First Draft Episode #229: Chani Nicholas
JANUARY 21, 2020
LISTEN TO THE EPISODE
Chani Nicholas is a Webby award-winning astrologer, and the New York Times bestselling author of You Were Born For This: Astrology for Radical Self-Acceptance.
Sarah Enni: Hey friends, I just wanted to chime in early in the show to say there are lots of ways to support First Draft. If you're in a position to donate, you can make a one-time or recurring donation at the support page of FirstDraftPod.com. Also, if you watch a TV show, or buy a movie, or order a book, using the link from the First Draft website, a portion of that purchase goes back to the show and it helps keep the podcast free.
And if you enjoy the show, please subscribe to the podcast wherever you're listening right now, and if you have a couple minutes, leaving a rating or review on iTunes really, really helps. That kind of support boosts organic growth, which is invaluable. And the simplest way of all, follow First Draft @FirstDraftPod on Instagram or Twitter and tell a friend. Okay, now on with the show,
Sarah Enni: Welcome to First Draft with me, Sarah Enni. This week I'm talking to Chani Nicholas, a Webby ward-winning astrologer with a community of more than 1 million monthly readers, myself included. This month, Chani released her first book, an instant New York Times bestseller. You Were Born For This: Astrology For Radical Self-Acceptance. I loved what Chani had to say about how writing horoscopes, with their inescapable deadlines, helped her develop her writing skills. How our astrology zeitgeist moment is really part of yearning for the roots of what makes us human. And, amusingly, she reads the hell out of me in my chart. So please, sit back, relax, and enjoy the conversation.
Sarah Enni: Okay. Hi Chani, it's nice to meet you.
Chani Nicholas: Hi! Thank you so much for having me.
Sarah Enni: Oh my gosh. I'm so thrilled to chat with you. I've been following you for a while. I get your newsletters. I print them out and put them in my bullet journals.
Chani Nicholas: [Laughing] Thanks!
Sarah Enni: It helps. It helps focus.
Chani Nicholas: From the very few things that you've said to me, I'm like, what is going on with your Mercury?
Sarah Enni: Oh, get ready. Yeah. Oh, I brought the whole thing.
Chani Nicholas: Very thorough. You're very thorough. I love. I'm a fan. I'm a fan.
Sarah Enni: Almost to a fault, yes. As I mentioned, I really want to talk about your writing life, and your life as an artist, and coming into your own and expressing yourself that way. So I start with a little bit of bio, and then we'll get into the book stuff. So would you mind telling me where you were born and raised?
Chani Nicholas: I was born and raised in a small town in British Columbia, Canada called Nelson.
Sarah Enni: How was reading and writing part of growing up for you?
Chani Nicholas: Oh, that is a really good question. School was really hard for me. I didn't have a lot of help with things that I had problems with. This is because there wasn't a lot of adults that were into helping teach me things. So I really struggled in school. And I remember being berated a lot by my teachers, and just made to feel really quite inadequate intellectually.
And so I had this thing, I had this feeling, I had this belief about myself, that I wasn't smart enough to go to school, to get further education. And certainly I didn't know rules of writing, and grammar, and sentence structure, and how to write an essay. I kind of just got through school. And so I never felt any kind of confidence in my ability to express myself.
And reading, definitely Judy Blume (author of Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret and Forever) was everything for me as a young person. And also authors like Margaret Atwood, and then Toni Morrison (author of The Bluest Eye and Beloved). And Maya Angelou's biographies, autobiographies (author of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings), and Alice Walker, a lot of Alice Walker (author of The Color Purple). And so I definitely had bouts of needing to read a lot of fiction and nonfiction. And also it wasn't necessarily my go-to as a younger child.
I think it was hard. There was a lot of chaos at my home. So I think it was hard to pay attention, and be able to focus on something like a book.
Sarah Enni: That's not the calmest environment to be able to sink into something.
Chani Nicholas: Yeah, I grew up in a party. There wasn't a lot of downtime unless everybody was hung over.
Sarah Enni: What about expressing yourself through writing? I mean, we'll get to astrology because, obviously, that's a huge passion in your life. But you mentioned in the book, several times, that writing is a particular joy for you too.
Chani Nicholas: It was always something that I loved doing. So if I wrote somebody a letter, I wasn't necessarily good. I'm not good at writing fiction. Fiction is something that's very elusive to me. But it was always something that, of course, helped me and everybody that does it, sort out my internal world. And that was also always really important for me. I didn't have a structure of doing it until I started writing horoscopes. And then the timing of how you publish them put me into a structure that demanded that I develop my writing skill.
Sarah Enni: Right. That's actually, I hadn't thought about that. That's such a good point.
Chani Nicholas: It's actually really good if you want to be a writer, or if you are a writer, and you also are into astrology. It's this way of like, "Well the moon is the moon. It's not gonna wait for me. I gotta get these things out." And so the amount of times I've been up at night, writing for a deadline, and being like, "I can't believe I have to still write seven more horoscopes in this day." It's like, "How do I get into that specific frame to be able to gather the words?" But it has to happen in the time it has to happen.
Sarah Enni: Well, yeah, and that's not even a deadline who you can email and get an extension from. That's the hardest deadline that there is.
Chani Nicholas: There's no extension. I definitely have missed a couple though.
Sarah Enni: So I'd love to hear... you covered this a little bit in the book, and we're talking about You Were Born For This, which we'll talk about in more detail. But I'd love to hear the story of how you were introduced to astrology and how that was, or wasn't, a part of growing up and identity forming for you.
Chani Nicholas: I write in the book about being really young, like eight, and having a person look down at an ephemeris, which is a listing of the planets, [for] the day I was born. And she came up with a judgment about me, and it felt very affirming. But the first time I had an actual astrological chart reading, I was twelve, and my whole new family formation. So my dad and his newest wife, and her children and me, all got a reading together.
That stepmother's mom got a reading for us. She is a Reiki master and had a lot of friends that were psychics, and astrologers, and tarot card readers. And I didn't know astrologers when I was in Nelson. My dad then moved to Toronto with this woman, and that's where my astrological journey began was in Toronto. And there wasn't a lot of astrological access in Nelson, though if there where, it wouldn't have been out of the norm. So it wasn't far from the kind of environment I was growing up in.
Sarah Enni: So it didn't seem out of step or a shock, but it was the first time you had...
Chani Nicholas: It was the first time anybody spoke to me in the language, and I just remember being like, "Oh my God, what is she saying?" I was so captivated by it, and felt it was a language that I knew and needed. She had written a book, and I got that book and [have] been reading about it ever since.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. I love that. And I think you said in the book that your dad bought that book for you?
