My guest today is Hilary Hattenbach, a freelance writer based in LA. Hilary majored in magazine journalism but ended up working in entertainment marketing for studios like Disney and 20th Century Fox before a chance meeting in a bakery led her to co-author The Kitchen Decoded Cookbook. Hilary tells me about that meeting and the cookbook that resulted, why being in an “artistic adjacent” field didn’t work for her, and how she began working as a freelance writer instead. She also has some great insight and advice into how working with editors as a freelancer really works—some of which might surprise you—and the pros and cons of writing for others vs. writing on your own platform, like Substack.
Episode breakdown:
[00:08:10] Storyteller at heart, not traditional career writer.
[00:13:03] Family death prompted job switch.
[00:18:03] Consulting, marketing, and a surprise cookbook
[00:23:50] Agent vanished; publisher wants book decision.
[00:26:34] Be transparent about money in publishing; people often think authors make (much) more than they do.
[00:35:00] The discomfort of uncertainty hinders our progress.
[00:43:04] Questioning assumptions, discovering new possibilities, embracing change.
[00:49:56] Writing workshops and mentor leads to publishing as a freelancer.
[00:53:08] Essay collection explores impact of friendships with older adults.
[01:01:16] Old Hollywood and a piece on the retirement home for actors and industry insiders.
[01:04:15] Interviews cut, piece rewritten by someone else.
Please leave a review and in it, tell us about how travel has influenced your creative process..
Show links
Hilary’s Instagram
Substack: In with the Old
Hilary’s piece on Sadie Vimmerstedt, who inspired Tony Bennett’s “I Wanna Be Around.”
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Transcript: Hilary Hattenbach
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. My guest today is Hilary Hattenbach, a freelance writer based in Los Angeles. Hilary majored in magazine journalism, but ended up working in entertainment marketing for studios like Disney and 20th Century Fox before a chance meeting in a bakery led her to coauthor the Kitchen Decoded Cookbook. Hillary tells me about that meeting and the cookbook that resulted, why being in an artistic adjacent field didn’t work for her, and how she began working as a freelance writer instead.
Nancy Norbeck [00:00:48]:
She also has some great insight and advice into how working with editors as a freelancer really works, some of which might surprise you, and the pros and cons of writing for others versus writing on your own platform platform like Substack. I think you’ll really enjoy my conversation with Hillary Hattenbach. Hilary, welcome to Follow Your Curiosity.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:01:10]:
Thank you so much, Nancy. Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.
Nancy Norbeck [00:01:14]:
Alright. 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?
Hilary Hattenbach [00:01:23]:
I was a very creative kid. I think that that was my way of coping with a chaotic environment as a child. So yes, always very imaginative, fantastical love to do art projects, finger painting, whatever it was. So it has been a lifelong journey for me.
Nancy Norbeck [00:01:47]:
Were your parents supportive of that, or did they try to make you do serious things?
Hilary Hattenbach [00:01:51]:
No. They were I mean, my mom was a single mom. My parents got divorced when I was before I turned two, and it was tough for her. My dad, lovely guy, not much of a dad and not really in the picture much. So she had her hands full. There were two of us. And she always you know, she herself had been, had dreams to be a singer, a Broadway singer. She had a lovely voice.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:02:18]:
She studied with Leonard Bernstein when she was a young woman in New York City and was a voracious reader and a creative person herself, but had to go to work. And she did work in interior design. So it was creative. She’s very visual. So yes, she always encouraged creativity for both my brother and I think she always took me to the library, always encouraged me to check out tons of books, art supplies, all that stuff. So yes. And we were very much surrounded by creative people because my mom worked in interior design. There were a lot of people around that were designers.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:02:53]:
My godfather person who I wasn’t baptized were of Jewish descent, but he was like a godfather figure, was a was a lighting and furniture designer. He was around a lot, took my brother and I to do things. So, yes, absolutely a supportive environment in terms of expressing yourself create creatively.
Nancy Norbeck [00:03:15]:
Studying with Leonard Bernstein must have been a hell of a thing. Did she ever talk much about that?
Hilary Hattenbach [00:03:20]:
She hasn’t talked about it in great detail. She just she kinda says it in passing. I you know, I studied with Leonard Bernstein. I think it’s because she went to I think she was in high school or something, you know, interested in the performing arts, and she went and did a program there. And I really should ask her more about it. I haven’t dug in, but I’m sure I’m sure it was incredible for her. She, you know, she she lived in she was born in New York City and grew up there. And her father was very into the arts and would take her to the theater and, you know, to all of these various sort of tony places in New York City.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:04:04]:
But he was a traveling salesman. So it was only when he was in town when she would do these things. And I think he encouraged her, but he ended up getting quite ill when she was 17 years old, I think. And she essentially dropped out of school to take care of him, and he died. I never met him quite young. Yeah. And then she didn’t really go on a creative path. I I think that she probably would have really enjoyed that, and maybe even maybe there’s even a little bit of regret that she didn’t do more of that.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:04:36]:
I don’t know because she ended up working before that in hotel, hospital administration. And then later, she got into interior design, and she’s always kind of done these creative jobs, makeup consultant, fashion consultant, very visual person. But I think the arts, I think she would have loved to have been a performer. She’s incredibly charismatic, funny, life of the party. So I think that was a path she probably would have liked to have explored. Wow. Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:05:12]:
So then how did how did you end up finding your way from the things that you did as a kid into I I know there’s kind of a path there into what you are doing now. Yeah.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:05:29]:
I mean, it was a pretty, I would say, lengthy journey Mhmm. To get where I am today, because we moved around a lot when I was a kid. So we started in Los Angeles. We moved to the Bay Area outside San Francisco. Then we moved to Long Island. So I was sort of near you. And then we moved to Boston, Massachusetts, and I spent my last two years of high school there. And then I came back out to California.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:05:58]:
And all that time as a teenager, I think I was much more consumed with trying to have social connections and feeling really displaced because it was really hard to move during high school, those formative years, leaving friends behind. I did always gravitate to the creative people in school. So the high school I went to in Long Island, it was Syosset High School, which, was a very, like, kind of jocks and sort of, I would say, the when the girls were very sort of into, like, being the same. Everybody looked the same at the school. Everybody wore the exact same clothes and kind of had the same activities day to day. And I sort of found this little rebel crew. We were the ones who liked the new wave music, right? More our hair is an asymmetrical haircuts. And,
Nancy Norbeck [00:06:57]:
and Plus the eighties.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:06:58]:
Right? I knew that you would understand where I’m coming from here. And, yeah, and I have to say that at that particular high school, the education was great. The teachers were fantastic. And the arts programs the arts program was great. And there I had, I remember, like, a a collage art class, which I loved because it really, I really gravitated to collage art because I’m kind of an all over the place creative person. I’m not super linear in what I do. So I really love that as an outlet. I I found the classes to be stimulating.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:07:33]:
I had my little group of friends. It was cool. And then we moved to Boston. And there, I went to this big high school that was very sort of it was a public high school, but it was very art centric. It had its own art building, and there were like AP painting classes, printmaking, like every kind of every kind of art you’d be interested in, and also tons of writing classes, creative writing classes. So I think from the time I was a little kid, I love to write. I always was interested in writing stories, making up stories, that was always something I love to do. I love to tell stories.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:08:10]:
I think in many ways, I am a storyteller more than I am like a traditional writer or literary in that respect. And my mom says I used to go to movies as a kid and I’d come home and I she’d say, how was the movie? And I’d say, well, it starts with and I’d like two hours, I tell her the entire, like from beginning, middle to end. You know, it’s just I just really love love a good story. Right? So I that was something I always gravitated to. But I think it took me a while to consider that anything that I was good at or could potentially have a career in or anything like that. It just it was just something I enjoyed. And even today, I don’t think of it as having a career because I don’t really have a career in it. But Mhmm.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:08:58]:
Sorry. This is a bit rambling. But, but, you know, I ended up when I was in my senior year of high school, there was a guidance counselor who had me take one of these class exams to figure out what your career should be. Because I didn’t know what I wanted to do. And I knew the things I liked. I liked writing. I liked magazines and reading them. And so I took this little quiz and it said I should be a creative director.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:09:29]:
Okay. Now this was what? 1988. I had no idea what a creative director was, but it sounded great. Right? I get to be creative and direct some stuff. So okay. And then I talked with this counselor about the things I liked, and she said, well, maybe you should think about journalism, copywriting, and anything in publishing because you enjoy reading magazines and books and maybe somewhere in the arts. So I decided that’s what I would do. I would find a program at colleges that were specifically magazine journalism.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:10:06]:
And that was there were about maybe four or five universities that had those programs, and I applied to them all. And I got in to every program except for one, Syracuse let me into a different part of the school. They’re like, you can’t come into the journalism one, but you can be like a philosophy major or something. I don’t know.
