Katherine Ewell

I'm Danny Ruderman and this is Extraordinary youy, a podcast that shares inspiring stories of young people who've done incredible things and how they did it. Our guest today is 24 year old Kathryn Ewell. When she was 17, she wrote her novel Dear Killer, a psychological thriller about a teenage serial killer that was published by HarperCollins when she was 18. Catherine then went on to attend Stanford University where she majored in computer science, minored in creative writing, and is now a software product manager in New York. Catherine, welcome to xu.

Hi. Thank you for having me.

So let me begin with this question. Did you participate in Full Moon on the quad?

Oh, yeah, I did. That was a thing I did.

So to explain to people who are listening, Full Moon. Katherine went to Stanford and so did I, and they have this. Well, you know what, why don't you tell it, actually.

Oh, great. So Full Moon on the quad is a storied Stanford tradition, which is the dates have actually shifted around from year to year. But the idea is that the first full moon of the year, everyone goes out onto the Stanford quad and at midnight just starts making out with everyone else.

Well, okay, hold on, hold on. You're missing one important thing. You can't become. I love that. That's the way that you tell it, though. You can't become a true Stanford woman or a true Stanford man until you, as a freshman, kiss a senior.

Is that really. That part of the tradition has been lost since.

No way. Seriously?

Yeah, yeah. That's no longer a thing.

Now everybody just makes out with each other.

Now everyone just makes out with each other.

It's just a big hookup session. Well, so here's the story. Here's the short story. Everybody in. All the guys that I was with were too scared to ask a senior girl or senior woman to make out. So it was like, it was at the very end and people were clearing out. So I said, all right, that's it. And I stood in the middle of the quad and I said, attention, I. Are there any other senior girls in the quad? If so, please report to me.

Oh, my God, that's so bold.

This woman stole. This woman stepped up and we made out. And it was weird as just all get out. And I was the only. I was the only Stanford man. And I walked back. I'm like, that's how it's done, boys. That's how it's done.

Oh, my God. That didn't.

That. It's not that way anymore.

No, it's not that way anymore. Although, honestly, it's like tapered off in the last couple years. I think because the university has taken a stance against this. They don't like it that much anymore.

It's like a hundred year old tradition. Come on.

It is, it is a time honored part of Stanford University.

The only thing that's important is I can say that you are a true Stanford woman, basically.

Thank you very much. It's very important to me.

All right, so let me ask you, how were you brought up? What was your family like?

My family was awesome. I grew up in Los Angeles with both my parents and my younger brother and my younger sister in general. Very good family and enjoyed being with each other, was very nice. I'm not sure that's a very interesting question.

I know some of these answers already, but I'm going to ask them to you. Were your parents creative in any way?

Not really, no. My parents, I think my mom did drama in high school, but other than that. My mom's a lawyer and my dad's a banker, so not really that many creative genes.

Exactly. So I'm interested. You know, you wrote this novel which was actually not even close to your first novel, but we'll get to that. Where did that come from? Where did your interest in writing originally start?

My interest in writing came originally from a really large interest in reading. So I always was that kid in class when I, you know, that would read during class and then under the desk and then get in trouble with it.

Nerd.

Yeah. And so I, it just developed from there because it got to a point where I was reading so much and someone suggested to me at some point, hey, you read a lot, you'd probably be good at writing. And then I went, huh, I've never really tried. And so then I decided, you know what, I'm going to try writing because I've never tried it before. And I ended up really liking it and being pretty good at it and it all kind of went from there.

And how old were you when you were really writing regularly?

Oh gosh, I probably started writing regularly about 12 or 13 somewhere in there. End of elementary school, beginning of middle school.

And what were you writing to start?

I kind of started out of the box with writing novels for the most part. Oh sure.

Just I was gonna sit down and write. Start writing a novel.

Well, I think it was also because when I was at that age, I never read anything except for novels. Like I wasn't exposed to really poetry or short stories other than the stuff that they kind of made you read in English class. So my Exposure as to what writing was supposed to be was, oh, it's a novel. So it never really occurred to me to write anything else.

And so you. You sit down to write your first novel. How do you know how to go about doing that?

