How to reach Laura Jevtich
Intro:
Well, hey there, Writer. Welcome to The Resilient Writers Radio Show. I'm your host, Rhonda Douglas. And this is the podcast for writers who want to create and sustain a writing life they love.
Because let's face it, the writing life has its ups and downs, and we want to not just write, but also to be able to enjoy the process so that we'll spend more time with our butt-in-chair getting those words on the page.
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Writers who want to connect with other writers to celebrate and be in community, in this crazy roller coaster ride, we call the writing life. We are resilient writers. We're writing for the rest of our lives and we're having a good time doing it. So welcome, Writer. I'm so glad you're here. Let's jump right into today's show.
Rhonda:
Well, hey there, Writer. Welcome back to another episode of the Resilient Writers Radio Show. Excited to be with you today. I have Laura Jevtich with me. She works as a writer and author and a social media creator. And she enjoys being part of a community, whether at home, online or traveling. She's a master gardener without a garden, a dark sky ranger with beautiful stars and stories and continually strives to read, write, and play well with others. And you can find her in Pahrump, Nevada with her husband, Sasha. Pahrump. Yes. Pahrump, Nevada. With her husband, Sasha, she's online. She has a YouTube channel as well, which I was looking at this morning. So we're gonna dive into all things writing with Laura. Welcome, Laura.
Laura:
Thank you very much for having me.
Rhonda:
So let's just start off with a conversation about your writing journey. You come to this in a little different way than a lot of other folks. So can you just kind of walk us through a little bit of what your writing journey has been?
Laura:
Sure. So I actually went to school and trained as a geologist. Way back in the 90s. So I did that industry for over 10 years until Y2K came around. And that's the computer, all these things happening with the computer, and everybody afraid of the computer dying, and things like that. And I jumped ship. And so I started my career hopping right around 2000 to jump from being a geologist to being a computer trainer. And I was teaching people how to use software. And so I jumped ship for that. And then I actually did that for a number of years until I started my own business in 2020, excuse me, in 2003. So I jumped ship again and went into having my own small business. And I was teaching people how to use the computer and using websites and all that sort of stuff. And so that's when I actually started, I was starting to write for the clients blog posts. And so I kind of was learning how to do that and writing like the calls to action, CTAs they're called at the end of it so that people would buy a house because my clients were realtors.
Rhonda:
Oh, I see.
Laura:
Yeah, so in 2005, my husband and I bought a very unusual RV. We bought a truck camper, which is the kind that you put inside the bed of a truck.
Rhonda:
The pickup truck. Right?
Lauran:
It goes, yes, of a pickup truck. Exactly. Yes. And I'm sure out in, uh, on the East coast, there's actually quite a few of those. Um, they're more common than they are in other places, but, uh, so we bought a truck and then we bought a truck camper and that was very unusual for our neck of the woods. We lived in Virginia, Northern Virginia, and in our small community, I think we were the only one. There was probably about 5,000 homes in our community, and we were the only ones that had a truck camper. So we were very unusual.
Rhonda:
And you have a memoir about this, right? Because did you pack everything up and like, I was looking at your memoir. I think it's fascinating. Unusual Adventures Traveling Through Life, a Memoir of Frugalness to Financial Freedom. Can you tell me the story of how that all started?
Laura:
Well, it basically started in 2005. I actually started a website in 2005 and I started writing about our journey, because this was so unusual to so many people in our area. I mean, we lived in Northern Virginia, the DC metro area, and the fact that we were going to travel in an RV, such a small RV. We went from 200, excuse me, we went from 2,400 square foot house to 24 square feet.
Rhonda:
Twenty-four square feet?
Laura:
Yes.
Rhonda:
Wow! That’s a big big shift? How did you, like did you put stuff in your story or did you get rid of the?
Laura:
No. Wo we started the journey. So we bought the truck camper in 2005. And that's when I started writing. I was writing a book. And I was writing a book you know, to let people know where we were, what we were doing. We took two weeks to get the truck camper and, you know, went out to Colorado and enjoyed ourselves. And I wrote, that's what I was doing. I was just writing, telling people where we were and that's the word thing. And my business started slowing down because I was working for realtors. 2006, 2008, I'm guessing it went up. 2007. So 2006, we took a six week sabbatical. And I put all my clients online. I said, I'm not doing anything else other than doing online stuff with you all. And this was in 2006. So this was kind of, again, a little different than, now it's not a big deal, but back then it was kind of a big deal. So we did that, and I was writing constantly, constantly writing about all the fun things that we're doing and all that sort of stuff. And...
