanna see that one.
Autumn Karen:That one is in preproduction. We are hoping to shoot it, summer of twenty twenty six when school is out. That's the
Cathy:problem. Oh, it's a while from now.
Autumn Karen:It's a while. Preproduction long and then that's because we currently have in production a short film that is based on my experience losing a child to epilepsy and it's animated.
Cathy:Oh, my.
Autumn Karen:Yeah. So it's I've actually had a meeting with the animators this morning. It's in production, and Infinity Care is kind of sucking up the air out of the room for the moment. We have lots of other projects going on, and I have four there are four of us, And they also have projects. We're doing a documentary on CRPS and InfinitiCare in 1999, and then we're running a film contest, script contest.
Merry:Oh, boy. You are a
Cathy:busy lady. Very busy lady. Yes. And tell us about the types of conflict in real stories that you've ghostwritten.
Autumn Karen:So so I'll start with, Infiniti Care in terms of conflict. InfinitiCare is a short film that focuses on the intersection of grief and capitalism. And the conflict is external in terms of we we go through the loss of this little girl to epilepsy and the seizure that kills her. So that's external conflict. But then the mother has a deep level of internal conflict because the little girl is severely disabled.
Autumn Karen:And so there is a conflict between her desire to have an able-bodied child, which is a really common conflict that special needs parents experience, and then also loving the child that she has. Like, loving the child in front of her, but also wishing that she didn't have these struggles. And so anytime we have conflict in something that is ghostwritten, we're always looking for that internal conflict and external conflict in a real person.
Merry:Mhmm. Yeah.
Cathy:I get I get it partly, but I leave it to you to be the expert on that. It sounds very complicated.
Merry:Well, that's but we all are that way as human beings. There's always an internal and external trying
Cathy:to write it down.
Merry:Very and without without always saying what it is. Right?
Cathy:Yeah.
Merry:So talk about ethical considerations, when you're using a real life experience, either your own or others' experiences.
Autumn Karen:So the big ethical thing is kinda like doctors, we wanna do no harm. And sometimes, we talk about fictionalizing things. Sometimes that does mean fictionalizing in order to protect people. And I always tell clients, it is perfectly fine for us to, like, stretch things or change things slightly if you want to protect people. I had a case of that with a client couple years ago with a book.
Autumn Karen:There was this very violent act that happened in their life, and the people involved, had we written it that way, would have been, like, hurt, would have been if this had been public that it was within the family. So I rewrote it so that it seemed as though it were outside of the family, but we still got that emotional resonance. So we still got that external conflict and we still got to see not the entirety of the internal conflict for the person, but at least some of it. Mhmm. So that's a big ethical concern.
Merry:Can you give an a real an example as far as perhaps to go deeper into detail perhaps with that or another story?
Autumn Karen:Oh, gosh. I have so many nondisclosure agreements. Yeah.
Cathy:Oh, of course. Don't don't violate anything like that.
Merry:No. Don't. Don't.
Autumn Karen:No. I am super I am super careful with my disclosures. In terms of internal conflict and external conflict, oh, that that's a hard one. The one that I can actually talk about in more detail, than that. Okay.
Autumn Karen:Well, I can so I can talk about the book that I wrote for James Hart Stern. He was the black preacher who took over the KKK from a prison cell. And one of the things in his book was how he how we characterized him and his relationship with Edgar Ray Killen because he did not he didn't want to characterize it as any more than it was. Right? It was kind of like a a line to toe, and James was like a very earnest guy.
Autumn Karen:He passed away from bladder cancer in 2019. So but he was an incredibly earnest and open man, and he wanted to lay it bare, but also to really characterize Killen in the way that he believed was authentic. And that was that was challenging because we don't really see any instances, like, we're we're looking for an ideally, if I were fictionalizing this, ideally, I would find some kind of redemption for this man. Right? If I were writing him as a as a character, I would find some kind of redemption for Killen.
Autumn Karen:And that's what I, like, I wanted to, like, I kept looking. I was like, surely, he's a human. There must be some redemptive quality. And there was not. And so there was I mean, the guy needs to be that way.
Autumn Karen:There was not. He was a he was a stone cold killer and, and a horrible racist. And so I kept looking as I was writing that book, and I kept asking James. I was like, well, certainly, like, we could find something to humanize him. And we had many, many sessions working on my book, and it just was not to be.
Autumn Karen:It would have made it a more interesting book, but it was not true. And so I had an obligation, obviously, to the truth. She never, like, humanized him.
Cathy:Mhmm.
Merry:Oh, that's it's so hard to find that in a human being because somewhere along the line, the person thinks they're doing the right thing. Don't they?
