90. Serializing Your Story on Substack with Memoirist Jessy Easton

What if you could publish your memoir or novel directly to readers as you write it? Writer Jessy Easton shares how she's serializing her memoir "The One Who Leaves" on Substack, building a dedicated readership while crafting her story in real-time.

We discuss the creative freedom of serial publishing, how it changes the writing process, and why connecting directly with readers can be both terrifying and transformative. If you've ever wondered what to write on Substack whether Substack or another newsletter or blog platform could be right for your work-in-progress, this conversation offers authentic insight and inspiration.

🎙️Find Jessy Easton's Substack here.

🎙️Find Nicole Meier's Substack here.

Transcript

THE WHOLE WRITER EP 90 - How to Serialize Your Story on Substack with Memoirist Jessy Easton

[00:00:00] Jessy Easton: As I started sharing, there was like this visceral release when people were just commenting and sending me messages and reading the story, and there was like this ripple effect that felt really powerful. And by reading my story, people were finding the courage to actually look at theirs and write theirs.

[00:00:20] Jessy Easton: That was a kind of resonance that I'm like, oh, this is what publishing is about. This is why this matters. This is so important.

[00:00:35] Nicole Meier: Welcome to the whole writer. A place where we talk about what it means to show up as a writer, not just a better writer or a more productive writer or a published writer, but a whole one. Someone who's grounded in their voice, in their community, in their creative path, even when the world tells them to hustle, compare, or conform.

[00:00:56] Nicole Meier: I'm Nicole Meier, a multi published author and book coach who believes that nurturing the person behind the page is just as important as refining the words on it. Each week we'll explore the terrain of riding life with honesty, warmth, and practical wisdom, creating space for you to write from a place of wholeness rather than depletion.

[00:01:16] Nicole Meier: Whether you're drafting your first manuscript or publishing your fifth book, you'll find conversation and companionship for the journey here. So settle in, bring your questions and your curiosity, and let's discover what it means to write and live with authenticity and purpose. Hello, listeners, today is very special because I am very excited to have this guest on today, Jesse Easton.

[00:01:43] Nicole Meier: I have been low key stalking her on Substack because I'm so incredibly inspired by her voice, her mission, and just her warmth that she brings so many writers in. Before we talk to Jessie and dive deep into all things I wanna read, just a quick blurb about her. So Jessie grew up in the Mojave Desert in a meth lab on the edge of nowhere, and riding saved her life.

[00:02:09] Nicole Meier: Her essays have been published in the Rumpus Good River Review and more her memoir, the One Who Leaves, is being serialized right now on Substack. Welcome, Jesse. 

[00:02:21] Jessy Easton: Thank you. You're welcome. It's funny when people, like when I hear like growing up in a meth lab, I'm like, yeah, that does sound like a lot. 

[00:02:30] Nicole Meier: Well, it doesn't define you, but it certainly makes for a rich memoir.

[00:02:33] Nicole Meier: Right? Right, exactly. I think it just set the trajectory for. Now. Right. I wanna get into all of that because one of the reasons I'm so inspired by you is that you really decided to take your own writing trajectory, if you will, into your own hands. And this is something that feels brave and true, but also very forward thinking.

[00:02:56] Nicole Meier: So let's kind of wind it back for people who are just getting to know you. You have said in your bio that I just read just now that riding saved your life. After, of course, growing up in a math lab in the desert. So could you maybe take us back to that moment when you first discovered writing as your lifeline?

[00:03:15] Nicole Meier: What did those early words on the page give you that nothing else could? Yeah, 

[00:03:20] Jessy Easton: I think for me, like I didn't even really like call it writing. I didn't even realize that's what I was doing, right. It was more like I was journaling. It was in elementary school, and it was just a way. I was kind of journaling like I was writing to somebody.

[00:03:36] Jessy Easton: It was almost like a prayer, and my parents weren't religious or anything like that, but it was like I was trying to commune with something or communicate with something that was bigger than myself and probably just looking for someone that I could count on. Since I didn't have that. I just didn't have that at home.

