Meet the Author: Kori Morgan

Meet Kori Morgan, a creative entrepreneur and the author of two books! Kori and I had a deep conversation about the role creative writing has played in her life personally and professionally.

​Kori Morgan is an author, disciple, and creative entrepreneur. A graduate of Ohio Northern University and West Virginia University's Master of Fine Arts program in creative writing, she has been featured in publications such as Shenandoah, SN Review, Blanket Sea, Agape Review, Switchback, Rubbertop Review, Cantos, and Clayjar Review.

She is the author of The Goodbye-Love Generation: A Novel in Stories, which centers on the members of a Kent, Ohio, rock band during the Kent State shootings in May 1970. Her essay collection, Why I Dyed My Hair Purple & Other Unorthodox Stories (affiliate link*), explores the integral role of the arts in her Christian testimony.

Kori is the founder and Chief Literary Strategist of Inkling Creative Strategies, an author services company that helps writers reach their full creative potential so they can impact and inspire readers.

You can stay up-to-date with Kori's writing by subscribing to her Substack, Peculiar Crossroads.​

You have published two books. What are they about? Who should read them?

My novel is The Goodbye Love Generation, and it came out in 2020. It's composed of short stories, so it features the same basic group of characters, and it takes place over a period of 50 years. You see the characters when they're younger; you see them when they're older. It centers on a rock band based out of my hometown of Kent, Ohio.

The story begins in 1969 when they are on their way up. A lot of people don't know that northeast Ohio was a hotbed of musical creativity in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, and that continues into the present day. But back then, there were a lot of really exciting things happening.

Then the Kent State shootings took place in May of 1970, and their world was kind of blown apart, so they had to figure out how they were going to regroup and what the rest of their lives were going to look like.

I'm from Kent. My dad was involved in the music scene around that time. He was in a few bands that achieved modest success, and I have family members who were tied to what happened at Kent State. The novel very much grew out of my growing up in that area and seeing the impact of that tumultuous period on people that I care about.

My next book is from Calla Press Publishing. It's called Why I Dyed My Hair Purple and Other Unorthodox Stories (affiliate link*). It's a collection of micro-essays, so very, very short pieces of creative nonfiction, and it is centered on my journey toward becoming a Christian. It’s about how that testimony unfolded and, specifically, how the arts played a role in it.

One thing that's rather distressing is many people think if you're a Christian who believes the Bible is the highest authority and Jesus Christ is the way to be saved, that is not compatible with a life of creativity. That is incredibly not true as seen through Scripture and as seen through the life of Christ.

It is a collection of essays exploring various works of art that have impacted me spiritually, and most of them are not Christian-oriented at all. There's an essay that mentions the Ramones. I mention the alternative rock band Everclear from the 1990s, the Indigo Girls, and Shawshank Redemption. It’s an exploration of the artistic works that have impacted me as a creative person who is redeemed by Christ.

How do your faith and creativity interact?

The most important thing to remember is that we are made in God's image. Every person has innate dignity because we're in the image of the one who made us all. The first thing we're told is that God created the heavens and the earth. Man is God's highest expression of his character and one of the most important ways that we show that is that desire to fill the world with beauty and ideas and wonderful things.

One of the times when I am most myself as somebody who is in Christ is when I am creating. Before I was a Christian, I was interested in promoting myself. I had a little bit of an ego, and I was interested in people seeing me and how awesome I am, and that is something that God has tempered in me.

Sometimes, that gets a little bit tricky because I write fiction about characters who are extremely troubled. They believe things I don't agree with. They make decisions that I don't think are very good, but they're operating in a particular community and a time and place in history where there was a great deal of trauma they experienced and a great deal of emotional upheaval.

People look at my fiction and wonder, “You're supposed to be a Christian. How can you write about characters struggling with immorality and addiction and terrible ways of seeing the world?” One way I can use my abilities is by engendering empathy in readers, whether they share my faith or not.

How did you decide to write?

The first time I remember deciding I wanted to be a writer was in high school. I had always told stories, and I had always written stories. I used to make a book and give it to relatives at Christmas, that kind of thing.

But I never thought about it as something that I could pursue as a lifelong vocation until I was in a writing workshop. The person teaching had a bachelor's degree in creative writing. I always thought, “I’m going to go to college because I kind of have to. My parents aren't going to let me out of it. I guess I'll be a journalist because I like writing.”

I didn't know that you could major in creative writing. I didn't know there were choices besides journalism and literature. That blew my mind. From that point on, I decided this was what I wanted to do. I want to get an education in this, and I want to do as much of it and be as good at it as I possibly can. I got my bachelor's in creative and professional writing from Ohio Northern University. Four years wasn't enough, so I went and got a Master of Fine Arts in fiction from West Virginia University.