Nancy Norbeck [00:10:29]:
Dear Syracuse, journalism and philosophy are, you might have noticed, not the same thing. Exactly.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:10:35]:
I was like, interesting. So, in college, that was my major at first was magazine journalism. I came out to California because I still had all these friends here. I went to San Jose State University, they had this new magazine journalism program. And that’s what I started to do. But, most of my professors were these kind of salty older men
Nancy Norbeck [00:10:58]:
who
Hilary Hattenbach [00:10:58]:
were journalists, you know, like they’re on the street, you know, they’re like at Watergate.
Nancy Norbeck [00:11:03]:
Newspaper men.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:11:05]:
Right. They’re newspaper men. And I was like, well, this doesn’t seem that fun. It’s not quite what I had in mind. But as part of the major, I had to take advertising courses and those classes were a blast. And the advertising instructors were like Don Draper, right? Like they’d worked on these big ad campaigns. They were super cool. Like they had all these fun stories.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:11:25]:
And so I thought, okay, maybe that’s my path. I’ll be a copywriter and I’ll go into advertising. And so that’s what I that was my major and that was my plan. And when I got out of college, there was a recession and there were no jobs. So, I just worked a bunch of part time gigs. I managed a bakery. I worked in a clothing store. I worked part time in a little ad sales office.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:11:50]:
And eventually, I got a job at this big publisher called Miller Freeman, and they did trade publications. So it was for every industry imaginable, guitar player magazine, software development software development magazine, whatever it was. And I worked for one of these groups in their trade show group. They would have these big expos. Right? And all the exhibitors would come. And in this case, it was software development. So I worked with all these tech companies, getting them set up on the trade show floor and helping them kind of do their work at the expo. I was their liaison.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:12:28]:
And that gave me, like, this kind of leg up in digital. Right? This was this was, I got that job in, well, I have to do my math now. I guess I got that job in around ’96 or something like that. And then there was a web design and development show. So I was working in software development, web design development in San Francisco at the time that everything was kind of popping off. And I wasn’t really doing any journalism or anything fun really, but I liked all the people. When we were in show business, we’re putting on these big expos, and that was kind of fun. And then I had a a death in the family of of my godfather, and his partner was running the business and asked if I’d come help him with some marketing stuff in LA.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:13:13]:
And I came here. And because of all my digital experience, I bumped into a friend at a movie studio who is now running their new media marketing department, which was all the brand new ways to market movies at studios. And he gave me a job. And that was my path for many, many years. I was doing just movie marketing, which felt creative. But it’s like, what does Julia Cameron call that? Artist adjacent. Right? It’s an artist adjacent job. Right? So here is all these people.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:13:41]:
They’re making movies. They’re starring in movies. They’re doing all their artsy things. And I’m sitting there thinking of ways to make people wanna come see those movies, which was creative in and of itself. Coming up with a marketing campaign, collaborating with people you like that are smart and creative is fun. But the entire time, I always felt like I’m not my heart is not in this. Mhmm. I’m not doing the thing I really wanna be doing.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:14:06]:
I really wanna be making my own art. I wanna be expressing myself creatively. And that was really hard for me. It was a real struggle because and I know you and I have talked about this. Like, when you’ve got a good job, right, and it’s paying your bills and your benefits and all these things, which are really important in life, it’s really difficult to be like, I’m gonna throw all this away and just go. Right? Take a chance on my crazy dream. So that was something that I, for several years, was sort of struggling with. What do I do? And, I was working at a movie studio.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:14:45]:
It was twentieth Century Fox, and I started to take I had an idea for a children’s book I’d never written for kids. So I took a course through UCLA Extension writing for kids. And that class really kinda flipped a switch in my head. You know, it really made me start to focus and write for myself, just fun stuff. I met a ton of other writers, and this was, you know, eventually through got to SCBWI, which I know you and I have that connection too. Right?
Nancy Norbeck [00:15:12]:
Which is the Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators for those of you who have not heard of it before.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:15:20]:
Thank you for clarifying that. Yeah. But I think because in that class, there were a lot of people like me. There were a lot of people who were kinda getting older. Right? We’re not in our twenties anymore. We have careers, but we’ve always wanted to do this thing. And we all kinda have some ideas for fun stories we wanna tell. And so I became kind of immersed in this in this group of people, and it really encouraged me to be more creative for myself.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:15:47]:
I think that was really a turning point. And that was, I would say, around maybe 2007 or 2008 or something like that. And so I did that for a while, and I would go, you know, the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators has big conference every summer, here in Los Angeles where all these authors and illustrators come together. There are speakers. There’s people like Judy Blume come and do a keynote. I mean, I saw incredible inspirational people come and talk. And for many years, I was working on middle grade novels for kids, and I really enjoyed it. And I did get good feedback.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:16:25]:
I did their they do manuscript reviews there, so they’ll pair you with, like, an agent or an editor. Right? And I would get good feedback. My very first conference, they they paired me with, the head of Penguin Kids, the editor in chief or something. And I was like, what? Like, I was not prepared to be in that meeting. She was asking me questions like, what are your plans? Is this a series? I’m like, I don’t even know. I’ve just been scribbling some stuff. So it was encouraging. At least it made me think, hey, maybe you can tell some good stories.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:16:58]:
But, yeah, so that really was, I would say, when I started doing a lot more of my writing again, because it had been years that I wasn’t writing. I was just doing my job and putting all my creative effort and all my energy into my job.
Nancy Norbeck [00:17:13]:
And I
Hilary Hattenbach [00:17:13]:
was like, right? Yes. So do you want me to just keep going with the okay. Okay. Just wind me up and all. So in 02/2008, I thought, okay. You know what? I’m ready to quit my corporate job and see if I can just do some consulting work and really focus on creating something, putting something out into the world, writing a book, whatever it is. So that I that was the first time I quit my job, and I I joke that I’m a serial quitter. You know? It’s constantly like, that’s it, people.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:17:53]:
I’m done with this corporate thing. And then, of course, I’d be, like, back at the corporate shop, you know, trying to pay the bills. So that was the first time I did that. And I did, I got consulting work here and there doing what I used to do, marketing campaigns and things like that, putting that together and working on books. And I was pretty committed to that. That’s what I really wanted to do. And then in 02/2011, my old boss, who’s also a good friend of mine, we knew each other when I lived in Boston as a teenager, and he was in college, and we worked at this coffee shop together. He ended up at a new studio, and he went to Disney.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:18:30]:
And he called me up, and he said, will you come back? Will you work for me? I really need your help. And he’s the kind of person where he’s, like, the only person where the bat phone rings, I pick it up, and I’m like, anything you need. Need. You know? It’s like, you got people like that in your life. Right? They’re just they’re your they’ve got your back and you’ve got theirs. So I said, okay. I’ll come on a temporary basis. That was in 2011.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:18:52]:
So, you know, for whatever, three years later,
Nancy Norbeck [00:18:55]:
it’s still
Hilary Hattenbach [00:18:56]:
there. And again, it’s the golden handcuffs because I have benefits and I have a good salary and I’m enjoying being creative in a different way, but I’m not focused on my own projects. And then this weird detour happens where someone I know said they knew that I like to bake. I like to bake, but I’m an okay baker. I’m decent. I’m not great. But if I make something enough, it is it can be good. But this friend of mine knew I like to bake and said, hey.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:19:31]:
There’s this bakery for sale in your neighborhood. And I was like, hey, that’s an idea because that’s creative. I could go run a bakery. What a great idea. Came very close to running a bakery, Nancy. So I go to visit this I go to visit this bakery and I’m like, yes. I could totally see myself doing this. This is gonna be so fun.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:19:52]:
It didn’t matter that I didn’t know the first thing about running a bakery or even really like how to bake that well, I’d figure it out, right? And while I’m there, I meet a woman who’s scouting the place for one of her clients, and she’s a restaurant consultant. I didn’t even know these people existed. And she said, oh, have you ever ran a bakery or restaurant or anything? And I said, no. No. No. No. This is just kind of a pipe dream in mind because I like to bake. And she said, you should talk to someone who’s doing this right now, someone who’s running a bakery because that will give you a real insight into what it’s like because I don’t think you have any idea.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:20:30]:
Right? And I said, hey. That’s a good idea. So she connected me with a woman who ran this very successful bakery called butter cake bakery. And that’s that woman’s name was Logan LeVan. And so I go to meet Logan. And Logan’s like, do not open bakery. She’s like, you gotta be up at four in the morning. Okay? Everything you own is covered in flour.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:20:51]:
She’s like, I have no social life. Haven’t been on a date in God knows how many years. Like, I just she said it was fun at first, but it really is so much work. And the burnout is so high. And you really do have to know you have to be able to keep the books, pay people, figure out how to get corporate accounts because you can’t really actually support yourself on just selling a few cupcakes every day or whatever it is. So she said to me, what else do you do? And I said, well, I have this job, but I’m also a writer. And she said, really, I’ve always wanted to write a cookbook, but I’m not a writer. And I said, well, that’s interesting.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:21:25]:
What’s your cookbook idea? So then she tells me her cookbook idea, which the idea was that she was always giving friends cooking equipment when they got married or for a birthday or whatever it was. And they said, when can you come over and show me how to use this? She said, nobody knew how to use any of the things they got either for their wedding or as a gift or a housewarming, nothing. So her idea was, I wanna write a cookbook where I show people how to use the equipment, and I give them a bunch of recipes that they can make with those things. And I said, I think that’s a brilliant idea. She’s like, do you wanna work on it together? I said, sure. So the next thing I know, I’m now writing a cookbook. Right? So Logan and I got together, and we basically hash it all out and put together a book proposal. We didn’t have an agent.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:22:12]:
We didn’t have anything, but I found some publishers that would take proposals without agents, and I just sent it off. And because I had been writing middle grade novels for years and trying to get an agent and all of this and never going anywhere, I just assumed this would go nowhere. Right?
