Tag: writing

creativity

How I keep going when things don’t work out

Christa Avampato
Flourless lemon zucchini cake from https://courtneyrecipes.com/

This week was filled with more than its fair share of disappointments: a few people I trusted let me down; the heavy emotional challenge of having a foster pup who not only isn’t happy to see me when I get home but who actively runs away from me because of the tough life he’s had is a painful circumstance for both of us; opportunities that I hoped would work out and didn’t despite my best efforts.

Of course there were bright spots this week, too: NYC’s Secrets & Lies, my storytelling show on the 28th, sold out and I’ve hit upon a great ghost story to tell; I had a great conversation about the show with a podcast host I admire; I was finally able to get supportive meds for my foster pup so both of us could get a full night’s sleep; I read, researched, and wrote about topics that matter to me.

Also, this month is my 5-year cancer-free anniversary so really that far outweighs any disappointment life will ever throw at me. I looked death in the eye and didn’t flinch, multiple times. A few disappointments? I’ll take ’em!

After a long work meeting this afternoon for a new project I’m about to begin, I walked home through Green-Wood Cemetery. The sun on my face and the scent of autumn leaves felt like a gift. It occurred to me that the challenges I’ve had this week are pointing me in the direction I’m meant to go. The universe is closing some doors so that the path for me to take going forward is clear.

Over the past year I’ve felt a bit stuck and unsure of which way to go, and so I’ve waited – hoping some insights would emerge. While I prefer insights with positive outcomes, learning where not to spend my time and effort is also valuable. It just doesn’t feel as good when the revelation arrives. I put a lot of effort into making plans and when those plans don’t work, it can feel discouraging.

Looking back on my life, the best things that happened to me aren’t things I planned. They were opportunities that found me and that I grabbed with both hands because they were even better than what I had planned. Maybe this week has again taught me to be open to possibility, to change, to growth. Maybe there’s some even more wonderful than I could ever imagine just up ahead, around the bend, and what I need to do to find it is to keep going.

In the meantime, I made myself a sunny bake – something I often do when I don’t know what to do. This week my lovely friend, Stephanie, posted a recipe for zucchini lemon cake and I gave it a whirl. Fuel for the sweet journey ahead.

creativity

The Climate Film Festival Storytelling Collective

Christa Avampato

I’m really happy to have joined a new collective created by Climate Film Festival that’s bringing together sustainability professionals with filmmakers to raise the bar on and expand opportunities for climate storytelling. As someone who has one foot in each of these worlds, I’m so excited to be part of this new professional group and to help craft and fund these stories that drive action.

Yesterday I went to the Essex Market coffee hour for our first in-person event and attended an excellent panel about climate documentary making. As someone who studied how to use storytelling to drive more climate investment from family offices, I felt like I was in just the right place at just the right time because financing was a key part of the conversation. I heard a number of filmmakers talk about the challenge of finding financing for their climate films, especially with the current situation in D.C.

What filmmakers need to consider is that private funders don’t want to just fund a movie. They want to fund systemic change, especially when it comes to protecting and restoring the health of the planet. Filmmakers need to show how their films, and the platforms and supports they are building around their films, will get viewers to engage in creating meaningful change. That change needs to be measured and reported on.

Is that asking more from filmmakers? Yes. Is it asking them to be skilled business people, entrepreneurs, and community leaders on top of their filmmaking expertise and beyond the creation of the film? Yes. Isn’t making a movie already a Herculean task? Yes. Is that a challenge? Yes. It’s also today’s funding reality.

You aren’t just making a movie, not anymore. You’re building a movement, and that movement is what’s fundable with a movie being one cornerstone of many.

creativity

September 5th was my 16th Alive Day

Christa Avampato

Friday, September 5th, was my Alive Day – many years ago on that day I ran out of a burning building to save my life. I’ve written about that event many times, here, here, and here for example.

It was a wild ride to recover from that and from past traumas that had piled up. It prepared me for everything that came after: becoming a novelist, the pandemic, cancer, and helping my soul dog, Phineas, cross the rainbow bridge when it was his time. Now with all this perspective, what was once one of the worst days of my life became a turning point that changed my life in ways I never imagined were possible. Yes, that fire took almost everything from me. It also gave me everything I needed.

