Megan Preston Meyer, Author, FIREBRAND

  Welcome back, friends, to our podcast, Unlocking Your World of Creativity. And we go around the world talking to creative practitioners about how they get inspired and organize their ideas, but most of all, how they gain the confidence and the connections to launch their work out into the world. And today we're stamping our creative passport in Zurich, Switzerland, and our guest is Megan Preston Meyer.

Megan, welcome to the show.

Thanks, Mark. I'm really

glad to be here. It's a fantastic part of the world. And no, wait, do I read in your bio that you live in Switzerland, but you don't ski?

I don't ski. Yeah, I have been skiing exactly one time in the past 11 years that I've lived here. And it's just not my thing.

I hike. But I'm just, if I'm going to go downhill, I would rather go at a controlled speed.

There you go. Oh, control is good. Megan is a former insights and analytics manager, and she's got her MBA in this field, and she's even started her PhD in operations management. But for the last bit of time here, she's really converted that knowledge.

To a creative pursuit, not only in books, but all sorts of stories. And Megan, I'd love to start with this line that you have of telling the stories that the data doesn't always tell what is your creative passion about telling stories?

That's, I think that's exactly what it is. The data so like you said, I have 10 years in supply chain and insights and analytics, and I was always the data girl at work.

I always had a spreadsheet open, I always had a query running, and I always had piles of numbers around me. And I realized, first of all, that the numbers tell half the story at best. You can't do anything with the results of an analysis until you interpret it. And I found out that while I was good at the kind of the techie stuff, I was much better at the communicating insights part of the job.

And so I decided one day to go full bore into communications and work on that storytelling and work on. more authentic storytelling, because I think if you're trying to tell a story around data, often you, regardless of what the data says, you've got your agenda in mind, you've got the punchline in mind, and you create the story to head to where you want it to go.

Regardless of what the numbers say anyway, and so I thought if I'm going to tell stories, I'm just going to, they'll be fiction and I'm not going to, I'm not going to hide behind anything else.

I love that. I think all the listeners can relate. We've been in those meetings where I already have the answer.

Now I'm going to give you a backup and justify or find the numbers to support my point of view, right? Exactly. Yeah. Congratulations on your latest book, Firebrand. And this is a novel, a mystery with corporate elements. Tell us a little bit about the work, the book, and how you were inspired to write it.

Alright,

Firebrand is the first installment of the Corporate Elements Mysteries, and it follows a girl named Current Kepler, who has just gotten her MBA and her first big corporate job, and has to solve a mystery. So there's definitely some elements some autobiographical elements. I too got my MBA.

I too went into my first couple of corporate jobs fighting this imposter syndrome, cycling between imposter syndrome and overconfidence. I didn't ever have to solve a mystery. So that part I, that part of the plot I had to stick in there. But there's a lot of me in the book, a lot of my corporate experience in the book, and then also just a lot of, I don't want to say parody or satire of the absurdities that you sometimes encounter.

I like to call it an homage. It's a campy loving look at the weird situations that we find ourselves in the weird environment that corporate culture can put us in and the ways that people deal with it that is not necessarily authentic.

Yes. And considering your Minnesota upbringing and education.

There's a little bit of that Midwest Minneapolis corporate culture built into the story right as a backdrop.

Absolutely. Yep. So current first big job happens to be at the corporate headquarters of Alpine Chalet Coffee Company, which is the Midwest's second largest coffee shop chain, second only to Starbucks, we would presume.

And and Alpine Chalet Coffee Company may bear some resemblance to another Midwestern coffee chain out there. But it also, what I like about it I gave it a sort of Swiss Twist. So it's got so the Switzerland theme comes out a little bit in

there as well. Yes. The chalet part, not just the woodsy cabin that I think about what that, as you say, the other coffee shop.

Exactly. So I love the fact that it's a mystery. And do I dare say a murder mystery? I don't want to give the plot away. But but there's also this sort of, as you were describing the work life balance issues, the millennials work issues. You were able to weave all of that in the mystery story.