Nancy Norbeck [00:22:27]:
Mhmm. Sure.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:22:28]:
Because that’s what a lot of this is. Just, you know, you’re doing your thing from your heart, but a lot of it’s going nowhere. Right? And that’s okay. But it’s kind of interesting that when you sort of have that attitude, then we started getting responses from people. Right? And we got an offer from this indie publisher, Skyhorse, that just said, I’m about to get married. This is the total kind of cookbook that I would want, and I would love to to buy this book from you. So the two of us are sort of like, we this was we didn’t expect this to happen, really. Right? And we don’t really know what to do.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:23:11]:
But it sounds many things about it sound great because it’s a quick timeline. It’s not something that’s gonna take forever to come to market. In the meantime, Logan knows somebody who has an agent, a cookbook agent, and she asked that woman if we could send our proposal to that have her forward our proposal to that agent. So then that agent gets back to us and says, I really like your proposal. I would ask you to make some changes to it, but I’m not gonna send it to indie publishers. I’m gonna send it to the big publishers. And you’re gonna get a much bigger advance. And it’s gonna take a lot more time for your book to come out because they have to schedule it.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:23:50]:
So we talked to this agent a bunch and she’s lovely. But at a certain point, we can’t get ahold of her anymore, right? And it’s sort of like she’s ghosted us. And now in our publisher that offered us the deal is like, we need to know if you’re taking our deal. Because we were trying to figure out what do we do? Do we go with the agent who can guess a little more money and bigger book deal? Or do we go with the indie publisher who’s scrappy, but maybe they’re gonna put some muscle behind it? So time’s running out. Logan’s on vacation with her family. I’m getting all these emails from the publisher saying you have to tell me what to do, and the agent seems to be gone. So I write the agent a letter and just say, we’re gonna take the deal with the publisher, but thank you. And I hope in the future, we’ll stay in touch.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:24:34]:
And I tell the publisher yes. And then that agent wrote to me later and said, this is totally my bad. I really wanted to wrap your book. I’m really sorry. I didn’t get back to you in time. We were moving offices, blah, blah, blah. Right? That’s just how it goes. Wow.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:24:50]:
I know. So we go with the indie publisher, which there were good things and there were not great things. And I can go deep into that if you wanna hear it. But ultimately, that was my first publishing thing. That was my first thing that I had happened as a older grown up that had my byline on it, my name, and it was very exciting. We went on a book tour, we did cooking demonstrations and it was super fun. It was just nothing I ever expected to do in my life. And I’m a okay cook.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:25:24]:
Logan is a very good cook. All the recipes are mostly hers, but she you know, the writing wasn’t really her thing. And I think that I was able to bring the copy alive and make the cookbook fun. And it was a proud moment because again, like, it was just something that was a little bit of a hair brained scheme that actually resulted in something. Right? And that cookbook still sells. We still get royalty checks. I mean, they’re teeny tiny. But our advance was teeny tiny.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:25:49]:
I think the advance is like $1,500 for two people. Right? But we get these these royalty checks, and I think it’s good to be transparent about how much you get because I think people who want to publish books never. Right? So when these royalty checks come, sometimes they’re like a $100, sometimes they’re $80 and we split it between two people and it’s like, let’s go to dinner. You know? Yeah. And spend our money. You know? So it’s not a lot of money. And a lot of my friends who got bigger advances for their book deals, have never earned out their advances. So that was really the big chunk of change they got in the beginning.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:26:22]:
So know, it’s a bit of a trade off however you decide to do it. It wasn’t a money making venture at all, but it was an exciting it was an exciting experience and a proud moment for us both, I think, just to kind of accomplish
Nancy Norbeck [00:26:34]:
that. Sure. And and I I think you’re absolutely right about being transparent with the money thing because so many people think I’m gonna sell this book, and I’m gonna be set for life and, you know, whatever. And, you know, it’s funny that because just this past week, I was with my nephews, and I I self published my novel. And it was just after my younger nephew was born, like, literally a month later, and I dedicated it to the two of them. And I realized there was a copy of it sitting on the end table when we were hanging out at in the living room. And I realized that I didn’t think that they even knew that it existed. So I said, if you look over there, you know, and the older one caught on a little quicker.
Nancy Norbeck [00:27:22]:
They’re eight and 11, so they’re not, you know, totally clueless about books or anything. But, you know, the the they both got the whole wide eyed mouths open thing going on. And then the younger one, who this is in many ways, this is him in a nutshell, sits there and starts asking all the questions. He’s like, how many books did you sell? How much money do you have? I said, not a lot, kid, because it’s not a good way to make money. And as I said to a friend when I was texting about it, know, he’s like, well, that was still pretty cool. I said, yeah. For point two seconds, somebody thought I was a millionaire.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:28:02]:
I know. Right?
Nancy Norbeck [00:28:03]:
Yeah. And then for point two seconds, that that was about as close as I’ve come. But but yeah. I mean, unless you’re extraordinarily good at selling books or just incredibly lucky, you’re probably not gonna land in that territory.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:28:19]:
No. It is quite rare. It is quite rare. And I think I have some friends that did get pretty decent, impressive advances, but it took them several years to write the books. And it’s not like that money carries you. Right. I mean, that’s that’s the money that you have in the moment that you’re gonna use for your expenses. So I I know a few authors that sell books regularly and that that’s not they still have a day job.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:28:47]:
Right? They still have a job that they do because, yeah, very few authors unless they are David Sedaris or, you know, Patterson. Right? Like, James is it James Patterson? People like that. Yeah. They’re living large. You know? They’re
Nancy Norbeck [00:29:05]:
And most of them started before publishing took such a turn with epublishing and all of that. And and so that that’s part of it too. You know? Once upon a time, it was more possible to land in that territory. But Yes. Yes. There there’s a whole separate conversation about democratization and publishing gatekeeping and all of that that comes in here too that Yes. Is a different conversation for a different day, but because it would go on for a long time. Indeed.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:29:36]:
Indeed. Yes. Yes. Absolutely.
Nancy Norbeck [00:29:38]:
Yeah. But there there were two things that jumped out at me in in your story so far. And one is is just that moment of baking could be fun. I could start a bakery because I feel like so many of us have had that moment, you know, of, like, I really don’t know what I wanna do. Oh, look. Shiny thing. I could do the shiny thing. You know? And and I I’ve have probably mentioned this on on this podcast before, but do you remember the show Mad About You?
Hilary Hattenbach [00:30:10]:
Oh, yeah. Of course.
Nancy Norbeck [00:30:11]:
There there’s a moment when, you know, Jamie has been working in PR and she quits her job or is fired. I don’t remember which. And she’s trying to figure out what to do next. And and I just remember this because it resonated with me so much, you know. And, like, Paul comes home and she says, I’ve I’ve decided that I wanna be a silversmith.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:30:31]:
Or or no.
Nancy Norbeck [00:30:32]:
She just she decided she wanted to be something else. And he’s like, oh, honey, that’s great and whatever. And she says, twenty minutes ago, I wanted to be a silversmith. And I was like, yeah. Yeah. That that would be me. That’s how my brain works. You know? Every time I think I land on something, twenty minutes later, there’s another thing.
