In this new episode of Out of the Clouds, host Anne Muhlethaler interviews novelist and mindfulness teacher April Davila (@aprildavila).
Anne and April got to know each other thanks to their two-year certification training course, or MMTCP, which they completed earlier this year, meeting over Zoom during the closing retreat hosted by their teachers Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield.
April, a fourth generation Californian, shares her journey from scientist to professional writer to novelist. She offers insights about both her writing process as well as what it was like publishing her first novel – 142 Ostriches – and recounts the wonderful story of how she found her agent, plus the joys and challenges of launching a book in a pandemic.
April started offering mindful writing sessions and workshops over the past year and talks about how this turned into a very meaningful project called ‘A Very Important Meeting’. The two discuss the surprising benefits of meditation practice to support creativity – something Anne was delighted to discover after she participated in April’s last workshop.
They go on to discuss how mindfulness concepts like ‘right view’ help the editing process when writing, and April shares tips and resources for writers, before sharing her current favorite reads. Enjoy!
Selected Links from Episode
You can find April at : AprilDavila.com
or on Twitter @Aprildavila
on Instagram @Aprildavila
Discover April’s novel ‘142 Ostriches’
You can join the community and join A Very Important Meeting
7 tips to get early to write – blog post by April
John Scogniamiglio at Kensington Books
Opportunities of the Week newsletter
MMTCP – Mindfulness & Meditation Teacher Certification Program with Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield
Sequoia etymology
Dance Yrself Clean by LCD Soundsystem
Noopiming by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
The One Thing book by Gary Keller, Jay Papasan
For the Love of Men by Liz Plank
The Mindful Writer, by Dinty W. Moore
Out of Eden, the project by Paul Salopek with the National Geographic
Full Episode Transcript
Anne Muhlethaler:
Hi, hello, bonjour, namaste. This is Out of the Clouds, a podcast at the crossroads between business and mindfulness. And I’m your host, Anne Muhlethaler.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Today, I have the pleasure to introduce you to a wonderful novelist called April Davila. April, who is a fourth generation Californian, you’ll hear in the interview she’s quite passionate about her state of origin, is not only a writer, but she also graduated from the same meditation and mindfulness teacher training as I did.
Anne Muhlethaler:
And we met over Zoom. We met over Zoom during our weekend closing retreat at the end of January. I looked her up on LinkedIn and I read a couple of her blog posts and found that she was exploring how mindfulness and meditation was supporting her in her work as a writer, as a novelist. So, I got in touch. I thought wonderful, someone who’s got a craft and a foot in mindfulness, how perfect for the podcast.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I so enjoyed my conversation with April. She’s incredibly relatable, very funny, and I hope that you will enjoy our explorations around writing the craft of how meditation can support artistic endeavors and lots of other fun things. Anyways, I am thrilled to be bringing you this beautiful interview with April Davila. Enjoy.
Anne Muhlethaler:
April, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to Out of the Clouds.
April Davila:
Thank you for having me. I’m so excited to be here.
Anne Muhlethaler:
So, I would love to first maybe ask you, where am I finding you today?
April Davila:
I am in a suburb of Los Angeles. We’re just north of LA and west of Pasadena. It’s called La Cañada. Actually, quite lovely. We’re very happy here.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Nice. I like to ask my guests to sort of tell us a story freely to introduce themselves, if that’s okay?
April Davila:
Yes, of course, where to start? I live in Southern California, but I’m a Northern California girl at heart. And I know many of your listeners are not necessarily in the state. So, the difference between Northern California and Southern California is actually pretty dramatic. They should be separate states. So, I grew up in Northern California. My mom was a painter. My dad was a helicopter pilot. So, I had a kind of unusual parenting. One sibling, a younger sister. And I mean, I lived in one house my whole life. I thought of it always as a pretty uneventful childhood.
April Davila:
And then when I decided to go to college, I came down here to Southern California. I went to Scripps College and actually studied science. I was a biology major, minored in marine ecology, which I loved. I mean, I still love science. I’m a big fan of science. I read about it, I love talking about it, but I just wasn’t great at it. I’m not super great with details. And it turns out if you want to be a scientist, you actually have to really be good with the details.
April Davila:
So, I did give it a shot. I worked as a research scientist out of undergrad. And then after doing a couple of jobs, I realized that if I was going to actually make a living at this and be a scientist, I would have to go back to school and get a PhD, at least a master’s if not a PhD. And being in the lab, and doing that part of the work was not what I loved about, I loved being out in the field.
April Davila:
And so, I kind of floundered then. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. And that was right around the time I met my husband. I was back up in Northern California at that point. He’s a filmmaker and he was working on some film projects. So, he kind of roped me in just this exciting creative work he was doing. And I ended up working with him for a little bit before we were married.
April Davila:
And then a little bit after, I produced his first movie up in San Francisco. But then after our daughter was born, we just realized that if he was going to seriously be in the film business, you kind of have to be in Los Angeles, or at least 13 years ago, you did.
April Davila:
So, we moved down here. And we’re both Northern California kids. So, we’re very skeptical about Los Angeles because Northern California and have this whole attitude about Southern California. And it’s not completely unfounded. Some of the rumors are true.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Can I just say, isn’t it just like old countries that have that north-south divide?
April Davila:
I don’t know what it is. And there are parts that are true to it. But when we got down here, we just found we loved it. We got really lucky. We ended up on a small cul-de-sac full of these just wonderfully creative people who were working. It wasn’t a hobby like up in San Francisco, people had jobs and then they are creative hobbies.
April Davila:
And when we came down to LA, it was like people were working in their creative business and we just loved that. And that was actually when I decided to go back to school and get my degree in writing. And I don’t know how much I should go into my journey from there. I mean, it gets much more detailed from there.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That’s the fun thing about long form, go wherever you want to go.
April Davila:
Wherever we want to go. So, I guess when I was pregnant with my daughter, we had finished making that film that I produced with my husband, and I needed to find a job, but I was visibly pregnant.
April Davila:
And it’s very hard to find a job when you’re visibly pregnant, which I know there are laws about hiring. And maybe if I was some super high qualified physicist or something, it wouldn’t have mattered. But when you’re playing for like a secretarial position or an administrative assistant, if there are two equal candidates, the one who’s not pregnant is going to get the job.
April Davila:
So, I just had a hell of a time getting employed. And when I had nothing to do all day, I ended up just writing short stories, and loving it. And that was kind of an illumination for me, this moment of like, I really enjoy this. I wonder if I could do this for a living. I wonder if I could be a writer, is that really a thing I could do.
April Davila:
So, when we moved down here, I decided to go for it. And I applied to a writing program at University of Southern California and got in. And it worked out really nicely because it was close to where we lived. And we had a nanny who would come for a few hours, so I could go to class. So, I got my master’s in 2010 when I was pregnant with my son.
April Davila:
So, started off my writing career with two small children, a toddler and a newborn and I was working freelance. And then my best freelance client asked me to come on full time, and this was in marketing. I’ve been listening to some of your podcasts. And that idea of marketing and how you reach people that you’re not just trying to sell because the company I ended up working for is actually a marketing and PR company for local governments.
April Davila:
So, they’re not so much trying to sell as just get their messages out. Particularly, we worked with a lot of small cities that had PR problems, there’d been some kind of scandal, and we were kind of helping them rebuild their image. And justifiably, there are a lot of good people in local government. And then there’s always that one guy who has to steal from backers and ruin everyone’s opinion of everybody else.