I think it's just. You read enough and you have a sense of what it's supposed to be like. It's, you know, there are characters, there's a story, something happens, something else happens. They have a low, they have a high. It all turns out okay in the end if you're writing with a traditional structure.

So did you map out a structure or provide some. Some sort of outline about where you wanted the story to go, or you just start writing and see what comes out of you?

I mean, to begin with, particularly at the beginning, I just sort of started writing and saw what happened. As I started writing more and more and different stories and longer stories and more complex stories, I plotted it out a little bit more. But still, I've always been more of a writer who kind of dives into things rather than doing a ton of plotting up front.

I remember that, actually. I remember you telling me, I don't know where this story's going to go. It sort of. It reveals itself and the characters reveal themselves to me as I go along, which is kind of the cool part about writing, especially something longer, right?

Yeah. And it's really cool because generally how I write is I have an idea of where it starts and an idea of where it ends, and everything in the middle is kind of a mystery that gets filled in along the way, which is, I think, a pretty fun way to write because it's, you know, it's drawing a line. You have point A, you have point B, and everything in the middle you get to make up.

I think that's what. I think that's. What's her name? Harry Potter. Help me. Who wrote Harry Potter?

J.K. rowling.

Thank you. J.K. rowling. She actually knew the beginning and the end of the seventh book, and then she just filled in the middle with seven books.

You know, that's. I feel like that's more than I could do. I feel like I'd get overwhelmed with that much stuff in the middle.

That's incredible. So what was the first thing that you wrote? Do you remember?

Ooh, I remember sort of, because I don't remember what the plot was, but I remember that I wrote it all handwritten on printer paper, so there wasn't even lined paper. It was just like a hand chicken scratch, like a handwriting on printer Paper. And I remember it was called Sour like Lemons. And I don't remember what it was about at all.

Do you remember liking it?

No, I don't think I liked it that much. I think I was proud that I had finished it because particularly writing on printer paper, that took a while, but I think it was fine. I remember that someone else read a snippet of it and I had described a school bus using eight words. Instead of just saying bus, it was just the yellow contraption with large wheels. And someone pointed out you could have just said bus. Oh yeah. Okay, fair.

And so your sowing education began basically.

Yeah, yep, pretty much.

I remember that the first novel of yours that I read was a space adventure.

Yes.

That one involving a romance.

Uh huh.

Even though at the time you had had no boyfriend.

Yeah, yep, yep.

And I actually remember saying like, wow, your chase scenes are amazing. How do you get this violent sort of chase but your romance. Not so good, right?

Yeah, not so great. I don't know. Apparently my imagination works well for some things and not for other things.

Yeah. And that's so interesting because, you know, we wrote about this in your college essay too. You were. I'm jumping ahead. But you wrote a pretty violent novel about a teenage serial killer. And if for those of you listening to your voice, Katherine is not in any stretch of the imagination resemble or sound like a serial killer, you know, you are not necessarily a dark place person. So where do these stories, Dear Killer and all these other stories, where do they come from, do you think?

I think I've tried to describe this a bunch of times. And I think that the best way I can put it is that I like writing stories that push people sort of to the limits of their emotions. Like things that really push them to the edge into anger and fear and pain. Because I think they're interesting emotions to think about. Particularly because I'm not a person that feels them that much. I'm pretty bubbly and, you know, happy most of the time. And so it's interesting for me to think about emotions that are on the other end of that spectrum. And I think that things that are thrillers or have a lot of chase scenes or whatever are a good way to tap into those emotions and sort of write a story that involves them.

And did you when you were growing up, are those the kinds of stories that you read?

Um, I read a lot of fantasy and sci fi growing up, more than I wrote or I read crime fiction actually. Um, I think that of the stories that I have written, it's maybe the easiest for me to write crime fiction. And I think that's probably because it has the extremes of fantasy and sci fi from an emotional perspective. But it doesn't require me to world build because it's just. It takes place in this world.

Ah, interesting. Gotcha. So how many novels had you written before you wrote Dear Killer?

Oh, gosh. You probably remember this answer better than I do.

I do, I do. I just wanted to see if you could remember it.

Is it nine?

