Author: Christa Avampato

The short of it: Writer. Health, education, and art advocate. Theater and film producer. Visual artist. Product geek. Proud alumnae of the University of Pennsylvania (BA) and the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia (MBA). Inspired by ancient wisdom & modern tech. Proliferator of goodness. Opener of doors. Friend to animals. Fan of creative work in all its wondrous forms. I use my business skills to create passion projects that build a better world. I’ve been called the happiest New Yorker, and I try hard to live up to that title every day. The long of it: My career has stretched across Capitol Hill, Broadway theatre, education, nonprofit fundraising, health and wellness, and Fortune 500 companies in retail, media, entertainment, technology, and financial services. I’ve been a product developer and product manager, theater manager, strategic consultant, marketer, voice over artist, , teacher, and fundraiser. I use my business and storytelling to support and sustain passion projects that build a better world. In every experience, I’ve used my sense of and respect for elegant design to develop meaningful products, services, programs, and events. While building a business career, I also built a strong portfolio as a journalist, novelist, freelance writer, interviewer, presenter, and public speaker. My writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, PBS.org, Boston.com, Royal Media Partners publications, and The Motley Fool on a wide range of topics including business, technology, science, health, education, culture, and lifestyle. I have also been an invited speaker at SXSW, Teach for America, Avon headquarters, Games for Change, NYU, Columbia University, Hunter College, and the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America. The first book in my young adult book series, Emerson Page and Where the Light Enters, was acquired by a publisher and launched in November 2017. I’m currently working on the second book in the series. A recovering multi-tasker, I’m equally at home in front of my Mac, on my yoga mat, walking my rescue dog, Phineas, traveling with a purpose, or practicing the high-art of people watching. I also cut up small bits of paper and put them back together as a collage artist. My company: I’m bringing together all of my business and creative career paths as the Founder of Double or Nothing Media: • I craft products, programs, and projects that make a difference; • I build the business plans that make what I craft financially sustainable; • I tell the stories that matter about the people, places, and products that inspire me. Follow my adventures on Twitter at https://twitter.com/christanyc and Instagram at https://instagram.com/christarosenyc.
books, writing

This Just In: How I edit a book—like a scientist at a microscope

Christa Avampato
Editing a book through a microscope
Editing a book through a microscope

Where the Light Enters is my first novel. I wrote the first draft in November and now I’m in the midst of the first edit. I’ve read lots of advice on the process of editing and the structure of the task. I decided that the best structure for me is one scene per day. And I really work that scene from overall book structure right down to the word choice. It’s like being a scientist—I put the scene on a slide and mess with it through a microscope to see if I can get something to happen.

I ask myself a lot of questions as I peer through the microscope. Why does this scene really matter to the overall structure of the book? What information and ideas need to be conveyed that are critical to the story, and how can I convey them through action? What are the characters’ relationships and motivations, and why are they important? I like this intense dive into a 2-inch picture frame of the book. The idea is that when I edit that last scene the book will have been through five drafts one scene at a time.

The value of intensity, focus, and merciless reworking? (Hopefully) priceless.

action, adventure, choices, learning, Life

This Just In: My Hundred-Foot Journey

Christa Avampato
My Hundred-Foot Journey
My Hundred-Foot Journey

With a groan, I stepped outside into the dark and chilly morning to let my dog, Phineas, do his business. It was 5:30am and I went to bed too late to be up this early. I was cranky.

The school bus came down the street and stopped in front of the neighbor’s house across the street. One of their sons has cerebral palsy, and his bus arrives before the sun comes up to take him to school. He’s always at the door waiting, fully dressed and ready to go, to get on the bus as soon as it arrives. He walks with great difficulty, on his own and always with a smile.

I’m out here groaning about being tired and here’s this kid who’s raring to go despite his challenges. I went inside and took a long, hard look in the mirror. I realized I’d just been given my hundred-foot journey in complete silence and under the cover of darkness, the lesson right across the street that taught me everything I needed to know to do everything I want to do. “Stop whining and just do it. You’re one of the lucky ones,” I thought to myself.

Now the school bus is my alarm clock. When I hear its come to a stop at the neighbor’s house, I swing my legs around and let my feet hit the floor. It’s time to get started.

adventure, change, travel

This Just In: What’s Your Hundred-Foot Journey?

