Romana Hasenöhrl has traveled all over the world and is the author of several books, including two novels, the second of which is currently in progress. She also coaches writers, who call her “Romana Rocks,” and is an astrologer. Romana joins me to talk about how travel has influenced her writing process and her creativity, how astrology is a useful tool to see ourselves in a new light (and to see our characters more completely, too), the biggest advice she gives anyone starting a writing project, and more.
Episode breakdown:
[00:04:57] An early story on airline differences was rejected.
[00:09:07] Driving a cab in Austria was lucrative, allowing for travel in Europe while studying at university.
[00:10:16] Exhausted, slowed studies, friends stayed, finishing lost work.
[00:16:18] Discovering email in 1989, a transformative experience.
[00:19:43] Passionate traveler explores multiple countries and cultures.
[00:22:04] Exciting solo travel led to successful business.
[00:29:07] Travel blog shared with unexpected success.
[00:32:03] “Long first novel gets condensed, spawns sequel.”
[00:40:10] Astrology and tarot reveal hidden truths.
[00:47:49] Book writing is a soulful, pressure-filled task.
[00:50:40] Halfway through book, friend questioned astrology academy.
[00:55:58] Writers respect each other’s ideas, collaborate respectfully.
Please leave a review and in it, tell us about how travel has influenced your creative process..
Show links
Romana’s website
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Transcript
Please note: This is an unedited transcript, provided as a courtesy, and reflects the actual conversation as closely as possible. Please forgive any typographical or grammatical errors.
Nancy Norbeck [00:00:06]:
Welcome to follow your curiosity. Ordinary people, extraordinary creativity. Here’s how to get unstuck. I’m your host, creativity coach, Nancy Norbeck. Let’s go. Ramana Hasenohrl has traveled all over the world and is the author of several books, including two novels, the second of which is currently in progress. She also coaches writers who call her Ramana Rocks and is an astrologer. Romana joins me to talk about how travel has influenced her writing process and her creativity, how astrology is a useful tool to see ourselves and our characters in a new light, the biggest advice she gives anyone starting a writing project, and more.
Nancy Norbeck [00:00:47]:
I think you’ll enjoy my conversation with Romana Hasenohrl. Romana, welcome to Follow Your Curiosity.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:00:56]:
Hello, and thank you for having me. It’s an honor being on your show.
Nancy Norbeck [00:01:01]:
Thanks. So I start everybody off with the same question, which is, were you a creative kid or did you discover your creative side later on?
Romana Hasenohrl [00:01:10]:
I was a very creative kid. I decided, I guess at the age of eight or nine that, I’m a writer. And I I started creating my own magazines already in that age. So I just took mom’s magazines and, like, destroyed them, which didn’t make her happy, built something new.
Nancy Norbeck [00:01:37]:
Did she did she get over that, though? Did you did she encourage you to do something different, or did she eventually just decide fine, whatever?
Romana Hasenohrl [00:01:45]:
No. No. She let me feel that she wasn’t happy, especially with, I did so many things, like, you know, we had those cassette recorders then. I’m I’m born in 1968, so we talk about old stuff. And, my sister and I, we love to record our own shows on those cassettes, but, we never got new ones. So we took mom’s music cassettes, and that was not good.
Nancy Norbeck [00:02:14]:
Your poor mother. I’m not gonna lie. I am with her on that one. Oh my. So she didn’t just buy you your own? I mean, I I that would have been my immediate solution to that problem after delineating these are the ones you can record on, and these are the ones you can’t.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:02:40]:
Yeah. That would have been a good idea. I don’t know why she didn’t do it. I mean, we my parents, were very young parents. So my mom got me when she was 18.
Nancy Norbeck [00:02:54]:
Oh, wow.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:02:55]:
And, so they they, like, built their own house, and they had to pay pay loads of debt. So maybe it was just a financial issue. That could be the case. I have to ask her. Wow.
Nancy Norbeck [00:03:08]:
But you survived. She didn’t kill you.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:03:12]:
Yes. I survived.
Nancy Norbeck [00:03:16]:
So, you know, I because I remember writing my first story when I was about that same age, like fourth or fifth grade, and, you know, it did not, in my case, turn into I suddenly started writing everywhere. It took a couple years. What happened with you?
Romana Hasenohrl [00:03:37]:
At the age of 12, I remember that very well. I I really decided I wanna write books. So that was clear for me. I tried it with, like, drafts of, like, movie things. I I wrote my first western, for example, at the age of 11. And then I realized, now I wanna write stories. So, and normal, maybe. And I had no clue where to start.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:04:02]:
So as my parents are farmers, I thought it doesn’t make any sense to ask them because they would know either. So I wrote a letter to the local radio station. Mhmm. I thought they must be clever folks. They’re reading the news every day. So and I never get I never got an answer. That’s so unfair. That’s
Nancy Norbeck [00:04:24]:
so sad.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:04:25]:
A kid writing a letter. So could you tell me how to write a book? And never got an answer. So I I thought that maybe my question was freaking stupid, or everybody else knows how to write books, and I’m I’m the only one who doesn’t know, and that’s why they don’t answer. And so I decided, okay. No. My dreams of being a famous writer just vanished. And I came back to that idea, of writing. I mean, I always did journaling.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:04:57]:
I never stopped, and and poems and loads of stuff. But at the age of, I think, that was 24, I traveled to, America, US. Mhmm. And we did a a lot of flying around over there from Florida to California and back and forth. And, I thought, why don’t I write a story about, airlines, how different they are, and offer it to a newspaper in Austria because they had tests like that. So, that guy was really nice. He answered and said, I love your style. I love the way you, like, built up your test, but that is just, you know, how many Austrians fly to America and then fly fly around.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:05:43]:
So we can’t use that, but I have you in our, like, address, data resources, and you will get to know when we are looking for offers. And two weeks later, I got an email who wants to write about soups. Soups in in, like, glasses and packages. And I yelled out via email, yes, I want. And so I got the first story, and that’s how I how it started. I was studying then and, working as a cab driver to afford my studies. And, yeah, I wrote for that newspaper. And that was a cool time.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:06:22]:
Every Saturday, seeing your own story in the news. Oh.