I tried to, I think actually I, what I probably more realistically did was wove the mystery into the work life balance, the millennial's experience of work. Yeah. Yeah. I figured it was, so I wrote the book, honestly, the bulk of it, I wrote in 35 minute chunks on my commute into the office on the train when I when I was working in Zurich and so a lot of it, I probably wrote three times as many words as made it into the final version, but the ones that I threw away were most of they were, it didn't read like a diary, but it was, here's how I'm going to put my kind of humorous take on what happened at work yesterday.

And I realized yeah, that might be, there might be a couple of funny little anecdotes I can stick in there, but people are going to get bored if it's just, here's what Megan did at work, vaguely, very thinly veiled, and then stuck into a novel. So I tried to to stick to the more universal themes of corporate

life.

And the names were changed to protect the guilty. I Love this craftsmanship. We love to tell the behind the scenes stories here on this podcast and writing it on the train. And I love that it's not just a half hour. It's 35 minutes. The data girl certainly knows how long the commute is, right?

But tell us about how. That worked out for you. Were you like writing towards a certain outline? Were you writing towards a plot? Or were you, as you say, almost diary just recounting the stories?

I Did have an outline. I did have no, I don't think I can even call it an outline. I had a plot and a structure and I knew where I was going, but One of the things so I actually I've always been a good writer, but I'm a very good editor.

And so a lot of what I do a lot of my process is just getting as many words down as I can. And then basically what I did on my 35 minute commute is I just wrote and wrote to give myself a almost like a block of marble. And then when I went back and did the editing, I could sculpt out the actual book.

And so it wasn't, I knew when I was, the, I got on the train and I was just going to basically type until I got off the train. And then the actual art, if you can call it, that came much later when I was In the second or third draft. Yep.

Yes. And how then did you set yourself up for editing?

Some people say, I need to write so many words a day, and you had the discipline of the 35 minute commute. But what about the editing part when you said, Oh my gosh, I have three times more words than I'll ever need. There's,

I go I don't have a very strict, I must write so many pages or so many chapters or get to this point in the in the book.

What I did was I would write during the morning commutes and then I would edit on the weekends. So that was, it was a man, a manageable chunk. So I wasn't going back and trying to, to thin down the entire book. So it's an ebb and flow. So a little bit of, a little bit of writing, a little bit of editing, and then getting to a point where I was confident to head on to the next scene or to the next actor, to the next place that I wanted to go.

And then comes publishing the book. And oftentimes this is a obstacle that keeps many writers from publishing the work, but you went the self publishing route and said, I'm going to get it done. And get it out there. I

did. I queried for six months and I decided I'm gonna I'm gonna give it a shot. I will see if I get an agent.

And I know myself enough to know that I could sit in any one of these stages. These interim stages. I could sit forever if I didn't give myself a deadline. I could edit forever. I could, I can't write forever. That's the only one that I'm not as good at, but I could have queried forever. I could have, revised forever.

I said, Nope, six months. And then I'm going to self publish. And then I did. And I am, I will say that I had a little advantage in the self publishing world because I've self published three children's books already. And so I know, a little bit about it. I had enough confidence that I could do it.

I still encountered all kinds of obstacles that I had no idea. A novel is a completely different animal than picture books but it was fun. I must say it's like anything else. There were definitely elements of. work in it, more work than passion but it was fun.

And having self published several books myself, but people ask me all the time, is it hard?

Is it easy? And I go and just as you described. It's a little of both. The word democratization certainly comes into play. You can take your book and you can publish it. Now you have to learn the rules of the road on on some of these platforms. But you took the time to learn the process and then get it done.

Yeah. Yeah. Very good. When you mentioned the children's books that you had published before. I'd love to get into that story too, because you talk about stories that data doesn't tell. These are supply chain books for kids. I love the mashup of these two ideas.

Yeah the kids books, they're the adventures of supply Jane and FIFO.

