Sara Zarr On Choosing A Gratitude Mindset

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Are you curious about how to lean into the slower periods and making the most out of that time? How about learning more about publishing deadlines and how to best ask for an extension? Or strategies to help you move closer to your writing goals? We talk about it all and more with Sara Zarr.

Sarah is the acclaimed young adult author of Gem & Dixie, The Lucy Variations, Story of a Girl, and her upcoming novel Goodbye from Nowhere. She’s a National Book Award finalist and two-time Utah Book Award winner. Her novels have been variously named to annual best books lists of the American Library Association, Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal, the Guardian, the New York Public Library, and the Los Angeles Public Library and have been translated into many languages. She is a MacDowell Colony Fellow and has served as a judge for the National Book Awards.

Sara and I kick off our conversation discussing her emotional and courageous journey to becoming a full-time author and the importance of creating a life that supports your writing. She drops some real-talk on how to financially support yourself and your writing career and how to sustain it long-term. We then dive into the importance of community and a support system to lean on as your career evolves.

Further in, we chat about publishing deadlines and how to best make use of the low times during the publishing process to grow other projects or work other jobs to bring in more income. She shares her experience shifting publishers and editors for her book Gem & Dixie and how she stopped herself from going down the bitterness and resentfulness path and chose a gratitude mindset instead. We talk about how important it is to not compare yourself to others on social media and ration your social media use.

And later, we chat about her upcoming YA novel Goodbye from Nowhere and her first nonfiction novel Courageous Creativity. She shares the invaluable tip of removing expiration dates you’ve put on your writing goals. And we wrap up our conversation discussing her writing process and the steps that help get her writing flowing. 

Please say 'Hi' to Sara on Instagram! https://www.instagram.com/sarazarrbooks/

Head over to Sara's shownotes page at  https://88cupsoftea.com/sara-zarr to download her writing prompt and to find the resources and books mentioned in her episode, tweetable quotes, and the timestamps of highlights throughout the entire conversation.