Autumn Karen:Oh gosh. So for those not familiar with Killen, Killen committed the Mississippi burning murder. So he murdered three young civil rights workers in 1964 and then he confessed another 32, 30 four murders. It's been a blast since I've looked to Stern while they were in prison together and he wrote this down in letters that James came out with. I don't I don't think so.
Autumn Karen:I I don't think that there was any part of him that thought that it was there was any moral imperative. I think that he could do it, and he got away with it for, you know, thirty years before he was even brought to justice. So I I don't know. I never got the from from James and from all the, like, listening that I did to interviews with Killen and things like that. I never spoke to Killen myself.
Autumn Karen:So, I can't say I have firsthand knowledge. But yeah,
Merry:that's interesting.
Cathy:What would you say is the key to capturing the original writer's voice when ghostwriting? And how do you ensure your work captures their message and voice and and therefore has impact?
Autumn Karen:I will say some of it comes in what other people might consider, like, bad writing. I think that, a lot of people and I've actually had clients I have had clients who I depart ways with because I I believe the grammar is a social construct. And I as much as we want clarity, there's things like passive voice, right, or the use of, prepositional phrases, things like that. Like, I'm like, I can get rid of all of that. Like, I I know how to do all that, but that doesn't sound like a real person.
Autumn Karen:And so you have to get rid of some of it. I mean, there is some of it that you have to, like, you have to pull up passive voice in order to for there to be clarity. But then I also think you have to leave it in or else it doesn't sound like the person. One of the biggest ethical conundrums I think I've had as a ghostwriter is when I have clients who were like, want me to make it sound like they they contextualize it like, I want you to make me sound smart. And so they'll, like, have me go in and, like, rewrite things in a more academic tone.
Autumn Karen:And I'm like, that's not your lived experience. Like, you're they they might be a high school dropout. I'm like, that doesn't make your experience less. So you're trying to, like, mold yourself, and I think that's disingenuous.
Merry:That's a writer's dilemma, like, totally across the board. You all
Cathy:Even when you're making up a character. Right, Mary?
Merry:Oh, damn.
Cathy:You're making up a character, you have to be careful how their voice is. Right?
Merry:Absolutely. And they could be very academic, that particular character, but other characters, not. Especially these days because we all speak in a different colloquial as to this tone. So
Cathy:Yeah.
Autumn Karen:Yeah. So that's the I think that that's a it's a big challenge. And when we're trying to capture someone's voice, I think it's very important to break the rules. I work with a lot of people and traditionally have worked with a lot of non English speakers. So I'm like, the it's English is their second language.
Autumn Karen:Not non English speakers. English is their second language. And I feel like the cadence of their language is so beautiful. I'm like, it's so beautiful the way that, like, the Arabic language or Vietnamese or whatever, like changes the way that you phrase things. And I wanna preserve that.
Autumn Karen:And if that makes it sound awkward in the book, okay. Like, so it's authentic and interesting. But people often disagree with me on that. Yeah.
Merry:Well, talking about challenges Yeah. Talking about challenges, talk about the biggest challenges writers faced when starting or finishing projects, and how do you coach clients to get through those roadblocks?
Autumn Karen:So the biggest piece is to have some kind of community accountability. You this does not happen in a vacuum. I don't work in a vacuum. I am actually a little bit stuck on a book right now for a client. Their their story is tremendous, and I have not feel like I have my my hand it's it's the only book that I'm working on right now.
Autumn Karen:I'm working my ghost writing book, but it's the only memoir that I'm working on right now. And I'm just like which is unusual. I've never only had one memoir before. I usually have two going. And so it you have to have community.
Autumn Karen:And the way that I get around these things is to have somebody else read the work. And that that is a honestly, that's a universal writer's block remover, is to have somebody else come and read it. And usually, like, the people I deliver it to are not gonna say mean things because I know who I'm giving it to. I know that they're gonna give me constructive. They're gonna say, hey.
Autumn Karen:This part's really interesting, but I wish that I knew more about that. And then it's like, oh, okay. Well, now I can see where I have an opportunity. Whereas I couldn't right now, I don't see my opportunity in this book, so I have it out with a client with a friend. And, that that's the biggest pieces of community.
Autumn Karen:Think people think that you, like, sit down in front of the laptop and you just, like, bang it out. And there is some of that. And, like, I use Pomodoro timers and I've got, like, timing techniques and meditation techniques. And, you know, when I have workdays, I'll, like, block out whole days. And my partner, he knows that, like, I'm pieced out, and he, like, he's very supportive.
Autumn Karen:He'll, like, bring me snacks
Merry:and things.