Nancy Norbeck [00:06:26]:
That’s good. It’s a great feeling the first time you see your name in print. Right?
Romana Hasenohrl [00:06:31]:
Oh my god. Unbelievable. And so I I did that for a long time, then I started, after finished university, I started in at Austria’s biggest broadcasting company, worked for the TV, but helped to build up the first website with news. That was, like, in the nineties. Wow. And, so I I I did online press as well. And the book idea really came back to me after I got fired from that company. That was after seventeen years.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:07:09]:
We had a little conflict with our new boss, the TV people. Mhmm. And, yeah, I’m I’m always the one who likes walks, walks in the front line. Right? You can’t do that to us. Then two weeks later, I got that letter in my inbox that I’m fired. And, of course, I was devastated. And it took me about four months to came back to the idea. Hey.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:07:39]:
There was something, a dream, a vision in your life. Why don’t you write those books now? You have time. I always said I’m a time millionaire now, broke the time millionaire. And and so I started, my first book, which was a garden book. And I was really lucky, lucky, lucky. I joined an online course on how to do it. So because I still didn’t know how to structure it and doing everything, how to write the proper email to a publisher. And after 12 emails, I had a publisher who took me on the contract.
Nancy Norbeck [00:08:19]:
Wow. That’s quick.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:08:20]:
And that that’s quick, and that’s really huge luck. I that’s I really know how how much luck I had. And, yeah, I I wrote, four books for them, and they still they wanted to keep me, but I decided for other topics. So I I did some, projects in in self publishing, but I know I can go back anytime. So Oh,
Nancy Norbeck [00:08:47]:
that’s nice.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:08:48]:
A real luxury situation.
Nancy Norbeck [00:08:50]:
Yeah. For sure. Yeah. I can’t deny that I’m terribly curious what driving a cab was like. Because I have to think that there are I mean, if nothing else, I’m sure you met interesting characters.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:09:07]:
Yeah. I mean, what happened was in these days, you really could earn good money in in driving a cab. Because Austria is a tiny country in in the middle of Europe, and we have weird laws in when it comes to business. So in these days, there were only a certain amount of caps allowed per city. So, of course, you you did a lot of you had a lot of work to do. And so I loved the earning much money thing because all the other students didn’t have the chances to fly to America or to I I bought myself a motorbike, and we went on tours all over Europe, for example. So I knew that this is a kind of luxury situation nobody else has. At my age, that’s what I liked.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:10:00]:
Of course, I had to do night shifts only because, at daytime, I was at university, and that was sometimes kind of weird. So we’re talking about the forty eight hour, work week plus university stuff. And in these days, you really you could put me wherever, and I sat down and fell asleep. That was so cool. It’s, amazing. So, I was super exhausted all time. And what what also happened is that my studies got slower and slower. Because you earn that amount of money, you love it, and then you are in that system.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:10:46]:
Right? Yeah. I know many students who who just stayed. They never finished and just stayed Capra. I will still meet them when I go downtown. So, when I, like, I I wanted to finish university, and when I have my my last, work to do there, I I promised myself when I’m done and I have that certificate in my hands, I give back that cap key, and that’s it. I had to promise it to myself. Otherwise, maybe I still would do it. And so that was almost ten years of night shift.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:11:28]:
Wow. And, of course, it was weird afterwards because you you have different socializations. Right? You only socialize with cab drivers because everybody else is asleep when you’re working. And so there was yeah. And the people, there was a huge shift because Salzburg is a tiny town. It’s not like in New York or London. So people were always nicer than otherware. But, nevertheless, the shift happened, and so it got more and more exhausting with drunk people and drugged people, and people who, like, they they tried having fun will scare you.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:12:18]:
Right? Mhmm. Pretending they have a weapon and stuff like that.
Nancy Norbeck [00:12:23]:
Yeah.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:12:23]:
That’s so yeah. That’s yucky. I and so I was really happy when I got the chance to start the TV productions and was off and away. But, it took me seven years until I wanted to go out again for a cocktail or something because I couldn’t stand those people, but I know everything.
Nancy Norbeck [00:12:45]:
Yeah. Don’t want it. Well and especially, you know, it’s it’s one thing, unfortunately, if you’re a guy and you’re doing that job. You know, I don’t think that somebody is as likely to try to scare you, you know, or or be inappropriate if you’re a guy driving the cab. But a a single woman driving a cab just seems like a ready made target, unfortunately. So
Romana Hasenohrl [00:13:10]:
yeah. Yeah. That was the case. And, of course, that that brought up some, like, feminist questions in myself. So and as I studied politics and and journalism that the topic was closed already. So we’re talking about the nineties. There was the the feminist, movement was very strong in these days, and all the students, female students started to cut their hair really short and, like, showing the world that they don’t need to be pretty and stuff like that. Mhmm.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:13:44]:
So that was a a real, yeah, huge movement. And I’m I’m pretty glad that the feminist movement changed as well. So women come back to knowing that we, as women, we we don’t have to be like men. Right? Mhmm. We have our own way doing things.