A special thanks always to Brian McCormack who helped me embrace my darkness and my light in equal measure by walking the path to wellness with me every step of the way. I’m forever grateful to be here, to be well, and to be whole.

creativity

Embracing stakeholder theory in Finland this summer

Christa Avampato
Photo from https://events.tuni.fi/stakeholdertheory/sustainability/

Finland, I can’t wait to meet you! I was accepted into the 2025 Summer Seminar in Stakeholder Theory at Tampere University with University of Virginia Darden School of Business (my alma mater), Darden-The Institute for Business in Society (IBIS), and RESPMAN Research Group. I’ll join an incredible global group of faculty, researchers, and PhD students to learn and share how to best integrate stakeholder theory into my work in sustainability and climate change mitigation. As part of the program, I’m revising and refining the work I started in my University of Cambridge / Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) dissertation on the role of storytelling to engage family offices in climate investments. I’ve spent the last 2 months editing (cutting it in half!) and am excited to get feedback on it. In addition to that paper, I’ll also work on 3 more research projects:

  • The Stories We Eat: Narratives to Shape Stakeholder Behavior and Policy for Sustainable Food Futures
  • Narrative Power: Using Digital Media to Convey the Voice of Future Generations and Nature in Sustainability Storytelling
  • From Self-Interest to Shared Benefit: How to Adapt Finland’s Exemplar of Public Trust Amidst Power Asymmetries in U.S. Businesses

I’m so grateful for this opportunity to learn and engage with these incredible people in one of the most sustainable communities in the world. I’m most looking forward to spending time with my professor, mentor, and dear friend R. Edward Freeman, who is one of my heroes and the founder of the seminar. As the originator of stakeholder theory that transformed business ethics, his work has fundamentally changed how businesses and business leaders around the world operate. He’s the reason I went to Darden and he changed how I see the world and my role in it. I’m honored to have had his support and encouragement for all these years.

It’s going to be an incredible summer of learning. I’m excited to experience all of it and to see where it leads! Nähdään pian, Finland!

creativity

My book birthday wish for the world (and a free gift)

Christa Avampato
Me holding Emerson Page and Where the Light Leads on top of Arthur’s Seat, an ancient extinct volcano that is the main peak of the group of hills in Holyrood Park in Edinburgh, Scotland. June 2024.

Today marks one year since my second novel, Emerson Page and Where the Light Leads, was published. To celebrate, the eBook of my first novel, Emerson Page and Where the Light Enters, is free today and tomorrow, May 14th and May 15th. Get it here.

Creativity is a lifeline for me. I’m so grateful to have writing as a spiritual practice that offers me the chance to bring my whole self to the page, and I’m grateful for every kind word, review, and note I’ve received from all of you. You raise me up.

In the author’s note of Emerson Page and Where the Light Leads, I wrote, “Since Emerson emerged in 2017 in my first novel, Emerson Page and Where the Light Enters, our world has been turned upside down. The pandemic, climate change, conflict across the world—all of it is cause for anxiety and distress. It’s okay to not be okay with any of this, to be scared in a world that seems so far out of our control. But what’s also true is that there is so much love, light, wonder, and beauty in this world, and in you. Emerson’s story is a mix of the joys and difficulties that are part of every life. She rises, falls, and rises again. And so do we.”  

I believed that when I wrote it on February 29, 2024, and I believe it today. If ever there was a time to create, celebrate, and elevate love, light, wonder, and beauty, it’s now. Right now.

So, on this first birthday of Emerson Page and Where the Light Leads, this is my book birthday wish for all of us: that we will continue to create and love, that we will live out loud, that we will express our joy, without fear and without reservation. As Mary Oliver so beautifully wrote in her poem, Don’t Hesitate: “Life has some possibility left…Joy is not made to be a crumb.” Please, make your joy the whole damn cake. Today and every day.

These two photos are from that same trip as the photos above. On the left, I’m at Castlerigg Stone Circle in Keswick, England, a town in the Lake District. On the right, that’s a photo I took on the Isle of Skye, Scotland. Both June / July 2024.

creativity

How writing a screenplay helped me write the first draft of a novel

Christa Avampato
Photo by hannah grace on Unsplash

On Sunday afternoon, I wrote “The End” on the first draft of my new novel. While my first two novels are young adult fantasy adventure, this one is historical fiction. 

In December 1941 four friends graduate from an all-women’s college and seize new career opportunities in a world forever changed by war. I was so happy to sink back into the world of these four friends. The struggles they face are, unfortunately, highly relevant to the times we’re living in today. With themes of empowerment, being on the right side of history, speaking out against injustice, and the love story of female friendship, they’re determination made me more determined, too. 

I’m hoping that it will be the first book in a series. The subsequent books will share the very different journeys that each of these women take in a new world order emerging before their eyes and how their friendship will pull them through.

This story began as a screenplay in 2020. It was a quarterfinalist in 3 international screenwriting competitions and received great feedback. Since then, most of my writing has focused on getting my second Emerson Page novel published and writing my master’s dissertation for University of Cambridge. With those projects complete, I returned to my historical fiction screenplay in January of this year.