April Davila:
So, that was the work I did for five years after I graduated and it was great experience. And we can talk more about that, too. I love the way you talk about marketing in terms of messaging, finding the right words, and the challenge of when you’re writing a novel, you have hundreds of pages to get the idea across. If you’re writing marketing copy, you have a few words and that is such a challenge.
April Davila:
And I enjoyed it for years. And then I ended up picking a job as a technical writer at an engineering company here in Southern California.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Interesting.
April Davila:
You know it was because it tied in with my training with marine ecology and science. And I told my kids, I was a nerd translator because I love nerds.
April Davila:
And the company had these like fantastically smart people. And probably half of them, English wasn’t even their first language. And they were put together these proposals for local governments of how they were going to repair their water systems. And water is a big issue in California, too, particularly Southern California steals a lot of water from Northern California, it can get very political.
April Davila:
So, they would write these proposals and they were illegible. And not just for language like if someone was from another country, it was a math English translation that got lost. It was like they couldn’t switch out of the math brain enough to make it a compelling story. So, they hired me to do that part.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I love that, math to English.
April Davila:
Yeah, it’s a thing. But it ended up not being a great fit. I ended up being really lonely in that job. I worked in a windowless room all by myself. And I had to commute. They had told me I could work from home. This is years ago of course before and everyone was working from home.
April Davila:
With the commute, I was leaving when my kids woke up. And I was getting home right as they were going to bed and I got really depressed. I missed them. I was not enjoying the work anymore. So, I kind of hit a wall. Thankfully, my husband at that point was at a place where I could quit my job and focus on fiction.
April Davila:
So, I did that. And I finished my novel. And I actually finished it in 2017. But it came out in end of February 2020, which turns out is the worst time in history to release the book.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Oh, oops.
April Davila:
Oops. Yeah, no one could have called that. It’s not the publisher’s fault. But it’s been a very interesting year. Yeah.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I believe you. So, I’m interested in how did you start writing short stories?
April Davila:
It’s funny, I wrote a few just little snippets of ideas or anecdotes that never really went anywhere because they weren’t very good. But the idea I really enjoyed is actually the basis for the novel that I’m finishing up now. It became my second novel.
April Davila:
I mean, my daughter’s 13 now, so this would have been 14 years ago. I was playing with this idea and I loved the idea, but I didn’t know what I was doing. And I made the right choice and choosing not to write it as my first novel because it actually was a complex idea. And I had played with it enough to know that it was a complex idea.
April Davila:
So, for from my first novel, which is 142 Ostriches, that’s the title, it’s very straightforward narrative. It follows one young woman for about 10 days of her life. It’s first person point of view, nothing tricky about it. And it took me eight years to write it. I was learning to write a novel as I went and blogging about it along the way, which actually turned out to be a really fun journey.
April Davila:
Writers name to my blog is one of the best websites for writers up years ago. But because I would blog about all my missteps, I’d write something and then realize, oh, that wasn’t good. And then I would blog about how I discovered that it wasn’t good. And then I would go about fixing it, and it just was this very long journey.
April Davila:
But then, once I got through that, I had been tinkering with this other idea for so long that I had an outline, that by the time I actually turned to, it was almost 60 pages long. But I had the thinking about it for so long that all I had to do is fill in the scene work basically, not that it’s that simple, ever.
April Davila:
But I wrote it in about a year and a half. I just poured out of me because it had been percolating in my brain for so long. Now, I’m rewriting and rewriting and rewriting. And actually I think I might be on my last pass. I just got a set of notes from a few readers and I’m getting close to them with this one.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Congratulations.
April Davila:
Thank you.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I am, I think, a quarter of the way through 142 Ostriches, and I got the audiobook, and you got me giggling because I was listening to it just before speaking to you today. There’s a passage where you describe what’s the name of the main ostrich, the one that was the favorite of the-
April Davila:
Abigail.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Abigail. Abigail really enjoying the hose, being hosed around. And it’s really interesting, I find it fascinating how good writing can propel us in the scenery. So, here I am in Geneva, going from my recycling station to grocery shopping. And as I’m turning a corner, I now have this vision of an ostrich running around being hosed down and it’s really cute. It stayed with me. So, thanks for making me giggle.
April Davila:
Of course. I love that about audio books. So, this last weekend, I was working out in my garden. And I remember that the last time I’d spent any good amount of time out in my garden, I’d been listening to this book, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, which I loved.
April Davila:
But I didn’t have my headphones in and I was at my garden this past weekend. And I could remember the scenes I was listening to as I like move from one part of my yard to the other, I could almost see it again. It’s amazing how those things get stored in your head.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Oh, completely.
April Davila:
So, you’re going to see that ostrich every time?
Anne Muhlethaler:
I will let you know if that’s the case. And I’ll send you a picture of the corner. So, I was going to ask you, I’ve asked you about writing, I want to know about your meditation, but I guess that there’s an in between anyway. Is it possible that over the course of the last few years, part of what made your blogging so interesting is that you had a different lens to look at your writing from, thanks to your meditation mindfulness practice?
April Davila:
Absolutely, yes. It’s something I’ve thought a lot about, actually. And so, where I’ve landed recently is with this new group, a friend of mine and I cofounded a group called a Very Important Meeting. And it’s a mindful writing group.
April Davila:
And the way that that came about was in recognizing the impact that meditation has had on my writing. Because I mean, I struggled as a writer for a decade before I really kind of got any traction. And there are a lot of factors in that, part of it is this persistence and getting better at your craft. But then, I couldn’t deny that when I got more serious about my meditation is when my writing really started to take off.
April Davila:
And I think part of that is I became better at editing myself. I became better at actually seeing what was on the page, as opposed to what was in my mind and noticing when they didn’t match up and when I needed to do more on the page to make it feel like it felt inside my head and inside my body.
April Davila:
And then also just the mental health aspects. One of the reasons I got serious about meditation is that when I left that job, I was so depressed and I was drinking too much, and I just was a mess. And so, getting my personal life together, meditation was so key in that. And then when you do that, all of a sudden, I don’t know, when you drink late into the night, it’s very hard to get up and write in the morning. And when you actually go to bed at a normal hour and get up and meditate for a few minutes, all of a sudden, writing just comes and it has been such a game changer for me.
April Davila:
And I’m happy to talk about some of the specifics of it because when I sat down to think about how I might want to teach meditation, and this was part of our class, when we had to teach the second part of our practicum, and we had a more in-depth talk, I thought about how has meditation actually affected my writing. And I actually made a list of bullet points of like it helped me in this way and this way.
April Davila:
Very quantifiable things that turned out, and I was actually surprised that I could delineate it so clearly. And that little list kind of became the outline for the mindful writer workshops I’ve been teaching. Right now, it’s a workshop. I’m thinking about making it a class.
Anne Muhlethaler:
You should. Can we go back one step, how and when did you get introduced to meditation? I have to tell you, as an outsider, not knowing everything about California, I can see California hippies, although I’m thinking that’s more the Southern side. Now, the Northern.
April Davila:
Oh, it’s both.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Oh, it’s both.
April Davila:
Oh, it’s both.
Anne Muhlethaler:
It’s not surprising to me that a Californian is meditating. But so how did you get started?