I remember seven, but it could be. It's hard to remember because what's amazing about Catherine is her. She was just prolific. You would write. I mean, this was all. By the time that you were 17, you had written seven novels. Let's call it nine, seven, whatever it is, by the time that you were 17. How did you do that?

I think it was just mostly that's what I did with my study breaks, is that I studied a lot for other things. And then for me, writing was the thing I did for fun in my free time. So it was easy for me to write that much because I sort of had high words per minute and it was stress relief. So I kind of wrote a lot quickly in whatever free time I had got it.

So it was really something that it wasn't because you needed to do it or that you were. Somebody expected you to do it or that you wanted to publish a book. It was that it actually relaxed you.

Yeah, yeah. And I loved it and still love it. And I think that I probably wouldn't have written nearly as much if the main aim had been to publish a book.

Right. That's important because I think a lot of kids these days have, they want to be successful. Right. And especially in celebrity culture that you want to get known. But in actuality, every single person that I've interviewed on this show, no matter what it is, music, writing, science, all do it because they simply love the actual activity of doing it. Right. So you're no different, basically. So wouldn't you also write, like starting after your homework, like at 11 o' clock and just write late?

Yeah, yeah. I stayed up till horrible times in the night because I would finish my homework or I'd finish one part of my homework and I go, okay, I'll write for an hour in between this homework and my next homework. And then I would start my math homework at midnight or something because I'd been writing in the middle or something along those lines.

Nice. And did you just write every day or did you sort of plan out time during the Week where you say, on Saturday mornings, I'm gonna sort of block out this time to write or just wouldn't. Was ever was moved you.

Saturday mornings, I was unconscious till about like, 1pm so that was definitely not it. But it was pretty much just whenever I felt like it, whenever it moved me, and I had enough time to do it and actually get, you know, maybe four hours of sleep.

Oh, my God. That's right. You. The high school that you went to is kind of insane. Everybody has to know, like, she goes, she went to one of the more rigorous high schools. And the amount of homework that you had was and still is, because I have students at that school, rather insane. So it was kind of nice. I would imagine that you had this sort of cathartic emotional release, you know, stress reliever in writing, right?

Yeah, it was really great. I think it was really important to me when I was in high school to have something like that that was a structured way to feel creative and also have an outlet for my emotions in a time that was otherwise very stressful with all the schoolwork I had going on.

And did you use the stories to sort of get out your frustrations or questions that you had through the eyes of your characters?

Yeah, definitely. I think that it's difficult, particularly given the kind of writing that I've done, to draw a direct line of, you know, I'm feeling exactly the way this character is feeling and she's a serial killer. Because that's really not true. But the. But, for example, if I was feeling very upset about something, I could write a story where the main character is very upset about something else, and I can sort of think about that emotion in the context of a story that's very unrelated to my own life.

Makes sense. And let me ask you the other way. I also know, because your personal statement was about this. Did you learn about other aspects of life from your characters?

Yeah, definitely. It was like, particularly in high school, when so much of my life was built around schoolwork and my extracurriculars, writing was a way to explore a broader world and a broader set of experiences than what was right in front of me.

Got it. So tell me, speaking of that, about a broader world that you explored. Let's just spend a few minutes and talk about Dear Killer. So this was the book that was eventually published. Right. But forget about that. You started writing it with what in mind? Do you remember?

Was this? Are we talking about my essay that I was writing?

I don't even remember, like, where did the idea come from for this serial killer.

So this came from a sort of intersection of things that were happening at the same time. One, I was binge watching the crime serial Castle, and two, I was writing an essay for my English class about moral philosophy.

Oh, yeah.

And so I. So the two things just came together in my mind because I was thinking a lot about, you know, what's right, what's wrong, you know, from all these different people who are thinking about it. And then, you know, crime show. Crime show with some serial killers on it.

Got it. And so if you could tell everybody what is the basic premise plot of the book?

Basic premise plot of the book is that it is based around a girl who is a teenage serial killer slash assassin who is trained by her mother, who sort of, through the course of the book, has to face up to her own way of viewing the world, which was very morally nihilistic, and make a choice sort of about how she sees herself. And other things happen.

And other things happen. And when you. And this was what I think it was 200 some odd pages when you were done.

Yeah, I think it was just over 200 pages.