Nancy Norbeck [00:30:49]:
And and so, you know, I think I think it’s so easy to be like, yeah. I wanna I wanna do that thing. That sounds cool. And, you know, and and also kind of in the same vein, you know, I didn’t know there was a restaurant consultant. Like, you find out that thing I I didn’t know this thing existed. What other thing is out there that I didn’t know existed? Right? Like like, you’re trying to find this thing that you’ve never even heard of that that, like, this mythical amorphous thing that fits, that you that might not actually exist, but you think it probably does. It has to. Right? Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:31:26]:
It’s Yeah. It’s a strange it’s a strange thing. And yet, kind of in a way, the I wanna start a bakery because I could do that, it kind of led you where you were supposed to go. And and so there’s also this element of kind of following this trail of breadcrumbs that did lead you in a direction that you were supposed to take, which I find really interesting too. I love stories like that.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:31:54]:
Yeah. Yeah. Totally. No. That is so astute. And, really, when I think about everything I’ve done, it’s always kind of been that way. Right? It’s like I kind of start here. I go here.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:32:06]:
I go here. Right? Like even getting to where now I do some magazine writing. Right? But that was something I thought about doing when I went to college. And I went all over the place before I ever got to that. And the only reason that I got any work writing for magazines was because I just sort of sent out that pitch on a lark, which I told you about. Right? But, but, yeah, I definitely I love your message about that, which is the name of your podcast too. Right? Follow your creativity because I think we are so programmed to to believe that we are supposed to know exactly what we should do and how we need to get there. Right.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:32:47]:
But I think as a creative person, I don’t know, my brain doesn’t work that way. Mhmm. I’m very I’m very all over the place. And even when I say yes to a project or something, I’m I’m going into it like not really totally sure how I’m gonna do it. Right. I’m just sort of like, I hope that I can figure this out. And I do because you just you have to. But, but, yes, you’re right.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:33:16]:
If I hadn’t have gone to that bakery, met the bakery consultant, I wouldn’t have met Logan. I wouldn’t have done a cookbook. Yeah. All that.
Nancy Norbeck [00:33:22]:
Right. Right. I think sometimes, you know, we get it backwards. We think we have to know what the endpoint is and then work our way there. But but I think sometimes you can’t know what the endpoint is. And that and I I think that this is, like, a cultural societal thing, but I don’t I don’t exactly know. I think may maybe some of us are just more like this too. Like like, we can’t can’t may not be the right word.
Nancy Norbeck [00:33:54]:
Like like, it freaks us out if we don’t know where we’re going. Right? Like, we never never we get in our car or rarely and say, I’m just gonna drive for a while. I have no idea where I’m going. Right? Because you could end up three states away, and then what are you gonna do? Right? You you you get in the car with a destination in mind. Yeah. And so we think that that has to apply to everything. You know, you you go to school to take the journalism program. Thank you very much, Syracuse.
Nancy Norbeck [00:34:27]:
Not the philosophy program, the journalism program. So that you can get the journalism degree, so that you can get the journalism job. Right? And and so it’s not we’re never encouraged to go take the philosophy degree and see where the philosophy degree takes us, even though you never know that could take you where you’re supposed to go because people look at you like you’re crazy if you do that. Oh. And in many cases, that could be the crazy thing to do. You you don’t know. And I think as a culture, we’re very uncomfortable with uncertainty. And to varying degrees individually, we’re uncomfortable with uncertainty.
Nancy Norbeck [00:35:10]:
And so we wanna know absolutely wherever, ever thing ever we’re going, where everything is, what we’re doing. And then we just freeze up if we don’t know. And then we wonder why we get stuck. We all know the reasons that we get stuck. We get stuck for many, many, many reasons, but I think that’s, like, such a big one. And I just finished reading Boyd Vardy’s book, The Lion Tracker’s Guide to Life, and the line that he repeats throughout that book is I don’t know where I’m going, but I know exactly how to get there. And I just every time it came up, and it’s been echoing through my head since I finished it, you know, I was like, okay. Okay.
Nancy Norbeck [00:35:54]:
I I, you know, I I love the sound of this. I don’t know what it means exactly. And yet and yet you kind of do. There’s this part of you that does, or at least for me, there’s this part of me that, like, kind of instinctively got it. And then there’s the logic brain that goes, what?
Hilary Hattenbach [00:36:14]:
What? Doesn’t work like that.
Nancy Norbeck [00:36:16]:
So so, yeah, you have all of this stuff that, you know, all of these voices contradicting each other and all of that in your head at the same time, which also contradictory voices make it hard to do anything too because which one do you listen to? And yeah, and yet, if you hadn’t said, I’m gonna open a bakery because that sounds cool. I I just find this stuff fascinating.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:36:41]:
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, me too. Me too. And I don’t I don’t think I think about it a lot. Mhmm. I don’t I don’t take the time to think about exactly how I got from point a to point b. Although every now and again, I do try to remember something that I didn’t think I could do.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:37:02]:
And I managed to do it anyways. That’s more of where I kind of end up now because I think I think as a creative person and I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but there’s a lot of self doubt. Right? And there’s a lot of sort of anxiety that comes in, especially as you’re getting older, right? In my case, to be in my 50s now, right? It’s sort of like, should I have done this? Should I have been a writer? Why didn’t I right? Right? Why didn’t I pursue this when I was younger? And I know exactly right? And I know exactly why I didn’t do it. I know all the reasons why. And in that case, my mother was like, oh, no. You need to get gainful employment. Right? You need to be able to pay your bills. Right? So she was creative, supportive of me being creative as a child, but she also felt like you need a job that you can support yourself.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:37:52]:
But yeah, so there’s a lot of that thought that goes on in my head, but I always try to catch myself, you know, in what like Stuart Smalley would call stinking thinking because we can’t right? We can’t go back in time. And every every step we took along the way has been important. It’s it it has led you and me to be where we are right now in this conversation about creativity, which is so cool. Right? So instead now, I I tend to have these moments of like, well, I I wanna do this thing, but I don’t think I can do it or whatever it is. You know, I will get kinda trapped in this. And I and I try I try to go back to a moment, like, when Logan and I were gonna make a cookbook. You know? It was like, I don’t know anything about making a cookbook. It’s just that, like, every time we think we can’t do something Mhmm.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:38:44]:
It’s it’s it’s not coming from a logical place because we’ve achieved things in our lives. Right. We get up in the morning and we take care of ourselves and we work and do the things we have to do. So, yeah, that that to me, I think is the big struggle is to fight the negative voices or the or these this notion that, like, I’m at this place in my life now, and am I wasting my time? Or what else should I be doing? What should I be doing? Right?
Nancy Norbeck [00:39:16]:
Yeah.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:39:17]:
I think it’s so easy to get trapped in that, and I try so hard not to.
Nancy Norbeck [00:39:21]:
Well, I will throw out the other line from Boyd Varty’s book
Hilary Hattenbach [00:39:24]:
Yes, please.
Nancy Norbeck [00:39:25]:
On that subject, which is no wild animal has ever participated in a should. Oh. Yeah.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:39:35]:
I like it. They don’t
Nancy Norbeck [00:39:36]:
exactly second guess themselves all the time
Hilary Hattenbach [00:39:39]:
at all. Yeah. Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:39:41]:
And and for what it’s worth, I have those moments too where I’m like, you know, I wish I had done this when I was 20. And then I usually stop myself and think, yeah. And the odds that I would have understood that at 20 are so slim that I never I never would have done it at 20 because I wouldn’t have understood it or I would have been too scared or I would have whatever. Never would have happened at 20. Couldn’t have happened at 20. Had to happen now.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:40:08]:
Right. Right. Exactly. And also, yeah, there were so many other things I was trying to figure out in my 20s, right? And I think we forget that it’s like, we think our brains now were in our 20 year old bodies, but they were not. They were not.
Nancy Norbeck [00:40:24]:
They
Hilary Hattenbach [00:40:25]:
Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:40:25]:
Definitely not. I mean, the one thing kind of on the line of of what you were just saying that that did happen in my twenties that that I do refer back to when I am scared of doing something or or, you know, don’t think I can do something is that I got on a plane and flew to Northern Ireland for six months to live with a family I had never met before because I had never had, like, an immersive time abroad, and I really, really wanted one. And at that point, I was no longer a college student. It was my money. Nobody could say no, and I just went and did it. And in retrospect, you know, it’s one of those things in the moment. It’s like, no, man. I’m doing it.
Nancy Norbeck [00:41:04]:
I’m doing the thing. And and some of my family were like, hi. Northern Ireland. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. Not necessarily the safest place to go. And I was like, I’ve talked to the people that, you know, they’re not right in you know, they’re it’s not like they’re they’re an hour from Belfast. It’s it’s not bad right now. It was the ’95, so there was a ceasefire in effect and whatever.