We came home from the six week sabbatical and we put the house on the market in 2006. So this was at the end of 2006. And so basically we sold everything in our house and I sold the house. So I didn't even have a realtor list it for us because I had so many realtor friends. It was kind of like, I'm doing your job, so I don't really need to have a realtor to do that. So we sold it in two months.
Rhonda:
And why did you want to do that? Like, was it because you just enjoyed the lifestyle so much or were you trying to get to like, you know, pay off debt and that free life?
Laura:
No, no. No, so basically my husband was kind of sick of the career he had, but we decided that we would I mean, we were basically, and I know that this is probably peanuts now, but back then, $3,000 just for mortgage plus all the other things that you have with a house. And we were sick of having a house at that time. And so we just, we were able to sell everything or donate it or give it away. So the 2400 did not include the basement. Um, that's, you know, so we had, you know, a suburban house. Yeah. Uh, and it was just, it was, um, we, we had, when my husband and I met, we had, uh, every single time we were going out and we were very adventurous, we were hiking and biking and kayaking and all the kind of fun outdoor activities. And then as soon as we got a house, none of that, you know, the outdoor activities became, you know.
Rhonda:
Sitting on the desk.
Laura:
Yes, yes, yes, exactly. And while that's fun and everything, and you know, we do enjoy that, we enjoy being outside. And so when we came back from the sabbatical, we went to one of the last things that we did, we went to a national park that was just outside of the Washington, DC area. It's called Prince William Forest Park. We went there um, as for a bathroom break, but we also thought, oh, you know, we had been to all these other national parks. Why not check this out? And they were looking for a volunteer to live on site and work at their visitor center. And so I applied for this volunteer position and I jumped ship again. So from another career and moved into doing a volunteer position at a national park living on site. And so this was the impetus to get us to move out of the house and live in an RV.
Rhonda
Wow, that's amazing. I don't know that a lot of people are brave enough to do this. So how did you decide to write a memoir about it?
Laura:
Um, well.
Rhonda:
Because I don't, you know, lots of folks have different interesting things happen to them in life, but not everybody decides, you know what? I think I'm gonna write a memoir.
Laura:
Well, so from 2005 through to 2018, I had a website and I wrote tons of blog posts, or at that time they were just considered posts, or you know, you wrote and you posted it on your website. And I had tons of pages and articles and all that sort of stuff. All the fun things I did, we did together. All the places we went to. And I worked, I worked as a park ranger. I managed to get a job as being a park ranger, a National Park Service Ranger and worked in Grand Canyon and Canyonlands and worked out west. I worked all in a bunch of different places and then we'd go and Be in Lake Mead National Recreation Area in Nevada. And so that turned out really well for us. And so I was posting every single time I could on my website, but then I was working. And so we kept on doing these different fun things. And then in 2018, I closed down the website.
We, I kept on saying to folks, I'm so sorry, haven't been on, you know, all this sort of stuff. I was also getting the hitting my website because I was getting a lot of hits and everything like that. And so I closed it down. But I kept all the files. And at the time, I had written a lot of long form articles, including organizing your stuff. I actually had had that as long form articles that I had put out to the world in different places and had gotten a lot of traction on. And I was sending that to my mom to review and that sort of thing, because I had no idea. I didn't know anyone to help me edit the story and all, or to do the organizer stuff. And so my dad said, Laura, why are you doing this particular thing? Why don't you do your memoir? Everybody wants to know about how this all happened and how you came to be and that sort of thing, more so than this organizer stuff stuff. And so I was like, huh, hmm. Well.
Rhonda:
I have to thank him for that memoir, that's great.
Laura:
Yes, I did. And so basically what I did was I started researching online to try and find how to write a memoir. And the other thing that I did was I started reading memoirs because I hadn't read memoirs, right? So, I basically, we got off the road in 2018. The reason we got off the road was actually because of my husband's father was getting ill. And so we were like, okay, well, we're not gonna, we're gonna try not to, we're not gonna work in the summer and we are here in Nevada, Southern Nevada where it's warm in the summertime. Very, very warm in the summertime, right? We were staying in a campground. We had, at that point we had changed from a truck camper to a fifth wheel toy hauler. So we went up a little in size, 240 square feet instead of 24. And we lived in a campground in 2018.
And my husband was able to work has I called him a cabana boy but anyway he was he was working at the campground as for the pool doing working and cleaning the pools right and so I was able to start working um I actually didn't really work I was writing writing writing writing constantly uh in 2018 that other book.