And do you remember how long it took you to write?

The first draft was very quick. The first draft took me about two to three months. And then it went through many drafts after that because the first drafts went. Draft was rather short. The first draft was, I think, about 40,000 words, and it ended up at 86,000.

Wow. That's. You doubled it.

Yeah, I doubled it because I first draft was 40,000. I sent it to my agent. She said, no, it needs to be 65,000 for me to send it out to editors. And then it got sold at about 65,000. And then my editor came back, said, I've got all these edits. Add these things in. And then it went from 65 to 86.

I remember that. So let's go back now. You have written these novels for yourself. You've written at this point, let's call it six or seven novels. Were you showing them to people? I mean, other than me at the time? Like, were people. Were you, like, giving them to your parents, or were they just writing strictly for yourself?

I was pretty much writing strictly for myself. I maybe showed it to one or two novels to one or two people, but I was mainly just writing for myself.

That's, I think, the way that it should be. And then you get the most purest writing out. Right. Because you're not hampered by deadlines or other people's expectations.

Yeah. And I think that I also am A person that when other people expect things of me, I put a lot of pressure on myself, which for a creative endeavor is not necessarily great or very productive. So I think it was good that I kept them to myself because it made me get better at my craft without a feeling of self consciousness.

Makes sense. So what? I don't know how much I was instrumental in this. This is not fishing for a compliment, but why or how did you get a book agent?

So this actually goes back to the Space Odyssey book that you mentioned earlier. Way back when Amazon used to do a novel contest every year. So it was called the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest. And they had a young adult fiction and an adult fiction so section and you could enter your book and it would get judged and there'd be a winner at the end, yada, yada, yada. So I entered that space book into the novel award contest and there were 5,000 entrants and it got to the top 50. And so after the contest we have a family friend who knew someone who had a couple, someones who were book agents and basically made an introduction, basically said this book got to the top 50 of a not small contest contest.

Easy for you.

So it's probably at least decent. And so my agent saw it and apparently saw some potential and picked me up as a client. And that book didn't end up getting sold, but then the next one I wrote did.

Got it. Did they actually try to sell that first book?

They did.

Oh, I didn't remember that. Interesting.

Yeah.

So a lot of teenagers or young people that I talk to who, especially in the arts, they have a very big fear of showing their work to other people, which is why I asked you before. So was it scary for you to actually put that work out there to a professional publisher or a book agent or had you already gotten some confidence because of the Amazon Award?

I think I'd already got some confidence because of the Amazon Award. And I think that also at that point, by the time I had, you know, passed the book off and started to show it to people, I think I've been writing for myself for long enough that my sense of self esteem about the writing had become less about how good is it and more about what does it mean to me. And I knew that even if it didn't get picked up, it would still have meaning to me and I would still write and I'd still be good at it.

That's a great answer. When you were writing this book over the course of months or when you're writing any book. What do you think is the biggest obstacle for you when you're writing?

I think it's just finding the groove of the story, for lack of a better way of putting it. Because beginnings are easy and ends are easy, but there's a bunch and large turning plot points in the middle. Those are easy, but then there's a bunch of stuff in the middle that's just your characters getting from point A to point B. And if you don't find the groove of the story and find something to be excited about, you're just going to get bored and, you know, burn out halfway through. So you have to find the things that you find interesting and the parts of the story that aren't as interesting.

And how do you do that? Do you pull from other things that you watch or read or do you just sit there and come up with imaginative type of solutions?

I think it's mostly just creating characters that you're interested in because at the end of the day you can write a story. Plots are easy. But if you have characters that don't excite you in the little moments where you have to show emotional depth or growth, for example, they're having a meaningful conversation over coffee in the morning. That's not a plot point, but it's nice to have in the story. If your characters aren't interesting, it's just not going to be interesting to write.

Makes sense. That's the whole basis of Pixar movies. There were lots of animation movies. But it's the characters that drive those movies and why people love them so much. Right?

Yeah.

So what do you think goes into then a great character?