[00:03:55] Jessy Easton: And I think that the page became that for me. It always was. There always showed up and it was always dependable and it was safe. And that built in safety was just so special for me. And I still to this day, have such a powerful journaling practice. 

[00:04:13] Nicole Meier: I love that. I wanna stay on that for a minute because I've never heard someone talk about journaling as kind of a prayer.

[00:04:19] Nicole Meier: And to me that just made me feel something right in my chest because. Who doesn't need something that is a version of that, that feels safe, that feels consistent, that feels like they can put their truth on the page. And I love that you didn't even think of it as writing back then. Can you talk about like, is this something you now do every morning?

[00:04:39] Nicole Meier: Is this something that you feel like you've put your own sort of spin on how to journal? Can you talk about that a little bit more? 

[00:04:46] Jessy Easton: Yeah. Yeah. I do it every single morning. I don't have a set number of pages necessarily, but I try to do it before my son wakes up, before I do anything else, like right out of bed kind of thing, just to see what's there.

[00:05:00] Jessy Easton: I call it like a clearing, and it just clears out whatever is in my space that maybe needs to be like, oh. I mean, sometimes it's not negative things. Sometimes it's just gratitude, like really centering in on what. Is feeling good for me right now. Sometimes I have prompts that I kind of make up. I love journaling prompts, and obviously when I was a kid that was not how I journaled.

[00:05:22] Jessy Easton: But now I find myself gravitating more towards some kind of structure in that way of what I'm writing toward. But a lot of times writing for me is not about finding the answers. It's about just opening up more questions, seeing what's there underneath, keep going, what are the layers? What are the layers?

[00:05:41] Jessy Easton: And then also when I'm working on a project, that kind of journaling will also be really powerful for me because I can get that clearing out and then when I actually come to the page to write the thing I wanna write, I'm ready. And I'm kind of primed to do that. 

[00:05:55] Nicole Meier: I love it. I call it warming up the creative muscle.

[00:05:58] Nicole Meier: But you remind me of my friend Tracy Lang. She's also an author and she talks about her processes posing questions for herself every morning. And that is sort of reminded me of what you were saying, of what questions do these prompts bring up, what kinds of things do you wanna look at? And to me, that's a really honest way of staying true to.

[00:06:19] Nicole Meier: What's happening right now in your creative process as opposed to coming with a plan and making sure you answer specific questions you put out the night before. 'cause some people actually do that and it's, you say you're looking for structure, but to me it sounds like a nice blend of fluidity while you're journaling.

[00:06:34] Jessy Easton: Yeah. I think what it is, is the bridge to the structure because when I'm working on a project there is there, usually I struggle with structure. I had no structure growing up. So that is not something that's built in me. And so, yeah, I think when I'm going into a project I'm like, okay, like what am I doing?

[00:06:51] Jessy Easton: What's the why here? And so that is that bridge to get me there. 

[00:06:56] Nicole Meier: But yeah, 

[00:06:57] Jessy Easton: it's really 

[00:06:57] Nicole Meier: powerful. Okay. So we talked about how writing sort of helped you, or in the early days, when did you actually start writing essays and think about writing a memoir? Can you talk about that a little bit? 

[00:07:12] Jessy Easton: Yeah. It wasn't until so much later, so much later, I was on a whole different journey because I grew up in the Mojave, so I was in California, so as soon as I could, I escaped that place and went to LA and then I worked there as much as I could, got in the mix of things, and then I became a publicist at Atlantic Records.

[00:07:32] Jessy Easton: And so I was on this track for music, and the music business. Music was like my first love. I didn't even realize writing was a thing or an option. Then I met my husband, who is a musician. We met on tour, and he had been one of the first people, or probably the first person that I had ever told about my life, like my past.

[00:07:54] Jessy Easton: Everyone else, I don't like to say I, but I admitted the truth where I came from and just how things looked. I just didn't feel safe talking about it, and I was trying to not just protect myself, but protect my parents. I like didn't want anyone to see them in a negative light. But my husband, we had this bond.