April Davila:
I think if you ask Californians, they would tell you it’s more of a Northern California thing, because that’s where more of the hippies ended up, like UC Berkeley is up there. And you had the whole movement in San Francisco of free love and all of this. Yes, California has kind of a reputation for new age thinking. And there’s good reason for that. A lot of the first westerners who went over and seriously studied and came back, came back to New York and California.
April Davila:
And so, there’s a contingent in New York. But there’s also like Jack Kornfield, came back to California and he founded this group called Spirit Rock up in Northern California, which is the first place I ever sat to meditate. It’s so beautiful out there. And these rolling, grassy hills, it just feels peaceful. You walk into the grounds, this place is amazing.
April Davila:
My husband and I, say I think we were newly married and we’re just curious. And Spirit Rock was offering once a month, they do a free day long with whatever teacher is available to do it. And I went online, I signed up, I was like, “Oh, this guy, Jack Kornfield seems nice.” I did a free day along with Jack Kornfield without even realizing what a big deal Jack Kornfield was.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I’m so jealous.
April Davila:
It was pretty great. And had just a really kind of amazing experience. I think a lot of early meditators have that experience where like, you get super blissed out, you’re like, “This is the best, I’m going to do this every day.” And then you go home and you meditate, and you’re like, “It’s not happening. Why isn’t it happening? I’m doing it wrong. Why am I feeling blissful?”
April Davila:
And then you come to realize that actually, meditation isn’t just about having your mind clear and feeling super blissful, there’s a lot to it. And I think that I found kind of discouraging, as many beginning meditators do.
April Davila:
And so, for years, I was very off again on again. I would occasionally go in for like, I think my husband and I did a Wednesday night class series once where we went for a few Wednesdays or something. But it was not that serious about it. And it wasn’t until I really hit that rough patch in my life where I was just so down and really struggling.
April Davila:
And again, I think that’s kind of where a lot of people come back to meditation is you need help with something. We’re struggling with something and we’re looking for answers. And for me, it was very helpful.
April Davila:
There was a program here through an organization that class called The Meaningful Life. And it was, I guess, stringent isn’t quite the word because it was meditation. And it came from a place of deep caring, but the teacher kind of took no nonsense. And when you signed up for this class, you were going to meditate every morning, you called in. And it was a 25-minute meditation every morning.
April Davila:
And then we met every other weekend as a group, and there were probably 30 of us. And I think I just needed that discipline. And then once I started meditating every day, I started to really understand more what I was experiencing. You have the goods but you also have the bads. And you start to feel some of your emotions in ways that you didn’t understand before. And then some understanding creeps in and yeah, just that was one thing shifted for me.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Did you start with insight meditation?
April Davila:
It was insight meditation because that’s what Jack was teaching in Spirit Rock, and Spirit Rock has been the place I’ve gone back to. I’ve done I think three silent retreats like residential retreats now. You go on vacation, and you’re like, I’m just going to relax and recuperate and you come home feeling more frazzled than when you left.
April Davila:
But when you go on a meditation retreat, you actually have that experience of like, you put your phone in your car and you leave it there. You don’t talk to anyone. You just sit quietly and it’s so rejuvenating. I have been dying to go on retreat again. And they’re all closed down right now of course because of COVID. But as soon as they reopen, I can’t wait to go back into another.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I was actually scheduled to do one last year at Spirit Rock in May.
April Davila:
Oh.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. I had to cancel my flight and everything. It was then rebooked for maybe November and then yeah.
April Davila:
Well, when you get there, you will see it’s a wonderful place. You’ll love it.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah, the reason I ask is because my way and wasn’t via insight, it was via loving kindness and it was very random. I sat through one group class was on holiday. And I don’t know why, but the teacher at the end said, “Imagine how powerful it would be if someone were to do this every day.”
Anne Muhlethaler:
In my head, I went challenge accepted. And I don’t know why, I did it every day. And I was sharing this with another teacher a few months ago. I was doing a detox with only food and veg that are noninflammatory. And so, they had also prescribed me infrared sauna. And so, it was very much the multitasker. I decided that was going to do the meditation in the sauna.
April Davila:
Yeah, what else are you going to do?
Anne Muhlethaler:
Damn. It turns out, it’s a little bit challenging, FYI for 30 minutes.
April Davila:
I would think so, actually.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah.
April Davila:
The duration and probably the physical discomfort, it gets hot in there.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah, yeah, it does. Because I also studied, I did my 200-hour yoga teacher training. I then ended up also going down the route of other kinds of meditations. And I have to say that I like to have experienced and seen different panels.
Anne Muhlethaler:
So, you were mentioning earlier that having reshuffled your life and got into meditation, you ended up getting up early in the morning to write. And I read in your bio, which was very entertaining.
April Davila:
Thank you.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Because you keep writing fiction, she bought a coffee machine with a timer, you say, and set it to start, bring it for 4:50 every morning so that you can write in the wee hours before the rest of the family work. And this went on for years. Now I have to ask, so, you weren’t an early riser before that?
April Davila:
Oh, my god.
Anne Muhlethaler:
How did you make it?
April Davila:
And this is still when I was drinking, too. It was painful. It was really painful. And then it’s amazing what the human body can adjust to. It really went about it all wrong. Like if anyone is interested in getting up early to write, I actually wrote a whole blog post about it. If you Google, How to Get Up Early to Write Even if You’re a Night Owl, I think that’s the title of it. But the things I did wrong is again, this was like the theme of my blog of like things I did wrong and how I figured out that we can do it better.
April Davila:
So, I had this idea because I was working full time and I had two small kids, I had not a lot of time. And I found that if I went to work as a technical writer or a marketing writer, before I tried to do my creative writing, there was nothing left when I got home. And so, I made the executive decision when you wake up, you have a certain amount of energy for the day. And I was like, I’m going to use it on my writing first.
April Davila:
And so, I set my alarm and I would get up and I would write and then I would go to work and my employers would get my less enthusiastic writing, not that they ever noticed I did fine. But it was the only time I could carve out.
April Davila:
The first mistake I made was that I tried to do it every other day. I thought I was being kind to myself. I was like, I’ll just do every other day. And then I can sleep in a little bit every other day and my body just never adjusted.
April Davila:
And I felt like I was ping pong all over it. I was so frazzled and tired. And it wasn’t until I committed to do it six days a week. I would get up, my alarm would go off and I would smell the coffee. I go up like a zombie and get my coffee. And then I would write in my journal while I drank my coffee.
April Davila:
And then as I was writing, my pen would start going a little faster. I’m like, okay, I got the coffee, and I’m ready to go. And then I would put up the novel and I would write until the first kid woke up.
April Davila:
Sometimes I was 20 minutes, sometimes that was an hour and I took whatever I could get. And I did that for years. And it was painful, but it did get easier once I had found a rhythm with it, and it just became something I did, and I didn’t have to think too much about, it did get easier.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I’m full of admiration. I’m a big sleeper.
April Davila:
Yeah. Especially now that I’m writing full time. And this year has been crazy, of course. But before COVID, I could drop the kids at school and come back and write. And so, for a while, I stopped getting up early. Because I was like, I don’t have to anymore. But I find that it’s still my best writing time. I think I did it for so many years that I just trained myself for that to be my creative time. So, now I get up early again.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I was thinking Pavlov’s dog, you conditioned yourself to go there. Amazing.
