✍️ Make Writing Your Job Podcast

Katie Ludlow Rich is an award-winning historian, ghostwriter, developmental editor, and book coach in Saratoga Springs, Utah, who helps people turn the stories they’ve lived into books. As a historian, Katie brings overlooked Mormon women back into view. Her article in the Journal of Mormon History won the journal’s Best Article Award in 2025. Fifty Years of Exponent II, the history and anthology she co-wrote with Heather Sundahl, traces five decades of a grassroots Mormon feminist publication and makes the case for community over ideological purity. It won three book awards in 2025. For years, as a stay-at-home mom of four, Katie built her research and interviewing skills in stolen moments and assumed a PhD was the only way in. Then she built a career without one.

And the reason we’re all here today is a thank-you note Katie sent me on Instagram. She wrote that the work we do here on ✍️ Make Writing Your Job (and my books Six-Figure Freelance Writer and Write for Money and Power) helped her go from “essentially a free freelancer” to running a six-figure ghostwriting and developmental editing business, and she called it “truly life-changing.”

Be sure to subscribe to Katie to follow her work:

* Visit Katie’s website

* You can also find Katie on Instagram here.

Thank you Abbey Algiers, Amy Benavides, Lindy Grace, Carlie's Heart Work, Michael Denny | Trilogy Author, and many others for tuning into my live video with Katie Ludlow Rich!

If you enjoyed this episode of our podcast, please share:

And a huge thank you to our paid subscribers, who make this interview series and everything else we do here possible. 🙏

✍️ Make Writing Your Job is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Madelyn Herrera (Mady) is a writer and journalist in Los Angeles who covers food, pop culture, and features, writes fiction, and jumps into the news when a story needs a voice. After a master’s in journalism from Kingston University London, Madelyn graduated in 2025 and spent almost a year and a half job searching, the same long stretch so many of you watching are in right now. That search just ended with the job Madelyn had been hoping for, found on the Make Writing Your Job job board. Off the page, it’s cooking, the gym, travel, making videos, and a reading habit Madelyn calls a small obsession. And a few weeks ago came a brand-new Substack, Mady, written by, in her own words, “a journalist trying to be relevant.”

And the reason we’re all here today is a message Madelyn posted in our ✍️ Make Writing Your Job chat: “After months I finally landed the job I wished for! I wouldn’t have found it without this job board!” Madelyn, congratulations.

You can also follow Madelyn on social media @madelynalina

Thank you Axel Ghinea, Snezana🦋, Nadia Raych, Sri Sudharsan, Stephanie Schantz, and many others for tuning into my live video with Mady! If you enjoyed it, please share:

Want to check out the same job board we post 5x a week that writers like Mady use to land their dream writing jobs? Check out our most recent job postings here.

p.s. a special thank you to all of our paid subscribers who make this interview series at ✍️ Make Writing Your Job possible!

✍️ Make Writing Your Job is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Olivia Wickstrom is a full-time Substack writer and strategist living in the south of France, and the writer behind Petal + Hearth, a bestselling publication about creative entrepreneurship, French living, and what she calls main character energy. She started it in early 2025 with zero subscribers, after years as a freelance copywriter for tech and AI clients.

Within a year it had hit the Substack bestseller list, twelve times and counting, and today it has more than 29,000 subscribers, 800-plus paying members, and brings in more than $75,000 a year from Substack alone. She’s known for a Notes strategy that brought her 5,600 new readers in ninety days, a Pinterest engine that has sent more than 100,000 visitors to her posts, and a paid community that gets weekly workbooks, live coaching, and a monthly networking hour. She’s also the creator of the course How to Take Your Substack Full-Time.

Thank you Betina Cunado, Ashley Fenker, Olivia the Courageous Traveler, Howell Bigham, Giana Vasconcellos, and many others for tuning into my live video with Olivia Wickstrom!

✍️ Make Writing Your Job is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

And thank you to our paid subscribers who make interviews like these possible. We appreciate your support, and if you like the interview, please share!

Brooke Warner is the publisher and co-founder of She Writes Press, the award-winning hybrid press she started in 2012 after thirteen years inside traditional publishing. She’s now also COO of The Stable Book Group, the indie publishing collective She Writes Press joined last year, and she co-founded Memoir Nation with Grant Faulkner, the memoir community that grew out of their podcast after eight years and more than 400 episodes.

She’s the author of six books, including Write On, Sisters! and Green-Light Your Book, a TEDx speaker, and a memoir coach who has taught Write Your Memoir in Six Months for fourteen years. Every Sunday she writes Writerly Things, a Substack read by nearly 10,000 people with no paywall, from Berkeley, where she’s at work on a memoir of her own.

Thank you Amy Benavides, Teeka K, Kevin Ferguson, Lee Powers BSN, RN, Mette Chris, and many others for tuning into my live video with Brooke Warner!

And thanks to all of our paid subscribers who make interviews like this possible.

✍️ Make Writing Your Job is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Liked this interview? Feel free to share it:

This email is sponsored by ProWritingAid. I only partner with tools I actually use.

Editing is one of the most challenging (and important!) parts of the writing process, but is often overlooked.

In today’s workshop in collaboration with ProWritingAid, learn how to approach the editing process without getting overwhelmed.