[00:08:12] Jessy Easton: I mean, we've been together for 14 years now. So I had told him and he's like, wow, this is um, wild. He's like, you should write about it. He's an artist, like multi like medium artist. And so I'm like, okay, sure. But I didn't really know how to even access my past because I had kind of hidden from it for so long.

[00:08:33] Jessy Easton: And so I kind of avoided the whole concept of that for like another four years. And then. Yeah, I just finally started getting into it and just following the, I was like 29 30 and I am 39 now, so I've only been really riding in that capacity for about 10 years and yeah, I just like started, whatever memories had the most emotional heat for me is what I just dream of.

[00:09:00] Jessy Easton: Conscious just started getting down. And it was never to publish. That was not even in my realm at all. I don't think I would've written a single word if that was ever something that I thought I could do. I think just as a journaler. Just processing my life in that way, it built in that safety for me, and so I could easily pour my heart out on the page and that felt safe.

[00:09:21] Jessy Easton: So I always had the goal that I would be keeping it private. But then once I had gotten some people, friends or whoever to start reading pieces and they were like, wow, this is, you should try to get this published. And of course my husband's in my ear the whole time like being a cheerleader. So I'm like, okay, yeah.

[00:09:38] Jessy Easton: Like let's just see what happens. And so then I started going down that road. As I was writing the memoir, I started trying to get into literary journals and publishing essays That way felt like a nice little step. 

[00:09:51] Nicole Meier: Okay, this is really great. So you talked about the emotional heat and you talked about not having the intention or the motivation to be published, which is why I think your writing.

[00:10:02] Nicole Meier: Actually, I know because I'm one of your readers. Why it resonates with people is because you don't write as if someone is looking over your shoulder, and that's actually a very hard thing to do. So you were allowed yourself to be emotional. You were allowing yourself to be true, but you were also writing from the only place you knew, which was, this is my experience.

[00:10:22] Nicole Meier: I'm not filtering it for any sort of publisher or editor who's expecting pages. 

[00:10:27] Jessy Easton: Yeah, and I think I might say this on my sub deck somewhere, but like I really do write as if I'm writing into a black hole or writing, like I said, like a prayer, like to the universe or whatever, into the ether as if no one will read it.

[00:10:42] Jessy Easton: And then when I go to publish it, I just try to honor that same feeling and not let whatever those things that can come up fears or imposter syndrome or whatever else, because at the end of the day, it's the truth. My story. People don't have to like it, 

[00:10:58] Nicole Meier: right? Okay, so let's stay on that thread. Your work does focus on the things we're maybe not supposed to talk about.

[00:11:05] Nicole Meier: Maybe it's taboo. It's parts of our stories that are uncomfortable. So as a memoir writer, how do you even navigate that tension between protecting yourself and protecting loved ones? 'cause I know there is an element of that while still telling the whole truth, and I know that there are writers out there maybe me taking notes right now because it's really hard for people to do.

[00:11:26] Jessy Easton: Yeah. Like I said, I don't think the fear quite showed up right away for me, but it definitely showed up in the sense of my parents. I was just so afraid to hurt them because I love them and they had already carried so much guilt for my growing up and everything, and I just didn't really wanna make it worse.

[00:11:45] Jessy Easton: But as I started sharing, there was like this visceral release when people were. Just commenting and sending me messages and reading the story. And there was like this ripple effect that felt really powerful. And by reading my story, people were finding the courage to actually look at theirs and write theirs.

[00:12:06] Jessy Easton: And that was a kind of resonance that I'm like, oh, this is what publishing is about. This is why this matters. This is so important. Just like casting that net out for people. And one of my biggest things was that I really wanted. People to see that like love could exist and the kind of chaos that I grew up in and that like love doesn't just come in like a little tidy box.

[00:12:29] Jessy Easton: It can take on many forms. And the journey for me has been actually accepting that, accepting that two things can be true at once. Essentially, like love can show up in dark places and cannot be enough. That's what it was. So people really started to connect with that concept. And yeah, I just never really wanted to write my parents as villains because I just didn't see them as that.