Nancy Norbeck [00:14:10]:
Yeah. We can be whatever way we wanna be.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:14:13]:
Yeah. Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:14:16]:
So so you survived driving the cab and you got to do early web stuff. And it’s funny because when you were talking about, I thought, isn’t it amazing to try to remember back to when the web didn’t exist and all of that was new? It just seems so normal to me now, and yet I remember those days of, oh, it’s it’s a it’s a thing on the web. You can go look stuff up. You know? It it was yeah. It was such a such a wild time. Sometimes sometimes I wonder, you know, what it was like when we couldn’t go look things up at a moment’s notice, you know, when you had to wonder or go look in the library, get a librarian to help you figure it out.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:14:56]:
Yeah. That that’s, that I remember the first email, so I didn’t understand what the hell it was. I had a friend who was a a computer programmer, so he started very early on computers. And when the whole Internet stuff started, he wanted to explain it to me, and it was like, I looked at him as if my head was empty. I don’t get what that should be. And then you had this little box, and it always went ding ding ding ding ding ding. It’s making the connection. And it was super slow.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:15:34]:
You suck.
Nancy Norbeck [00:15:38]:
I actually found there is at least one video on YouTube of old school dial up modems connecting and the sound and how it was different, which I had never realized that it was different. I always thought, you know, a modem is a modem. It sounds like a modem. And damned if I didn’t sit there and listen to that whole video and it must have had 10 different modems connecting, just thinking, wow, I haven’t heard this in so long, and I feel so old. But yeah. Right? I mean, it had to make that noise. You could you could hear it in your head even when you weren’t connecting to something because it was so distinctive. And, yeah, there there it was.
Nancy Norbeck [00:16:20]:
And and I remember being a freshman at university and a friend of mine who was the son of a military civilian in Germany who was using email to keep in touch with his dad, telling me what email was and taking me to the computer center to apply to get an email address. It was 1989, and they had a form you had to fill out, and you had to tell them what you wanted it for. Oh, my god. You know, I mean, now people will just throw an email address at you, you know, but no. I had I had to say what I wanted it for, and I was afraid they weren’t going to give it to me. Course, the only person that I could email at that point was the friend who was taking me who lived a floor above me, so there wasn’t a whole lot of point. But but that changed. But, but, yeah, I mean, it’s just so wild to be how quickly all of that took off and changed everything.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:17:20]:
Yeah. It’s, it’s unbelievable. My partner is 30. So when he was born, I mean, that Internet thing wasn’t that Mhmm. Used, but he grew grew up with it. Right. He doesn’t know it in another way. So sometimes I I say stuff like, yeah.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:17:44]:
You you you had to find for example, I play guitar, so you had to find someone who has the chords for the song you wanted to learn. Right? And you had to print it and keep it with you and be very careful because when it was gone, it was gone. Nowadays, you just look it up and there it is. Yeah. So and when I talk about stuff like that, or even, I’m a long term traveler. Nowadays, I travel with an old van, and, I still do map navigation. So I have those maps from all over Europe, each country, and I navigate per map. And when he looks at me, he’s just like, why don’t you use a navigation system? And I say, I hate it because I hate it.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:18:32]:
That thing is talking to me and sometimes she’s wrong and I cannot stop, like, telling her that she’s wrong. And I’m I’m still quick and better with map map navigation, but a 30 year old wouldn’t understand that.
Nancy Norbeck [00:18:50]:
No. Not at all.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:18:51]:
No chance. That’s so weird.
Nancy Norbeck [00:18:55]:
I know. I know. I mean, I don’t think that it’s such a massive level of change, and I I don’t think even our grandparents probably saw any one thing that changed the world as dramatically as the Internet changed everything Yeah. And as quickly. It’s it’s kind of amazing to think about it. They saw lots of different things that changed together
Romana Hasenohrl [00:19:16]:
Mhmm.
Nancy Norbeck [00:19:17]:
How we lived. But yeah. Wild. Wild. So, actually, since you brought it up, let’s let’s talk about the traveling because I think travel is super important and is a major piece of of what helps us to get in touch with our creativity in new ways. So how did you come to start doing that?
Romana Hasenohrl [00:19:43]:
I love traveling since I was a kid. So my first trip without my parents, I was, 13 and spent two weeks in England with a family to improve my English. And, from that day on, I knew that that’s my thing, traveling. So I traveled The US eight times. I’ve been to Thailand twice, to Africa, to Alaska. So so many, many countries with all those years of of studying. And then in Austria, we have the luxury situation that if you are employed, you have five weeks of holiday. So that’s really much you can do stuff in in these holiday times.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:20:28]:
And, I bought that old Volkswagen van in 02/2009. It’s, it’s built in 1985, so it’s the car is, for example, older than my mechanic.
Nancy Norbeck [00:20:44]:
Is this, like, the classic Volkswagen bus?
Romana Hasenohrl [00:20:47]:
It’s the Volkswagen bus, not the round one, not the t two, but the t three, the next one. But still, it’s a classic and, an old timer already. And I I took all those years to rebuild it and redo it, and now it’s almost done. We just need an an engine overdue, complete overdue, because, of course, in all these years, that car, like, collected loads of kilometers. And, after I’ve I’ve, realized that I’m a time millionaire, I I founded my own company, and then I decided, okay, I could do longer travels now because nobody tells me when to come back.
Nancy Norbeck [00:21:31]:
Mhmm.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:21:32]:
That took a while to settle in my soul. I know I’m more creative when I’m on the road. For example, my best stories I wrote while driving my motorbike. I had those huge ideas and thoughts. And, so I I founded my company in 02/2013. And in ’15, I realized, hey, I could now just pack the car, head off, come back whenever I want. So let’s do that. And that was pretty exciting all by myself.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:22:07]:
And I spent, almost, three months on the road and loved it.