April Davila:
So, like the Pavlov’s dogs idea, that’s actually how I made meditation more regular in my life too. Because I had this regular routine and I get my coffee, I write in my journal and then I would start writing.
April Davila:
And so, what I did was I just slipped meditation right into the middle there. So, I would get my coffee, write in my journal. And then I turn to my cushion which is right here by my desk and I sit down.
April Davila:
So, now as I finished my journal writing, I’m like okay, now it’s time to sit and it’s become again, the routine of it is become so set that I don’t have to think about it so much anymore. Not that patterns don’t get disrupted from time to time, but I have found that routine to work really well for me.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I resonate with that a lot. I find that the more you can visualize certain behaviors, the easier it is to just slip into them and instead of asking your self-questions about I should be doing X, Y, Z?
April Davila:
What do I do now? What should I do with my day?
Anne Muhlethaler:
Exactly.
April Davila:
I don’t want to think about it. I love my routine. That’s been the hardest thing about COVID for me is it just jacked up all my routines.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Well, I can just about imagine. So, I was going to ask you about the process of publishing your first book, because I’m guessing it’s pretty different from simply the writing process. How did that happen for you?
April Davila:
So, good question, where to start. I guess with finishing the manuscript. I finished it at the end of 2017. And one of the things I would do when I wasn’t feeling creative enough to write as I would work on my list of dream agents. So, I had a list of agents.
April Davila:
So, one of the things you can do, if you read a book you really love, they will always think their agent in the acknowledgments. So, you can turn to the back end if they’d like to thank my agent, so and so. And then I would research them and see what kind of books they represented and either put them on my list or not.
April Davila:
So, I had a list of 30 agents that I thought would be a good fit for my book, and that I would want to work with. And then as I was finishing my manuscript, I ranked them. So, like my top choice and down on through 30. And my plan was, I wrote up my cover letter, basic template, but I plan to customize it. And my plan was that I would send out five queries to agents.
April Davila:
And then when I got to rejection, I wouldn’t worry too much. I take like the rest of the data morning and cry and whine about it. And then I would just send out to the next person on the list. This is a plan that one of my teachers suggested to me and I was like, I’m in for that I’m all about spreadsheets and get it organized. Because that helps for me to manage the inevitable disappointments that are just part of being a writer. There will be rejection. There will be, I don’t know, tears. There will be tears.
April Davila:
So, I sent out my first five query letters on a Monday and I think it was in February of 2018 that I did this, and customizing each one of like, here’s where I found your name. And here’s why I think you’d be a good match. And then there was the blurb about my book. And a little bit about me is like you’re supposed to have her query letter, there’s a structure to these things. And then I just chewed my nails waiting for a response. And my number one pick came back and said, “Oh, it sounds interesting, send it over,” which never happened.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Amazing.
April Davila:
Never happened. So, I sent him the manuscript. And on Friday, he offered to be my agent. He said, “I want to read this.” I mean, it was unheard of.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Quite a great story.
April Davila:
It was really exciting. And then of course, I was over the moon about it. And he was talking about we’re going to have a bidding war, we’re going to go to New York. And he was so excited about the project. There was one other agent who actually did respond as well, but she was much more lukewarm about it. She’s like, “Yeah, kind of like your project.” That is like, no, you’re not even competing with this guy. He is so excited about it.
April Davila:
So, then the rejections came. He started sending it out, and it just got pass after pass after pass, which is part of the game. If you don’t get rejections in one spot, you’re going to get them somewhere else.
April Davila:
So, he sent it out over and over, we kept getting nos and I asked him at some point, I was like, “Well, should I edit? Should I rewrite?” And he said, “If we were getting the same feedback every time, I would have you edit before we sent it out, but we were getting feedback, like love the characters, but not the story.” And then the next one will be like, “Love the story, but not the character.” And he’s like, it just has to find its own. It has to find the editor who loves it.
April Davila:
And that ended up being a gentleman named, John Scognamiglio at Kensington Books. They generally don’t do a lot of literary fiction. They do cozy mysteries, and romance novels and things like that. But he has his own part of it, where he gets to choose just because he loves it, even if it doesn’t quite fit in with their model.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Amazing.
April Davila:
So, he picked mine and we went from there. And then we start to marvel at how long the publishing process is because that was July of 2018. And they already had their 2019 spring books. And they plan that far in advance. Because it said on a ranch, they wanted it to be a spring book. I guess ranch stories sell better in the spring. They know, I don’t know.
April Davila:
So, they said we want it to be our spring 2020 lineup. And I said great. And I went on to like work on my next novel and it jumping back and forth because there’s a lot of editing process. They send you notes, you send revisions. There’s a lot of back and forth.
April Davila:
And then all the prep work leading up to planned out the book tour. I had all these people I was going to visit and bookstores I was going to talk at and then the book came out on February 25th when people were just starting to get nervous about COVID, people were starting to notice it was coming to the states, cases were starting to build. And on the third day of my book tour, it was officially declared pandemic and everything was shut down.
April Davila:
So, they canceled a book tour, which was very disappointing. But over the months that came pretty much everyone canceled ended up moving online. So, I was supposed to be part of San Diego Festival of Books. And they had to cancel, but then they ended up moving online. So, I was part of their online festival. I did a reading.
April Davila:
I mean, I actually ended up doing more things than I probably would have done in person. There was a book club in New Jersey. There’s no way I ever would have been to New Jersey just for a book club. But to Zoom in with them was really fun.
April Davila:
So, I actually ended up meeting a lot of people, talking about the book quite a bit. It was an unusual book launch experience. But it is what it is at this point.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That’s fantastic. I do need to ask you, what is your experience with ostriches? Where did that come from?
April Davila:
That’s a good question. So, the story is much more about the family. If you’re listening to it at this point, it’s much more about the family.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I mean, right now I’m at the funeral, and it’s all kicking off.
April Davila:
Yeah. And so, it’s about the family dealing with the death of the matriarch, but it’s set on the saucer tranche, which a main character has inherited. And the reason that all came about is I was actually working on a travel piece. This is, I think, when I was still in grad school, even I did some travel writing.
April Davila:
And I went out to this ostrich farm to write the travel piece. And I was just starting to work on my novel. And when I got there, I was trying to decide where I wanted to set it. When I stepped out of the car at the ostrich ranch, the birds are so bizarre, they’re like this study in contradiction. They’re beautiful and deadly. They have these giant eyelashes that like, I don’t know, they like supermodel eyelashes. And then their legs are this horrible, scaly, awful texture. There’s so much about them that just doesn’t mesh.
April Davila:
And for me, that was the perfect metaphor for family. You can love them and then if they come to visit, and you’re like, why did I invite them? It’s just conflict and contradiction and that experience of holding two things at the same time. And I thought, this is it. This is where I’m going to put my book.
April Davila:
And the guy who ran the ostrich ranch was so friendly. And I think he was kind of lonely. It was just him out on the ranch by himself. And so, I thought I’d do like a one hour tour for this piece I was writing. And I ended up standing out there like all day talking with him. And he told me all these anecdotes, and probably 80% of the plot points in the book actually come from anecdotes that he told me about the ranch. And it just kind of took off from there. Yeah.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That makes sense.
April Davila:
I didn’t start with any great affinity for ostriches, but I know a lot about them now.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Clearly. That’s really wonderful. Well, I’m looking forward to the rest of it. So, that’s the good news.