Autumn Karen:He's like, I know you're just gonna be on the couch all day with your Pomodoro. So I block out time, but then mostly, I have to have community. It just doesn't work otherwise.
Merry:I I laugh because I'm identifying with everything that you said.
Cathy:Yeah. Mary, work on that community part. It's a good piece. Mhmm. Yeah?
Cathy:Can can you also tell us what it takes for a writer to stick with his or her writing until it's done? And and also the editing process.
Autumn Karen:So, this is, this is a paraphrase of William Kenauer whose book I've been teaching for many years in writing classes. Writing is an act of radical self self acceptance. You have to just accept who you are as you are writing. And if you're gonna get to the end of the book, you have to have to like yourself. Like, you have to like what you're writing.
Autumn Karen:You have to follow your interests with within whatever written work it is. And even as a ghostwriter, you know, I am essentially following my own interest. I recognize we talk about the ethics of it. I recognize how much of me is in these books, even when they don't have my name on them because I am still engineering. What question I ask this is what I teach my ghostwriting students.
Autumn Karen:The question that you ask a client is gonna lead them in one direction or another, and that will it's like the butterfly effect. Right? It changes everything. So, and now I've forgotten your question. Like, what about
Merry:k. But but what will I'm
Cathy:just asking what it takes to stick with it till it's done. Any editing process. Yeah.
Autumn Karen:Yeah. So is that active radical self acceptance? As far as the editing process, I I find that I'm a heavier editor in screenplays. In all honesty, in books, by the time I get to a finished draft with a client, we have workshopped it so heavily along. I don't usually have big edits on books.
Autumn Karen:And that's because, like, I'm a pre planner, so when I write with someone, you know, we get started. And And then the first thing that I give them is we'll spend several weeks, maybe even several months talking and I'm gathering information. And then I puzzle that information into a structure and outline before we start. So I don't, other writers might disagree. I don't really edit books.
Autumn Karen:Like, I I don't I've seen I've done that with other people, but when I'm working myself, we front load it so that it's like going downhill on the other side. And you're not, like, trying to figure out, does this chapter go here or there? It's like we've already outlined it. Like, we know exactly. And and then we've already like, I have a the memoir that I have right now, they're looking at a draft of most of it.
Autumn Karen:There's, like, about a third of it that I'm, like, stuck on. I'm like, I don't even know where we go. I gotta figure this out. Even though I've got it outlined, I don't think it's one instance where I think my outline is bunk. I'm like, I just I dropped the ball on this one.
Autumn Karen:This outline sucked. Yeah. I need to, like, rework it.
Cathy:Wow.
Autumn Karen:So but yeah. No. It does. And some of it is with that particular book, it started out, like, chronologically and that was, like, that was the way that it made sense. And the further and further we've gone, I'm like, this book really needs to be idea based.
Autumn Karen:Like, it's not the reader's not it's too their life is so freaking interesting. I wish I could talk about them in more detail, but I have nondisclosure. Their life is so interesting. Of course. Well, I I yeah.
Merry:A question. What kind of questions do you ask the writer, in order to produce a book? What kind of questions should the writer be asking themselves? You mentioned it earlier about what's your goal, but what else?
Autumn Karen:So this is where relational interviewing comes into play. Relational interviewing and anthropology, and I really base mine on the work of Lian Fuji, who's a tremendous anthropologist. We are letting them lead. So I might start out with an idea and then I am engaged in active listening and responsive questioning. So if we start to go down one road, like if I'm like, tell me about your childhood and you focus in on the relationship with your father, then we allow that to evolve.
Autumn Karen:So maybe it starts out with you talking about your father when you were chill when you were a child, and then suddenly you're talking about he's got dementia now. And and then it becomes about that, and it becomes about you in the modern day. So allowing that to lead. The other thing is that books are made of stories. They're made of scenes.
Autumn Karen:So you have to have you have to actually tell stories. We have to have, like, beginning and middle and end. So I need to hear what, I need to hear the story about you and your mom cutting flowers in the backyard. And I need to hear you may not remember exactly what kind of flowers they were because we're gonna fictionalize that if you don't, but what is your recollection of it? And you might say, oh, they were these big white flowers.
Autumn Karen:And who will actually know? Maybe you'll never remember what exactly the flowers were, but, but we'll describe them in detail. But we have to have a scene. You have to have like an actual story. You can't just be like, I grew up here and then I went there.
Autumn Karen:It's like, no, I grew up in a brick house on the corner and there were always cars going by because then I can describe the cars and then I can describe and then you have to give me a beginning, middle and end. Like it's not even enough to set that scene, you know? And then one day a car was driving down the street and they ran into the yard and almost hit the dog. Like, then that then comes the story.