Nancy Norbeck [00:22:12]:
Wow.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:22:13]:
Went to France and Italy and south and north, and I just enjoyed it. It was pure joy. And I realized that I had great ideas when I’m traveling, so I I founded a, web portal, It’s unfortunately, it’s in German language, where other travelers with old cars get informations about where to get help when you have a problem, where the best campsites are, where you can stay without the campsite, all that stuff. And within two years, I got, clients who wanted to, be partnering with me. So the whole thing just built itself up without me having much work to do. I’m just writing the stories, and I love it. So that’s one thing that really worked out pretty well and came up to me while traveling. And, in 02/2017, I got my dog.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:23:15]:
And from that day on, I knew, okay. We’ll stay in Europe for a while now. Because, she’s tiny, so she could fly with me in cabin, but, I wouldn’t do that too often. Mhmm. But still, it’s, my next plans are traveling to Canada, and then I could take her with me. So that would would work, but not countries like Thailand or India. Yeah. You you won’t bring a dog there.
Nancy Norbeck [00:23:45]:
Yeah. I think traveling with a dog is a totally different experience. You have something small and tiny and relatively helpless that depends on you rather than you just being as fancy free as you might be on your own.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:23:59]:
Yeah. I mean, what’s really cool is that she’s a territorial dog, at Chihuahua. So they are like that. So what I can do now, and I I didn’t do that before, is, for example, sleep with open windows or or or doors even, because that dog is like an alarm system. And they yell so loud. They yell. Right? Chihuahuas don’t really bark. So, that’s pretty cool.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:24:30]:
I feel very safe now. And, I mean, I never felt scared before, but you are a bit more careful when you’re traveling alone. Like Yeah. Yeah. And all the great ideas, for example, my first novel came up during my travel times. Second novel came up, during traveling, and I’m writing on it right now. So all that things yeah. I am more creative when I’m traveling.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:25:01]:
Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:25:02]:
That makes perfect sense to me. I think just because you’re seeing different things and you’re seeing them in a different way than you would in your normal environment, so different different synapses are gonna fire together than would have otherwise.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:25:17]:
Yeah. Absolutely. And I think it’s it’s it’s the whole altogether thing. Right? So in Austria, we we live in the mountains. They are beautiful. The Alps are gorgeous. But nevertheless, we have that urge to be at the sea. And when I’m there, it’s like, oh my god.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:25:38]:
And then, as you say, the the brain synopsis start firing, because that’s so different, and it smells different, and the people are different there, and and all those languages in Europe. So you travel for five hours and you have a complete different language, which is fun and and and, yeah, you have to do something to be understood.
Nancy Norbeck [00:26:06]:
Right. So how many languages do you speak?
Romana Hasenohrl [00:26:09]:
Fluently, just English and German. And Austrian, I always say that Austrian is a known language, and, most people say, no. It isn’t, but I say this. But, yeah, I know a bit of Spanish, language and Italian. I’m now improving my Italian because in September, I start off to Italy. And every time I’m like, I know where I’m going, then I start trying to improve that language. Mhmm. A little bit of French, no Portuguese, unfortunately, but that I don’t get it.
Nancy Norbeck [00:26:49]:
Yeah. I think that that probably also does something for your creativity creativity too, because you’re using your brain in a totally different way, and those languages see things in different ways from one another. So that’s gotta be a factor as well.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:27:04]:
Yeah. I think so. It it said that you should, learn languages till you are very, very old. That really helps your brain working and trying to talk in a different language. And, as you said, in in every language, you you say things in a different way. For example, in Russian, I I studied Russian for for two years. You never say I have something. You say that thing is with me.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:27:35]:
Mhmm. So you you won’t even say I have a husband, you would say that man is with me. And it’s poetic, isn’t it? It’s absolutely different. And so the Russian language was very, very hard to study, but I I liked it. Forgot most of it.
Nancy Norbeck [00:27:59]:
Yeah. I mean, even just something like French, you know, has its its moments like that.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:28:05]:
Oh, yes.
Nancy Norbeck [00:28:06]:
You know, different different little little things. And it’s been a long time since I studied French, but I remember kind of being fascinated and thinking, oh, I think I like that better. I like the way they say this better. This makes more sense to me. And it’s always fascinated me that words that I learned first in French sound so wrong to me in English. Mhmm. You know, formidable just sounds like I have marbles in my mouth compared to formidab.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:28:36]:
Formidab. Oh, I love it. Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:28:39]:
You know, I mean, it’s so it it’s it’s amazing that that’s that’s the one I always think of in that particular case. Because when I finally encountered it in English, I was like, I have no idea how to say this. And then and then I looked it up, and I was like, you’re kidding. Right? That can’t be right. So when you started writing novels, was that, like did it come to you pretty naturally, or was that a really big shift?