April Davila:
I hope you enjoy it.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Last week, I interviewed a really wonderful wellness specialist. She’s a naturopathic nutritionist. She lectures in London and she’s also a personal trainer. And she was telling me about how hard it had been for her over the past 12 months to actually put any time into fiction. I was wondering if this is something that came up maybe over the time that you were talking on book tours, I mean, on the Zoom version of the book tour.
Anne Muhlethaler:
The reason I’m thinking about this is obviously because Kara’s mentioned that last week, and she did recommend a book that she couldn’t put down. And I read your blog post about the freedom of putting a book down. So, I feel personally very unencumbered by the fact that at least five books that are not finished by the side of my bed. So, what did your audience have to say around that?
April Davila:
It was interesting. I heard from a lot of people and I experienced it too, that reading was really hard, particularly most of 2020. People found reading hard, it was hard to focus. I experienced that too. Most of the books I was reading, I just couldn’t. I don’t know, my brain was very scattered.
April Davila:
The one way I was able to get back into it was I went to my daughter’s YA fantasy bookshelf. And that was my sweet spot. I needed total escapism. And I think it was just about finding what works for you.
April Davila:
Because once I found that, I was just devouring books again. What I needed was some escapism. I’ve talked to some people who are like I needed nonfiction. I needed concrete answers to things that I could understand. And that was their way of coping.
April Davila:
But it seems like most people have kind of come through that fog and people are starting to read again. I mean, I had my best friend, she emailed me and she’s like, “I’m so sorry, I haven’t read your book yet. But I just I can’t focus.” And this was my book had been out for six months. And I was like, how can I be mad, we’re dealing with all this together. And it was hard for a lot of people.
April Davila:
And then writing was particularly hard, trying to be creative. Some people just blossom, but I’ve heard some writers say that it was great time for them. I think they probably don’t have children. I don’t know. It was not an easy time for me. It took me a while to get back into actually drafting, but the nice thing was that I had a draft of this novel.
April Davila:
So, when I did get back to it, I was editing which for me that’s an easier thing to do with more distraction. First drafts for me, I really need quiet. That’s when I’m more inclined to get up at 5:00 AM because I just need quiet. I need to know that no one’s expecting a phone call or email or just, I really need that space for a first draft.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That’s interesting. I was about to ask you about editing, actually, because I read your blog post about it. I think I read that on LinkedIn before I even contacted you. It piqued my interest because in it you tie in right view, which is a mindfulness concept as a tool for better editing. And so, I wanted, if you don’t mind, for you to explain that to our listeners, how did you find this mindfulness to help you in the editing process?
April Davila:
Yeah. This was one of those things I was mentioning that was really revelatory for me in how mindfulness has affected writing because particularly when we’re writing fiction and we’re writing, more or less alone, I mean, some people have writer groups or whatever, but it’s us in the page. And we have this vision of what we want the story to be, and it’s in our head, or at least for myself, I can see the environment. I know what I want it to be. And I’ll write it down like the woman walked into the room, well, that tells the reader almost nothing.
April Davila:
If I write the woman walked into the room, in my head, I’m seeing maybe it says gorgeous, gleaming kitchen with marble countertops, and canned lighting, and every fancy appliance you could ever imagine. And there’s a dog running around and I can hear the birds chirping. It’s a very modern day Cinderella kind of kitchen.
April Davila:
And what does she look like? Is she a 13-year-old girl? Is she an older woman? Is she a grandmother? There’s so much that isn’t on the page if you write the woman walked into the kitchen. But when I was starting out as a writer, and I would read my own work, I didn’t notice that distinction. And that idea of writing view as you know in mindfulness as seeing things as they are in the present moment. And that that is a training that we can work on.
April Davila:
And so, now, when I used to read the word say that as an example, the woman walked into the kitchen, I would bring so much mental imagery to it that I thought that that was what’s on the page.
April Davila:
Now, I’m exaggerating a little bit here, but to get the point, but what we overlay, and that’s true in so much of our lives, if my husband says he didn’t love the dishwasher, what I hear is two decades of resentment about me being lazy with the dishes, and I bring all this emotional overlay to the conversation instead of, oh, I got busy taking care of the boy and I didn’t get to it, that would be the simple answer. That’s the right view version of that.
April Davila:
And the same applies to my writing. So, if we can actually see what’s on the page and say, like, oh, is that what I wanted it to be? Is that what I’ve seen in my head? Oh, not at all. And then you have the opportunity to actually make it what’s in your head.
April Davila:
And I think the example I gave in the blog post is an edit I was doing on my current project, where I open the story with a storm. And I think my first sense was just the most boring sense. It was something like it was raining. I mean, is there a more boring sentence than it was raining?
April Davila:
So, I reedited it, I think I have it right here. And what I landed on was, and this is not done, it’s not perfect. But that unrelenting rain pummeled the earth and left divots in the mud. So, you can see how that is much more what’s in my head when I say, oh, it’s raining. Because now we’re outdoors. It’s one of those heavy rains, it’s not a sprinkle. I’m starting to give some details of what I’m actually seeing in my head. And they can only do that because I can actually see what’s on the page as it is.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That feels really powerful. I read in your blog post something about context. In general, I find that very much to your point, context is setting the scene. Context is giving a background, insights into the motivations.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I mean, I’m not sure how you approach it as a fiction writer. But I’ve understood that in order for a story to feel more compelling, giving it context tends to bring it to life in a way that the sole representation of the piece or the person as they are is not going to go as far into bringing people into the story we’re trying to tell.
April Davila:
Yeah, it’s interesting. The thing that comes to mind is when you go to a museum and they give you the little description of where the artist was in their career and how this piece fits in with exactly what you’re saying.
April Davila:
And it’s funny, I haven’t thought about that as much when you’re writing fiction, I think context is most important to explain motivation for later down the road. So, in those early pages, you are basically establishing a character who has certain ways in which they respond to the world so that later when the dramatic points of the story come, we understand why they make the choices that they do.
April Davila:
In terms of context, in general, when I think about say writing a blog post or something that’s a shorter format, maybe nonfiction, I think it’s simply like what you said about the narrative that as humans, narrative is how we make sense of our lives. We’re constantly telling ourselves stories about why things are, how things are, I mean, look at any religion, it’s about organizing our principles through story. And story is much more compelling if it has a context.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. I think the story also tells the why, to very much to your point about how you build a character. It fills in part of the blanks, essentially. It’s the why. It’s the Simon Sinek thing. It’s the why, the why, the why.
April Davila:
It’s funny, because I just was thinking to do said that how whenever I read a blog post that I like the next thing I click on is the bio link, because I want to know about the author like, oh, how did they get there? How is this a thought that they’re having writing about? I absolutely do that.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Actually. I really liked your bio. Well done.
April Davila:
Thank you.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Do you know what I like the most is the fact you open with a video to tell people how your name is pronounced. Do you want to give us…
April Davila:
April Davila. People get very creative with the Davila. My maiden name was Collier. And no one ever got that wrong. But people get very creative with Davila.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Really? How do they pronounce it?
April Davila:
Davila, Davila. And then they get nervous that they’re saying it wrong. So, then they’ll put the emphasis like Davila. They break it into two words. I don’t know. When I first started doing my book tour, I did an interview on NPR, the woman I talked to, she was like, “Just put it on your website, because it’s something everyone who does anything audio with you is going to want to know how to pronounce it right. Just put it on your website.” So, I did that.