Cathy:Mhmm. And then
Autumn Karen:we had to put up a fence. Like, whatever. You have to tell me an actual story.
Cathy:Yeah. Mhmm. Good example.
Merry:Yeah. Detail. Detail. Detail. Detail.
Merry:So when are you most satisfied with your work? And tell us what you think is important in order for a story to inspire the reader.
Autumn Karen:Well, again, it all comes back to emotion. You have to we have to tie what the person is reading to some kind of emotion. So, right, if the car came into your yard and, like, drove into your yard and it didn't bother you, then there's no point in telling that story. Right? But if the car came when you were sitting right next to your dog and it made you feel something, then we can make the reader feel something.
Autumn Karen:So that's so important, which is why and this is true of every book I've ever almost every book I've ever written. I don't know. I wrote a book on farm finance once, so that one probably started differently. But the but the books I the memoirs I work on, we start with something very deeply emotional. And that's what, like, what is the reader gonna feel?
Autumn Karen:I've written a lot of nonfiction. Like, I'm looking up at my shelf because I've got a whole shelf that y'all can't see on the other side of the room. There's all the books I've ghostwritten that, like, I, like, I can't turn the camera around because that's all my nondescript listening.
Cathy:Oh, wow.
Autumn Karen:On the shelf. But so some of them I have written, like, real estate books or, like, I wrote a book on, blended families once and, like, it was very practical. And those are a little different. But for memoirs, you want them to feel something just like when you feel something when you're sitting around the table with your parents or with your kids and you're telling stories about your life. Right?
Autumn Karen:We want to have that kind of sense of sitting around the kitchen table telling stories, and that's how you reach readers.
Cathy:Mhmm.
Autumn Karen:If you are connecting, like, a human life to another human life, that's why AI doesn't work. And AI is never gonna work because because it's not connecting a human life to another human life.
Merry:At least right now. I
Autumn Karen:don't think it can do it. I don't think it can do what we do. I do think that there are there are places that can be helpful. Like, I'm I'm not, you know, if I'm like, I don't know. Like, it's certainly helpful for coding or, like, it can help me, like, with my calendar.
Autumn Karen:Like, there's very, like, great logical things you can help me with. But
Cathy:Yeah. Yeah.
Autumn Karen:This is not coming for us. Not not as a substantive way.
Cathy:Yes. Well, I'm glad you feel that way. Wish I were more sure about that. But, Autumn, tell our audience what you'd like to have them have as a takeaway today.
Autumn Karen:My biggest takeaway is that your story matters. You may not think that it does. You may think that nobody wants to hear it, but there is somebody who needs to hear whatever story you're trying to tell. The difference in the work that I do, both as a filmmaker and a book writer, is that we find platforms. I help people find a platform to tell it.
Autumn Karen:But that's really privilege. And when we talk about the ethics of it, it is a privilege to be able to tell your story because not everybody has that level, has that ability to tell them. There's a reason that out of 28 books, I think 24 of them I have written for men. And it's because women have less money. Like, women tend to have, like, have less disposable income to pay my fee.
Autumn Karen:So I always think about what a privilege it is to be able to tell your story. So that's my takeaway.
Merry:I love that. We all have our
Cathy:own voices,
Merry:don't we? And and every voice can be inspirational. I love that. Thank you. Thank you, Autumn.
Merry:Thank you for for our audience and for me and late boomers. Our guest today on late boomers has been Autumn Karen, filmmaker, ghostwriter, and college professor. You can reach Autumn via her website, autumn karen dot com. And that's Autumn spelled like the season, a u t u m n, Karen, k a r e n, dot com. Thank you.
Cathy:And tune in next week when we will be meeting Anmol Singh, a consultant in the trading and investing industry. Well, really flip switch. He has advice for all of us on how to be a success in life. Please subscribe to our Late Boomers podcast on YouTube, and take us along in the car and on walks on your favorite audio platform. Let us know what gets you inspired.
Cathy:We are on Instagram at I am Kathy Worthington and at I am Mary Elkins and at late boomers. Please share the late boomers podcast info with your friends who may not yet be listening to podcasts. Thanks again, Autumn.
Autumn Karen:Thank you so much.
Cathy:Thank you for joining us on Late Boomers. The podcast that is your guide to creating a third act with style, power, and impact. Please visit our website and get in touch with us at late boomers dot biz. If you would like to listen to or download other episodes of Late Boomers, go to ewnpodcastnetwork.com.
Merry:This podcast is also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and most other major podcast sites. We hope you make use of the wisdom you've gained here and that you enjoy a successful third act with your own style, power, and impact.