[00:12:58] Jessy Easton: So I think the tension for me was really around what would they say? What would they think? So when I started writing the book. I told my family I was doing it. I told everybody and I interviewed them, my, like my parents and my brother and my uncle, my aunt, my grandparents, like everyone that would sit down with me.

[00:13:19] Jessy Easton: I just asked them questions about our life. Not in like a really sterile way, but I did have a tape recorder or whatever, like a little digital recorder, and I just, we just talked and we told stories and we laughed and we cried and it was great. So afterwards I transcribed them all. There were stories that were told over and over again, and most of those stories made it into the memoir 'cause it was like this collective thread that I felt really kind of beat through our family.

[00:13:45] Jessy Easton: And then there was a few stories that after people were like, oh, can we keep that private? And I honored that because they had already given me so much. And on top of that, I feel like they weren't integral to like the crux of the story anyways. But yeah, I think that my parents. Through interviewing them, it helped me understand where they were coming from and then helped them understand what I was doing, and they could see that I wasn't trying to necessarily throw them under the bus, but they could also see that they messed up.

[00:14:21] Jessy Easton: But I think this is like, I don't know, my parents have supported me from the beginning and my mom was one of my first readers and she read my whole manuscript. I gave it to her in like a box. And on the last page she wrote, I'm so proud of you, and you know, I, I couldn't you, you can't, I couldn't have dreamt that, right?

[00:14:39] Jessy Easton: It's just, I feel so lucky and I understand that like, that experience is so rare, and I don't think most people's families would be cool with them writing about them. But at the end of the day, it's your story, it's your experience, it's your truth. So you have to be authentic to you. And I think there is ways to do it in a way that's not necessarily hurting them, if you can.

[00:15:05] Jessy Easton: And all that to say too, like I still got some people and like messages from readers who had stuff to say about it. Like even to this day like that I'm exploiting my family or especially my mom or that I'm self-absorbed or whatever people are on about. But the judgy things that people say are often.

[00:15:26] Jessy Easton: More about them than you, so you can't really let others' voices and opinions into your writing and like your story and your truth, or it's like, well, we'll always be silenced. Right, 

[00:15:39] Nicole Meier: right. Okay. So that is so surprising to me that I guess it's not surprising it's the world, but it's surprising to me that you get pushback because.

[00:15:49] Nicole Meier: When I read your work and when so many other people read your work, there is a story message, if you will, of love, and I can only imagine that you must have interviewed your family with that same sort of energy of love. Otherwise, they would've brought the wall up and shut down and not answer. And I know you can't speak for your family members, but I'm wondering, did you get a sense that this interview process, this deep dive into everybody's backstory, did you get a sense that it was healing them too, to be able to talk about it?

[00:16:19] Jessy Easton: I think so. That's such a good question. And I also wanna thank you for seeing, for just naming and acknowledging the love that's coming through on the page in the memoir, because that was important to me to keep love at the center just because that was my truth. But yeah, I think it did. I think my mom, she wanted to see.

[00:16:42] Jessy Easton: Me see her, and so I think that she was able to see herself through my words, my eyes, my perspective. I think that was helpful. My dad was a little bit trickier because he carries, it just seems like he carries like more active guilt. I don't know if my mom's just better at disassociating or something.

[00:17:03] Jessy Easton: Right. But my dad is like, for a long time he was just like, Ugh, nah, we don't need to go. He didn't even wanna touch it. But over time, and I created that safety for us. And like you said, that he realized I was coming with love. Mm-hmm. And it was just to be like, yeah, let's talk about it. You know? Right. I remember when I asked him about the meth lab, like how he learned how to cook meth and how that all came about and like what was going on there.

[00:17:29] Jessy Easton: 'cause I was like six to eight or something, and. He was like, uh, what do you, you want, like, you wanna learn how to make meth? Like, what are you asking me? Like, he just didn't wanna, and I'm like, no, I don't need like a recipe. I just need, I just wanna know like, how did we go from like A to B? Like what was going on there?