Ooh, big question. I think this is maybe a cop out answer, but I think characters that surprise you because I think that there's a lot of ways you can write a character that feel very straightforward of you know exactly what this person is going to do at any given point in time. And I think that even if you have the most heroic, upright, straight laced main character, hero, you can write them in ways that are still surprising. But I think you have to have some. Just a little quirk, a little something that keeps you on your toes.

And how did you learn about this? Did you take summer programs? Did you have a really good English teacher? How did you learn about these types of writing? Or maybe is it just from reading?

I think it's a. I did go to a couple of summer programs that were really great and taught me a lot about creative writing. One in California and one in Iowa. But I think most of my Education, such as it is about character and how to structure story, just came from a lot of reading.

Makes sense. So, okay, so you submit your book, the first one, and it doesn't get picked up. And so you go ahead and write another one and you submit it. And how long does it take between the time that you put it out there and you getting some word back from publishers that they're actually interested in?

It was actually reasonably quick. I'm trying to remember exactly, but I think it was a week or two somewhere in there.

A week or two? Really?

I think so. My memory may be failing me, but I'm pretty sure it was about a week or two.

And so just to let people know who don't understand how this works, you can submit a book directly to a publisher, but a lot of the bigger publishers won't take direct submissions from authors. Right. They need to only be submitted to from book agents who are the ones that end up negotiating your contract and sort of representing you putting your book out to multiple publishers, hopefully to getting a bidding war, if an ideal world where multiple publishers can be played against the other one, to jack up the amount of money that you make. Right. So you were fortunate to have this sort of family referral. Now, he wasn't doing you any favors. He wasn't doing it to be nice. He actually thought you had talent because of the Amazon Breakthrough Award. So your agent, she basically saw talent in you, probably. Also, you had some demonstrated talent from the Amazon Breakthrough contest. Right. And so she wasn't doing you any favors and being nice to you. She actually thought that you had talent. And so she saw this manuscript, she put it out there, it got turned. It didn't get picked up. And so you give her another one, and then she puts it out to all of the agency, all of the publishers, again, the ones that she thought might represent a young person with this kind of genre. Right. Because not every publisher publishes crime fiction.

Yeah.

Right. And then who picks it up? Who do you hear from?

I got picked up by Katherine Teigen Books, which is an imprint of HarperCollins, which claim to fame, among others, is the same imprint as the Divergent series, which was fun for me because that was particularly a good big time for when Divergent was a big thing out there. Yeah, yeah.

So your editor was basically the same editor for Divergent.

Yep.

And that's pretty awesome. And do you remember how you found out that this major publisher wants to actually put your book out into the world?

Yes, it was a call from my agent. So I actually Remember this? Vividly. I was actually volunteering at the John Wayne Cancer Institute that summer. And so I got a call from my agent on the way home and I was in the car and I remember I was just so ecstatic. I didn't know what to do with myself. And I remember I got home and then I just was still on the phone with her as she was telling me that they wanted to pick up my book. I was just walking in circles around my driveway and just like hyperventilating. I'm like, oh, my God, they want to pay me money.

That's amazing. And who did you first tell? Do you remember?

Oh, I can't remember. I'm sure it had to be my parents or another member of my family, but that.

And what was it? I mean, I can't imagine. I remember actually when my book got picked up, which is not as nearly cool as yours, it was just college admissions. Boring college admissions. But I remember fist pumping. I was older than you, but I remember fist pumping just like, yes, yes. And I thought, wait a minute, this is gonna be in every bookstore in America. What? What, do people hate it? Like, what do I really know? What I'm doing is my editor is insane person. So, like, did you. Did you have any doubt or was it just all, oh, my God, this is going to be amazing?

I mean, for me, I sort of. I think where I was at that point, I'm like, I don't care if they hate it. I hope they like it. But at the same time, I still will be Regardless, an 18 year old who's published a book. And that's neat. Regardless of whether people like it or not.

For sure. And do you remember when you first went into a bookstore and actually saw your book sitting there?

So yes and no. So I remember the first time I went to a bookstore and found my book, but it was on the night it came out. I'm like, all right, it's a bookstore, so we gotta go. We gotta go to the Barnes and Noble. And so I went with a couple of my friends to the Barnes and Noble, but it was so new, they hadn't pulled. And so we had to ask the sales lady. I'm like, hey, do you have this book? And she's like, oh, yeah, we have it in the back. And so she went and got it out of the back for me so I could buy it.