Chani Nicholas: Yeah.
Sarah Enni: Which makes it extra special, I think, especially at that age. I personally feel it was really great to read the story of how you knew your passion, but you didn't lock into it right away.
Chani Nicholas: It took a long time.
Sarah Enni: We see a lot of stories about people that are fresh out of the gate, and jump into something and just skyrocket right up.
Chani Nicholas: Yeah. Not me.
Sarah Enni: [Chuckles] I love your story. Do you mind sharing...
Chani Nicholas: Spent a couple of decades suffering, really good at suffering.
Sarah Enni: I'd love to hear you talk us through this period of searching. What was that time like for you?
Chani Nicholas: It was full of a lot of misery, experimentation, fun. Just throwing myself into the world in ways... I'm a big risk taker, and I don't think things through very thoroughly before I do them, necessarily. And so I'm kind of always down for trying something out. So I did that a lot. And I think as you get older, you start to get wary. If you don't know how you're gonna pay the bills, and you're in your mid-to-late thirties, it starts to get old.
In your twenties, it's like, "Okay, just survive." And I've worked in every single service position. Not every single, but most of them. I've washed dishes, I've cooked food, I've served food, I've cleaned houses, I've done childcare and elder care and animal care. And I did a lot of that over the years while I was trying to learn things and apply my skills in certain ways.
I was really into acting, and theater, and all of that. And [I] tried that out for a long time and struggled with it, and eventually just grew tired of the industry. I'd never had any success in it anyways. And so I just always felt like I had this huge drive and ambition, but I had nowhere to put it. And that was the most frustrating thing of all. I felt like, "I am somebody who has..." [Pauses], and I don't know if I knew this right out of the gate, and it took me a minute, but I have an incredible work ethic and ability to produce a lot of stuff. And again, before I had focus, that was kind of all over the place. And I would start a million projects, or be like, "Okay, that thing! I'm gonna go do that." And then not quite know how to do it and structure it.
And it wasn't until I met my wife where all of that finally was given a container, and she was just like, "Listen, give it to me. I'll build the thing, and we'll make it into something great." Which we've done. But I really needed that person to help me to understand what containment looked like, in a positive way, and how liberating commitment is. And the astrology also taught me that.
So before I met her, the writing horoscopes taught me about commitment, and I started to build a relationship with the work. And that was something that was electrifying, even though I was doing it for free. It took me two to three days to write horoscopes and I was doing them weekly at that time. So I was working half the week for free. I was a slow writer also, but I would write these big, huge things. And then also a new moon and full moon piece. Anyway, I was writing a lot and I wasn't getting paid for it at all.
It was generating clients, but a lot of my week was me hustling to make money, and then writing, and then trying to do that all over again. And so building that relationship with my professional self, especially as a woman in the world, I think is really important. And especially as somebody, I'm also a queer person. I'm not somebody who likes to compromise very much, which has gotten me far, and also in my early life in a lot of trouble. Fired from jobs, very not appreciated in a lot of circumstances, especially when you're in the service industry. And so I was like, "What am I gonna do with this kind of personality that I have, that's really tough in a lot of spaces?"
And also I don't do very well in a situation where I can't be completely honest. And so I was able to use that, to use those parts of me, in my writing. And I was like, "Oh wow, that's cool!" And again, for years, I didn't make any money off of it. But it felt like something that I had, and it was my relationship. And I was single, and in my thirties, and really lonely, and really feeling like I might never meet the person that I'm supposed to meet, or that I want a relationship with.
But I have this relationship, and no one can take it away from me. And all I have to do is go back to the computer to access it, or the page. So even though it takes a lot of physical, and emotional, and intellectual labor, it's still something that was mine and I really needed that.
Sarah Enni: Yes, that's huge. I mean, that comes up over and over again, that all you need is a pen and paper if writing is your particular calling. And I feel for people for whom acting is it, and they have to wait.
Chani Nicholas: It's really frustrating. You really should be a writer, or producer, or director, if you're an actor. To have any sense of feeling that you have agency, or one of those things. Or also a gardener, or something where you're like, "I got sustenance from another thing." Cause waiting around for other people is murderous.
Sarah Enni: It's very, very rough. Especially on on a creative soul.
Chani Nicholas: Yeah, and dealing with all that rejection. As somebody who went out a lot and got rejected a lot, it's intense. You're spending all this time and energy just getting ready for the audition, and nobody cares that you're there. And then it's over in two seconds and then you start all over again. So if you don't have that outlet, or a team of other actors, and writers, and directors, that you're a part of where you feel like, "Okay, at least I have some, maybe not control, but agency in this space. I have a voice, I have somewhere to put my creative energy." I think it's so important.
Sarah Enni: It's huge, and we'll talk about how that kind of applies to you finding social media, or on the internet, and in practicing what you practice. I do want to ask about storytelling, because I think, from what I understand from the book and reading interviews with you, is that you were always doing readings. That was always kind of in the background. Which I would assume means that you were developing a storytelling style around.
Chani Nicholas: I think as an actor also, I always found like, "Oh, I can perform the planets for people. I can act out a challenging Saturn aspect. I can act out a loopy Venus Neptune situation." That I can always do. So I know how to be animated, and I know how to get my point across. Not only through my words, but also through my body and through my ability to project emotionally also. And so to enter into somebody's chart and act it out for them has, I think, been a lot of fun and really healing and really illuminating in a lot of readings.
Sarah Enni: I thought a lot about... technically there's, well this isn't exactly true, but technically there's one chart for each person. Right? I know there's different ways to create the chart, but it's each astrologer kind of accessing it in their personal way. Finding your voice, which we talk about in writing a lot, which is so interesting. And that's what kind of struck me in looking at the time that you spent searching, and gaining a ton of life experience, and learning a lot about...
Chani Nicholas: That's what you call it, "life experience".
Sarah Enni: [Laughs] We're putting a nice spin on it... that you can bring that then to your work now. You have a breadth of experience that you can draw from.
Chani Nicholas: And a lot of therapy sessions under my belt.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, I'm with you on that for sure. I think in the book you wrote "late bloomer" and I have a couple of friends that relate to that. And I think it's also finding peace with that is a whole other thing.
Chani Nicholas: Yeah. And we're really youth obsessed and we really feel so much pressure, especially with social media. I think we've always felt a lot of pressure. But I think with social media, watching people be super fancy and hang out with celebrities, and be in beautiful gowns at 24, or whatever, is really weird. And it's also great for those people, and super fun to give our friends a lot of hearts and flame emojis, but also, there's no way a human being can take in that many images and not feel like, "What's the image that I'm projecting? And what does that mean about me?"