It turns out that writing a screenplay is akin to having a very detailed outline for a novel:

  1. All the dialogue is there.
  2. The scenes and their sequence are set.
  3. The characters and their relationships are developed.
  4. The plot is charted.

I wouldn’t say going from a screenplay to a novel is a slam dunk, no-effort-needed project. As someone who dreads a blank page, the screenplay was my map, a guide that helped steer my writing sessions and make them productive.

I’ll take a short break from this story (to finish the first draft of another novel that’s also nearly done!) and let the first draft build up some dust so I can return to it in a few weeks with fresh eyes. Then I’ll dive back in to begin the work of editing and rewriting.

I much prefer to edit and rewrite rather than write a first draft. I no longer have any blank pages. Every time I sit down to write, it will be to refine and improve what I already have. I’ll immerse myself in extra research (something else I absolutely love to do!) and I’ll add much more detail, polishing the story one word at a time. Editing and rewriting is gratifying work because it’s all about making the story shine.

I’m hopeful that this new novel will do well in the query process and that I’ll be able to find a literary agent — a goal I’ve had for many years. For now, I’m celebrating this huge milestone of completing the first draft. It only gets better from here!

creativity

A reminder on where we can go from here

Christa Avampato
Photo by Holly Mandarich on Unsplash

Here’s a reminder I know I need every day, and maybe it will help you, too — At any age and stage in life, you can:

– Start over
– Start again
– Try something brand new
– Be a beginner
– Learn
– Grow
– Change
– Evolve
– Say goodbye
– Say hello
– Forgive
– Ask for forgiveness
– Pause
– Reflect
– Discover

You are allowed to do all those things, and many at the same time. You are never just one thing or one way. Who you’ve been, what you’ve done, and where you’ve been are prologue to who you will be, what you will do, and where you will go. The past is merely setting the scene and dressing the set for all the choices you will make and the adventures you will have that lie ahead.

creativity

Saying goodbye to foster dog, Harold

Christa Avampato
Harold at my home

This is Harold, a sweet, gentle senior dog who I watched overnight. He had a vet appointment the next morning and his full-time foster wasn’t able to take him so I offered to help.

When he arrived, I fed him his dinner. He was still hungry so I made him some chicken and rice, which he happily gobbled up. He was so incredibly sweet and trusting.

I walked into my bedroom at one point and Harold followed me. He went right to my full-length mirror and inspected himself. I felt like he was telling me he was seeing a younger version of himself.

I was up all night with Harold. He was restless, anxious, and confused, walking back and forth between his food bowl and the front door. He had some pain in his back legs and the meds didn’t seem to help. Sometimes, he walked in circles. His behavior reminded me of Phinny’s end stages. I tried getting him to lay down, taking him for multiple walks throughout the night, putting him in his crate. Nothing worked. He was so uncomfortable and I felt terribly for him. I asked Phinny if he could help me figure out what to do to help Harold.

At one point, I nodded off in the middle of the night. I had a dream about Phinny. He was standing in front of an empty food bowl, just staring at me with sad eyes. When I jolted awake, I was afraid something was terribly wrong. I looked in my kitchen and Harold was hovering over his food bowl. Then, I understood what Phinny was telling me: Harold was ready to cross the rainbow bridge. I got Harold to sit down next to me for a bit. I stroked his soft, curly fur and tried to soothe him with my words. He was telling me it was his time.

The watercolor of a dachshund at the vet’s office

Morning arrived. I got ready and then walked to the subway with Harold. He was an absolute champ on the train. When we got to the vet, we had a short wait. In the lobby there was a watercolor print of a dachshund. I knew Phinny was with us.

The nurses did an intake and asked me some questions. I explained I’d just had him for one night and told her what I observed. As I watched Harold walk away with the nurse, he looked exhausted and worn out. My eyes welled up. I’d only had him for 16 hours and yet I felt like I’d known him much longer. I was afraid I might not see him again.

I texted with his foster and another rescue volunteer. We were talking about him having fospice (foster hospice) vibes. She said he’d improved some since he’d been with her. I gave her a rundown of everything I observed while he was with me.

The vet messaged me a few hours later that Harold was ready to get picked up. I went to get him since his full-time foster couldn’t get there before the vet closed. They wouldn’t give me any info directly about his check-up. He looked about the same to me. We walked back to the subway to go home and wait for his foster mom. Again, he was a star subway rider with perfect manners. As we walked home, he seemed to be giving me the same message: It was his time.