Romana Hasenohrl [00:29:07]:
The first one really came naturally, and it started with a blog Because, with my first, long trip, my my mom said, couldn’t you just, like, do a blog and so we can see where you are? And, of course, we understand that you won’t send an email on a daily basis. And so and I thought that’s pretty cool. So I started a tiny traveling blog. First of all, just for for my mom and some colleagues, ex colleagues from work. And they they liked it so much, they shared it with other people, and I got feedback that people love it. And I I just wrote down my thoughts every day in the evening, sat down, wrote down my thoughts. And at the beginning, I really had loads of troubles with the car because I didn’t know, how an old car works and how I can help myself. So I started hearing her voice.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:30:11]:
So her name is La Carissima, which is Italian and means my my my loveliest one. And, so I I I I started writing down what she says, and then we discussed stuff. And all of a sudden, another person came into the scenery called the blues, and he’s he’s a weird guy. He’s just, like, doing things you don’t want. So wherever he shows up, things go wrong. He sits in the car smoking. He’s, like, swearing, spitting out of the window. And this person came up in my mind, and I wrote wrote it down.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:30:51]:
And so my plan then was to find out how many people would love to read that as a novel after all that feedback, so I did a book presentation without the finished book. Mhmm. And I read some parts of it and asked people, what do you like best? And people could buy the book in advance at the presentation. And everybody just said, I love the blues best. He’s so funny. And I thought, come on. That’s the worst part. That’s that’s my inner blues, right, personalized.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:31:26]:
Because when you’re traveling alone after four, five weeks that things come up come up, you you you ask yourself why the hell I’m doing that. I mean, back home, I have friends. I have social contacts. I have everything. And here I sit on a campsite with cold water and nobody, and maybe it’s raining. And and, nevertheless, they loved the blues because, I think that everyone has kind of a blues inside their themselves, and, and they found a humorous way to read about that. People loved it. And that’s how the first novel happened.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:32:06]:
At the beginning, the first draft had over six six hundred pages full of stories, and I I really had to do that, what you call in movie making, you call it kill your darling. You just walk through it and, you know, get rid of the stuff you really love because that, most of the times, is the is the stuff people don’t wanna read. So so that was hard, and now it’s 450 pages. And within that first novel, there came up a second novel idea, and Karisima started to talk about it. So we were we’re traveling long, long, long night shift, and and she kept asking, tell me a a story. Tell me a story. I’m bored. And, so I started to tell her about Frank, who’s a lost and lonesome poet living in Northern France.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:33:02]:
And he gets, involved into a mafia crime story and doesn’t realize it for a long, long time. And then people loved that part as well, so I thought, why don’t they make a whole novel out of that Frank part? And that’s where I am now. So in the meantime, Frank has traveled to Rome and still don’t get what’s going on.
Nancy Norbeck [00:33:32]:
Is it because they’ve hidden it well, or is Frank just a little dim?
Romana Hasenohrl [00:33:37]:
Ah, maybe he’s just he’s got too much blues inside him, and that makes it a bit, like, you don’t see things properly. And as the whole story starts off with, like, another person should show up for a meeting, but that person gets run over by a car and Frank is there and he looks similar, so they mistake him. And he of of because of this, he thinks somebody’s doing some fun with him, maybe a TV show or some stupid friends just and so he thinks, no. I’d go to Rome. When if they send me there, I’d go there. If these are stupid friends having fun with me, I do it. So he doesn’t get the whole situation. Yeah.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:34:21]:
Yeah. He’s he’s he’s missing
Nancy Norbeck [00:34:23]:
some important stuff there from the sound of his head. Frank’s gonna have a life changing moment in ways he doesn’t expect
Romana Hasenohrl [00:34:32]:
to act. Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:34:38]:
So did you write most of the first book while you were traveling?
Romana Hasenohrl [00:34:42]:
Yes. All of it. Yeah. All of it. With Frank, it was like, I started in 02/2020, and then that whole corona time started. So corona changed a lot for me because my my my business, I’ve got three parts of business. Right? The traveling part, then, the writing part. I’m writing for big companies and do search engine optimization, on page optimization for them.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:35:10]:
And then I’m an astrologer as well, so that is the third part.
Nancy Norbeck [00:35:14]:
Oh, wow.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:35:15]:
And that search engine optimization thing that went off during corona, I couldn’t help myself with with, things I had to do. I was working through the whole time. So many people, like, on on the phone said, yeah. We have to stay home. We’re not allowed to go to work. And I thought, am I the only person working still on the world? So that kept booming until, this year in spring. And I in spring, I thought, okay. You have to make a cut here because, first of all, I want I wanna finish that Frank book, and then search engine optimization after a while really gets exhausting.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:36:07]:
Mhmm. Because it’s it’s non creative writing, and you really have to love your clients to do that over years. So Sure. I I kept three of them, I really love. And and now, yeah, the rest, is gone.
Nancy Norbeck [00:36:23]:
That makes sense to me.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:36:25]:
Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:36:26]:
Yeah. So I’m curious about the astrology part. I’m especially curious to know, like, because I would totally do this, but maybe it’s just me. Do you do you do astrology for your characters?
Romana Hasenohrl [00:36:42]:
Yeah. I I did it for Frank, not for for the the first novel because the blues is the blues, and me, it’s me. And and, yeah. For Frank, I did it because, I have a very, very good friend, and parts of him are Frank. So that part of being so tired all the time, and you have so good ideas and and and visions and never do something with them. So whenever I look at him, I think, yeah, that’s Frank. And Frank is Virgo, so as my friend. And, Virgo characters, normally, they are very correct, and they they wanna finish everything on time and stuff like that.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:37:36]:
But if it doesn’t happen, then they can be like that. So they’re looking back on all the things they haven’t done, and I’m very sad about that. So this part of Virgo, I knitted into Frank’s character.
Nancy Norbeck [00:37:52]:
Interesting. I was gonna
Romana Hasenohrl [00:37:55]:
say, I don’t know
Nancy Norbeck [00:37:55]:
how you would do an astrological chart for a character unless you just make up a birth date for them. But if you’re you know, sounds like you didn’t have to go that far.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:38:06]:
Not yet, but, of course, I will have to think about it because, Frank has severe, relationship issues. And, yeah, I I know which constellations from astrological thinking would fit there, but they bring other stuff with them. So I think, I will have to do that.