Anne Muhlethaler:
By the way, given how my last name is spelled, I am taking a leaf from your book, and I’m going to do it as well.
April Davila:
It’s helpful to people. I mean, I look up people’s names and you’ll find that people who have challenging names know this. And if you go, it’s either in their bio or in their press kit link.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Very funny. Now, a couple of weeks ago already, I attended half of your Mindful Writers Workshop because of the time difference. And I was really fascinated by the process. I enjoyed your teaching style, first and foremost. And I think that even as a newly certified meditation teacher myself, I always love how every person has different way, their own language, their own choice of words that can open up different opportunities of discovery.
Anne Muhlethaler:
So, that’s why I really like discovering a plethora of teachers because I felt like I always get something new.
April Davila:
I agree.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I think you touched on a little bit about how you put it together. But maybe you can talk to us a little as to how the meditation process as you teach it can open up the writing for the people who participate in the workshops.
April Davila:
Yeah, absolutely. So, the basic idea is to learn to treat our writing, or whatever creative work we’re doing, as the meditation. So, the way that I teach it in the workshop is I’ll have people do basic insight, meditation, mindfulness of thought, where we sit quietly, and you just become aware of where your brain goes to, and you come back to the anchor, they chosen usually the breath. And when your mind wanders, okay, I’m planning dinner, or okay, I’m thinking about that email I need to write, and then you just come back to the anchor.
April Davila:
And then what I try to do with as little time in between, is transition into a writing exercise. So, that people are writing with a goal in mind, like, I’ll give them a prompt of some kind. And that the challenge of the exercise is to write the prompts. And at the same time, notice where their mind goes to.
April Davila:
Because what happens right around the age four or five, we become more critical, that you can watch it happen in preschools, where kids will suddenly decide that they’re not good painters, or they’re not good artists, or they’re not good singers, because they can see paintings, they’re like, “Well, my painting doesn’t look like that. So, I’m not a good painter.” Or they try to draw a person. And because they have not practiced very much, their person doesn’t look like the person. And so, well I’m not good at that, and our critical mind really starts to kick in around that age.
April Davila:
And that’s when most people stop being creative, which is a shame, because I think everybody has some sort of creative thing that they would like to do. It doesn’t have to be professionally, but a creative outlet of some sort. And it can get really shut down because of that inner critic.
April Davila:
And what I tell my students is that anytime you’ve had the experience of writing a sentence, and then deleting it, and writing it again and deleting it, you may not even know but that is your inner critic saying that suck do you better start over.
April Davila:
And so, the exercise that I leave them through is as they start writing, they’re not allowed to delete and go back, they have to keep writing, and notice when your brain says, “Well, that’s suck, you should probably delete it.” No, I’m just going to thank you for your opinion. You can go now. You get a little internal bow. And you just keep writing.
April Davila:
And I have found that to be one of the most transformative things in terms of meditation and my writing, getting that first draft on the page, noticing your inner critic simply giving about to it and saying, “I hear you, and I’m just going to choose to ignore you right now and keep writing.” And you just put her in her chair. You put her over there, you keep writing.
April Davila:
And then the other part of that, the flip side of that coin, is you can’t get rid of her completely. Because that little voice is what allows you to edit what’s on the page. So, when you bring that idea of right view and I read that sentence, and that inner critic says, “Well, that’s not what it’s supposed to be,” like, “Oh, you’re right, what do I want it to be?” So, you need that inner critic, but you can’t let it dominate when you’re just trying to get that creative first draft done.
April Davila:
So, for me, I have to really space out my first draft and my edit. And I try to work through start to finish, I’ll do a draft. And then I engage my critic, and I read it through and I make all the notes. And then I have to put her aside again. It’s a real back and forth. But the more mindful I can be of the transition, the less I suffer, which is kind of a key tenant of Buddhism. And the better my work is and the faster I write, the better.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Well, I got to tell you, the day after the workshop, I just couldn’t stop myself writing. Because I had ideas pouring out of me the following morning for the first hour and a half of two hours of the day, which was completely unexpected. But I realized I was better to just let everything out, as you said, instead of trying to understand what it is that I was doing.
Anne Muhlethaler:
And a couple of days ago, I attended an online class with a New York based yoga studio. And we had an hour long asana meditation practice and I didn’t think anything of it. But then I sat down at the piano because I still do sing and play. And I rock my own world, I’ve got to be honest.
April Davila:
That’s so awesome.
Anne Muhlethaler:
It was so surprising because I think often as I don’t write my own music and I’m performing other people’s work, one of the pieces that becomes really important is to make it mine. My goal is not to sound like someone else. And sometimes that means going further into the twisting and then changing in the molding. And that’s a really, really tough thing to do. I have to be honest.
April Davila:
Yeah. I can imagine.
Anne Muhlethaler:
So, as much as I’d realized before, all of the benefits of meditation, I don’t think I had at all understood the levels to which it could help me creatively. And that came thanks to you.
April Davila:
Oh, I’m so flattered. That’s wonderful. I love that feeling of flow, when the critic finally gets the message and just sits down and they’re just going with it. I mean, I can write all day when I hit that point. I mean, not that I ever get to write all day but I love that feeling.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. It’s wonderful. So, I think that you can tell us a little bit about your project called A Very Important Meeting.
April Davila:
It’s called A Very Important Meeting. And it actually came out of the pandemic. So, I had invited some writer friends to join me on a Zoom call on Friday mornings. This was after lockdown started, kind of just desperate for some social time but I also wanted to write.
April Davila:
So, I had a few writer friends. I invited them to come on a Zoom call. And I led a little 10-minute meditation. And then we wrote for about an hour and then we chatted and it was just the most lovely … I just left it feeling so good that we did it again the next week. And so, it became a regular Friday thing.
April Davila:
And then I found out a woman I had met at AWP, her name’s Paulette Perhach. She was doing the same thing on Saturday mornings. We decided to join forces because we actually started attending each other’s groups. And then we started subbing for each other, like if she was camping, I would cover her Saturday morning class.
April Davila:
And we started asking the people who were in the groups, well, how could we make this more useful for you. And they said, more meetings. Sometimes Friday mornings or Saturday mornings aren’t necessarily always the best time. And then we were like, “We should maybe just expand this. Let’s go for it.”
April Davila:
And so, we brought in a friend of mine, who’s in New York. His name’s Matthew Perez. And we set up a schedule and website. And so, now we are hosting 14 free, it’s totally free. It’s donation base, mindful writing groups, and everyone has the same structure. We meditate for 10 minutes. We go immediately into our writing. And then after the hour is up, we hang out and chat for a few minutes if we want to people have time.
April Davila:
And it has been such a lifeline for the pandemic and such a way to connect with writers all over the world. We’ve had writers from Australia and Hong Kong and all over the United States and Europe. And it’s been such an exciting thing. People really respond to it that we hear all the time of like, “I get my best writing done in these sessions,” or “Oh, I had this idea I didn’t even know I had. And my dad comes he’s working on his third memoir,” and he’s like, “This is the most productive writing time I have all the week is that he comes on Friday morning once.” Yeah.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That’s amazing.