Chani Nicholas: And so the levels of comparison that happen now, are off the charts. Human beings have never been able to compare each other in the way that we do now. And as an artist, as somebody who's an entrepreneur, as someone who's... your money comes from your effort and not from some job necessarily. That's a lot. Cause you also have to be able to reclaim your attention and pull it in and focus on what you're doing.
Chani Nicholas: And it's not immediate gratification. It will kill you creatively if that's what you're going for, I think. And we live in a world of constant, immediate gratification. And constantly forgetting about the last thing. And success is even more fleeting than it ever was, because nothing is permanent. There's just another thing up the newsfeed that gets more attention, and so it's so hard to be able to be present where you are. I think I got lost in your question.
Sarah Enni: No, no, I love that. That's all adding to it. But I'm also just really relating to that. Being an entrepreneur is like, you need that. You need to be outward.
Chani Nicholas: You do. And everybody needs gratification. Everybody needs to be seen and witnessed, and you need accolades, you really do, in some way, shape or form. But if that's where your sole attention is, you're screwed. And so is your art.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, totally. And we're talking about types of accolades, right? I look at my inbox and I'm like, "Inbox zero! What does that mean?" You know what I mean? I'd rather have fifteen unread emails, then have written 2000 words.
Chani Nicholas: You do? You can have mine, I'll send you some.
Sarah Enni: Okay, great. Perfect. We'll do a trade. So let's get to discovering astrology, moving into this space, reclaiming it for yourself. Was that, or was that not, tied to discovering modern versus traditional astrology?
Chani Nicholas: A lot was tied to working with Demetra George (author of Astrology for Yourself: How to Understand and Interpret Your Own Birth) and learning traditional astrology. She talks a lot about, and I write about it in the book, astrology is a self-secret system. And there's ways in which things, these older wisdom traditions, reveal themselves to you in stages, or the understanding of it, or the integration of the knowledge. And each person's really different. There are modern astrologers that are just so incredible, and so talented at working in a modern kind of setting, and with modern techniques. And their work is phenomenal. And it was something that I was like, "Yeah, I love that." But I never felt like I had ownership over it. There was always something elusive about it.
And when I met Demetra, she looked at my chart and she was like, "Look, I can see that you function a lot on intuition and being really sensitive, and being open to what you're receiving, and the symbols and all of that. But I want you to just put that away for a moment, and I want to teach you rules. I want to teach you a system. And then I want you to add that back on. But I want you to have a system underneath everything."
Sarah Enni: The containment.
Chani Nicholas: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so for someone like me, I was like, "Ah, I'm in." And when we started working together, I had again, places to put things. I was like, "Oh, that goes there. And that goes there. Oh! And then if they're there and they're there, then that means this." And it really like coding in a way. Everything has a place and you understand it. And again, it's not the only system. It's not the only way to see a chart. But for me, it just helps me get to the information in the clearest, most direct way possible. The question was...?
Sarah Enni: Oh, sorry. Yeah, that was actually, I feel just appreciating talking about modern versus traditional is great. But then the story of how you came to accept the role astrology was supposed to play for you.
Chani Nicholas: It really was about the ruler of the ascendant. So the ruler of my ascendant is in the third house, which has to do with writing and teaching, which really helped me give myself permission to be a writer. And also that house also has to do with rituals. And the ninth house, the house opposite to the third, is the house of astrology. But the third house is related in the way that it was the temple of the moon. So it was actually the place where you would do ritual. It's the actual daily rituals. And in as much, it's related to systems of divination because of that, to me anyways. And I think older literature supports that.
But the way my chart is structured, I was like, "Oh, it's the temple of the moon."And I literally have always talked to people about the new moon, and eclipses, and full moons. I was always that girl in class that was like, "It's a new moon today!" And people would be like, "What's that mean?" I was just always doing that, way before I even started reading charts. And so realizing that, I organically started teaching about the new moon. It was like all this stuff just happened and I was like, "Oh, it's right there in my chart." In a way that felt very literal.
And also the planet that rules my ninth house of astrology is in my tenth house of career. So it pulls the ninth house into my tenth house. So astrology, teaching, traveling, publishing, all that stuff gets pulled into my house of career. And it's important for me to do that. So it wasn't until Demetra walked me through my chart, in this way, that I was like, "Oh!" And when that became clear, I started to see everybody else's chart with that kind of clarity.
Cause I was like, "Oh it really is actually quite simple." It's like, "That piece is there. So this comes with that, and that goes with that. So how does that work in your life? Do you do ABC?" And of course there's more complex layers to it, but that really is the basis of it.
Sarah Enni: So let's talk about, I actually am, as a fellow entrepreneur, I'm actually interested in how does it begin to grow? What was the moment like of saying, "I think I'm gonna go all in on this" And what did it look like, kind of manifesting that?
Chani Nicholas: So I was dropping out of my third and final grad program. It costs me $14,000 to do so. I stayed a month past the deadline, because I was really trying to work it out, and really trying to get through it. And it was just so abysmal that I remember sitting down at my desk, in my room in an apartment, a flat, in San Francisco. I was renting a room. I was living with five other people that I didn't really know, and that turned out to be not a good situation. In a cold, drafty space, in my thirties, and just being like, "What am I gonna do? This route is not for me. This is not working out."
I was teaching yoga at the time. It was a kind of brutal way to make money. The way you make money in yoga is you have to teach wealthy people mostly. And it just was not my bag. And I was really starting to be like, "I hate this, and I don't want to be a part of this. How else can I be of service in the world and try to be of use?" And I was taking astrology clients and I was writing astrology, and I had been for a couple of years.
So I just sat down in that cold, drafty San Francisco room and was like, "What if I just put all of the energy into the business? What if I just went all in?" And I had really no other choice, it was really the only thing that was working at the time. I did have a lot of readings, and I did have a lot of interest, and I was getting a lot of feedback about the writing. And so I just made a big, what I would call now, a mind map. I just put all the words on paper and put it up on my wall.
I was like, "This is what I want my life to be like.This is what I want my business to be like. This is what I want it to be a container for." And I just had that up for a couple of months, and it just really seared into my brain. And then I moved back to LA, and a couple months later I met my wife, and everything started to work out. But I started studying with Demetra, and then met her a month or two later.
Sarah Enni: It's funny how immediate it can be. Shifts don't have to happen, they can happen over time, but sometimes it just takes...
Chani Nicholas: It takes all of every single moment and every single day leading up to it ,and then all of a sudden it's a domino. Just something falls off the cliff and you're like, "Okay, now we're in another place."