Rhonda:
And did you know the other book of how to organize your stuff?
Laura:
Yes. Yes.
Rhonda:
And you finished that one.
Laura:
No, I got I got almost all the way. I stopped two chapters from the end because my dad was saying how don't do that do the other thing.
Rhonda:
You were to try to switch and you switch. Oh my god.
Laura:
Yes. Yes, I switched, you know.
Rhonda:
All right.
Laura:
I crazed, yes I know. And along the way too, we decided to buy property in Props. So not only buy property, get off the road. I mean, we're doing all the stuff sort of thing. Father-in-law passes away, unfortunately. But he was also one to say, live your dream, enjoy your life, that sort of thing. And so basically 2018 and 19, we were just basically being part of a community, building a house, all that sort of stuff. It wasn't until 2020 that I actually started thinking, oh, maybe I should write this memoir. And it was-
Rhonda:
When you started writing the memoir, did you, were you using material that you'd already written? Like the blog post, the long form content and kind of like curating that and make it work like a book.
Laura:
Yeah, so basically what I did was I used, I had gotten into the, I don't know if you're familiar with this, but the planner community. It was very big in 2018, 1920, all the way through, even now. And I became a an ambassador slash affiliate of several of these different companies in the planner community. And one of the affiliates was the passion planner. And I bought one of their journals and I started handwriting my outline of my memoir. So here I am computer supposedly guru and I'm handwriting my memoir. And so I wrote out the outline and then from the outline, I actually started handwriting the memoir. And so basically I did short chapters just like James Patterson. I wrote basically 102 chapters that were almost kind of like blog posts. And I would put, you know, what our expenses were at the end. And so I talked in the beginning a little bit about myself and my husband. I used the hero's journey as my kind of like the way to write the memoir. And then I also, I was reading memoirs as well on book sirens. So I had gotten ARC, you know, advanced reader copies of these memoirs and then I would review them and put them on Amazon and other places. And that allowed me to like review a ton of them and see what I liked and what I didn't like.
Rhonda:
Well, that’s so smart. I love that. That’s a really interesting sort of take on like reading your genre. Reading to review other people’s books that are coming out. Good. Great.
Laura:
And I started reading more books, but it wasn't just reading the books. I actually started finding the community of writers. Before it was the community of planners and that sort of thing, but now it was starting to be the community of writers. And so I was finding more and more writers, including We Love Memoirs, that's a Facebook group. And I found them, and then I also found Sarah Cannon. I don't know if you know that person, but Publish and Thrive was her is her course that she does.
And so in 2022, I made the goal of I'm writing the memoir. I'm going to write it. I'm going to complete it in 2022. I took in, not took, I decided basically for November that I was going to finish the memoir, type it all out, get it all done during the month of Nanowrido month. November, Nanowrido. Yes. So I took from the handwritten stuff, I went in and typed it, typed it all out, used my computer and typed it all out. And I won NaNoWrita Month because I was basically doing it every single day. I was focused, it was everything to do it. And I had my Kanban board, I was bringing down the little stickies each day to all the different chapters that I've written, that sort of thing. So I was very goal oriented in this sense. And I managed to do it. I managed to win that, finish typing it and then I had to go through the edit process, which of course, you know, takes even longer to do. And that basically-
Rhonda:
That’s okay. It does take a little bit of time, yeah. Did you have an editor for yourself?
Laura:
No. No, no, no. I was like, I'm going to go through Sarah Cannon's seven edit process. It's like a way to go in and edit it all. And so that's what I did. Because again, I was kind of like, I don't know what I'm supposed to do here because I hadn't taken the Publish in Five class. I took her class in 2023, February 2023, and went through the process and published the book, the memoir in July, 2023.
Rhonda:
Wow, that's not long at all. That's great.
Laura:
No, no, exactly. And I set up for me, at that point, I had started to meet like tons of people. And so I was like, oh my God, this is amazing. This group of, this community of writers. And so I actually went to 20 books to Vegas. I don't know if you know that conference. Yeah, yeah. I, somebody, a friend of mine had told me about that and I was like, oh, let's me go to that thing. And they're like-
Rhonda:
What used to be the 20 books to 50K annual conference. I think it's changed now. It's something like Author Nation.