[00:17:48] Jessy Easton: You know? So it takes a lot of patience and I was really lucky to be able to have that time to be able to actually talk with my parents. Not everybody has that. Not all the, their parents are not, maybe not even be alive, but are not open to even discussing. And so that took 

[00:18:08] Nicole Meier: time. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. I wanna circle back to some of the things we talked about about reader responses.

[00:18:16] Nicole Meier: But before we get there, can you share with the audience the decision you made? I don't even know if it's a chicken or egg, which came first of to get on Substack and then to serialize your memoir as opposed to. Being in the query trenches like we all have been, and it's a really hard process. Can you kind of talk about that?

[00:18:35] Jessy Easton: Um, well it was the last straw really. I wish it was. I could say that, oh, this was what I wanted from the beginning and this was the choice I made, and I was very empowered and that choice, and it was so great. No, I had gone through like almost five years of querying agents and I had gotten nearly a hundred rejections on it.

[00:18:58] Jessy Easton: And it was a whole long process. I have so many agents in my corner to this day who love the book and who love the story, but it's always goes back to it's not the right time. They can't sell it, like it's not gonna work in like where we are in the world. And so I don't really fully look at it as a loss because like I said, I have these connections with these amazing agents who.

[00:19:24] Jessy Easton: Are always inspiring me and hopefully I will write the next book and maybe that will be the thing. 

[00:19:29] Nicole Meier: Yeah, 

[00:19:30] Jessy Easton: well just the timing wasn't right. I started pitching, I started clearing March of 2020, so right when the pandemic hit. Yeah, it was just happened to be when the book was done, I didn't know how this was all gonna go down.

[00:19:43] Jessy Easton: It's just the luck of the draw and that happens sometimes. And obviously I had to move through a lot of self-doubt around rejection. Like my story doesn't matter and I don't, didn't feel valued. All these things, but as I built relationships with the agents, that really wasn't what it was. And I had a few people who had said, well, maybe if you fictionalize it, we could find a spot for it.

[00:20:07] Jessy Easton: Just 'cause memoir is so much harder to sell. There's like literally less shelf space. There's all these like, you know things. So I just didn't wanna do that. I could've, but I didn't want to. I had worked so hard on it being true and I kind of was like. I'm done with the project. I didn't wanna have to revisit everything again.

[00:20:26] Jessy Easton: I already worked for it to be what it was. So instead of it just sitting there doing nothing, that is when I decided to put it on Substack and the serialization just seemed like a really fun way to do it and to connect with readers. And I think my big thing too, is why I wanted to publish it. Was you don't really get into book publishing for the money.

[00:20:49] Jessy Easton: For me, I was getting into it for the connection. I want to connect with more people and I figured traditional publisher would be able to cast a wider net. So with Substack I was like, oh, I can like be one-on-one with my own readers. Like, that is so special. I can't believe this is a good thing. And so that's kind of how that came about and why I wanted to go that route.

[00:21:11] Nicole Meier: Yeah, I'm so happy you're sharing this because that is why we write. We write to connect full stop, and someone else is looking for external validation, which many of us are. It's not gonna give you the same sense of fulfillment as hearing back from a reader who said, I feel the same way. This happened to me too.

[00:21:29] Nicole Meier: Or, tell me more because I'm so engrossed in your story. And honestly, Jesse, I will tell you, I mean, I've been gushing about you a lot on this podcast. When I read your why you wrote a certain Substack post before you start Serializing saying why you were choosing to do this. I didn't know you. I hadn't read your writing.

[00:21:48] Nicole Meier: I didn't know what level of storytelling you were bringing to the table, but I immediately pressed that subscribe and pay button, and I just said, I'm in because I would've purchased a book at a bookstore for the exact same price. And I felt like this, to me feels so brave. And so right now. I was in like, you didn't need to sell me on anything.

[00:22:08] Nicole Meier: I just was so invested already because you were so endearing and inviting with your message. And I think a lot of people, I mean, I didn't look at your follower account, but you have a lot of followers who feel pretty much the same way I do. So kudos to you for that. Thank you. It's 

[00:22:24] Jessy Easton: like, ugh. I know. It's hard to get compliments.