Sarah Enni: Oh, that's so interesting. I really want to make sure we talk about how emotional this kind of writing is. I'm fascinated by this because as a writer, I'm a novelist, so my goal is for readers to have a feeling and respond to the writing. And that's a two way street. And you're holding up a mirror to people and taking on some kind of responsibility. I mean, it just feels very loaded emotionally.
Chani Nicholas: Thanks.
Sarah Enni: It's a lot. It's a whole different interpretation of work.
Chani Nicholas: Yeah, it is. And it's a horoscope, so it's not supposed to be any kind of absolute. It's supposed to be a prompt, or to be read as inspiration, or just as a place of meditation. So whatever works for you, you keep it. If it doesn't, it's not for you. You can leave it. And then I'm also sitting with the way in which the astrology is lining up for each sign. And then I'm thinking, "How can I best say this in a way that's applicable to the masses, but specific enough to the situation, that could be helpful to a wide range of people from different life's experiences."
And how I'm always looking at, "What do I have access to, and how do we use it to deconstruct normative narratives? How do we use it to encourage people to get loud about what they need to get loud about? How can this work be like, "Yes!" You know, give yourself permission to do the things you know you need to do. Because we're so weird as human beings. We know it. We can learn it. And then we forget it the next 24 hours and we have to remember it all over again cause it's a different context. And we're like, "Oh, also here too." So we need to keep hearing the same things over and over again.
The work is meant to be that place of like, "Remember who you are and what you have. And don't forget your agency, just don't." It's so important, especially in these times where it feels the powers that be, are just wielding their influence in ways that feel really devastating. In ways that are really devastating. And in ways that will have very long lasting impact. And we don't have power over that. But there are places where we have power. There are places where we have agency. We do make choices all the time. And so to live under the umbrella of what feels like dictators and psychopaths... it's easy to forget that we have agency. And we do have power. And collectively, we have a lot of power. And I, especially in 2020, don't want us to lose sight of that. Ever. Ever, ever.
Sarah Enni: Well and definitely... reading your 2020 thing I was like, "Okay, I feel more hopeful." But, you just named so many different intersecting things that you carry as a writer when you're crafting these things, and you're doing it every month, at least. How do you, as a creative person, as sensitive person, take that on, work with that? Does it ever block you? I mean, how do you kind of interact with that?
Chani Nicholas: Well, I'm not more powerful than it. So I have to, like every writer, open myself up to what wants to be said. And try to be as good of a channel for that as possible. And know that it's not my responsibility to fix anything. That I can only give what I've got to give and that's it. And I don't want anyone to forget our power and our agency. And also, we need to remember that so much of it is up to so many factors, and so many things. And so I can't take myself too seriously also. And so it's like, "Okay, I'm gonna sit down and do my best. And write this thing in the best way that I can. And hopefully people will find what they need here." And if not, I also trust that they'll find what they need somewhere else.
That I'm not far from the only thing that they'll read that day, or the source of info that they'll go to. And so, God willing, they will get to what they need to really quickly. And hopefully the people that need this, will get here quickly, and everything will just keep moving.
Sarah Enni: And the other thing that's interesting is, you talk about when you went all in with the business, that you also decided to claim your voice as someone who was gonna bring a lot of political perspective and engagement with the social justice world.
Chani Nicholas: That was always there. That wasn't new.
Sarah Enni: Okay. So that's always been a part of...
Chani Nicholas: Yeah, I was like, "Why would I ever sit down and write something if it wasn't honest?" And I think I was really trying to incorporate, again, all the things that I was reawakening to and relearning, from going back and finishing my bachelor's and being like, "I need to put this somewhere." And I was reading so many great pieces that I was just like, "I need to write." And the astrology was, whatever it was doing at the moment, I was like, "Oh god, this is so fitting for that."
And I just started seeing all these correlations, or ways in which I could write about the astrology that was more radical. Or that was appealing to me as somebody who wanted to talk about what's possible if these weren't the only systems that we lived in. If we could recreate the world in which we live in, what would we want it to look like? And what does that mean?
Sarah Enni: Which feels interesting, you know, you are practicing something that's so old. It's certainly older than our country. It's not older than everything, but it's pretty darn old. So you can use that to maybe be more elastic with time. It hasn't always been this way. In some cases.
Chani Nicholas: Well in most, I mean we've always looked to the sky as a map, not to understand like, "What does it mean to be a Leo?" But as a way of being like, "Okay we walked Southwest, and now we've got to walk back Northeast." And as nomadic peoples, we use the sky as a map as just traveling people. Before we had maps, before we had GPS, all that stuff, we knew the sky. And we knew the seasons by the way things grew, but also the pattern of the sun, and we knew the moon and the timing. And the moon probably most likely helped us [learn to] count.
So it was a way of developing consciousness through watching the rhythm of the sun, and the solstices, and the equinoxes, and the moon. And those rhythms that we notice like , "Oh, this keeps happening, this keeps happening. What does that mean?" When we start to build things like Paleolithic people built huge monuments to, we think, the winter solstice. Why? Because they were so into the sun! They were so there with it.
And you know all the, not all, but many of the world religions function on a lunar calendar. Or a lot of the festivals happen in new and full moons. Why? Because that's what we did. We were in relationship with the sky and the earth in a very different way than we are now. Or, we were in one, and we're not really anymore. And so I think the yearning for astrology is very, very rooted in the actual roots of being a human.
Sarah Enni: So let's talk about You Were Born for This. You kind of had locked in, the business was growing. I'm interested in what elements started to add into the business, and when did a book become part of the plan?
Chani Nicholas: So I got to a place where I was so booked out with astrology sessions with people, that I couldn't really keep up. And I also was like, "Oh my god, I have lost control of my calendar." And it felt panic inducing. And I kept, again, being like, "I'm just saying the same things to people. I'm teaching people the same things in their reading, cause I want to give them..." I just want to give you tools. I don't want to be the person that knows everything and you don't know everything, and you have to come to me to get the next installment of the thing.
I actually want to teach you what I'm looking at so that you can have a relationship with it. Because I think your conversation with your chart is going to be more interesting than my conversation with you about your chart. And so if you're interested, I want to give you a direct line. And so I was like, "Everybody wants to come for a reading. What if I could talk to everybody at once?" So we did a tele-class way back in 2014. It was our first one. And then in 2015 we started doing online classes. You didn't have to phone in, you could do it whenever you wanted.
And I started teaching about the qualities of the new moon. And then I started to go through the astrology of that lunar cycle. And then I started to give that, plus the readings of every sign for the month. And then I started to be like, "Oh well I can teach you about your sun, moon and ascendant and the ruler." And I taught my first actual course, and then I started to teach about different parts of the chart.
