The Creating Pros Podcast

Randee Dawn reports on entertainment and lifestyle stories during the day for publications including Today.com, NBCNews.com, Variety, The Los Angeles Times and Emmy Magazine, and is a speculative fiction writer by night. We talk about her career, what the media side of life is like, covering celebrities and entertainment, and how it influences her fiction!

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone celebrating in the States.
 
This week, I'm building on the last few. I want to touch on Gratitude. Real thankfulness. What is it, and how can it help us? How can we find it, and build it in ourselves?
It's gratitude, not platitudes.

Humility may not be a term often used about me, but this week we build on last week's exploration of Imposter Syndrome. What is humility? Where did the term come from, and what does it mean today in the world of social media? How can we be creative, run businesses, and yet have humility?
Why is humility a tool in the Imposter Syndrome toolbox? What does it mean for our mental health?

Everyone faces imposter syndrome at some point, some more than others. This week we dive into what it is, how it manifests, and techniques to manage it.

Melisa Todd joins me to talk this week about her move to becoming a full time author and publisher, what it's like to complete a series now that she is completing her second series, her popular "Twisted Luck" urban fantasy series and how it's different from wrapping up her Sci-Fi series "The Kaylid Chronicles," the grief process you experience as an author when you complete a character's journey, and her upcoming talk at '20 Books to 50K' on grief and the creator's journey. This one gets deep and personal.

This episode brings us up on a year since the relaunch of CP! This week, I touch on the three things I think are the biggest learnings for me, and some of the most meaningful conversations of the last year!

Creative businesses, like all businesses, runs by the numbers. Rachel E. Carr (RachelECarr.com) is an accountant and auditor by day, and an author by night. She joins me this week to talk about accounting, royalties, taxes, budgets, and the benefits of creativity in your professional life. 
 
 

This week is a short, but important one.
 
Have clarity and intention in what you say, and do.

I recently taught a workshop at DragonCon 2023 on side hustles. With a full room, we ran through the fundamentals of a business, starting your ideas, and ideas around marketing. A common factor to all of these is the question, 'What's your why?'
The reason you look to go into business, especially starting creative ones, often is your motivation behind the work. Join me for a deeper conversation on how your why is one of the most important questions.

Cleveland was home to Superman's creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. To celebrate Superman's 85th anniversary, locations all over Cleveland are hosting talks and events from September through November 2. Co-director Valentino Zullo joins me to talk about Superman’s Cleveland, and event for everyone: comics fans, families, scholars, history buffs, and all lovers of the culture of the greater Cleveland area.
 
He is also co-director of Superman's Cleveland, a city-wide Superman Celebration, American Editor of the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, co-editor of Rust Belt Studies, and has written articles on comics and psychoanalysis for various journals.
 
Valentino Zullo is Assistant Professor of English, the Anisfield-Wolf Fellow, and a member of the Rust Belt Humanities Lab at Ursuline College. He is the co-director of the Get Graphic program at the Ohio Center for the Book at Cleveland Public Library where he was the Scholar-in-Residence. He is also co-director of Superman's Cleveland, a city-wide Superman Celebration, American Editor of the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, co-editor of Rust Belt Studies, and has written articles on comics and psychoanalysis for various journals including The Journal of Popular Culture, INKS: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society, and American Imago:  Psychoanalysis and the Human Sciences.