And so they follow a purple haired heroine and her canine companion as they go through little adventures that learn or that teach kids about supply chain or logistics or manufacturing principles. So each book takes one little, one little element and there is a lesson, there is an educational.

aspect to the books, but it's well hidden in illustrations and dragons and fun. So kids don't realize that they're being

taught something. Yes. It's one of my favorite headlines of the description. It's a dragon food factory. And so how do we make it distributed and supply Jane clears the way. I love that.

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. You really tapped into kids and their interests. And I guess that was the whole point. Wasn't it?

Yeah, it's to be completely honest, when I started, it was more just a, I thought it was funny. Like I came up with the name supplied Jane and thought, Oh, that's a cute little pun.

And then, Yeah. Yeah. A story just wove itself around there. And I thought, it was an afterthought where it was like, Oh, ha, this is funny, a kid's story about supply chain. And then I thought, I wonder if kids would actually like it. And it turns out that, quite a few of them do.

That's fantastic. And the other part then of self publishing is the promotion of the books. And first of all, congratulations, front page of the business section of the Minneapolis Star Tribune for your Firebrand book. Thank

you. Thank you. Yeah, that was really exciting. What

other sort of publicity and promotion efforts did you put behind the publications?

There's, there are a million blogs out there that will tell you, to be a self published author, to, to make a dent, here's how you need to game the Amazon algorithm. Here's how you need to, the exact timing of when you should have your reviewers leave their reviews. Here's what you need to be, you want to be optimizing all of your keywords.

And that stuff is important. I'm not going to say it's not. But I also, I thought, Hey, like I'm going to have some fun with this and I have always wanted a billboard from the time I was like, I remember, I think it was maybe like 22 years old. I was driving down the I 35 corridor and from Northern Minnesota to the Twin Cities, and I remember calling the number, the 800 number on a billboard one of those that said, you're this spot available.

And so I called them just to see. Like how much does a billboard cost? Because I had no idea, like how that worked. I can't I don't remember what they said, but I remember thinking, oh alright, I guess I'm not gonna have a billboard. But then, I somehow that idea came back to me.

Long story short, I was able to, um, to get two different digital billboards in the Twin Cities area. And advertise Firebrand for all of the Labor Day holiday travelers to see. I've no idea if it sold any books, but I took a couple of pictures and I got to see it and I was very gratified,

a vision come true.

I like that. Yeah. Terrific. Now that you've published this book and these books and you've seen how your creative spirit can be expressed, what's next? Are you thinking about more books? Are you thinking about more consulting back in the corporate side?

I'm thinking about more books, definitely.

The sequel to Firebrand is underway. It's going a little slowly because I don't have my 35 minute commute anymore. So I'll need to find, I'll need to create some sort of space for it 35 minutes at a time. But the sequel, Watermark, will be forthcoming. And then I have at least one more book in the trilogy planned.

In the corporate elements trilogy. And otherwise, one thing that I realized is I've been writing full time for about three years now. And I have done some some communications consulting and some workshops with some corporate clients, but I'm running out of those corporate anecdotes to go into the books.

And so I want to get back into it. I would love to just take a two week vacation back into the corporate world just to get my feet wet again and refill my little notebook of jargon terms and funny sayings.

Yes. What a concept to take a reverse sabbatical or a reverse vacation. We've had our space now, but just to say, I'm not trying to commit for life, but I need two or three weeks just to reinvigorate and reintegrate some of these experiences, terms, and stories.

What a great idea. Yeah,

I have this. I think this is, at least for me I, I'm not very good at balance, or I think the idea of balance is, I like to visualize it more as a wave. So a frequency. So sometimes you're very high, sometimes you're very low. And that evens out over time. It's just how quickly you can get your peaks and your troughs.

And I do that with a lot of elements of life writing and editing or writing and corporate life, the analytical and the creative. And I think it's all about finding the right frequency and. Right now I'm I'm, I've been spent a little too much time in the creative side.