And did you get like, can I have 14 of them, please? And I'd like to put them right here in the front. Thank you so much.

Yeah, there we go usually, not usually once or twice I went to a bookstore, I'm like, can I sign one? And then I would sign it and then they put it up in front of the autograph coffee section.

That's smart. Actually. That brings me to a good question. When you publish a book, how does it get out into the world in terms of publicity?

So publicity, generally speaking is very self driven in, especially in young adult. I did have a publicist that I worked with, but a lot of what goes into publicizing young adult is really just authors getting out there and doing the legwork, being on Twitter, being on social media, being a part of the.

Book community and also, you know, if you can. And this was difficult. You were still in high school. It wasn't like you could do a book tour all over the country. Right. I know that you did a couple of talks.

I did, yes.

By the way, I went to one. But how was that? Was it scary? Was it awesome?

It was scary, but also cool. Particularly when they got me up on stage with other authors because a lot of the authors I got put up on stage with, for example, I did the Pasadena Book Fest with, you know, a bunch of incredible authors who have been doing this for years or decades, whose books have been made into movies, et cetera, et cetera. And I'm just up there in front of everyone and I was, and I was just very aware that I was the youngest person on the stage and I had this feeling of, oh my God, do I know what I'm talking about at all? Should I be here? It's very neat that I'm here and people are listening to me. But also, oh my God, were they nice to you? They were all very nice. Everyone was incredibly nice. Once I did a little event out and I can't remember where it was. I remember, I think it was next some cows. But anyway, it was very far from home and I remember I was having some trouble getting a ride home for some reason and another author that I didn't know at all just offered to give me a ride all the way home from out in the middle of nowhere. And so very grateful.

That's awesome. To explain to people as well. When you're a publisher picks up your book, there is what's called an advance, right? And an advance is an amount of money that they pay you that is based on how many books they think they're going to sell in the first year. Right. Now, if the book continues to sell more than that, then you'll get royalties, you'll get Suddenly a check will show up in the mail, and you're like, oh, look, I just must have sold some books. Right, but you got. And I'm not gonna ask you to tell us what it was, but you got a pretty decent advance for someone who had never published a novel before, right?

I did, yes.

Yeah, that's. I mean, I remember it. And I was like, damn. Wow. Actually, you can make a living out of this if you really wanted to. I mean, that's gotta feel so validating that, like, someone's paying you for this.

It was extremely validating and also very disorienting to suddenly have a lot of money where you previously had almost no money. It was very strange.

Yeah, you're like, I'm working this $10 an hour job. You're like, yeah, about that. Yeah, yeah, we won't talk about that.

That's cute. Yeah.

So you apply to college and you go on to Stanford. And one of the things that Stanford has there is a creative writing program. Is it the Wallace Stegner Creative writing Program? Is that what it's called? I think so.

What it's called. Yeah. It seems right.

And all of a sudden I hear through the grapevine that while you're minoring in creative writing, you decide to major in computer science.

Yep, that is true.

Now, that is not like writing. In fact, usually at Stanford, they're classified, too. I don't know if they do this when you were there, but there's techies and fuzzies.

Yep. That's still a thing.

Right? So fuzzies are kids that like English and history, and techies are kids that like math and science. And usually they're two very distinct groups. You come in as one of the biggest fuzzies of all time, and all of a sudden you get transported into techie land at one of the most techie schools in the world. How does that happen?

Okay, well, I'd like to correct. What's it not? Miscommunication. What's the word?

I don't know.

There's a word. Misperception. There it is. I was very techy in high school too, if you remember. I. That sounded very condescending.

Okay, let's. Let's try it again. So you can say like, I want to correct a misperception or misconception.

Misconception. That's the word.

Okay, so start again.

Okay, so I want to correct a misconception. I was actually also very techy when I was in high school.

Aha. I do kind of remember this, actually.

Yes. When I Wasn't writing novels. I was volunteering in a series of biology labs. So I kind of ranged both ends of the techie fuzzy spectrum all my life. So I think that probably the most impressive thing I did when I was in high school was the novel, definitely. But I still really, really enjoyed science in high school as well. And so when I went to Stanford, my original plan was actually to be a bioenglish double major. That was what I wanted to be right off the bat. And then I did a year of chemistry, and I was not very good at it. So bio went away.