Nancy Norbeck [00:38:33]:
It’d be really interesting.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:38:36]:
Yes. I I really love it. So that astrology thing is, is the my heart thing. So, I’m I’m thinking astrological, if you wanna put it like that. And I’m doing not that a kind of astrology where people come and they wanna know their future. Right? I’m not a future teller. I wanna support them finding out why they do stuff like that and how to change it if they wanna change it, especially when it comes to relationships. That’s the most important thing for people.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:39:12]:
They they come and say, okay. I I always struggle at the same point, and then my partner’s leaving. Why? Mhmm. What’s going on here? Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:39:23]:
Wow. Yeah. I I’m imagining all the people who say, but astrology isn’t real or whatever, and I’m curious
Romana Hasenohrl [00:39:34]:
to know what
Nancy Norbeck [00:39:35]:
you what you think about that.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:39:39]:
For me, it’s like that. When whenever someone says to me, but I don’t believe in astrology, I say, yeah. Listen. I don’t believe in my dentist, but I know he’s doing his job. That’s not a question of believing. Right? He does his job, and it’s good. So and astrology works the same way. It does its job.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:40:01]:
You don’t have to believe something. It’s some yeah. I mean like a dentist.
Nancy Norbeck [00:40:10]:
Thinking of two things I never would have put together, astrology and the dentist. But but it’s interesting to me because I, one of my grad school advisors was Rachel Pollock, who was a tarot grand master and, you know, knew more in the tip of her pinky finger than probably anybody else I’ve ever known before. And she would say that tarot just tells you what you already know, but that you’d lost track of or couldn’t access consciously or or whatever. And and I think that there’s there’s truth to that. If you look at it, if you pull a tarot card, whether you believe that tarot and and again, I don’t think that tarot is gonna tell your future either. I don’t think anything can tell your future because everything’s always changing. But if you if you ask a question and you pull a tarot card and you say, how does what this card means relate to my question? At the very least, you’re gonna get a different way to look at it than you had before, and that probably is gonna bring you some kind of insight. I did I’ve done courses with Martha Beck over the last couple of summers, and one of her creativity exercises was how is this like that.
Nancy Norbeck [00:41:23]:
And it’s basically you take any two random things and come up with how the one is like the other, and you will come up with stuff. And you won’t know where it’s coming from because part of your brain is gonna say, this makes no sense. A boat is not like a cat. You know? And yet, you’re you’ll come up with some things. And that, if nothing else, it’s a way to connect parts of your brain that don’t ordinarily connect, kinda like what we were talking about before. I have to think that that astrology does the same thing whether you believe in it or not. It gives you another angle to look at your situation, your life, whatever it is that you’re asking the question about.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:42:03]:
Yeah. It’s exactly that way. It’s, for example, I’m I have a real wonderful client who’s, like, many, many years working with me. And, of course, if the person is doing that and and getting to your office twice a year, then you you really know that birth chart very well. So whenever he asks a question, I can see where that is hidden, and see how it’s connected, and then ask him back. So, for example, he’s one of the persons with, yeah, relationship issues. And he says, hey. Why why why do I always do it the same way? The moment a lady really starts loving me, I’m running away.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:42:51]:
And then you look at that birth chart and and you say, okay. See here. This connection shows me that you are scared like hell. So you have to work on and you saw see, for example, the connection to a childhood thing where you got betrayed in in your trust system. And then you have to work there and not in now times. You have to work with your inner child and heal that and get to know your inner child. Take get back to trust. Trust the world.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:43:27]:
Trust people. Trust love. And then you’re not scared anymore, and you don’t have to run. And that’s just one thing exactly like you said. If this person is is taking a tarot card, the information will be there as well. People know about that unconsciously knowing.
Nancy Norbeck [00:43:50]:
Yeah. We will make a connection
Romana Hasenohrl [00:43:52]:
Mhmm.
Nancy Norbeck [00:43:53]:
From something.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:43:54]:
Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:43:55]:
And it, you know, may not answer everything, but it’ll give you something to think about and to explore differently than you might have without it. And it may just bring up that thing that you already knew that you didn’t realize that you already knew.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:44:11]:
Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:44:14]:
It’s, it’s interesting. Because I think you’re right. I don’t think you need to believe in any of that in order to use it as a tool at the very least. So for different way
Romana Hasenohrl [00:44:25]:
of looking at stuff. It’s always about tools. Right? It’s the same with psych psychotherapy. Mhmm. And and if we think of psychotherapy is is a thing that exists for about a hundred and twenty years, astrology exists for four thousand years. So why should I believe or trust in the one and not in the other? That’s the the thing. And and even with, with methods, for example, when I’m teaching so I’m teaching writing students as well, people who who want to produce, to write the first book and then publish it. And we are doing exercises from from all different kinds.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:45:09]:
We are like it’s on Zoom. Right? We are clapping hands. We are rocking the the the stage. We are we are painting. We are, like, hugging ourselves and stuff like that. And, after the first two afternoons, I I I asked them, didn’t you ask yourself why I’m doing all the crazy stuff with you? And they sit there like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:45:35]:
And and so I I tell them about brain science and how it works, that you have to move your body as well, and you have to touch yourself and touch real paper and not only computer. And and that’s why I come up with all those different exercises, to get the brain working. And then you get into the trust. Yes. I’m a writer. I will write this book. Done. And when the moment they get that, they are like, oh, yeah.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:46:11]:
Sure. That lady knows what she’s doing. Just thought she’s doing crazy stuff.