Nancy Norbeck [00:41:25]:
My whole family was convinced that I was going to live in an absolute war zone, which was not true at all. And, you know, but it was this massive leap of faith that was far bigger than I think I really understood at what was I, 24? And and so ever since, I’ve kind of referred back to it, and it’s like, look, You basically flew into a black hole, and you were fine, and you figured it out. You can do this thing too. Totally. You know? So I’m really grateful for that just because I I could probably take it too far and bully myself with it. I don’t think I ever have, but it is kind of this, wait. You’ve done this thing, so you can do this too.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:42:10]:
Totally. Yeah. No. That’s incredible. That’s so inspiring. And it’s true. I mean, we we do things all the time that we never believed we were capable of doing. And I guess it’s just what do they call that? The The instinct in our brain from when we evolved as a species, that’s like, watch out, right? There’s like a wild animal coming to eat us or whatever it is that makes us have this moment of pause of thinking that we can’t achieve something or that a bad end is gonna come from it.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:42:43]:
Right. And and I guess our work, you know, as creative people is to just try to not be hard on ourselves because, yeah, it’s it’s, it’s not easy to to just do your thing Yeah. In this world, in this society.
Nancy Norbeck [00:43:04]:
Yeah. And I think a lot of the time, we assume things thinking that they’re true when they aren’t necessarily. And and I have definitely more more over the last couple of years. I think for me, at least, it has one of those things that’s come with age where I’ve started to notice it more and more, and I’ll have those moments where I go, wait. Hang on. Is that thing really true, or do I just think it is? Do I does it actually have to happen that way? The way that I think can’t happen won’t work, whatever, or can it actually be some other way that I think will work better? You know? And and that’s like this magic moment because suddenly, it’s like, maybe maybe it can be a little different. Maybe it doesn’t have to be this constrained thing that that I don’t think will work or, you know, don’t think somebody else will accept or, or whatever. And maybe it does, but at least you’ve had that moment of going, is it really what I think it is? Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:44:07]:
You know, it gets gets you out of that, that space, even if it’s just for a little while.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:44:12]:
Totally. Yeah. Yeah. I’ve also just become a person where I wasn’t a big nature person. I always lived in cities. And so I was just like, I love the city, care about nature. But I’ve become a person now where I go outside as much as I can sit in the yard, I put up bird feeders, I have a bird bath, I just watch and listen to the birds and just and and and and I know that I’m it’s just idle time. I’m just sitting out there.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:44:39]:
But I’m like, I don’t care because I feel like this is very healing. I’m I’m feel very at peace. And I think this is also something that’s happened as I’m older. It’s just being okay with, like, I’m not in a race to get out of the house to go to do something. I can just sit and be peaceful. And I think that does feed you, nurture your creativity, just, you know, give your brain a break. I do a lot of that now. Yeah.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:45:03]:
And it
Nancy Norbeck [00:45:03]:
and it does it does feed you. I don’t think we were meant to be inside all the time. Mm-mm. I mean, because let’s be real. There wasn’t an inside way, way back.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:45:13]:
You know? Right.
Nancy Norbeck [00:45:14]:
If we were meant to be inside, I think there would have been an inside. And and, yeah, I’ve I’ve had that that moment too, certainly during the pandemic,
Hilary Hattenbach [00:45:23]:
you know
Nancy Norbeck [00:45:23]:
Yeah. The lockdown and all of that because it was like, get me out of here. But but yeah. In fact, I’ve been working on a a draft for Substack about going to New Zealand because that was just like, oh, look outside. Where have you been my whole life? And I won’t spoil that, but if you wanna read about it, sign up for my Substack. There’s a link in the show notes. Yeah. But but yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:45:51]:
And that that one actually, I’ve been working on it for a bit because it’s like, where do I find the right words for that? But that’s a that’s a different story.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:45:59]:
When did you go to New Zealand?
Nancy Norbeck [00:46:01]:
About five and a half years ago. Six and a half years ago. Two it was January 2017.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:46:07]:
Oh, cool. We went in 2020. We like, right before lockdown.
Nancy Norbeck [00:46:11]:
Oh, wow.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:46:13]:
Because we had already booked the trip. And it was February. So it was before like March was like the right like
Nancy Norbeck [00:46:20]:
Really right before.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:46:22]:
Yeah. But New Zealand was doing so well.
Nancy Norbeck [00:46:25]:
I was gonna say you could have been locked down in New Zealand. I mean, I please sign me up.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:46:31]:
I know. I know. So close. So close. We, like, got back just in time for everything to come to the screeching halt. But
Nancy Norbeck [00:46:39]:
Yeah.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:46:41]:
Fun. Oh, I look forward to reading your stack.
Nancy Norbeck [00:46:43]:
Yeah. So how did you then end up going from writing a cookbook to doing what you’re doing now? Okay.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:46:53]:
Good question. I think what happened, the cookbook came out and we were sort of hustling with that and doing social media and trying to keep it going, but we only do so much. Mhmm. And I think around that same time, I saw, I’ve been doing more of personal writing, really personal essay stuff, but a lot of it I would just do on Facebook. I would just write a really long post about something that happened in my day, or I had a neighbor who was a good friend of mine. She was in her nineties, Tina, and I spent a lot of time with her. And so I would post about her a lot and just all her stories and everything interesting about her. And I saw our friend sent it to me.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:47:36]:
Our NPR station in Los Angeles was looking for LA stories for a new storytelling show they were putting together. And I’ve always thought, well, I love to tell stories. Maybe I could be a live storyteller. This was never anything I had done before. But I took a class in it. There was a course that you could take with a person who that’s what they they would lead storytelling events like the Moth and stuff like that. And I submitted a little write up of a story about my neighbor, Tina. And because she was kind of an LA legend and I thought they want neighborhood stories.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:48:09]:
And they wrote back to me and said, we’re interested in this story. Will you come in and essentially tell us your story? And, of course, I was nervous wreck because now I’m on the spot. There I was like, I’m just gonna send this off. I’ll probably never hear from anybody. I really do think that every time I send something, right, it’s sort of like, it’s out into the ether now, whatever happens. So I go and I essentially audition. I stand on the stage and I tell them my story and they say, we think it’s great. Maybe a little more of this, a little more of that.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:48:44]:
And they’re organizing a big event where it’s gonna be 300 people in the audience, and they’re gonna have a bunch of us storytellers stand up there and tell our LA stories. So, it was a very anxiety producing thing for me to have to prepare for you. And I have also talked about the fact that, like, I do get stage fright, and I hadn’t really done a lot of this type of performing. I’d taken this class and done a little showcase with the class. So I ended up hiring a coach to help me because I didn’t wanna get up there and just freeze and freak out. Mhmm. And, and I did it and it was great. You know, it was great because the coach really helped me a lot.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:49:26]:
He helped me with my pacing. He helped me with ways to calm myself down. The people who were the producers of the show were so lovely and wanted us They want us to actually get up there and read our stories. They didn’t really want us to like tell them off the cuff, but I can’t do that. It’s really hard for me to read a story. Right?