[00:22:26] Jessy Easton: It's so hard to, to like, I'm trying to increase my capacity to hold compliments. Yeah, thank you. Especially after so many years of rejection, I'm like, wow, it's good, right? 

[00:22:37] Nicole Meier: Yeah. And once I got into it, you know, I am a developmental editor by trade, so I can tell you, I would've never invited you to come onto this podcast if I was like, uh, I don't know.

[00:22:45] Nicole Meier: Her writing's not that great. Your writing's beautiful. It's stunning. And your storytelling is up to par. So. Yes. Yay for you. But I'm also thinking about the listener in the back of my mind thinking, okay, not all the listeners understand what Serializing is. They don't understand Substack, so can you share exactly how you do it?

[00:23:05] Jessy Easton: Yeah, sure. So. Substack. So I have it set up. So every week there is a chapter that goes out to my paid subscribers and I went back and forth on whether or not it goes out to my free subscribers or just my paid. And I settled on paid because I did work really hard on it, and I did end up getting.

[00:23:24] Jessy Easton: Professional editors. I got to work with one of the editors who worked on the Glass Castle, which was such a dream of mine because I'm obsessed with that book. Incredible. And so I'm like, this is my work. So I was like, this is great. So I did the paid tier and I made it the price of a book, essentially, because I wanted it to be accessible to people.

[00:23:45] Jessy Easton: So they can subscribe and pay $5 a month if they want and just like feel it out, see if it's their vibe. Or they can pay $20 for the year, and then they get the whole book. And like all of the chapters up to this point, we're about halfway through are all there on Substack and you can read them at your leisure.

[00:24:02] Jessy Easton: And then the next ones, every week a new one comes out. And so it will take over the course of a year. And then I also have audio to each chapter. So I read each chapter and add that in for people. It's so funny 'cause I'm not an audio book person. I love language and I need to sit with the words and the flow of the sentence at my own pace.

[00:24:22] Jessy Easton: Like I will just stare at the same sentence for like way too long. 'cause it's just so beautiful. Or I'm just taking it in. But if I do see that an author reads their own work, I'm like, oh my God, I've listened to the audio book too. 

[00:24:35] Nicole Meier: Yes. 

[00:24:35] Jessy Easton: So I just like to have that as an offer. 

[00:24:37] Nicole Meier: Yeah. And some people really do better listening to audio books, so that's amazing.

[00:24:42] Nicole Meier: So incredible. Yeah, 

[00:24:43] Jessy Easton: and it's fun because my husband does the editing of it, and so he puts, he adds like a little, he does instrumental music and um, well he does all kinds of music, but one of his instrumental music he created for one Chris, is a little side note, but it's so cute. So for the Christmas that I was working on the memoir, he created a whole album of instrumental songs that I could write to, so that I could up the memoir to, and each song.

[00:25:10] Jessy Easton: Was inspired by and named after favorite lines that I had underlined in my favorite books. And it was just such a beautiful, and I still, I write to that album every single day. So he took one of the songs from that, and it's a bookend at the end of each little chapter that I read. And I just love it. I love to be able to collaborate with him and his music has been such a big player in me writing it because it's such a big inspiration to write to it.

[00:25:38] Nicole Meier: That is incredible and incredibly touching. I mean, honestly, it is so important to have a partner who gets it, but to go a step beyond that, the music aspect of it makes it even more intimate and special. Oh, I love that so much. Yeah. Yeah. No, he really sees me. Let's talk about the reader response. We talked about some of the not so great responses, but I'm sure that completely is small and compared to the big reader responses, can you share what it's been like for other people to mirror back to you, your work, their responses?

[00:26:15] Nicole Meier: What has that been like? 

[00:26:16] Jessy Easton: It's been surreal after having just the memo, more just sitting in a box essentially for five years. I never knew if it would ever see the light of day. And now that it's actually out in the world, it's resonating with people and it really is just validating that like, yeah, this happened and this story matters and people are really getting it.