I know, I know. That chem series, it's brutal.

Oh, it was terrible. It was absolutely terrible. By the end, I'm like, oh, God, I never want to see a molecule again.

So. But computer science, that wasn't something that you had been previously interested in, was it?

No, it wasn't. So essentially the series of events was I self selected out of chemistry, bio. And then I was an English major, just an English major for about a quarter. And I didn't feel like I was challenging myself enough. So I really like things that are difficult. I like an uphill climb. So I didn't really feel like I was getting enough of that with English. And so the next quarter, I took econ and I took computer science. And I said, whichever one of these I like more, I'm gonna major in.

Wow. Okay.

Yeah. Well, it was also midway through sophomore year, so I didn't want to.

Oh, you had to. You're gonna get that. Dear Undeclared Junior.

Yeah. Yeah. So I had to pick. And I took econ and I didn't like it. And I took computer science and I loved it. I absolutely loved it.

Go ahead. I'm curious as to why.

It just felt like puzzles to me. It was difficult, but it was so rewarding when you got it right. And I loved that feeling of an uphill climb and then a reward.

So I have two questions for you. One is you said that you like to do. You like to challenge yourself, you like hard things. Why is that?

I think that doing easy things or relaxing and not struggling for things, I feel like it feels very good in the short term. And then I look back, if I take it easy for a month or so, I look back at the month and I feel disappointed with how I've spent the month. I said, well, I could have been doing all these other things and working hard towards XYZ thing, and I wasn't. And I wasn't using my brain to its fullest potential. And So I like things that give me that sense of struggling because it comes with a sense of accomplishment at the end of it.

Well, that makes sense because when you set out to also start a novel, you know, that's a pretty big undertaking. But you're at the end of the day, you're completing something. You actually have a physical product. And as you were talking, I was thinking, wow, writing is so right brain creative. And computer science is so left brain logical. But they do have something in common, which is each one produces something where you have a physical manifestation of your work.

Yeah. Like you. You start from nothing except for a thought in your head, and you end with something. And whether that something is a full story or a full, you know, code that does something, it's the same thing. And it kind of feels the same in that you start with an idea of where you want it to nothing but an idea of where you want it to end. And then you create everything in the middle.

That makes so much sense. Yeah. And I can see why you'd really like both. So you're going through Stanford now, and I'm going to ask you to go back and ask one more question about the book, because I've never asked you this. When you put your book out there, you get reviews. You get people who rate you, and people are sometimes amazing and sometimes they just suck. Right. So did you ever experience. Did you read your own reviews, first of all? And was that easy or difficult for you?

I did read my own reviews for a while. I think that it was a mixed bag because, you know, with everything out there, you're gonna get people who love it and you're gonna get people who hate it. And there were people who loved it, and there are people who hated it. And I will say that the people who loved it were wonderful to read. And I think that even if there was one person in the world who loved it and everyone else hated it, it would still be worth it. Nice to give one person something they loved. But after a while, I think that negative comments started to take too much of a toll on me and I decided to stop reading the reviews. I think that it wasn't necessarily worth it to me, even if I got to read the good ones as well. Sometimes people will reach out to me on social media directly and say that they really liked the book, which I like that to this day. Still to this day.

Wow.

Yep. Which I really appreciate. And I also, in that way, I get less of the negative, which is nice because people rarely are gonna reach out to Someone to specifically tell them that they hated something that they wrote.

Yeah. And by the way, I've realized this entire interview, I don't think we've said the name of the book.

Dear Killer.

Dear Killer.

Available where books are sold.

Excellent. So when you're in college and now you're switching to computer science, are you still writing?

I am still writing. I don't write as much or as intently as I did before, but I definitely still write.

And do you do it because you eventually want to have another book out there or you do it more personally because you just love it?

I mean, right now I'm just writing mostly because I love it. And if I write something that's worth publishing and I publish again, that's a nice side effect, but it's not necessarily why I'm writing.