Nancy Norbeck [00:46:21]:
Well and I noticed on your website, you have a series of videos about the biggest mistakes you can make when you start writing a book. And I’m hoping that you’ll be willing to tell everybody who’s listening about the first one because it it struck me for various reasons. Oh my god.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:46:43]:
It did.
Nancy Norbeck [00:46:45]:
Well, I’ll talk about it, and then I’ll tell you why.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:46:48]:
Okay. So as I changed the order of that videos, you you can’t imagine how that production went. You have to help me. Which one was the first?
Nancy Norbeck [00:47:07]:
The one that I looked because I changed it. Not telling people that you’re writing a book.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:47:14]:
Yeah. I right. That was, right. That was the thing. I had that as last video first, and then I thought it’s so contra so contra with with what all the coaches say that you have to put that on the first position. And that’s a real huge thing. If you tell everybody, and many coaches say do that about your visions project whatsoever. In book writing, it’s like, you are like a tiny, weak plant at the beginning.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:47:49]:
Book writing is something huge. It’s not like learning a language or starting a new job. Because in book writing, if we really do creative writing, we are working from the deepest parts of our soul, especially when it comes to novels. So if you stop telling everybody about it, your neighbor, your mom, your kids, the friends of your kids, the lady in the supermarket. Then, first of all, you create loads of pressure, loads of pressure onto onto yourself. And the next thing is there will be people, and you won’t expect that they are doing that, who will tell you, what’s the what crazy idea is that? How how did you come up with the idea you could write the book? How there are so many books about that topic. So that’s what happened to me with the garden book. I am not a professional gardener.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:48:52]:
And, people started telling me, why do you think you can sell that book? Even sell it to a publisher. There are so many professional gardeners out there who write books. You really think they take your book? And you know what’s happening? You get smaller and smaller and smaller. You doubt yourself. You, all those little voices, you you have in in your head. Right? You are not good enough. You’re not clever enough. You are a a procrastinator.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:49:30]:
You are whatsoever. They come up and they grow big then. So those tiny voices become big voices. And that’s why I really recommend, for example, I have one one student, and and this really struck me hard because she told everybody, and then she she she she took a coach, a riding coach, and paid loads of money for it. And then that pressure got so high, she couldn’t write a word. She had a massive writer’s block. Massive. And every time we talk about it, she, like, burst out into tears and said, I cannot.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:50:13]:
I cannot. I cannot. So in this case, I really recommend, don’t tell it. Tell tell your partner, maybe, if he’s a good one. Right? The good partner.
Nancy Norbeck [00:50:28]:
Yeah. Or
Romana Hasenohrl [00:50:29]:
or tell tell your sister if if the connection is really good, and you know she’s supportive. And then I would start the book. And when you are halfway through it, then it’s time. You can start telling and and see how does it feel. So people will then say, you really think you can write a book? You say, yeah, I’m halfway through. So I’m just two chapters left and yeah. That’s the secret about that. And it’s it’s I think it’s the same with so many, visions.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:51:07]:
I remember one situation I told a very, very close friend that I’m I’m into astrology that came overnight. Right? I never was interested in a topic, and then, bam, I was in there, and I started, an academy in Austria for three years studying astrology. And I told a friend of mine, very close friend, that I’m doing that, and, of course, that was expensive. It was for three years. And she said, you really think you can earn money with astrology? Are you crazy? And all the doubts came up. Mhmm. I thought, okay. Yeah.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:51:46]:
Yes. So, okay. That’s expensive. At least I wanna get that money back in because I need it. So and that wasn’t good for me. And and situations like that, I think many people can name 10 of them within a minute. Right? Situations where people are not supportive and not even realizing it.
Nancy Norbeck [00:52:11]:
Right. They think they’re sparing you from some embarrassment or spending lots of money or working hard on something and getting nowhere, but they’re really just feeding all of your doubts and insecurities.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:52:23]:
Please.
Nancy Norbeck [00:52:23]:
And you’re right about the pressure build up too. It’s huge. Yeah. The more pressure you put on yourself, the harder your creative work is gonna be.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:52:31]:
Yeah. Tell me what came up for you.
Nancy Norbeck [00:52:34]:
So so both of those things, but also and this one I just thought of while you were talking, you know, one of the things about telling people, I’m gonna I have this great idea. This is what I wanna write about, and it’s this story where this happens, and there’s this character, and there’s, you know, you’ve got all of these ideas in your head. The more you talk about them, the less you have to write about them because you’ve already done that work out loud. And so then you go to write about them and you’ve already told 25 people, and now it just looks like, you know, on your page, you’re like, well, I don’t know what else to write about this character. This character is, you know, depressed and lives with his mother in the basement and, you know, whatever it it is, it just looks ordinary like what everybody else was gonna do if you even get to the point of putting it on paper. Yeah. The other thing that that it made me think of is that I tell people, and I think I’ve done a pep talk episode about this. I think so.
Nancy Norbeck [00:53:33]:
I think I called it keep it to yourself. But is that people will write, like, the first five or 10 pages, and they’re so excited that they wanna show it to everybody. And, oh, tell me what you think. Tell me what you think. And it’s, like, the worst thing you can do because your first five or 10 pages are only the first five or 10 pages. You haven’t really gotten started. You don’t really know what’s happening, where it’s going. You’re just flying on pure adrenaline.