Nancy Norbeck [00:49:42]:
Yeah.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:49:42]:
To really, like, bring all the emotion to it that you wanna bring. So they let me do it just sort of telling it, but I had notes, and they let me have notes and everything. It wasn’t like the mop. And so that was kind of my first toe dip into, hey. I can tell these stories that are meaningful to me about things that are happening in my life. My friendship with Tina, I have I, at the time, had a lot of friendships with older adults that just kind of it just kinda happened. I had a friend I had met at the y, my friend Harry that I went to Zumba with and stuff. So I was writing about a lot of this stuff.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:50:15]:
And, I decided to sign up for some workshops to do personal essay writing. And I took a bunch of them and I ended up meeting a writing mentor and some other folks that had been in the workshop with me and we went private with him. And I’ve been in that workshop for years. And, at one point I had an essay that was a very LA story. And my mentor, Bernard said, you should pitch this to LA Magazine. And I said, okay, that sure, that sounds I don’t know how to do that, but okay, I’ll figure it out. So I know I I I mentioned this story to you in our emails, but I’ll tell it. So I went to the LA Magazine website, and I looked for how to submit to them, and they didn’t have any information like that.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:51:05]:
And I didn’t really know how to find it. But I saw that there was an email address that said editorial inquiries, and it just said I think it said something like editor@lamagazine.com. So I said, okay, I’m just gonna send the email to them. My subject line was pitch, nothing else. And the email itself was like, hello, editor. A little summary of my story and like, thank you. Good night. I didn’t attach the essay.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:51:36]:
Nothing. And an email like that probably should have just gotten thrown out. Right? Because it’s not how you’re now I know the drill. And now I know that there is actually a method to pitching. So off that email went and I forgot about it, but I was proud of myself for at least sending it. Because I think like every time we do a little thing that’s sort of in service of our creativity, that’s a good thing. Right? So, it was three months later, I think. August, I sent it in April.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:52:09]:
In August, I got an email back and the subject was, Hi, Hillary. And it came from a name I never heard of before. And the email said, it wasn’t a reply to an email that I had sent. It just said, I read your pitch. I thought it was really well written. And I’m wondering if you’re seeing this as a column. Are you seeing it as a longer form piece? And I’m thinking, what’s he talking about? Who is this person? So I Google his name, and he is the newly installed editor in chief of LA Magazine, right? And I’m thinking, how is this possible? Like this email clearly went to the person who checks their like spam filter, right? Maybe it went to someone else who’s like, I don’t know, hot potato this. Somehow it got to this guy.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:52:59]:
So I don’t even know what to do. I write to Bernard, my mentor, and I’m like, what do I do? This is the email I got. What do I say? And so Bernard helped me. And he said, tell him because when I had started to do Nancy’s, I had started to put together an essay collection of stories about my friendships with older adults throughout my life and how they really have shaped the woman I’ve become now. Because let’s face it, I’m AARP eligible now. And I think Right? And having had all these friendships with these people and really, I learned so much from from older adults in my life as a young person even now that I felt like I really wanted to to tell these stories together, you know, in in sort of chronological form. So, so he said, tell the editor you’re working on that collection. Send him the piece.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:53:47]:
You know? Tell him you want it to be a a long form piece, whatever it was. So, anyway, back and forth, back and forth. I will say for anybody who is interested in getting anything published, he would this editor would write to me and say, yes, I think this is great. And, I’ll get back to him really busy. This happened a lot and I wouldn’t hear from him. Weeks would go by, months. And I said to Bernard, like, is it a pass? And Bernard said, until they tell you no, it’s not a pass. Keep following up with him.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:54:19]:
So I did. It’s weird to be a stalker because you don’t wanna bother somebody and you don’t wanna be annoying. So I would try to wait till what felt like a reasonable time and I just stay checking in. Just wondering if you’re still interested, anything I can get you any more information. So it took a year from the time he emailed me to the time that that essay ended up in LA Magazine as a cover story, which was very exciting. And it really was because I just kind of kept at it. I just didn’t give up. I stayed on top of him and he eventually assigned an editor to me.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:54:54]:
They sent a photographer here to take pictures with me and my neighbor, Tina. And it was an amazing experience. And that essay in LA Magazine basically opened a lot of doors for me because that ended up becoming a great portfolio piece that if I wanted to write for other magazines, I could send as a piece. I had a friend who worked as a copy editor at a magazine, and he sent it to his editor. So that’s really how I got to where I am today, which is I do freelance writing. I write for a few periodicals. I have been a contributing writer for for a few, Emmy Magazine and Closer Weekly and and LA Magazine, though. That’s kind of an on and off thing.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:55:31]:
It’s not steady work at all. And then I also have some private clients I write for. And all of this because I just, on a lark, sent this piece out into the universe and hoped for the best. So that’s that’s kind of what happened, and I still can’t I still can’t believe it. Like, even when I tell it, I’m like, it’s the craziest thing, but it’s, yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:55:58]:
That’s like the ultimate patience and perseverance story. Yes. Yeah.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:56:05]:
100%.
Nancy Norbeck [00:56:07]:
Yeah. The idea that I think a lot of us have, you know, if it’s gonna happen, it would have happened by now. I I think that whole until it’s a no, it’s still alive.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:56:19]:
Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:56:19]:
You know? Yeah. I I think that’s not something we hear all that often. And I think and there are many cases in fairness where, you know, if you don’t hear anything within a certain amount of time, it’s totally fair to be like, this is not worth pursuing anymore. But but I think knowing that there are cases where not hearing anything doesn’t mean something’s dead yet.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:56:43]:
Absolutely.
Nancy Norbeck [00:56:43]:
That is a huge game changer.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:56:45]:
Yes. And I think I think the difference is I think it’s one thing, and there are plenty of editors or calls for pictures or things like that where they’ll say, we get too many pitches. We can’t get back to you. If you don’t hear back from us in this many weeks days, whatever it is, it’s a no. But I think if you hear back from an editor and that editor has a question or they’ve responded with some interest, that’s when I think that door is open. And editors are so busy. I have learned this, right? They are swamped. They are trying to get issue closed.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:57:20]:
It’s a crazy pace for them, that chances are you slipped through the cracks. And I will say every time I had, I think four pieces in LA Magazine and every single time it was months from the time that I pitched to the time that it got published. And it was me always following up, always just checking in because I knew that every person I’m working with there, I’m not the top of their list. They have so much breaking news and all this information that they’re dealing with and inboxes that are exploding. So, yeah, I think it’s more about if you feel like somebody likes what you’re doing and they’ve been encouraging, like, you can definitely politely follow-up and just check-in and say, just waving. Like, I would do that.
Nancy Norbeck [00:58:08]:
And I would
Hilary Hattenbach [00:58:08]:
just send sort of a friendly email. Like, I hope you’re okay. I hope you’re enjoying, like, the wisteria and the, you know, the night living Jasmine on the air in Los Angeles. Like, you know where the person lives and you live nearby. But I just would try and keep it friendly and not be annoying, which is very hard to do when you’re stalking somebody. But but that’s but, but, yes, I’m a big believer in persevere, don’t give up. I’m also somebody who has walked away and given up on a lot of things. So it’s it’s it’s a real struggle to not just go, they they don’t want this.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:58:46]:
Right. It’s dead in the water. But but I think you can kinda sense maybe where there’s still a little flicker of a flame. Right? Mhmm. Something is still viable as opposed to, I’ve been ghosted and all. I’ll never Yeah. I’ll never hear from this person. Right?
Nancy Norbeck [00:59:09]:
Yeah. Have any of the folks that you’ve worked with reached out to you looking for you to write things?
Hilary Hattenbach [00:59:17]:
Yeah. So that’s what’s really cool too is, if you get kind of a rhythm going with certain editors. So when I first worked with Emmy Magazine, they asked me to pitch some stories. And that was really hard for me because I know a few people in the business, but when you’re writing for a magazine like that, they’re not supposed to be personal relationships. They want you to be a journalist and to be telling a story. And most of the people I knew I’d worked with in some capacity, so it felt a little not quite right. But I had a couple of things that I thought might be decent, and they went for they went for two of my ideas, actually, which was pretty cool in the beginning. And after that, they started assigning me pieces.
Hilary Hattenbach [00:59:57]:
They would reach out and say, hey. We have this editor who worked on this show. Do you wanna interview her? We need the piece by this date. They they I only ever pitched them that very first time, and they assigned me tons of pieces. So that was a case where that’s happened a lot. And then also when I was, writing pretty regularly for Closer Weekly, which is, like, basically, like, the People magazine for the ARP crowd where it’s a lot of legendary celebrities and their little stories. Mhmm. That wasn’t have always ever been an assignment.
Hilary Hattenbach [01:00:31]:
And then LA magazine, so only one time. That editor who I worked with had been an editor for many, many years, old school. So he wanna talk on the phone. This is very unusual, right? He would be like, I can’t email, just call me. And I’d be like, like freaked out. I’m gonna call him on the phone. And so this is funny. So the first time I called him, when he said call me, I think I had maybe sent him a pitch ID.
Hilary Hattenbach [01:00:58]:
I don’t remember exactly what the what the impetus of the call was. But when we got on the call, we started talking about something and he said, what else you got? So this is a very old school editor thing. Right? They just want you to sit there and pitch some ideas. And I had nothing. I was not prepared. So I’m like, oh, well, I mean, stalling, trying to think of other pieces I had been working on. And he sorta understood my vibe that I sort I like to write about old Hollywood. That’s kinda my thing or or feast friendships, older adults.
Hilary Hattenbach [01:01:28]:
And he said to me, he said, I’ve always been curious about the motion picture and television retirement home. Now, if you don’t live in Los Angeles, you may not have heard of this place, but it is a incredible retirement campus that is in the Valley and people in the industry can go and live there after they retire. And it is, they will supplement, a lot of the fees if you’ve been in the business for a certain amount of years and a lot of old Hollywood people have lived there or gone to the hospital there, or it’s been a and it also there’s a fun that supports actors when they are out of work. So right now, they’re even helping people who are on strike. He said, I think that their hundred year anniversary is this year. And I said, I am obsessed with the motion picture and television retirement. And this is like my dream, right? Because when I worked at a studio, they would have You could volunteer and go there. I never got a chance to, but they would have people come and talk to us about the place.
Hilary Hattenbach [01:02:25]:
And we used to essentially give like a little percentage of our paychecks to the fund because someday we’re all gonna end up there was the idea. So that was the only story he actually threw my way and said, would you wanna write about the place and their anniversary? And I said, I absolutely would love to write about that. And so that was a story that I did. And it was during COVID, which was crazy because that place was on serious lockdown. Mhmm. Right? And they had had they had had some people die and some some tragic stuff happened there. And so they were very they were very nervous about having a journalist come in. And I really had to talk to them a lot about what my angle of the story was gonna be and what I wanted to talk about.