[00:26:40] Jessy Easton: And I think one of the biggest things for me is that it's not just that they're like, oh, me too, or I feel less alone because I'm reading this story. It's also. They are processing their own stories and their own pasts and all this hard stuff through reading my story, that just blows my mind. Like I didn't even think that that was a possible thing.

[00:27:03] Jessy Easton: And it's like, of course it is. 'cause that's how I've done it as well. I read memoirs and it helps me get to the center of mine and it kind of builds my courage and it is just beautiful to be able to be that for someone. And then. To be able to actually speak to them and connect with them on that level is even greater.

[00:27:22] Jessy Easton: I started getting messages from people who were talking about how hard it is to actually write these stories and access these parts of themselves and these parts of their past, and so I went back into like, oh, what were the tools that I really use, still use, and especially use when I was beginning and I created, I call it the Fear to flow framework, and it's kind of like this.

[00:27:44] Jessy Easton: Body-based somatic framework that you go through to help you move through the fear as you're writing into your hard stories without totally losing yourself in the process, which I did in the beginning. Like my nervous system was just totally flooded all the time, and I didn't have the tools at first, but I over time had gave them.

[00:28:04] Jessy Easton: And so I kind of gave that as a thing. And then I also, a lot of my, as the stuff that you've read is around writing the hard thing. My host a weekly. Just like a writing prompt, like a grounding and writing prompting that we do every week too. Just get people to at least touch their story in a time, in like a short container and in a way where their body still feels safe as they do it.

[00:28:26] Nicole Meier: Yeah. Beautiful. Okay, so the fear to flow techniques and your prompts and having people show up, this is for people who subscribe to you on Substack and you've developed a community of sorts. Is that correct? 

[00:28:40] Jessy Easton: Yeah. Most of that stuff is free. Right now for my paid is just the memoir. I'm in this place where I, it's just community is so important to me.

[00:28:49] Jessy Easton: We're all in this together. Yeah. Like I know a book is done and it's going out in the world, but I've been in the same exact place as people are right now, and I will be alone because I'm gonna write another book. There's always things happening. When I went through my birth trauma, I was like, oh, not the beginning of this.

[00:29:04] Jessy Easton: Again. It was a different story, but the feelings were the same. So it's a collective experience. 

[00:29:10] Nicole Meier: I love it, Jesse. It's amazing. And I was gonna ask you if this has taken you any unexpected places, but I'm going to guess that all of these new community members and people sharing and working together and creating probably feels like an unexpected gift.

[00:29:26] Jessy Easton: Oh, absolutely. It's the connections. For me, writing can be such an isolating and solitary thing, and I kind of love that about it. And if there's times when it needs to be that, but then when you get to the other side. It just feels so good to be heard and just witness it feels so good and to be able to do that for others.

[00:29:47] Nicole Meier: Yeah. 

[00:29:47] Jessy Easton: Amazing. 

[00:29:48] Nicole Meier: Well, while we're talking about all of these incredible offerings that you have for people, can you share where they can find you, how they can follow along? Because I think some people are probably not only gonna wanna follow along, but join in some community offerings that you have. 

[00:30:02] Jessy Easton: Yeah, I'm mainly on my substack, so it's just Jesse Easton on substack.com/jesse Easton, and my substack is called afterwards.

[00:30:10] Nicole Meier: Love it. 

[00:30:11] Jessy Easton: I'm also on Instagram. 

[00:30:13] Nicole Meier: Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing everything. This was incredible, and I'm such a fan, Jesse, and I know so many others who are listening or reading your work are fans as well. So please keep up the good work. We can't wait to see what comes from you next. Thank you so much, Nicole.

[00:30:31] Nicole Meier: Thank you. Okay, listeners, thanks for joining the whole writer and we'll see you next time.

[00:30:41] Nicole Meier: If you want to check out my coaching programs for fiction writers, visit nicolemeier.com. That's M-E-I-E-R. And if you like this episode, I'd love you to take a minute to leave a rating and review for this podcast. This will help more writers like you to discover the show and to get going on their writing journey.

[00:31:01] Nicole Meier: Thanks so much for listening. Until next time, happy writing everyone.