April Davila:
So, it’s been great. And actually, we just added a new teacher. Her name is Faith.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I saw that. I got the email today.
April Davila:
Oh, good. Yeah, she’s fantastic. So now, we’re up to 16. Starting next week, we’ll be at 16 meetings a week.
April Davila:
And I think I talked to you briefly about this months before. But it’s interesting in the context of mindfulness and communication in business and that nexus of ideas, because there were two main challenges. One, that it would be free because writers go through periods where they can’t afford to pay for anything. And we want this to always be a resource that people can come to.
April Davila:
And then the other thing was that we wouldn’t ask anyone to work for free, because writers are always being asked to work for exposure. And the phrase I like is people die from exposure. You should never write or expose.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That’s excellent, thank you.
April Davila:
So, the challenge there though, of course, is that if you offer something for free, how are you paying the writers that are leading the meetings. And people have been so generous. We asked for $5 a meeting, if you can afford it.
April Davila:
And we don’t check who gives. We don’t tally up who gave at what meeting. We just have a PayPal account and people send money if they want to. And they show up for meetings when they want to.
April Davila:
And I would say 90% of people throw $5 out for when they come to a meeting. And that basic amount of reciprocity has allowed us to hire first, Matthew, and now, Faith. And we’re hoping if people continue to come and be generous, that we can keep growing this.
April Davila:
I’ve had this dream of having around the clock mindful writing groups, have teachers in Europe and in Asia and all around what so that like, if you woke up in California, 3:00 in the morning and couldn’t sleep, you can log on and write with whatever group was.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That’s such a lovely idea. Congratulations.
April Davila:
It’s been fantastic. Thank you.
Anne Muhlethaler:
How did you put the word out?
April Davila:
That’s probably the hardest part. Paulette and I both had newsletters. So, we sent the word out to our newsletters, and then social media, and then asking friends to tell friends. We got a few people, when I did a talk at an online writing festival, I did a talk on how plot inform story. And we were just starting it then. And so, I pitched it to the group. And we got a few people who came in. Mostly word of mouth. People who come and they really enjoy it. And they tell their friends and, yeah.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Well, clearly, they liked it. That’s really wonderful. I was going to ask you about the tip jar at the bottom of some of your blog posts.
April Davila:
Yeah.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I wanted to talk about what is your advice for writers to get them paid for their work better?
April Davila:
Yeah, that’s a good question. Before we move on, I just want to put out that if anyone’s interested in joining, it’s averyimportantmeeting.com, and everybody’s welcome, all the time. So, just putting that out there for everybody.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Sure.
April Davila:
In terms of getting paid for writing, it takes time. I mean, that has been my experience. When I was pregnant with my daughter and writing short stories and had the idea that maybe I could be a writer, I started looking at how do you get paid to be a writer, and there’s no quick way to do it. And I’ll share my story, that’s probably the easiest.
April Davila:
So, I started by writing website content from my friends and family. And so, when I say you shouldn’t write for exposure, I think the one exception is when you’re really, really just starting out, pick one or two friends who need help with their website, and write the website content.
April Davila:
And then build a website for yourself, start blogging, list them as clients. I would say every client I got when I was freelancing, including the client that I ended up hiring full time with, said to me at some point, “Oh, I read your blog, and I really liked your work. And that’s why we hired you.” So, the blog is the easiest way to represent yourself as a writer simply by writing.
April Davila:
And the other trick that it took me a while to figure out as a blogger is with rare exception, people don’t really want to read your diary. I mean, unless your diary is particularly weird and interesting, try to be useful. This was like the main thing that took me a couple years to figure out that my blog traffic started to pick up when I started sharing things that could be useful to people, sharing my missteps as a writer, sharing my struggles as a writer, things that I’ve found the solutions.
April Davila:
And there’s never too much of that content out there. I always hear bloggers, writers say, “I would start a blog.” But there’s so many blogs out there, who cares what I have to say. Why write anything? People care. People want to read this stuff. There’s so many people out there who want to write or be creative or learn what you have to teach. Just put it up there, you’ll be surprised.
April Davila:
And the other thing you have to be as consistent. So, sometimes bloggers will be really good how they set up their website, and they’re going to blog every other day. And then like three days later, they burn out. So, I always tell people, once a month, start blogging with once a month. And then if that feels manageable, make it every other week. And then if you’re like, “Wow, I’m really jamming on this and I have the time,” then every week. But don’t start off super ambitious and just burn out because consistency is more important than frequency.
April Davila:
And I think those are the steps you take to start representing yourself and then signing up for things where you can see who would needs writers. So, there’s a newsletter called Opportunities of the Week. You can find them on Patreon. And I think it’s $3 a month. She basically, this woman, Sonia, she goes online on Twitter, mostly in any editor, publisher, or somebody who’s looking for a writer, she puts it all in one newsletter and sends it out twice a week.
April Davila:
So, start scanning that of really specific calls for like, okay, we need people of color who are talking about mental health. And you’re like, “Well, I can write about that.” Then you send them a pitch. I only discovered that recently. But my last few clients have come off of that list.
April Davila:
So, just starting to network, starting to pay attention to who wants what. And then don’t quit your day job unless you have a very supportive spouse, or you’ve gotten to a point where the income is fairly reliable. Because there will be ups and downs financially in terms of getting your feet under you writing professionally.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Thanks. I’m so happy to hear your advice. I was talking with a friend of mine who used to be a journalist a couple of weeks ago. And I think she should be more expensive than she is. And so, I told her that. And I’ve hired a lot of people in various countries. So, I feel like I’ve got a good gauge about the value, given the extent of her expertise, her taste levels, et cetera.
Anne Muhlethaler:
And then what she said back to me is a lot of the time as journalists, people are told that they’re expandable, that they’re lucky to have a job. And so, not only are they badly paid, but then it’s reinforcing this mentality of you’re just lucky to have this whatever.
Anne Muhlethaler:
So, obviously, I had no idea because this is not my background at all. But that’s why it’s been percolating in the back of my mind. The notion of how can you get a sense of your own value is something that I find is really important, especially I would say, for women, women writers.
April Davila:
And women tend to lower their prices more quickly than men and undervalue our work more than men.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I’ve worked with a couple of clients who do not understand the value of the people that they’re paying. So, then if we see, these are clients that I think is good to lose. Because if you have to argue constantly about why someone is worth the dollars, or euros or whatever, it’s probably better not to work with them.
April Davila:
And you should always, too, be looking at your next client should always pay more. Your lowest paying clients should be the one you get rid of first. You should always be kind of climbing that ladder of income so that you can make more as you go along. That’s how career should work. It should be making more as you get better at your skill, you get more experience.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I’d love to know why you decided to enroll in the Meditation Mindfulness Teacher Certification Program. It rolls off the tongue, or MMTCP.
April Davila:
It was one of those moments where I don’t even know. I was scrolling through Instagram, and I saw the ad. And I was like, I’m going to do that. And this doesn’t happen very often to me in life, but like, you just kind of be like, I’m not sure why. But that’s the way I need to go. I even had family being like, “Well, tell us why. Why you’re interested in that?” And it’s like, “I just don’t know. I just feel like that’s the way I need to go right now.”
April Davila:
I think I was looking for community around my mindfulness practice. And I wasn’t even sure about the teaching part yet. But I knew that there would be other people who were in a similar boat, and that I would at least get to meditate with them, which was true. I still meet with my mentor group. So, yeah.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah, I’m seeing mine tomorrow.