Hilary Hattenbach [01:03:06]:
And so the one thing though to be, like, completely transparent is I put my heart and soul into that story. Right? This was like a really big story for me, and I was so excited. And I sent it to the editor, and then I didn’t hear back for a long time as per usual. And I was sort of like, I don’t know. And the PR person from that retirement community kept saying, Hillary, when’s this what’s happening? Is the story killed? I’m like, I don’t know what’s happening. I haven’t heard from anybody. But they finally reached out to me, basically, the week the magazine was closing and said it needs a few cuts, and we’re going to print with it in this issue. I was like, oh, okay.
Hilary Hattenbach [01:03:45]:
Great. And what happened, Nancy, is, oh, they completely rewrote my whole story. Right? Because it was way too long, and they needed it really trimmed down. And I think the editor who got assigned, it wasn’t the guy I’m working with. It was somebody who worked for him. He just, like, rewrote it. It was crazy.
Nancy Norbeck [01:04:02]:
Wow.
Hilary Hattenbach [01:04:02]:
I’ve never I’ve never had that happen. And, it was really tough. I won’t lie. Like, I think I might have cried a little when I saw that. Yeah. Because I’d worked so hard. And also, the people I interviewed were the best. They were the loveliest people.
Hilary Hattenbach [01:04:19]:
And all the things I wanted to say about them. It just there wasn’t room in the article. It just didn’t it all got it all got, you know, cutting room floored.
Nancy Norbeck [01:04:26]:
Yeah.
Hilary Hattenbach [01:04:28]:
And when the editor first sent me the piece, I said to him, I just, I’ve never had to review a piece of mine that contains very little of my original writing. So I’m just taking a minute to process. But you know, they paid me for the story and I ended up months and months afterwards putting my version up on my website and stuff just so I could have the full story told. And I wanted the people at the motion picture television fund to see it, to know that I had done all the work. But that is something that can happen too, right, in this world of of putting our work in somebody else’s hands. This is the trade off that’s so hard. Yeah. Because I think so many of us creative people are like, I wanna I wanna write a novel.
Hilary Hattenbach [01:05:14]:
I wanna make a short film. I wanna perform on stage, whatever it is. And if there is a gatekeeper that is responsible for giving you money for whatever you’ve done, well, they get to do whatever they want with your work.
Nancy Norbeck [01:05:30]:
Right.
Hilary Hattenbach [01:05:30]:
And that that’s the trade off. You know, when we’re just writing our substacks, like, we can put anything we want on that. Mhmm. And I love it. You know, I love the freedom of that. I love that I’m not having to write to an editor. And I know it’s not perfect. And I know if I was spending more time, it would be, you know, it would be so much better.
Hilary Hattenbach [01:05:47]:
But it’s about just, I think, having the freedom to just express yourself.
Nancy Norbeck [01:05:52]:
Right. Yeah. So my mind is, you know, an experiment. I never know what’s gonna pop out Yeah. At any given moment.
Hilary Hattenbach [01:06:02]:
No. I love that. Same with me. It’s like some people have a whole, like, calendar, I think, like an editorial calendar of what’s coming, and I’m like, I right? Dude, that sounds
Nancy Norbeck [01:06:11]:
like a job.
Hilary Hattenbach [01:06:12]:
Oh my god. I know. I’m literally, like, Friday or Saturday going like, oh, here’s an idea. I know. Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [01:06:17]:
I mean, I have, like, unfinished drafts that I haven’t decided what to do with yet.
Hilary Hattenbach [01:06:21]:
Yes. Yes.
Nancy Norbeck [01:06:22]:
And yet, you know, I sat here yesterday and was like, I wanna write something and literally just, like, threw down a poem in, like, forty five minutes and tossed it out there.
Hilary Hattenbach [01:06:32]:
There it goes.
Nancy Norbeck [01:06:33]:
Yeah. And and was like, I don’t I don’t know if this is fully baked. I don’t know if it’s even half baked, but here it
Hilary Hattenbach [01:06:39]:
goes. Yeah. No. It’s the best. I love, you know, I love that about that platform and that there’s no there’s no risk in doing it. Nothing bad will happen. You know? It’s like and chances are what you wrote will speak to somebody. You know? Who see somebody who sees it, you know, might be moved by that.
Hilary Hattenbach [01:06:59]:
It might be exactly the message they’re looking
Nancy Norbeck [01:07:01]:
for. I got an email from a friend of mine today. She’s like, did you write that? I loved it. And I’m like, okay. I guess it was baked. What do I know?
Hilary Hattenbach [01:07:08]:
See? Your work is done. Exactly. Alright. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Totally. Yeah.
Hilary Hattenbach [01:07:15]:
Yes.
Nancy Norbeck [01:07:16]:
Yeah. You just you just don’t know.
Hilary Hattenbach [01:07:18]:
You don’t. You really don’t. And, yeah, I think that’s that’s what’s been my sort of thing to figure out lately is, what do I want from my writing? Mhmm. Right? What do I want? Because people ask me. They’re like, what’s happening with your writing? What are you working on? Right? Everybody’s
Nancy Norbeck [01:07:37]:
Yeah.
Hilary Hattenbach [01:07:39]:
People are always trying to Or giving me ideas, right? You should write about this. I’m like, oh, it’s so much I have all these ideas. But I don’t know. I used to really want a book deal. That used to really be a fantasy of mine. I’m like, I wanna get this essay collection. I wanna get an agent. I wanna sell this essay collection, all this kind of stuff.
Hilary Hattenbach [01:07:58]:
And when I started to go through the the motions of what that entailed, it just was so it was so soul crushing. Because because again, the people who who are in the position to say yes to you have ideas, right? Mhmm. Oh, you should write a how to get old book. Like, you should have a book about here’s some tips that you learned from your older adult friends. I’m like, but that’s not the book I wrote. That’s not the book I wanted to write. And so I think at this stage I’m at, it’s like, I don’t care about the book deal anymore. You know? It’s not about that anymore.
Hilary Hattenbach [01:08:30]:
It’s about, like, being able to do the writing I like to do. It’s nice if somebody wants to pay me some money to write something. That’s great too. I’m certainly not saying no to that. But it’s changed my my priorities a lot because I think it’s so once you once you start having to answer to somebody else in terms of what your creative vision is, then it’s just a job again. And it’s just like being back at our corporate jobs where we didn’t get to do what we wanted to do because we had to get a paycheck. And Mhmm. I struggle with that.
Hilary Hattenbach [01:09:02]:
You know, I I really Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [01:09:04]:
I mean, generally speaking, I think avoiding things that are soul crushing is a really good compass point. There was a metaphor that was kind of half baked in my head there. But, you know, it’s like it’s like soul crushing is the direction you do not want to go. You want to go the opposite direction of the soul crushing. Yes. Generally speaking, spending too much time in the neighborhood of soul crushing, not good for your health In any kind, any part of your health, not good.
Hilary Hattenbach [01:09:37]:
That’s right. That’s right. Express train express train out of soul crushing town. It was what we want.
Nancy Norbeck [01:09:42]:
Right? Don’t don’t go there for any longer than you absolutely have to, and be really sure that you absolutely have to. You know? And that’s not, like, spoiling yourself or anything like that. I have spent too much time too close to skulls crushing. Prom I I promise you. You don’t wanna you don’t wanna be there for any longer than you absolutely genuinely have to be. No. So so yeah. And, you know, I was asked one time in a job interview how I would feel if, I can’t remember now, if it was if someone didn’t take my advice about something or if someone changed something I had done, but it was something like that.
Nancy Norbeck [01:10:28]:
And my response was basically, is my name gonna be on it? So if my name’s not gonna be on it, I don’t care what you do with it. If my name’s gonna be on it, then I might have a problem with that.
Hilary Hattenbach [01:10:40]:
Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [01:10:42]:
You know? Because if it’s gonna look like I’m okay with whatever you did with it and I don’t like that, I got a problem with that. Kinda like what you were saying about that story. And yet in your example, you sold them the story. So I’m kind of sitting here listening to you talk about going, that is a thorny one, isn’t it?
Hilary Hattenbach [01:11:00]:
Yeah. It’s their story.
Nancy Norbeck [01:11:01]:
Yeah. It’s their story. But, like, if you’re working for somebody else and it’s just going out there, if, yeah, if my name’s not on it, you do whatever you want with it.
Hilary Hattenbach [01:11:12]:
I don’t care. Totally. I think that’s a really yep.
Nancy Norbeck [01:11:15]:
But if I’m gonna take the blame for it, then I got opinions about that.
Hilary Hattenbach [01:11:20]:
Totally. Yeah. I think that’s a really good distinction to make because you’re right. I mean, in that case, it was it was my name on an article I didn’t write. But, you know, the guy was a good enough writer that I was like, at least it’s not embarrassing that my name’s on it.
Nancy Norbeck [01:11:34]:
So that’s good.