And again, I was just teaching the same things over and over again. And you can get more in depth in a course than you do in the book. But I was like, "If I just have a book that has just the basics." Like, "This is just an intro into these basics of your chart, then we can start with the same language and then we can keep going." But I just didn't have this reference manual to give everybody that was taking courses with me.
And I was like, "If I only had the book, then we could just go from there." And be like, "Okay, you know how it says on page 37 about the dah, dah, dah, well, this is what I'm talking about." So when people started to come to me about writing a book, I was like, "Well, what am I gonna write it on?"
I'm not the astrology teacher that's for other astrology teachers. That's not me. I really love beginners. I love introducing you to the language. And I think there's so much depth and richness that can happen in that introduction, and with the basics. So finally I was like, "Why don't I just write the book that I don't have to give people?" And it's not that there aren't other amazing intro books to astrology, cause there are. But this was just the way that I wanted to put it across and I wanted to queer it. I wanted to update it. I wanted to bring it into the modern age a little bit more.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. I love hearing that the book came out of a view being like, "There is this missing thing, and it's book shaped." Rather than just scrounging for like, "I signed a contract and now I've gotta do something." It's a whole different way of approaching writing it. Which is probably, I'm sure it made it easier or It feels better. So let's talk specifically about the book. Do you mind pitching You Were Born for This?
Chani Nicholas: Yes. So, You Were Born for This is an intro to your astrological chart. It goes through the main skeletal system. I call them the keys of your chart. The sun, the sign it's in, the place it's in, and the other planets that it's talking to. The moon, the sign it's in, the house it's in, and the other planets, it's talking to. The ascendant. Any planets in the first house, which is where the ascendent is, which you would have to embody and bring into your persona. And then the planet that rules that ascending sign, or the rising sign. And that planet steers the direction of your life towards a certain destination.
And I believe, or the thesis is, if your chart says that, and you deny it, it will be pretty unfulfilling. If the chart says that, and you embrace it, I can guarantee you'll move towards a life that feels like it has meaning and purpose. That's the promise of astrology.
Sarah Enni: I was gonna say that's a pretty great promise. That's a good sell. I like it. I have been following astrology my whole life on a very kind of cursory like... I knew I was a Gemini, I read everything about Gemini and it was only a couple of years ago that I even understood what the ascendant was at all, or found out what my rising sign was. And it was a total game changer.
Chani Nicholas: Mmm, I'm intrigued!
Sarah Enni: Yeah. A rising Sagittarius, which I'm sure explains a lot.
Chani Nicholas: [Laughs] And where's the Jupiter?
Sarah Enni: Jupiter is in, actually, where's the thing? I cheated and brought my whole thing.
Chani Nicholas: No, that's not cheating. Oh, look at this!
[The sound of paper rustling in the background].
Sarah Enni: Yeah, this is what I did last night.
Chani Nicholas: Look at you. Oh my god! Okay. I'm being shown something that could not be more Gemini badge access. Of course, it's in the third house of writing and teaching and communicating. And it's in Aquarius, the sign of wanting to know things thoroughly, and being known for one's ability to get to the truth and explain it in a very succinct, practical, logical manner. Maybe not practical, but logical for sure.
Look at this. Your writing is, ugh, my god, it's so neat and tidy.
Sarah Enni: [Laughs] Well, this is...
Chani Nicholas: And you have Uranus in your first house. So what did you think when you read about that?
Sarah Enni: That was a little, it was interesting. However...
Chani Nicholas: It gives you an electric kind of energy.
Sarah Enni: And it was rebellious or...
Chani Nicholas: Yeah, it can be rebellious, but it's really about going in and bringing in something new. Like you are here to bring something new in. And to look for innovation and to look and see what is old and outdated and how can I flip it, break it. And that can seem rebellious to some people. Do you know what I mean? It's like, "Status quo, okay, if it works, fine. If it doesn't, I'm gonna fuck shit up."
Sarah Enni: I'm working on a new project within the podcast right now that really, as I was filling this out, I was like, "Oh, this is really great."
Chani Nicholas: And your moon is in Taurus with Venus. Oh my God. You worked so much.
Sarah Enni: Oh yeah, mm-hmm.
Chani Nicholas: Wow. That's such a strong setup though.
Sarah Enni: Is it?
Chani Nicholas: Do you have a lot of luck in your work life and with coworkers, a lot of connections?
Sarah Enni: Yes.
Chani Nicholas: Do end up supporting a lot of people?
Sarah Enni: Mm-hmm.
Chani Nicholas: We won't go into it now. Wow.
Sarah Enni: Yes, I do. I mean, I feel like I knew the book was working for me when I was like, "None of this is a surprise." You know what I mean? Like, "This makes sense." But that's kind of why I guess I kept coming back to the concept of mirror with your writing, and everything you're doing. And you use the word witness a lot which is very powerful. And it was like, "Oh I do... This resonates with me a lot."
Chani Nicholas: And the ruler of your ascendant, Jupiter, is in a very nice sextile with Uranus and your first house. So that just speaks to the kind of innovative truth-telling information that wants to come through. And in a kind of shocking or a new kind of way. And so the communication and using any kind of [talking over each other] all this stuff that we have here is very much about that.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. Well it was super fun. And I just wrote it all out cause I was like, "This is what you were saying, the remembering." I was like, "Oh I think just rewriting kind of what you've written in there made a lot of sense to me."
Chani Nicholas: I have never... My wife has really incredible handwriting and she's very neat and tidy. But this is new levels.
Sarah Enni: Oh, that's very sweet. Thank you.
Chani Nicholas: And also, so tiny. I love.
Sarah Enni: Very sharp pencils.
Chani Nicholas: This makes a teacher very happy.
Sarah Enni: Oh, I'm glad. I'm glad.
Chani Nicholas: But your mercury, the planet that rules your mid-heaven, your career, your tenth house, is in the eighth house of anguish, pain, death, loss.
Sarah Enni: Oh, yeah. Mid-heaven was not covered in there, so I didn't...
Chani Nicholas: I know that's in a different book.
Sarah Enni: I didn't get to that one.
Chani Nicholas: Yeah. So do you write about really tough stuff, like emotionally hard things?
Sarah Enni: The podcast usually ends up being therapy sessions.
Chani Nicholas: Yeah, it would have to be.
Sarah Enni: And I work all the time. And then I write novels that are not... so no, nothing's casual.
Chani Nicholas: [Laughs] Super chill.
Sarah Enni: I'm not a very casual person.
