042: Writing Through Life with Amber Starfire

Amber Lea Starfire is an author, editor, and creative writing coach whose passion is helping others tell their stories. Her most recent books include Not the Mother I Remember: A Memoir — finalist for the 2015 Next Generation Indie Book Awards and the 2013-2014 Sarton Women’s Literary Awards — and Week by Week: A Year’s Worth of Journaling Prompts & Meditations. Amber is also co-editor of the award-winning anthology, Times They Were A-Changing: Women Remember the ’60s & ’70s. Her creative nonfiction and poetry have appeared in numerous anthologies and literary journals. Amber earned her MFA in Creative Writing from University of San Francisco and an MA in Education from Stanford University. She has a writing and publishing-oriented online classes website and blog at writingthroughlife.com.  Grab her book for free here! Save Save Transcript: Writing is a lot like giving birth, right? You work for months and months. And when you finally have something that you want to share with the world, you hope that people see it the way you see it. And it gets like in the back of your head, you know that that could never ever be. But I have a deep and indescribable gratitude for my guest. Today, she encouraged me, she calmed me down, she used humor to help me see a different angle. And honestly, she told me when it was time to just hit Delete. She had empathy and excitement. And she helped me to create something better, and to learn new skills that I could only ever dream of. So I am forever in gratitude. And I want to share her with you today. She’s got some really cool things to say about writing and sharing your story and developing a voice of your own. So I’m anxious to share this interview and this guest with you today. Welcome to the art of living big. My name is Betsy Pake entrepreneur, author and personal success coach. This is the show that brings you stories and small ideas to help you live a big life. I hope this once a week podcast will inspire you, motivate you and encourage you to think differently about what could be possible for your life. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let’s go live big. All right. Hey, everybody, welcome to the next episode of The Art of Living big. I’m here with my friend amber Starfire. And she has a special place in my heart. We’re gonna talk about that. But Amber, welcome to the show. Thank you. Pleasure to be here. Yeah, I’m, I’m so pumped. You’re here? Because truly, um, well, we’ll get into what one of the reasons that I love you so much. But tell everybody a little bit about you. And what you do? Sure. Well, I’m an author, a memoir, author, and nonfiction author. And I also edit and I’m a writing coach as well. So I really dedicate my life to empowering other writers to tell their stories. And that’s my tagline helping you bring your true stories to life. Which is that’s really cool. Because a lot of people have a story, right? Don’t you find that most people even if they never thought about writing a book, they have some sort of story they want to tell? Yes, I believe everyone has a story and that everyone’s story is unique. And one of the reasons that memoir is such a popular genre is because we find in other people’s stories, those commonalities that that universal human experience that we can relate to, and it encourages us, it helps us realize we can get through anything. Yeah, yeah, I really like that.