Nancy Norbeck [00:53:59]:
And you’re so excited that you’re super vulnerable to anything anybody says about those pages, which is why I will tell people a lot like what you just said. Wait until it feels solid enough to you, which might be halfway through, might might be when it’s finished, might be before that depending on who you are. But wait until it feels solid enough to you that you know that anything somebody tells you about it isn’t going to destroy this project for you. Because until then, it’s it’s like cotton candy. You know? Somebody breathes on it wrong, it’s gonna melt, and that’s not good for you, and it’s not good for your project. It’s not it’s not good for anything. So so, yeah, that’s that’s part of why I tell people to keep it to themselves. Mhmm.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:54:45]:
Yeah. And what you just said with if you tell it to many people, then, like, it feels so ordinary. That’s, for example, what we did at TV work. Right? When you had an interview, you do some rehearsal. But, we told people not to answer. Just at the rehearsal stage, you got asked a question, they say nothing. Because if they say it, when the interview is live then, they think I’ve said that already. And they say say stuff like, as I said, but they didn’t.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:55:20]:
And so, that’s exactly that thing, and you have that feeling, our brains look like that.
Nancy Norbeck [00:55:26]:
Yeah.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:55:27]:
And, especially when it comes to story outline. And, and then the next thing happens that people say, I’ve I’ve read a novel which is exactly the same story. And you’re like, what? But it’s not. It never is.
Nancy Norbeck [00:55:45]:
Never is.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:55:45]:
Because you are unique and your character is unique. So it might be that the story is similar, but how many billion people living on this earth? There are similar stories. That’s the fact.
Nancy Norbeck [00:55:58]:
Right. And I love how writers respect each other’s ideas so much that, you know, somebody will say, oh, I’m working on this thing, and this is the premise. And and I might say, oh, man. I wish I’d thought of that. But, obviously, it’s your thing, so I’m not not going anywhere near it, which is how it should be. But I have again, with with Rachel Pollock, I I mentioned something to her that I had not exactly misheard, but wondered about from a Doctor Who episode one time. And and she immediately said, I know exactly what that would be, but I can’t use it because it’s yours. And I said, Rachel, the odds that you and I would do the same thing with that idea are so phenomenally tiny that you should just do it and I’ll do whatever I want to do with it if I ever do anything with it and it’ll all be fine.
Nancy Norbeck [00:56:47]:
Mhmm. You know? Because I was like, no, there’s, there’s absolutely no way the two of us are gonna come up with the same thing. And then she finished hers and sent me a copy and I can’t read it because I haven’t decided if I’m doing something with it yet.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:57:01]:
I was so excited that I was like, wait, I
Nancy Norbeck [00:57:03]:
can’t read this because if I do, I’ll never come up with my own idea. I can’t do this. So it’s still sitting on my shelf waiting for me to decide if I’m gonna run with it or not. Oh. But but, yeah, it’s funny because, you know, it’s it’s that a thousand monkeys with a thousand typewriters thing, you know, that nobody’s ever gonna come up with the same stuff.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:57:23]:
Stuff. That’s true. Yeah. Absolutely correct. It’s it’s we are unique. And that is one thing, I really wanna tell people again and again and again. Be unique and feel it and be so happy with you. And, yeah, embrace it that you are unique.
Nancy Norbeck [00:57:50]:
Yeah. Absolutely. Don’t don’t worry so much about being like everybody else because you won’t you won’t be. I mean, even if you’re rewriting, you know, Snow White, it’s gonna be a different kind of Snow White. I mean, look at Neil Gaiman rewrote Snow White in a story. I think it was Snow White. Yeah. Called Snow Glass and Apples.
Nancy Norbeck [00:58:10]:
It ain’t like any Snow White you’ve ever read before. It’s one of the creepiest things I’ve ever read, you know, because it was Snow White from the evil stepmother’s point of view. If the evil stepmother wasn’t actually evil, and what is this child doing? You know? And and, yeah, it’s it’s super, super creepy. So, you know, you can even take something like that and turn it into something totally different because you’ll have that unique point of view that somebody else won’t have.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:58:45]:
Yeah. That’s that’s the the secret. Mhmm. We have to tell people, all creative people out there.
Nancy Norbeck [00:58:55]:
Yeah. You gotta do your thing. Worry about what anybody else thinks about it after you’ve done it.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:59:03]:
Perfect.
Nancy Norbeck [00:59:05]:
Yeah. Well, somehow this seems like a good place to stop. Yeah. There was
Romana Hasenohrl [00:59:16]:
just brought up from nowhere. But, yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:59:20]:
Well, Romana, I have really enjoyed this conversation. I’m so glad that you came and spent some time with me today.
Romana Hasenohrl [00:59:26]:
Thank you so much for having me on your show show. I I really enjoyed it.
Nancy Norbeck [00:59:33]:
That’s our show. Thanks so much to Romana Hasenohrl and to you for joining me. Please leave a review for this episode. There is a link right in your podcast app. And in it, tell us about how travel has influenced you. If you enjoyed our conversation, I hope you’ll share it with a friend. Thank you so much. If this episode resonated with you, don’t forget to get in touch on any of my social platforms or even via email at nancy@fycuriosity.com.
Nancy Norbeck [01:00:02]:
Tell me what you loved. And if you’re feeling a little bit less than confident in your creative process right now and you haven’t yet signed up for my free email series on six of the most common creative beliefs that are messing you up, Please check it out. It’ll untangle those myths and help you get rolling again. You can find it at fycuriosity.com, and there’s also a link right in your podcast app. See you there, and see you next week. Follow Your Curiosity is produced by me, Nancy Norbeck, with music by Joseph McDade. If you like Follow Your Curiosity, please subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And don’t forget to tell your friends.
Nancy Norbeck [01:00:44]:
It really helps me reach new listeners. Thanks.