Chani Nicholas: No, but you lead with that Sagittarius energy. You're just like super, you know?
Sarah Enni: And then I flip it on ya.
Chani Nicholas: [Laughs] You got a Mars, and Mercury and Cancer hiding out in the eighth house.
Sarah Enni: And then people are like, "Why am I crying?" And I'm like, "Yes, this is what happens at 45 minutes at every interview I do."
Chani Nicholas: I love it. Well you're also sun Chiron which means that you've got the wounded healer connected to your sun. So partnerships, and business partnerships, but also just this. A lot of therapists and whatnot have that kind of placement. Or people that have clients or are just in the interface. This is first house, seventh house set up right here, and that's where you shine. You shine in the partnership in that way. Not to say that your career isn't you doing a lot of deep emotional investigation and writing. And so the planet of writing rules your career.
Sarah Enni: Yup. Yup. You got me. No, this has ended up being the passion and being able to connect with people one on one and then making that into something. Like you were saying, being able to teach and get information out. But at the core of it is a pretty personal thing.
Chani Nicholas: Very. And healing. And people trust you. Cause that moon, Venus and Taurus, you're just so stable and productive.
Sarah Enni: The Taurus thing is a real... and I also, by the way, keep falling in love with Taurus people, which I'm like, "Oh God."
Chani Nicholas: Ah, but your Venus is there, of course, because there's a natural connection.
Sarah Enni: So, but you know, listen. It's a whole thing.
Chani Nicholas: I know. It's okay. There's still humans. They're messy.
Sarah Enni: I know! They are messy. They're secret messy cause on the outside they're very put together. And then you're like, "Wait a second, you were hiding a lot!"
Chani Nicholas: "You're controlling this whole thing."
Sarah Enni: Yeah like, "Wait a second."
Chani Nicholas: I mean we could talk about the opposition with Pluto and Saturn. Those are tough spots, but...
Sarah Enni: I was gonna say, this is about you. So let's make sure that we talk about the book.
Chani Nicholas: [Laughs] Well that's all in the book, or most of what I said is in the book. It's about locating those things and being like , "Okay, well if I am a person that needs relationship, then it doesn't have to be romantic. Or in the times where it's not romantic, where do I get those needs met? And as a Gemini person that is always in conversation, either with the self, or the introverted, extroverted, or with the person on the outside, but there's always gotta be that bouncing off of ideas and investigation.
Sarah Enni: My cat doesn't talk back. [Both laughing] I had to bring in outside resources. I tried with him, but...
Chani Nicholas: Exactly. Exactly.
Sarah Enni: I just found this book to be really clarifying.
Chani Nicholas: Oh, thank god. That's all I wanted. I just want us to get on a page that's more than the sun sign.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So actually if you don't mind really quick, I just thought this was fascinating. If you could talk about the history of what made the sun sign such a dominant thing.
Chani Nicholas: Oh yeah. Because the printing press and astrologers wanted to have access to the masses. And through the printing press, everybody could start to have access to each other in ways that weren't available before. So stories could get out. And so if everybody could know the day that they're born, which most people do, then you can tell them, "Oh, if you're born within this day and this day, then that means you're a Leo." Then everybody born within that day could read this one thing about Leos. And so we started to do sun sign astrology, which is to look at the chart through the sign of the sun, as if the sun was the ascendant.
And so that was only ever supposed to be a gateway into having a conversation about astrology. I think. Maybe the original people that did it... there's an astrologer named Christopher Renstrom ( author of Ruling Planets: Your Astrological Guide to Life’s Ups and Downs) who he has tons and tons and tons of information. He's studied all of it. He's an incredible historian. But it's only ever supposed to be a little jumping off point. But people mistake your horoscope for your astrological chart, which they are not the same thing, at all.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. And I think everybody has friends that are like, "Hmm..." Eye-roll-y about astrology. And I'm like, "Yeah, but it's not..." And in my life, they're all Leos. So I was like, "Of course!" Cause there's a lot of stuff that people put on Leos. So no, you don't want to pick all that up, of course. But there's so much more. But talk about the emphasis of moon, and especially ascendant. We don't talk about that much.
Chani Nicholas: The ascendant is the most personal part of the chart because it is the moment that you take your first breath. We look to the Eastern horizon to see the sign, the little tiny specific piece of sky that's rising up over the Eastern horizon. And that is the marker of when you said yes to being alive. And so that is really it. And that sets up the whole house system for the chart. Then you can see where all the other planets were, and they all mean something if they're in a specific part of the sky. And then they're all talking to each other. And it's really that moment of saying yes.
So when I start out on a journey, there's a chart for the moment I open the door and begin it. If I opened up a business, there's a chart for it because there's a yes there. And so the moment your spirit came in body and started to breathe for itself, that was the yes. Or breathe outside of the person's body that birthed you. That was the yes. And that's the moment that we take the snapshot of the sky. And that's the mark of your life.
So the ascendant everything, to me. The sun is, of course, life purpose and essential self. And so of course the sign that it's in is really indicative of the personality. And also, you can't ever forego what that rising sign was and and where it makes your sun be. Because a Leo in the fourth house is very different than a Leo in the 10th house, right? Someone's either gonna be way out in the world, or really actually need to be very much at home or related to their ancestry and all of that.
And then the moon is so poetic, of course. Any writer or poet will tell you that. But the moon is the most local planetary body to the earth. It's our neighbor. So it really does speak about local life. And it speaks about our relationship to everything else, because the moon makes the most contact with all the other planets by aspect, a day. And so the moon is this messenger.
So the moon also talks about writers, cause it is the one who brings the messages. So you've got the moon in the sixth house of work. So I don't know if you deliver information for a living, but you've also got the north node there, which makes it a giant desire for a lot of info. And a lot of relationship building, because Venus is there. So I don't know if you meet a lot of people and have a lot of information reeling with others, but that would be a good thing for you to do and your work life. Building connections, building solid...
Sarah Enni: That's it. That's pretty much the deal.
Chani Nicholas: Making art. Making things beautiful. And so the moon tells us about our body and our emotional life because it is the reflection of the sun's light. And so if the sun is our life purpose and essential self, then the moon reflects that by us being in body. The soul, the spirit, needs a body on this material plane. And so the moon tells us like, "Okay well this is how you have to do that thing. That big life purpose, that shiny thing you have. That big Gemini like, "I have information, and things, and ideas!"
Well the moon and Taurus is like, "I got to do that in an everyday way at work, through work rituals, through work routines, through building relationships, through just waking up every morning and making myself tea, and looking at the paper." All those little things, that's the moon, for creature comforts and habits.