When we got home, he drank a whole bowl of water, and had a full plate of chicken and rice. He was so hungry from having to fast for his vet appointment. Then for the first time since he arrived at my house, he curled up in Phinny’s bed. Another sign that it was time.

Harold’s foster mom arrived at my apartment soon after Harold laid down. I got him up and we went outside. His foster wasn’t convinced that it was his time yet. He had improved so much since he’d been with her and she thought what I observed was just anxiety about being in a new home. I knew it was something more, and said so. I had to advocate for him.

His foster messaged me that night about some of the symptoms he was now exhibiting. She was seeing now what I saw. She messaged me again the following morning. The rescue made the painful decision to help Harold cross the rainbow bridge.

My eyes welled up again. I knew it was the right decision for Harold and still, I was heartbroken. I’m grateful he didn’t die alone on the streets or in a crowded shelter. He left this world surrounded by people who loved him. He got to go with dignity.

Run free, sweet Harold. I sent Phinny to meet you and show you around your new forever. Thank you for giving me the honor of looking after you when you needed me most. Thank you for trusting me to be your advocate. I will never forget you.

creativity

Sign up for Togetherhood – my nature newsletter

Christa Avampato
Sign up for Togetherhood – my nature newsletter

In my free weekly LinkedIn newsletter called Togetherhood, I share stories about nature’s wonders. Many of the posts are about my area of expertise— biomimicry. As a product developer, I apply nature’s designs to the human-built world to create a sustainable planet.

Read published posts and sign up to receive future posts here: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/togetherhood-7273771832221089792/

A little more about the newsletter – in case you need more convincing to subscribe 😉

1. Why this, why now

Right now we have a window of opportunity to halt and reverse the impacts of climate change. That window won’t be open forever, and if we are to protect and advance progress we need to act, together, now. I hope my stories about the wonders, wisdom, and beauty of nature will inspire all of us to take action to love, safeguard, and regenerate nature.

2. The kind of community you’ll find in the Togetherhood

This community is rooted in love, joy, respect, and curiosity for all species. We are here to learn together and support each other.

3. When I’ll share new stories

I’ll post once a week on Saturdays. I don’t have any plans to make this a paid newsletter. The content is free. It’s my gift to the world to share my expertise, support nature, and inspire wonder.

4. Join me in the Togetherhood

An old growth forest is one of my favorite environments and metaphors for life. It has wonders above and below ground. Every being in a forest is connected to every other being. It’s a web of life, literally and figuratively. I want the Togetherhood to be an old growth forest of stories. Let’s go have an adventure, together.

Read published posts and sign up to receive future posts here: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/togetherhood-7273771832221089792/

creativity

In 2025, I’m rebuilding

Christa Avampato
Photo by Mike Erskine on Unsplash

Each year I choose a word to live by. In 2024, my word was vulnerability. In 2025, my word is rebuild. To rebuild and do work with our whole heart is to be utterly vulnerable. The two go hand-in-hand. Our greatest work begins once we’re able to be completely vulnerable, giving voice to our deepest dreams knowing we may never reach them and trying anyway because it’s what we’re called to do.

I’ve been thinking about the Mary Oliver quote, “Listen, are you breathing a little and calling it a life?” Sometimes, I’ve done exactly that because I didn’t feel ready, or I was missing something I thought I needed to move forward. I have notebooks full of ideas and dreams that I want to get to “someday”. I’ve decided that someday is today, and this year I’m going to be open to all those words I’ve written for years taking shape. I don’t need more time, money, experience, or training. I need to give my dreams everything I’ve already got. Some will work out and some won’t, and that’s okay. I’ll be a better person for giving those dreams a fighting chance to become real.

2024 often felt like a dark season for me. Maybe it was for you, too. I tried to climb out of it and into the light until I was exhausted. So, I sat in the dark. It wasn’t comfortable but it was necessary. The darkness always has something to teach us, and this is what it taught me: we can only find our way out of the darkness and into the light if we journey together.

My 2025 will primarily be about building community, seeking out advice, trying something, iterating, and trying again, supporting others, and lifting them up as I rise. I’m most interested in being the most generous person in the room, the best listener, and the most collaborative partner. Our world needs so much love, kindness, and healing, and we have to be there for each other, especially when the going gets tough.

2024 taught me that progress isn’t permanent. It needs protection. 2025 will test our resolve, values, and strength. We’ll be called to have courage in the face of intense adversity. What’s on the line is bigger than any of us can face alone; we have to face it together. In 2025, you’ll find me rebuilding bridges and longer tables, publishing writing that ignites curiosity, wonder, and a sense of belonging, and creating spaces, products, and experiences that provide safety, comfort, and care for all beings. I hope you’ll join me for this adventure because I’d love to share it with you.