I want to go back to the, use the other, the left brain a little bit

more. I love that. I love how one reviewer calls Firebrand replete with millennials, MBAs, marketing, and macchiatos. It's a nice blend and overlap. And I, as one guest put it recently, Venn diagram of experiences. But I wonder as we close, if you have any words of insight and experience, For people who might be in those left brain roles, the data driven does the supply chain, the operation side of things who really now want to express that creative side and dive into the right brain.

What what could you share from your experiences, inspiration and motivation for those folks?

The first thing is that the definition of creativity is very broad. And there are, I learned to embrace my creativity while I was in a very left brain role. And there are so many ways to be creative that don't mean being creative does not mean picking up a paintbrush or sitting down at a typewriter.

You can be creative in the way you solve problems. You can be creative in the way that you. that you communicate or that you that you approach relationships at work, for instance. And so you can start to, you can start to reframe your idea of creativity and then move yourself more into something like painting or writing or a more kind of traditional creative pursuit.

And that makes it a little less and then the other piece of advice, what I did when I quit my corporate job is I did not tell myself that I was like swan diving off the corporate ladder, never to return. I said, I'm taking a year off and I will, I'm going to take a year off. I'll see how it goes.

then I can always brush off my resume and get another job if I want to. And especially if you're more left brained and you have a little bit of that, your brain is going to be weighing the risks. No matter what, whether you want it to or not. And so make it as risk free as you can take a, time bound it or put some other constraints on it and give yourself a, a small little window, but then a safety net too, if you need it.

Yes.

So practical. I love that part. And maybe as you were describing, both left brain and right brain people, or skills, maybe I could turn that question inside out for a minute and ask, what would you say to people in maybe traditional creative roles about how they look at people?

In these operational or data driven or analytical roles and not right off their creativity is my question. How would you persuade us to look at these career or positions differently? That's a

really good question. I think it's just about... I think there's an element of humility that we all need to realize that there's very little we can do on our own.

Even the idea of kind of the lone writer sitting at, by themselves in a cabin and creating brilliance. There's so many more people and positions that go into anything, whether it's a novel, whether it's getting a... an advertising campaign off the ground. And the execution is just as important as the idea.

And I think, let's face it, not everybody loves all of the work, we talked about that with self publishing, if you are in a more purely creative field, appreciate the eye for detail and the ability to execute that your colleagues might have and appreciate the way that they go about those tasks creatively that you might not have thought about.

I think that's good advice on almost any role. We've been talking about creativity, but wouldn't it be great if we all appreciated the contributions, and we use this word diversity a lot to maybe connote one thing, but the diversity of contribution, the diversity of experiences, and the diversity of insights that everybody could bring.

It would make the workplace better, wouldn't it? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Thanks for sharing that. Listeners, my guest has been Megan Preston Meyer. She's author of a great new novel, a mystery called Firebrand. And it's first of at least three, a trilogy that she's described. So we're looking forward to two and three, Megan, we're going to stay tuned for those.

How do we follow you and stay connected with your work? Where's the best place to find you?

So I am on LinkedIn, Megan Preston Meyer. I'm also on. Twitter and Instagram at M. Preston Meyer, and then you can find out more about the book at www. alpinechalet.

coffee. Fantastic. And if you ever bring that brand of coffee to real life you've already got the website.

I love that. Yep. Yep. That's Foresight. , Megan, I can't thank you enough for the interview. I've really enjoyed talking with you and learning about what you do and how you put it into play. Yeah,

this has been great. Thank you so much, Mark.

Yes. And listeners come back again. We're going to continue our travels around the world.

Just like today. We've learned from Megan, the basis, the. Foundation, the backdrop of the story, but we've also learned literally and logistically how she was able to bring it to life. Not only the writing habit, the writing craftsmanship, but also learning the techniques of self publishing and all the way to, hey, I always wanted a billboard.

That could be a real soundbite. from this show. You've got the dream, you've got the vision, and then you bring it to life somehow, some way. So come back again next time as we continue to talk to creative practitioners for your inspiration and your motivation, and I'll keep unlocking your world of creativity.