I've taught at various universities and for different audiences. I have written educational content for online sources, I did an internship at McGraw Hill, and I created content for The Economist's GRE preparation course. I got into marketing and trained as a content developer, content specialist, and copywriter. They have not only made me a better writer but also laid a foundation for me to start a business.

I run a company called Inkling Creative Strategies, where I help writers reach their full creative potential so they can impact and inspire readers. I work with authors at all stages in the writing process to execute their visions.

What types of writers do you work with? How long have you run your business?

It’s been four years. I was the person who started a business during the pandemic. I reached a point where I looked at my skill set with creative writing and teaching and marketing and desktop publishing, all of these skills, and thought, “You know what? Instead of running from cool thing to cool thing, I need to find some way to unify all of this under one roof.” I wanted to help writers at different points in their journey. I do that through coaching and mentorship.

I review people's manuscripts and give them suggestions on what's working for me and where I got confused or wanted more information. I do editing.

One of the cool things I do that a lot of editors don't is layouts. I design everything between the front and back cover. I do typesetting. I go through the manuscript, line by line, and get rid of all those weird gaps and stuff between words. That is probably my favorite thing that I do. I really like making the end product.

I have authors who go through the entire process with me. Many people have come to me with a collection of stories or essays or a novel and said, “Can you help me figure out what to do with this?” And I have coached them all the way through developing the book and then editing it, and then doing the design for the interior.

I've worked with people who do memoirs, essay collections, short fiction. I had a mother-daughter team who both wrote dystopian Christian young adult novels. They were working on their books together, and they both worked with me and released their books around the same time. That was a cool thing to see.

It's been very fulfilling to give back after having so many people pour into me and my talents.

What writing strategies have you found helpful?

The most important writing I do every day is something nobody will ever read, and it is my prayer journal. No writing of any significance will get done unless I start with God. I have been prayer journaling for 15 years. What's great is that when I write prayers, when I make my requests known that way, it's out of my head and it's something tangible that's on paper.

Apart from that, the most important thing I do practice-wise is be in regular community with other writers. I got a taste of this when I was in college, especially in my MFA program. MFA programs are very intensive. You work with the same cohort of about six or seven people for the entire three years. You get to know their work really well. You get to know them.

After I received my degree, I walked away from grad school thinking, “Okay, well, this is it. It's me on my own.” And you know what? I tried to do that for a while, and it did not work out.

I have to be in connection with other people who are doing the same thing that I am. I'm part of a community that is run by Jonathan Rogers, who is a young adult author as well as a literary scholar. It's called The Habit, and it's for writers, primarily of faith, to connect online through different writing classes that we take. There are online forums where we can discuss each other's work and post things for critique.

We do virtual writing Zoom rooms about four times a week. Everybody mutes themselves, turns off their cameras, and we get back together at the end of the time and share what we did.

I have to have other people who are helping me, even if the help is not necessarily getting feedback on my work or giving it, but people that I know are out in the world doing their cool things, and we can connect to talk and get feedback. That's really encouraging to me.

I hate that the pandemic happened. We all do. There's not many pandemic fans out there, but one cool thing was the world for creative people got a lot smaller, and it became much easier for all of us to connect and find community, to support each other.

The whole thing about writers sitting in a dark tower and furiously pounding away on typewriters to write their novels, that's not real. That's a nice story that somebody came up with. We're not intended to do that alone.

What writing struggles have you faced, and how do you move past them?

I find that when I get blocked, the best thing I can do is go do something else. I mean, there are going to be times when doing something else isn't always feasible, like if you are on a deadline or if you are banging your head against the wall and the clock is ticking.

Even then, going and doing something else is always helpful. I have other things besides writing that I swerve into when I hit points where I don't know what to do.

I cycle a lot. I'm into outdoor biking, and I find that so many creative problems get solved if I can just go on my bike because it frees up a channel. I'm moving, and I have to focus on physically going somewhere. My mind is able to get out of being in my office alone and stuck and start thinking in other avenues.

I discovered that when I worked in marketing. If I was on a deadline, I would just disappear for an hour and go ride my bike. I would come back and have a plan for what I wanted to do.

The community thing—if I'm trying to solve a problem, I ask somebody else what their solution would be.

So much of it is based on fear about what if I mess it up, or I do it wrong, or somebody criticizes me. If I can do something to excise all of those emotions, then I'm able to think more clearly about what to do next.

What has it been like to publish your books?

I now have experience independently publishing a book and working with a traditional publisher.

I released my novel through an imprint I run as part of Inkling Creative Strategies. It’s great having this skill set that is very centralized. The Goodbye Love Generation started as my master's thesis, and editing it and putting it into book form was not that difficult.

I don't do cover design as a general rule, but I had a very specific idea of what I wanted this cover to look like, so I went ahead and did it myself. I've learned so much more about how to design books. Now, I look at that novel, which was the first project I did, and it makes me cringe. I have plans in the future to do a reissue of it, so I'll have an opportunity to do it over again.