In this workshop, you’ll learn…

* My pass-by-pass self-editing workflow (story first, sentences second, polish last)

* A live walkthrough of ProWritingAid’s brand-new redesign — you pick a mode (Plan, Write, or Edit) and only see the tools you need for that stage

* How to get developmental feedback on your entire manuscript with Manuscript Analysis, and how Virtual Beta Reader predicts where readers might put your book down

✍️ Perk for Paid Subscribers of Make Writing Your Job — Claim Your Gift!

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Paid subscribers of ✍️ Make Writing Your Job get 20% off your yearly license or 10 credit bundles.

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Satta Sarmah Hightower is a journalist-turned-content marketer who has been a full-time freelancer since 2014, when a second layoff pushed her into self-employment by accident. Through her consultancy, Talented Tenth Media, she’s spent more than a decade writing and building content for brands like Adobe, Microsoft, Google, Morgan Stanley, and Capital One — after starting out as a reporter for the Orlando Sentinel and as a reporter and editor at AOL’s local news network. She’s the author of The Forever Freelancer: How to Build a Thriving Solo Creative Business — and Unlock Family and Financial Freedom, and she writes the Substack of the same name, about the intersection of millennial motherhood, ambition, and creative entrepreneurship.

* Book: sattasarmah.com/book

* Substack: sattasarmahhightower.substack.com

* Instagram: www.instagram.com/sattasarmahhightower

Thank you Amy Benavides, Cierra Tanae, Ethan Jaffe, Roy Tate, Narin Sabah, and many others for tuning into my live video with Satta Sarmah Hightower!

✍️ Make Writing Your Job is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

p.s. we had some connectivity issues which is why the video switches in the end, thanks for your patience as we continue to troubleshoot some of these Substack Lives :)

Michael Weiss is a WGA screenwriter who has spent more than twenty years writing studio features, including Journey to the Center of the Earth and Around the World in 80 Days, along with a long run of franchise sequels. He’s taught in the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program for over fifteen years, where he was named Instructor of the Year, and he also teaches at Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film & Media Arts. His new book, Beyond the Hero: Relationship-Driven Screenwriting and the Secret to Hollywood’s Greatest Scripts, arrives this September from Allworth Press — and it argues that the engine of every great script isn’t the hero’s journey at all, but the core relationship between two characters taking that journey together.

Thanks for supporting our guests and their work!

Thank you Gonz Paoli, Cora Hanes, and many others for tuning into my live video with Michael Weiss!

✍️ Make Writing Your Job is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

p.s. Thanks for your patience as we’ve had some technical difficulties lately on our Substack Lives! We will be troubleshooting these more going forward. As always, thanks for sharing and subscribing.

Grant Faulkner is the co-founder of Memoir Nation — the memoir community and podcast he runs with Brooke Warner — as well as the Flash Fiction Institute and the journal 100 Word Story, and he spent twelve years as executive director of National Novel Writing Month.

His books include The Art of Brevity, Pep Talks for Writers, and, most recently, something out there in the distance — a “flash novel” created with photographer Gail Butensky. His writing has appeared everywhere from The New York Times to Poets & Writers, and he’s currently at work on a memoir, with a novel and a book about rejection on the way.

You can find Grant and his work…

* Here on Substack

* On his website

Thank you Olga Koutseridi, Ashley Fenker, Twahna, Raen, EveryNow Series, and many others for tuning into my live video with Grant Faulkner!

✍️ Make Writing Your Job is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Jessy Easton is a writer from the Mojave Desert of California, now living in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, whose essays have appeared in numerous literary journals and earned nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net award. She’s the author of The One Who Leaves, a bestselling serialized memoir on Substack about growing up in a meth lab and the long shadow of her mother’s addiction — a book she decided to publish herself, chapter by chapter, after five years and nearly a hundred rejections.

Through her Substack, AFTER/WORDS, and her programs The Threshold and The Inner Room, she teaches a somatic, trauma-informed approach to writing that helps women stay present with their hardest stories.

And shout out to Jo Ollila for connecting us!

Thank you Amy Benavides, Halona Black, Oana Martisca, Jo Ollila, Kim Talbert, and many others for tuning into my live video with Jessy Easton!

✍️ Make Writing Your Job is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Haley Raymond is a PR and communications consultant who helps entrepreneurs, creatives, and small business owners get press without a big-agency budget. She started out as a magazine editor before cutting her teeth at two PR agencies in Belfast, where she ran campaigns for local and global brands — including a Belgian microbrewery launch that landed coverage on CNN.

Now running her own consulting practice in the U.S., Haley builds publicity strategies that are intentional and true to the person behind them. She was the PR expert behind the launch of my bestselling book Write for Money and Power, and she’s joining ✍️ Make Writing Your Job Live to break down what actually works in a book launch — from pitching media to timing your campaign.

Want to work with Haley on your book launch?

👀 You can find Haley on her website here or on her LinkedIn!

Got something out of this live? Be sure to share + subscribe for more live interviews and conversations about books and the writing life!

Thank you Kevin Ferguson, Oana Martisca, Kristin Vartan, Shayne Buchwald, Allison Lau, and many others for tuning into my live video with Haley Raymond! Join me for my next live video in the app.

✍️ Make Writing Your Job is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.