Sarah Enni: Home, essential stuff, food. It was interesting to learn about that a couple of years ago, cause I was like, "Oh!" You talk about containment. I'm relating so much to that. Recognizing the power that comes from creating rituals. Or just noticing what you already do that is a ritual for you. A lot of writers talk about like, "I have to sit down with a mug of tea. Or I have to do this before I write." And I'm like, "Then lean into that. That's a ritual. It's important."
Chani Nicholas: Very. The moon is our ritual place.
Sarah Enni: Which is, like you said, very romantic and very sweet. I want to talk about how interestingly you structured this book. Cause it's sort of an intro. It's sort of an, "Okay class. Here we go." Walking through it, and of course people that are gonna pick up pick up the book are probably interested anyway. But you have this really clever thing of using Dr. Maya Angelo and Frida Kahlo as characters almost, throughout. Can you talk about how you came up with that construct?
Chani Nicholas: You're actually the first person to mention them. It's really important for me to use people whose body of work speaks for itself. So that I'm not prying into their life. I'm not trying to get into any information that they didn't already give us willingly. And it's everywhere in their work and their interviews and their own writings, it's published, we all know it. It's public domain.
And we have a verified time of birth for both of them. Very important. And they've already lived their life out. So they passed away. They've left us this thing, this incredible monument to their life. And to me it's to their astrology chart as well. And they're both incredible artists, very important activists, very important thinkers and creators in their time. And also still. Their work keeps being unpacked and it's very informative.
And they both had very different lives. They had very different charts and very different experiences. They both are Leo rising. So there's that piece of it. But Maya Angelou's chart is this stellar lineup of just very beautiful astrological setups. And Frida Kahlo's is a really challenging one. And you can see that clearly lived out in their life experience. Not that Maya didn't face a lot of extraordinary obstacles, but they lived out their life purpose in very different ways. And very clearly, to me, through the lens of their chart.
So I was like, "Well these are two extraordinary examples." And Maya Angelou was the first example chart that I worked on with Demetra George. And so I remember her looking at Maya Angela's chart and be like, "Well..." and she would giggle and be like, "Well obviously you know she's a writer and a poet and then all these things cause look at her setup." And I was like, "Oh what? What is she talking about?"
And now I can so clearly look at it with these rules and be like, "Of course." God, the sun in its exaltation and its joy with Jupiter. I mean, how much better could you get as the ruler of the ascendant? this is clearly marked as somebody who's got to go out in the world and live a huge, big, dramatic, glamorous, teaching, publishing, all the things, life.
And then Frida's is something that is about how we work with the pain and trauma of our lives and what we might do with it. And so life is an unfair set up and our charts are also, they reflect that. And so some of us have these intricate burdens to carry, and how we carry them is our choice. And Frida's legacy I think, really speaks to that.
Sarah Enni: And I just thought it was so clever cause I was like, "Oh I feel I'm getting to know these two people in this different way." Two people that I've known publicly and you're sort of saying like, "Oh yeah, this is..." And it was useful to say, "Well their set up is this way. It really showed your thinking in saying, "Yes, I'm gonna show you that your Xs and Y, but here's an example of how I interpret that." I just thought it was so smart.
Chani Nicholas: Thanks!
Sarah Enni: And then ironic... I feel it's such a funny thing. Irony, in general, is...
Chani Nicholas: Almost dead at this point in our world's history.
Sarah Enni: Basically. And then it's also so wink, wink, nod, nod. Like, "Well I'm into astrology, I guess." As a cover. Or, "Whatever."
Chani Nicholas: Yeah, peer pressure.
Sarah Enni: When I was thinking about about how a lot of people feel free to talk about astrology with a big asterisk to it, or maybe with open mocking even at times. That you must encounter this in your work day-to-day.
Chani Nicholas: Well I'm mostly at home by myself cause I write a lot. I don't engage much with the outside world face-to-face. But when I do, I have a lot of people tell me things about signs that I'm just always like, "That's interesting, I've never heard that and I have no idea how that makes sense." But, "Cool, cool."
Sarah Enni: They're astro-splaining to you [laughs].
Chani Nicholas: And people make signs as a catchall for everything. It's like, "Well, you know, they're a Taurus. So they dah, dah, dah." And I'm like, "I literally can't make that connection at all, but okay, that's interesting that you do." I said the other day, someone was doing this thing with sun signs and wanted everyone to go around the room and say their sun sign. And I was like, "I just honestly hate this so much." Because it's almost like someone doesn't know you're best friends with somebody and they start talking about them, and you're in the room, and you're like, "Oh god, I just wanna get outta here. Say what you need to say. But I don't want to hear it. It's not for me. This is not for me to hear." So that's how I feel.
I'd rather never talk about it in public, to be honest.
Sarah Enni: About astrology in general?
Chani Nicholas: Yeah. Sometimes my wife will start talking about people's astrology with them and I'm like, "Oh my god, kill me now." I just don't wanna... I don't want to do it. I want to talk about it in context and otherwise I don't really want to talk about it.
Sarah Enni: That makes sense. I guess I was also relating to it somewhat [pauses] I write young adult fiction. And so there's some element when people, it's not uncommon for people to be like, "Oh, that's cute. You write little books." You know, talk about it in some type of way.
Chani Nicholas: The most formative time of our development. We're developing our relationship to our sexuality to our self, to our identity. Our brain is literally being molded. Frivolous.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. Honestly. Identity forming, who needs it? So I just kind of was like, "Oh, there's like..." I felt a kinship there with that. There must be some level of being like, "I don't have to justify my art to you." Or whatever.
Chani Nicholas: Yeah. I mean, it's not even a conversation about what I do. They're talking about some aspect of something related to what I do, but it's not actually what I do. So I'm always like, "Huh, I don't know that. Tell me about it. I don't know. I don't really know what you're talking about."
Sarah Enni: Interesting. I love that. That's a good way to...
Chani Nicholas: I like your chart for why YA stuff. Because the third house is also the beginning of our education. Ninth house is higher education and the third house is kindergarten, preschool, elementary school, high school.
Sarah Enni: That's interesting. Okay!
Chani Nicholas: I like that. Then it's, Jupiter's the teacher. So it's the wise one, or the wisdom holder also in that space.
Sarah Enni: Oh my gosh. That's so cool. Yeah, I love that.
Chani Nicholas: Did you like that? Did you have a good...?
Sarah Enni: Yes, I'm a rare YA author who enjoyed high school.