Christa Avampato
The Hundred-Foot Journey
The Hundred-Foot Journey

This weekend I finally saw the movie The Hundred-Foot Journey, the story of a restaurant-owning family in Mumbai who loses everything and finds a new life in France. Though that trip was full of experiences, the journey that really transformed their lives was the hundred-foot walk from their new home and restaurant in France across the street to a rival restaurant.

It’s a beautiful story about challenge, love, loss, dreams, redemption, courage, and risk-taking. Go see it. It prompted me to realize that while travels around the world have so much to teach us, the travels that make us who we are often happen just around the corner from home. What’s your hundred-foot journey, the great life lesson you learned close to home? Tomorrow, I’ll tell you mine.

commitment, Florida, food, New York City, Orlando

This Just In: Orlando creates a scene with food

Christa Avampato
East End Market, Orlando, Florida
East End Market, Orlando, Florida

When I lived in New York City, I loved the vibrant food scene there. Growing up in a rural area of farm country and later working for an environmental nonprofit, I’ve always felt really connected to the dirt despite living in cities for more than half my life. I didn’t know if I’d find anything like that food scene when I moved to Florida but yesterday (ironically) The New York Times shined a light on what is growing here as it picked Orlando as one of its top travel destinations for 2015. Why? Because of the local food scene driven by places like East End Market and Cask & Larder.

While nowhere near the size of New York’s food scene, Orlando-based farmers and food artisans are building a locavore community with passion. I’m hoping to get more involved with that world now that I have the time and space to do that. I’ll let you know what I find. In the meantime, check out this article that highlights several food entrepreneurs that are making a delicious life here in the central part of the Sunshine State. (Scroll to number 15 on this list.)

action, community, courage, media, writing

This Just In: Revisiting my writing on India and thinking of Charlie Hebdo in Paris

Christa Avampato
Demonstrators in Amsterdam on Wednesday evening. Photo: Novum
Demonstrators in Amsterdam on Wednesday evening. Photo: Novum

“Everything exposed to the light becomes the light.” ~St. Paul

Yesterday I revisited the writing I did on my trip to India in 2012 to prepare some of my essays for magazine submissions. In my re-reading I found this quote by St. Paul that is especially poignant in the wake of the events in Paris this week at Charlie Hebdo.

People all over the world have come together to stand up against the violence and intolerance of the attackers, and stand for freedom of expression, especially in the face of fear and grieving. With enough time, light always wins and that truth helps me to keep looking up. I hope it helps you, too, and those around the world who need this message now more than ever. Je suis Charlie. We are all Charlie. We are all light.

discovery, science

This Just In: Images from space knock me out and wake me up

Christa Avampato
Pillars of Creation by Hubble Space Telescope
Pillars of Creation by Hubble Space Telescope

Tonight, go out into the streets or into the yard and look up at the sky knowing this: our worries are so small in the grand scheme of life. Here are the two biggest announcements in space news this week that got my mind off my worries and piqued my curiosity:

The Pillars of Creation
Oh, Hubble. You never disappoint. 20 years ago, Hubble Space Telescope snapped the first photos of the “Pillars of Creation”, three columns of gas and stars of the Eagle Nebula. Thanks to advances in technology, Hubble snapped a photo this week with much higher definition and the results are even more stunning that the ones that have fascinated us for two decades. Majestic and haunting, they are 7,000 light years from Earth. Through them, we are witnessing the creation of new stars. The finger-like protrusions at the top of the pillars are each larger than our solar system.

1,000 Earths
I’m working on a science fiction short story about a young girl, Marin, who travels the Universe with her father. They land on Earth after the apocalypse so that her father can teach her the cautionary tale of human consumption habits. As I was doing some research for the story, I came across a story in Scientific American. This week, NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft discovered two more Earth-like worlds. That brings the total of planets similar to ours to over 1,000.

When life gets a little overwhelming, I’m grateful for space. It reminds me that there is so much more to the universe than us. It lets me escape, for a little while, into the deepest depths of my imagination, so I can face whatever it is that needs facing with fresh eyes and less ego. I hope it helps you, too.

career, choices, community, courage

This Just In: The unusual and improbable journey of boxer Floyd Patterson

Christa Avampato
Floyd Patterson as I remember him
Floyd Patterson as I remember him

“You try the impossible to achieve the unusual.” ~Floyd Patterson, American boxer and youngest ever Undisputed Heavyweight Champion

When I was a kid, I went to the same church in New Paltz, New York as Floyd Patterson. He was an usher who collected the weekly offering and every week I wondered how someone so kind and gentle could punch someone in the face for a living. I would watch for some sign in his personality that he could even swat a fly. I never saw one; he was known as a quintessential gentleman by everyone in our small community.