Yeah, makes sense. So you make you decide then that I'm not going to try to make it be a professional author for the rest of my life. And I really like this CS thing. So what do you do for a living now?

I am a product manager.

I'm sorry, Catherine, is it still running?

It's still running.

Okay, awesome. I'm sorry, you're a product manager again, Go ahead.

Yes, I am a product manager at a tech life insurance company. Woo. I know, fun. Everyone loves to talk about life insurance.

How did that come about? What do you do?

So it came about in kind of a roundabout way. So right out of school, I very directly use my computer science degree to go be a software engineer at Adobe for about two years. And then after those two years, I decided that maybe just doing software engineering was really not for me and I wanted to do something slightly different. So there's a role for people who aren't familiar with it. There's a role called a product manager, who essentially is a person who works with a team of software developers. And it's their role to scope out and decide what people are going to build and when and sort of vaguely how. And so my job every day is I go to the office, I figure out what we're gonna build, and I help tell people what to do and coordinate to make sure everything gets built the way that it should be.

So you're the boss, basically, is what you're saying?

No, no, but let me ask you.

Actually, in all seriousness, you're 24, right? And you are the person that other software developers or engineers are reporting to.

Not, well, technically have a flat organization. So no one reports.

Okay, I'm sorry they don't report to you, but you are sort of, you are setting the stage, you are making the plan. You are sort of the, you know, as you rightly said, like you're telling people what to do is what you actually said. Is that true?

Yes. Though I don't necessarily like thinking I, we as a team make it a very large point. There's no hierarchy, everyone's at the same level.

Got it.

And so I don't ever really like referring to myself as a boss because I really don't feel like it's true. We're all helping each other out.

Well, that sort of answers my question because I wanted to ask you, how do you know? Or how did you learn how to manage people? How did you even come up with that skill?

So when I was at Adobe, I was a, these are all very techie terms, but I was a Scrum Master, which basically is a glorified. I kept track of what everyone was doing. I did a little other people decided what we were going to do, but I helped sort of break it up into more manageable chunks for people, helped coordinate people essentially without actually setting the stage, as you put it. And so that sort of helped me dip my toes into it. But I've always kind of been a people person and so when I decided I wanted to make the switch into product, it sort of was taking those skills that I had learned doing Scrum Master stuff, taking my people skills and also my very opinionated nature and just putting them together.

That is excellent. You found your strengths. How much of the success that you've experienced so far do you feel is natural talent versus how much do you feel is hard work?

It is definitely mostly hard work. I think I, I, maybe some of it is talent, but a lot of what I've done has just been grit and determination and being very opinionated about a lot of things and not quitting easily.

So can you give me a time when, you know, you thought about quitting or you thought, oh, I don't know how I'm going to do this, but you did it anyway.

So many times in college when I was studying for a hard math final or I was running on two hours of sleep and I have to go to my final at 8am in the morning and all that stuff. I think that I took so many hard classes and particularly because I had to finish my major pretty much only in two years, I took a lot of them at once, which was grueling, but you just kind of have to grit your teeth and get through it.

Okay, thank you. Here's the second question. What advice would you give an 11 or say, 15 year old listening to.

This Find what you're passionate about and chase it down for the sake of chasing it down. I think that going into something because you want an accomplishment out of it is oftentimes a recipe for disaster because you put a lot of pressure on yourself that doesn't need to be there. But if you find something you love and do it for the sake of doing it, oftentimes I find that you end up being pretty good at it just out of the passion you have for it.

Thank you. I really wish I would have known that when I was your age. Hey Kathryn, thank you so much for being on the show. It was so nice to talk to you. It's been a while, so it was nice seeing you too.

Nice seeing you. Lovely to talk to you.

If you want to learn more about the specific steps our guests took to follow their dreams, go to our website dannyrooterman.com and become an XU VIP. You will not only get access to all our episodes, but you will also be able to download free guides that have step by step action plans and resources that will help you become extraordinary. If you want to tell us your story or ask for help, go to Danny ruderman.com YourStory or reach out via Instagram at dmruterman. You can also subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And while you're there, please leave us a review. Extraordinary youy is produced by Anna Darling, music by Geom, sound editing by Rob Pera. Extraordinary youy is a production of Acast.