Hilary Hattenbach [01:11:35]:
That’s good. There was that. But But I will tell you the next time I had an essay with them, which is the last piece I had with them in the February issue of the magazine this this year, I think. They made some they want an editor, not not the editor that I originally worked with, but another editor made a lot of changes. And I fought back this time because I was like, this story is too personal, and it’s it’s something that happened to me. Mhmm. It’s not journal it’s not it’s not a journalistic exploration. I haven’t gone as a reporter.
Hilary Hattenbach [01:12:03]:
Like, I am writing a personal essay. And so I I I am gonna push back on these changes because that doesn’t sound like anything I’d ever say. You know, there’s just certain ways we talk, our voice, and and there was language being changed and things that just I I it was very uncomfortable for me, and he was fine. He said, okay. I mean, that’s the thing too. I think it’s like a lot of times we’re afraid to push back when we’re getting paid. Right? Someone’s giving us money because they’ll buy a personal essay from you. Right.
Hilary Hattenbach [01:12:33]:
But but I think it’s still really important to protect protect your voice and protect your point of view in pieces that feel really personal. So Yeah. Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [01:12:46]:
Yeah. I think you don’t wanna do it over every comma.
Hilary Hattenbach [01:12:50]:
Right. Right.
Nancy Norbeck [01:12:51]:
Right. But you wanna feel like when it’s important, you know, especially when when you feel like you have a solid justification and you can make your case Yeah. That that it’s fair to say, hey. Wait. Let me explain to you why I did it this way. Yeah. And why I think it should stay this way.
Hilary Hattenbach [01:13:09]:
Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [01:13:13]:
Yeah. And you’re right. It is. It’s the it’s the money thing that makes it complicated. Every time. If if money were not being exchanged, I think we would always feel like we could say, hey. You know? I mean and and it it’s funny because, you know, having taught for a while, you see it in schools too. Right? Because there’s a power dynamic there even though there’s no money involved.
Nancy Norbeck [01:13:37]:
Right. And kids will be terrified to go up and say to their teacher, no. That’s actually what my grandfather said to me. Right. And you’re changing what he said, and now the story doesn’t make sense because you don’t understand it because you weren’t there. Or maybe I didn’t write this other part well enough, and maybe that’s what I need to change so that this other thing makes sense. You know, because teachers are not perfect, but you know, especially kids think that they are. Boy, the number of kids that I have tutored that I have had to try and try and try to convince that going to see a teacher for help with an assignment that they don’t understand is an is not a way to make yourself look stupid to the teacher unless they’re a bad teacher.
Nancy Norbeck [01:14:23]:
Right. You know, I always had immense respect for the kids who had the nerve to come to me and say, I don’t understand the assignment. Can you help me understand this?
Hilary Hattenbach [01:14:32]:
Right.
Nancy Norbeck [01:14:32]:
Right. You know, what were they gonna do if they genuinely didn’t understand it? You know, and, and they were, are always so convinced that the teacher is going to think that they’re stupid and some teachers do. And those teachers quite frankly, shouldn’t be in the classroom because that’s what they’re there to do. Yeah. You know? And if you can’t write a clear assignment and having tutored for a while, there are a lot of who can’t write a clear assignment, then, you know, that’s that’s on you, not on the kid. And that’s a lot of the time how you figure out that your assignment wasn’t clear is that a bunch of kids come to you and say, we don’t understand. Right. That’s on you.
Nancy Norbeck [01:15:14]:
Yeah. But but, yeah, it’s it’s that same kind of thing. When when power, whether it’s teacher, student, or, you know, pay or payee gets in there, it gets dicey, and we don’t wanna challenge it. But there are moments when we really are justified.
Hilary Hattenbach [01:15:31]:
Right. Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. I think that’s really the balance in being creative is what are you doing for you? I try to ask myself that all the time. Why am I doing this? Am I doing it for me? Is it bringing me joy? And if I’m trying to cram my idea or reshape my idea because somebody else told me that it’ll sell better, that it’ll be more attractive to this audience or whatever it is, then it’s not my story anymore. Then it’s not it’s not the reason that I wanted to express it in the first place. And it’s taken me a while to get here because Mhmm.
Hilary Hattenbach [01:16:14]:
For a long time, I would say, okay, Maybe I’ll try to change my book proposal. Maybe I’ll try to, you know, see if I can, you know, shape this into something that is marketable. Right? But that just that was just a bummer. And it it it made me feel yeah. It made me feel badly that I wasn’t actually being true to myself. Being true to the to the story I wanted to tell. And it was taking all the fun out of it, and creativity should be fun.
Nancy Norbeck [01:16:46]:
It should be. Yeah. In fairness, there are cases where an editor will have ideas that are totally worth considering. Absolutely. Just for anybody who’s listening, not to come across like we’re saying editors don’t know what they’re talking about.
Hilary Hattenbach [01:17:01]:
Oh, no. No. No.
Nancy Norbeck [01:17:02]:
They totally totally do. And and the right suggestion can make you go from, I think this is a pretty good piece to, woah. This is way better than what I came up with.
Hilary Hattenbach [01:17:13]:
Absolutely. And I and I I’m in workshops, and I love input. And I and my writing has been been made so much better by really smart, great editors and friends. So I’m 100% on board with that. And also those people who gave me advice on how to change my book are right. It would have sold better. A book about some great tips on how to get older from older adults probably would be a great best selling book. They’re 100% on the money.
Hilary Hattenbach [01:17:42]:
Like I think they are super smart at their jobs and they know what they’re talking about. They know the market. But then it just for I guess the point I wanted to make, and no disrespect to editors or publishers or anybody, is that I guess for me, it’s sort of like, why am I doing it? Mhmm. Right? Am I doing it just because I wanna sell a book? Right. Or am or am I writing because writing brings me joy and there are stories I wanna tell? And if I can’t do that, is it still okay?
Nancy Norbeck [01:18:12]:
Right. That’s not the book you wanna write. Exactly. That’s not for somebody else to write.
Hilary Hattenbach [01:18:18]:
Yes. Exactly. Yeah. Which somebody should, and it’s a great idea. And Yeah. You know? If somebody listening writes that book, like, just put us in the acknowledgments. You heard it here. But, yeah, that’s that’s more of a thing.
Hilary Hattenbach [01:18:34]:
It’s like, it’s a it’s not about denigrating anybody else. It’s more just about myself and what I what I wanna achieve. You know? Right. What will feel good for me?
Nancy Norbeck [01:18:47]:
And sometimes it’s hard to strike that balance.
Hilary Hattenbach [01:18:49]:
Yes.
Nancy Norbeck [01:18:49]:
How how much of somebody else’s input do you wanna take and how much is too much?
Hilary Hattenbach [01:18:54]:
Yep. Yeah. Yep. Totally. Totally. Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [01:19:02]:
Well, this seems like a good place to call it done.
Hilary Hattenbach [01:19:06]:
I know. We covered a lot.
Nancy Norbeck [01:19:08]:
We did. And I feel like if we keep going, we could be here all night. Oh my goodness. Yes. Totally. So thank you for this. It’s been really cool and really fun.
Hilary Hattenbach [01:19:19]:
Yes. Absolutely. Thank you. It’s been such an honor to be on your podcast and to get to chat with you and commiserate about creativity. You know, the highs and the lows.
Nancy Norbeck [01:19:32]:
Yeah. No. Totally. Thank
Hilary Hattenbach [01:19:34]:
you so much.
Nancy Norbeck [01:19:35]:
And and you everybody who’s listening should totally check out Hillary’s Substack because it’s awesome. Oh, thank you. She’s always got cool stories in there. It’s it’s worth going back to find my favorite one so far, which is about the woman who gave Tony Bennett the idea for the ultimate revenge song, I wanna be around.
Hilary Hattenbach [01:19:54]:
That’s
Nancy Norbeck [01:19:54]:
right. It’s it’s a fabulous story, and it’s really well well written. And I will find the link for it and put it in the show notes so that you don’t have to go dig in for it.
Hilary Hattenbach [01:20:03]:
Thank you.
Nancy Norbeck [01:20:04]:
But, but, yeah, Hillary’s Substack is fabulous. So Thank you. Check it out.
Hilary Hattenbach [01:20:09]:
Those those Nancy’s.
Nancy Norbeck [01:20:12]:
Welcome to our little mutual admiration today.
Hilary Hattenbach [01:20:14]:
I am.
Nancy Norbeck [01:20:16]:
So Alright. Alright. See you around.
Hilary Hattenbach [01:20:20]:
Yes. Thanks so much. Bye bye.
Nancy Norbeck [01:20:23]:
That’s our show for this week. Thanks so much to Hilary Hattenbach and to you for listening. Please leave a review for this episode. There’s a link in your podcast app, and in it, tell us about a time when you made a crucial shift in your life. If you enjoyed our conversation, I hope you’ll share it with a friend. Thanks 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. Tell me what you loved.
Nancy Norbeck [01:20:54]:
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.