He was very elegant and graceful with a broad and beautiful smile. He never sat. Instead, he always stood in the back of the church. I remember thinking he was rather small for a boxer with teeth that seemed too perfect for someone who had such a successful career in the boxing ring.

In those years, Floyd Patterson helped me understand that people are very complex creatures. With his example, I couldn’t and wouldn’t judge anyone through a one-dimensional lens. From him I learned that what we do isn’t all that we are. There is always more to us than meets the eye.

action, choices, personality, relationships

This Just In: Let’s ditch our own BS

Christa Avampato
"I've never seen any life transformation that didn't begin with the person in question finally getting tired of their own bullshit." ~Elizabeth Gilbert
“I’ve never seen any life transformation that didn’t begin with the person in question finally getting tired of their own bullshit.” ~Elizabeth Gilbert

I read this quote today and it really prompted me to think about my own BS. To make 2015 a revolutionary year, I’m going to have to face and blast through a false narrative that’s plagued me for too long in every aspect of my life: the concept of being enough.

For too long, I’ve remained that kid who didn’t have enough and therefore wasn’t enough. All my life I’ve allowed people to make me feel that lack of enough-ness. On the outside it might not look that way, but on the inside their words and the feelings they cause ring in my ears and heart every day. It has to end.

I write this not to elicit any kind of sympathy but as something that might help you and help the world. What we feel and do on an individual level rolls up to the human collective. I think feeling like we aren’t enough might be the very root of so many of our personal and global issues. It’s certainly the root of all of my issues.

Maybe feeling like you aren’t enough on some level is your BS, too. Maybe there’s some other personal and painful narrative that’s holding you back from the transformation you want and deserve. Let’s face all of it together. Let’s make 2015 the year we cut ties to our own BS and rise.

action, career, time, work, writer, writing

This Just In: All any writer can do is write one word at a time

Christa Avampato
Just breathe.
Just breathe.

Yesterday was my first day back to work, and like many of you I felt that uncomfortable twinge that comes from the back-from-vacation blues: my inbox was overflowing with requests for quick turnaround deadlines. I had follow-ups to do, connections to make, and pitches to send. And this was just paid work to say nothing of my own personal writing and projects that needed attention. Honestly, I was freaking out a bit.

And then I remembered to breathe. Just breathe. Like every other day, hectic or not, it was about putting one foot in front of the other in the right direction. Doing one assignment at a time in priority order. One letter, one word, one sentence. It all got done. It all always gets done. I’m sure this is a reminder I’ll need over and over again: just breathe. It helps.

books, creativity, writer, writing

This Just In: Author Kazuo Ishiguro’s magical 1-month draft writing schedule

Christa Avampato
Kazuo Ishiguro
Kazuo Ishiguro

There’s something magical about writing a first draft in one month. Author Kazuo Ishiguro, one of my favorite authors, put himself on the one month schedule for his first draft of Remains of the Day after battling anxiety and writer’s block that followed his earlier successes. Many revisions later, it won the Booker Prize and became a major motion picture.

About the process, he said, “I wrote free-hand, not caring about the style or if something I wrote in the afternoon contradicted something I’d established in the story that morning. The priority was simply to get the ideas surfacing and growing. Awful sentences, hideous dialogue, scenes that went nowhere – I let them remain and ploughed on.”

I can personally attest to the power of this one month formula. I wrote the first draft of my novel, Where the Light Enters, as part of NaNoWriMo in November. I’m editing it now and to get the bones of the story down in a month was very valuable. I followed this same one month draft pattern for my play, Sing After Storms and it was produced in New York City less than a year later.

Maybe you have a massive project, a piece of writing or something else, that you’re afraid to begin. Go at it full force, mistakes and all. Roll up your sleeves and get down into the weeds. Creation is messy for everyone. Give yourself a deadline and charge at it with everything you’ve got. It’s the only way anything ever gets done.