April Davila:
Yeah, lovely.
Anne Muhlethaler:
So, this would be a good one. What is your favorite word?
April Davila:
I love this question. Because of course, I’m a word nerd. My favorite word is sequoia. It started because I went through a minor obsession with words that have all five vowels of the English language. So, like tambourine and dialogue, and evacuation, I think that’s one.
April Davila:
And sequoia came up because I was looking at and sequoia as a word has a really interesting history. It’s the name of a redwood, of course. And I love this sequoia redwoods because I’m Northern California girl, and they just feel like home.
April Davila:
But then also the history of the word is that the tree was named after a Native American chief from, I think, like somewhere down in the Mississippi area, who never even saw a sequoia tree. It was named as kind of an homage. I think he was the guy who first put the Cherokee language on paper. I may be getting the details wrong, but just a fascinating story behind it. And I love story.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Wow, that’s beautiful. What song best represents you?
April Davila:
That’s when I don’t know if I can answer. My taste change every time I turn on the radio or turn on my iPhone. I think Dance Yrself Clean by LCD Soundsystem. If I had to choose one, that might be it. Yeah.
Anne Muhlethaler:
There you go. Well, you did choose one. It wasn’t look hard. What or who did you want to be when you were a little girl?
April Davila:
I really wanted to be an astronaut, like really, really. All the way through college and actually I applied to go to space camp when I was a junior in college and my manager was supposed to write my letter of recommendation. And she didn’t do it. And she didn’t tell me. So, my application was incomplete.
April Davila:
And I didn’t even find out until like, I didn’t even get a rejection letter. And I was like, what happened? And they told me that she never sent in the letter. So, I didn’t get to go to space camp. So, instead, I did a lot of drugs and I never became an astronaut.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That’s very funny. What would you say to your younger self if you could send yourself a message?
April Davila:
I think if I could talk to like my 20 something self, I would sit her down and give her talk about impermanence. Because my 20s, I just had this feeling that everything that happened, that was going to be my life forever. So, I would get really panicky. I’d be waiting tables at some restaurant and be like this is going to be my life forever. And I would panic. And I would rush to try to find another career, another job.
April Davila:
And I think if I could just give myself one note, it would be like life has phases. You go through cycles, just try to be a little bit patient with yourself. That would be my advice.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Very wise.
April Davila:
I wish.
Anne Muhlethaler:
What is the best advice that you’ve ever been given?
April Davila:
You can’t edit a blank page. That was the advice that really turned my writing and to a positive arena of just get it on the page. You can edit a pile of crap into gold, but you can’t edit a blank page so get something on the page and go from there.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Again, super wise. I mean, I can see your semi-color coded bookshelves behind you. But so, can I even ask what book is next to your bed or on your desk?
April Davila:
This is a challenging one, too. I have about 12 books on my bedside table. There’s never fewer than about six on my bedside table because I’m always reading different books for different reasons. There’s the fiction that I’m reading before bed and there’s the nonfiction I’m reading. There’s research and there’s the book I intend to get to next and then I get tired of that. So, I switch to short stories for a little while.
April Davila:
And so, right now I have a book though, Jacqueline and short stories. I’m reading a novel called Noopiming by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. That is Samosake, I’m never quite sure how to say her middle name. She’s a Ojibwe. And it’s a fascinating novel, almost poetry, prose. It’s all they, them pronouns every character, it’s just a wonderfully creative book called Noopiming, the cure for white ladies.
April Davila:
I’m also reading The One Thing, which is a nonfiction book about like focusing on one thing, which I’ve actually read before, but I joined a book club and they’re reading that. So, I’m reading that. I’m reading a book called For the Love of Men, about raising boys who can be strong without being jerks. I just started.
April Davila:
And then I think one of the other ones on the bedside table is The Mindful Writer, I actually bought a book called The Mindful Writer, because I was like, that is a book I need to read. And it’s a wonderful collection of poems.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I’m going to order that. Add that to my file.
April Davila:
That’s a good one.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Who is one person you think we should all know about?
April Davila:
This is such a great question. I thought long and hard about this one. There’s so many. The person I would point people to that I think everyone should know about is a guy named Salopek. He’s a journalist for National Geographic. He’s Pulitzer Prize winner, but he’s doing this project right now where he is walking the path of human evolution.
April Davila:
So, he started in Ethiopia, kind of where they found the oldest of fossils, and he walked up to the Red Sea, and then over up the Sinai Peninsula, through the Middle East. He’s going to have to take a boat across the Bering Sea because it’s not no longer land bridge. And then walk all the way down the west coast of North America, South America. He’s basically tracing the entire path of human evolution.
April Davila:
And he was supposed to have been in South America by this year, but he’s been arrested multiple times. And then of course, the pandemics shut everything down. But he hasn’t given up. He writes about it, and National Geographic does updates on him. And if you look him up, Paul Salopek, that’s what it is. Definitely a journalist worth knowing about. He’s doing some really interesting work.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That’s amazing. So, the last question, can you please tell me what brings you happiness?
April Davila:
Well, my family, always, and my kiddos and coming to appreciate recently how soon they will be leaving. I’m trying to really appreciate every hug and giggle.
April Davila:
Aside from my family, professionally, The Very Important Meetings. It’s funny because I don’t always feel like sitting down to write or sitting down to host a meditation or whatever. But I do it because it’s on the schedule and I committed to it.
April Davila:
But when I’m done, and I wrap up, and I leave, how many times I’ve like gone out into the kitchen to make myself a salad or something. And my husband always says, “You’re in the best mood after those meetings. You always just kind of float out of your office afterwards.”
April Davila:
And it’s true. There’s something wonderful about, I meditate, I write, I get to talk with some minded people, and it’s so grounding. It really has become such a source of joy for me over the last few months.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Thank you so much. I hope that a lot of people who listened to us will actually join you, and come and meditate and write. I was going to say that for me, even though I am not planning to write fiction, it didn’t stop the fact that it was a powerful way for me to find creative outlets.
April Davila:
So, a lot of people who come don’t write fiction, they’re writing poetry, or memoir, or nonfiction, and it’s so fun to hear what everyone’s working on. Thank you so much for having me.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Thank you. And I’ll put all of the links in the show notes so people can find you very easily. Have a wonderful day and have a great meeting.
April Davila:
Thank you so much.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Thanks to April for being my guest on the show today. You can find her online, aprildavila.com and on Instagram @aprildavila. Of course, you should definitely check out her wonderful project, A Very Important Meeting. And that is averyimportantmeeting.com. You can also find her novel, 142 Ostriches at all good bookstores. Of course, as usual, all of the links are included in the show notes.
Anne Muhlethaler:
So, that’s it for this episode. And I hope you’ll join us again next time. Our theme music is by Conor Heffernan, artwork by Brian Ponto. Special thanks to Joel for editing and sound.
Anne Muhlethaler:
You can soon find all of my episodes and find out more about my projects at annevmuhlethaler.com. You can sign up to receive updates on all the cool things I am working on. The site is almost live.
Anne Muhlethaler:
You can also follow the show on Instagram, @_outoftheclouds. If you can, please rate and review the show on iTunes. It really does help other people find it. Now until next time, be well, be safe. Remember the hand washing, the mask, the social distancing, all of that good stuff.