Chani Nicholas: Yeah, that's what it seems cause you have a really good, I mean you've got a couple of things with the Saturn.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, no, it's funny. I mean middle school was terrible, but high school really took off. I enjoyed it. So I always wrap up with advice. I mean, we didn't get into too much of it, but the fact that you had a nonfiction book, I think nonfiction is incredible. I Love it so much. It's also not easy. So I guess I would love to hear your advice for someone who is interested in writing a book like this, it's instructional, it's nonfiction about your passion. How did you approach that? Or what advice would you give?
Chani Nicholas: Oh... get someone, if you're not good at it yourself, have somebody who's really good at helping you shape the way that you are teaching something. My wife did that. She's not credited, but she should be. And I asked for it, but they didn't give it to me. But she really edited this book. This is her outline. I wrote everything down and she was like, "Okay, cute. Babe you can't just tell everybody everything you know and hope that they can make sense of it. Let's actually structure this." And I was like, "Oh, that's a good idea."
And she laid out the structure and re-formatted the things that I'd written into, and be like, "Okay, now write ABC, write these components." And I'd be like, "Okay." And so really her ability to see how people needed to receive the information in the cleanest, clearest way possible, is her. So for me it's always about partnership. The ruler of my seventh house of relationships is in my first house of self. So my relationship people have to be able to work with me really closely [laughs]. So she does that incredibly well.
It's also her gift. Being able to take people's talents and shape them and bring them into form. So I don't have a lot of personal, you know, besides that, I just lucky. I picked the right person to spend my life with. She really knows how to work me. She's like, "Okay, if we do this, it'll be successful." I'm like, "Okay!" And then I'll do the work. She gives me the structure.
Sarah Enni: Well, find the right person is always good advice. And just really briefly, if someone was looking to get into astrology in a more serious way, what advice would you have for them?
Chani Nicholas: Well, I think it's really good to find a teacher to work with. And so there are a lot of teachers, or schools even. There's programs. If you read this book and you're like, "Okay, I got it. I have other courses that go more in-depth online. And like I said, there's always that one-on-one teacher/student relationship that's really important. Or if you study with somebody where they're teaching a group of people at the same time, that transmission can be really important.
And so just depends on what kind of a student you are and how you learn. Do you need to be in a room with somebody and to be with them. Do you like to listen to things in the background? Do you like to study in books more? So really finding the way in which you learn best. And then starting to read your chart, and read other people's charts. And try to get in front of people that you trust, that are gonna be kind to you, and read what you see. And keep asking, " Does that resonate? What part of that resonates? Where am I on? Where am I off? Does that make sense?" Check in with people.
Sarah Enni: It's like performing. You get feedback.
Chani Nicholas: Yeah, and if you read the book and it makes a lot of sense to you for your chart, you're like, "Oh yeah, yeah. I get it." Then try your mom's chart, or your sibling's chart, or your best friend's chart, and see if you can still start to understand the logic of it. And just keep building with different circumstances and different charts and be like, "Oh, that's what that means." And then you can take, also, the principles here and Google stuff and see what other interpretations you get. Just knowing how to frame the info, can be really helpful to adding layers on.
Sarah Enni: Well, and this is a great place to start. You Were Born For This. Chani this has been such a delight. Thank you so much.
Chani Nicholas: Thank you so much for having me.
Sarah Enni:
Thank you so much to Chani. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @Chaninicholas. And don't forget to sign up for her newsletter where you'll get horoscopes in your inbox on every new moon. I recommend it highly. You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram @SarahEnni, and the show (Twitter and Instagram) @FirstDraftPod. For links to everything Chani and I talked about in this episode, check out the show notes, which are @firstdraftpod.com.
An easy way to support the show is to subscribe to First Draft where ever you're listening to it right now. And if you have a couple minutes, you can go over to iTunes and leave a rating or review there. I'm gonna read a very recent review that the show got. This review was left by Artisty Arts. Artisty Arts says, "Love this podcast. So inspiring. I started listening to this podcast when I was struggling to write my first novel during NaNoWriMo. A year and a few months later, and I'm midway through my third draft. Listening to Sarah Enni's thoughtful, insightful questions, and hearing about the different journeys of many authors I admire on my way home from work, helped me feel inspired to write when I got home from a long day at work. And helped keep me writing."
That's so incredible. First of all, Artisty Arts, I'm so impressed that you get home after a long day at work and you keep writing. That is truly inspiring, honestly. And I'm so grateful for whatever role the podcast could have played in helping to keep you motivated, or keep your energy up. And you leaving that review helps make sure that new listeners find the show. Maybe people who wouldn't have found it otherwise. So Artisty Arts, you're the best. Congrats on the third draft. I know you can do it.
If you have any writing or creativity questions that you'd like me and a guest to answer in an upcoming mailbag episode, I'd love to hear from you. The mailbag episodes have been so fun and it's a really great way for me to feel connected to you guys, to listeners. I want to really get a sense of what's on your mind. So if you have a question, please call the voicemail box at 818-533-1998 and leave your question there. I really look forward to hearing from you and addressing some of your creativity questions.
Hayley Hershman produced this episode. The theme music is by Dan Bailey, and the logo was designed by Collin Keith. Thanks to production assistant Tasneed Daud, and transcriptionist-at-large Julie Anderson. And, as ever, thanks to you exalted suns for listening.
I want to hear from you!
Have a question about writing or creativity for Sarah Enni or her guests to answer? To leave a voicemail, call (818) 533-1998 or send an email to mailbag @ firstdraftpod dot com!
Subscribe To First Draft with Sarah Enni
Every Tuesday, I speak to storytellers like Veronica Roth, author of Divergent; National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature Jason Reynolds; Creator of Sex and the City Candace Bushnell; YouTube empresario and author Hank Green; Actors, comedians and screenwriters Jessica St. Clair and Lennon Parham; author and host of NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast Linda Holmes; Bestselling authors and co-hosts of the Call Your Girlfriend podcast, Ann Friedman and Aminatou Sow; Michael Dante DiMartino, co-creator of Avatar: The Last Airbender; John August, screenwriter of Big Fish and co-host of the Sciptnotes podcast; or Rhett Miller, musician and frontman for The Old 97s. Together, we take deep dives on their careers and creative works.
Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Track Changes
If you’re looking for more information on how to get published, or the traditional publishing industry, check out the Track Changes podcast series, and sign up for the Track Changes weekly newsletter.
Support the Show
Love the show? Make a monthly or one-time donation at Paypal.me/FirstDraft.
Rate, Review, and Recommend
Take a moment to rate and review First Draft with Sarah Enni in Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Your honest and positive review helps others discover the show -- so thank you!
Is there someone you think would love this podcast as much as you do? Just click the Share button at the bottom of this post!
Thanks again!