Laura:
Author Nation, mm-hmm, yep. And I'm going to it this year as well. Okay. But that last year, I kind of made a name for myself these like signature books. So I was using the planner idea and making them into these little books that people could go around and get signatures from authors. And then they could win a prize when they came back to my author table that I had where I was selling my memoir. So I was, I was doing direct selling. I mean, it was like, what do you call it? Going into the fire, doing everything all at once sort of idea where I was doing everything. I was on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and self-published and did everything. And so, yeah, so I, 2023 was a massively exciting year for me and went to the 20 books to Vegas, got an author table. Sold books there, met my super fans, and signed books, which was so cool. I was like, oh wow, I'm doing all this.
Rhonda:
Look at me, I'm an author. Look at what I've done.
Laura:
I'm an author, what I've done, yes. And I actually, you know, sought out, like, author groups or writer groups. We actually have one here in Pahrump which was very cool. There's other ones all over Nevada, of course, that do critique. So you are able to be face to face with others. And then from there, I just kept on going. So I did the memoir, and then finally I decided in 2023 that I was going to publish that turn. Other book, the organizer stuff, finally went through it like with an author's eye, I guess you could say, and finish the last two chapters and then publish that one in December 2023. But it was kind of weird because I did the the ebook in 2023 December 2023 but the paperback I could not do because of the colon.
There was a colon that I put into my title. Do not put any punctuation into your title. It's just horrible. So I took out the colon and there was a space. And Bacher, which is where you buy your ISBNs from, they're like, oh, you know, you have this space. It's not working for putting it on Amazon or something I don't know. It’s really the weirdest thing.
Rhonda:
Okay. It was one of these glitches because you've previously had a colon and now a space in your title. These are the things, with self-publishing these are the things we don’t know until we get into it, right? Now we’re like ‘Oh, why is this not working?”. What’s really helpful then is to have these author groups who can tell you “Oh, maybe it’s this or maybe it’s that.” Right? Yeah! So good,
Laura:
Yeah. Yeah, so I was able to publish the actual paperback in January 2024. So just this year. OK. And I'm having the follow up, making it into a series, which will ultimately become a box set slash class, ultimately probably in 2027. How to organize yourself stuff, live small, but have a grand life sort of idea. Yeah, so, you know, first comes your stuff and getting it to a manageable amount, then comes your files and organizing them properly. Your time.
Rhonda:
Like I cannot even imagine doing that. It sounds, yeah, it sounds like I need to focus what it sounds like.
Laura:
Yes, yeah, and then you know organize your time and finally organizing your money You know my memoir was you know frugalness to financial freedom and we obtained financial freedom Pretty early on I retired from the rat race at 38. So I And my husband basically we both chose jobs that we enjoyed as opposed to losing our life's energy sort of idea. And so that was very important to us. And so this writing is something that I enjoy doing. And I'm actually writing a fiction story now. So I've jumped ship yet again from doing nonfiction and doing fiction.
Rhonda:
What genre of novel are you writing?
Laura:
So I'm writing a historical romance.
Rhonda:
Oh, so you are.
Laura:
Yes, so I'm getting to do all the history and learning all the stuff with the romance and the beats and all that. So that's what I've been writing for 2024. And hopefully we'll, yes.
Rhonda:
Awesome! Okay. So you've really gone deep now. Writer is your, your new job. It's your new identity. It's what you're doing.
Laura:
Yes. And as you can see, yeah, I made shirts too. So that because my name's so unusual that I made shirts and I actually had that when I was doing the signing over at 20 books.
Rhonda:
Yeah. They can’t see this cause we're on audio, but her Instagram handle on it in big, big font at Laura Jevtich. So, so good. So that's how you can find her on Instagram. I'll link that up in the show notes as well.
Laura:
Well, that's actually, while it's Instagram, it's also YouTube, it's also Facebook. And I'm also on what's called Medium. That's a writer's community as well as...Reem Stories, that's where I'm actually publishing my story, my historical romance is on Reem Stories. And I just this past two weeks, I was featured on my not yet completed story on Reem Stories. I was on their front page for historical romance. So-
Rhonda:
Fun, I'll try to link to that as well. That's so great.
Laura:
Yeah, yeah, it's a fun way to do it.
Rhonda:
Yeah, absolutely. And I love how you're just diving in and doing, as you say, like all the things. Now I'm like, I've got these books out, I've got to market them, I'm doing all the things. Thanks so much for being with me today, Laura. It's been really great hearing about your writing journey and your interesting life journey that you wrote about in your memoirs.
Laura:
Thank you. Thank you, I really appreciate it. This was fun and I appreciate you. Thank you for doing this.
Outro:
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