One of the challenges is that everything was on me because of the particular time frame I worked under, but I've gotten a lot of action out of it. For a little book that I published on Amazon, it's gotten a fair amount of attention, and I've been happy with that.

The big difference with working with a publisher is that a lot of the day-to-day work is out of my hands. Some things are on my end, like promoting pre-orders for the book and releasing it, but I didn't have to typeset the book. I didn't have to design a cover. I have fabulous people. Calla Press Publishing is marvelous.

Editing has been the best part because when you have people you're working with who are tied to the company and have a really good idea of what's going to be good for their audience as well as what you are trying to create, it creates an awesome partnership.

I like indie publishing. I like working with publishers too. Am I probably going to do one or the other in the future? No, I'm probably going to do both, and we'll see as I develop more writing which of those two venues will be the best fit.

When I was finishing up my master's, which would have been 2009, 2010, the general attitude toward self-publishing was, “Don't do it.” That was before we had all of these different platforms that make it easy to release a book that is quite excellent.

It's awesome that the process has been democratized so much. You don't have to wait for the gatekeepers to open the doors for you. You can create the avenue, create the path for it to get out there.

What’s next for you, creatively?

Two things immediately come to mind. I want to continue helping writers with Inkling Creative Strategies. I have some clients that I'm very excited about, some people doing really, really cool work, and I want to see them win and get more of an audience. A couple of them are writing series, so it's going to be interesting to see the second installment of their respective series coming out.

The other thing that I want to do is write more of the fiction with the Goodbye Love Generation characters. One of the lies that writers too often believe is that you can't keep doing the same thing. “You need to do different things, and if you do the same thing for too long, you might lose your audience. You need to be bringing more people in. People are going to get bored with you.”

That just isn't true. You need to find your thing that you love to create, and even if it is a hyper-specific, like very, very niche thing, you can still have an audience that is a small but powerful readership for your work.

So, with fiction, my niche is that I will be writing exclusively short stories about these characters from this rock band. I have a whole idea about where the timeline is going to go next. One thing that's great about having the different time frames is there is so much to explore. These characters have already been through a very tumultuous period in history.

The fact that I have things that I can incorporate, like the pandemic, is cool. Today, they're in their mid to late 70s, and they're still quite frustrated with having to deal with a lot of the same frustrations and the same sources of anger. That’s manifesting itself on a current event spectrum.

What advice would you give another writer?

That’s a great question. Don't be so hard on yourself. Don't take yourself so seriously. I wasted so much time being so stressed out about things that are, frankly, not supposed to be stressful.

Creating is supposed to bring you joy, and even if you are frustrated, as I've mentioned, you still have to have strategies for dealing with the frustration. If your strategy, which is no strategy at all, really, is to bang your head against the wall and get frustrated and want to smash your laptop or something like that, if you just respond to the frustration by feeding it, nothing good will come of that.

You need to not be so hard on yourself and make sure that you're able to separate yourself enough from the work that you do not see as a mirror for your own identity. Invest in other people.

Don't try to exist in a vacuum where you are so concerned about what other people are thinking that impressing them becomes the main thing.

I created so many problems for myself when I was younger by viewing people as enemies and making assumptions about them instead of trying to come alongside them and collaborate with them. Those are the dangers of taking yourself too seriously.

What that means to me is that I am doing all things as unto Jesus because he's the one who has given me these gifts to begin with. It would be robbing God for me to take my abilities and to say, look at all the cool things that I've done when, in reality, I'm not responsible for any of the amazing opportunities or abilities I've been given.

Whether you are a Christian or not, the idea that you have to invest in something outside of yourself creatively is an important thing to consider. Better yet, invest in people.

What's the best book you've read recently?

I have two, and both are tied to the MFA portion of my life.

I had the amazing opportunity to go back to WVU and hear one of my best friends from the program read from her first book alongside our primary faculty mentor. I highly recommend The Monsters Are Here by Lori D’Angelo (affiliate link*). It is a work of speculative horror that is equal parts terrifying, hysterical, and moving.

The other book is American Seasons by Mark Brazaitis. It's a historical novel focusing on a basketball team at a small college in Ohio in 1961. The main character is a student journalist tasked with reporting on the team's success. But little does he know that he's about to be thrust into a lot of the social issues of the early ‘60s, particularly where civil rights are concerned.

Reading both books and being able to celebrate a friend and somebody who has so greatly poured into me as a writer was a reminder of how grateful I am for all the community that I've had in various forms.

Meet the Author interviews are lightly edited for clarity.

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I appreciated Kori's emphasis on building a writing community—we need other people to feed our creativity. If you're looking for an opportunity to connect with other writers, check out the 30-Day Writing Challenge I'm hosting in April!