“Writing is like a competitive sport and, you don’t go into that without warming up” – SOPHIA WOODS
S2 #003 – In this episode, Sophia and I discuss how she developed her passion for writing, her experience as a ghostwriter, and how she keeps the love of writing alive.
Have a question/comment? DM me on Instagram @mahrukh.m.imtiaz
Highlights from this episode:
[3:13] Where did that love of writing come from?
[4:20] How did writing help you become a blogger?
[11:51] What did you do when your usual daily routine wasn’t helpful?
[19:28] What is a ghostwriter and what does that career look like?
[29:19] What opportunities have opened up now that you’re blogging
Connect with Sophia Woods:
A little bit about the guest:
Sophia Woods is a seasoned professional with a diverse background, showcasing her expertise in projects across Africa, Latin America, and the South Pacific. Her primary mission revolves around preserving the Amazon and combating deforestation. Before dedicating herself to environmental causes, Sophia served as a ghostwriter for Latin American venture capitalists and entrepreneurs. Her impactful content, featured in renowned platforms like Forbes and Entrepreneur, contributed to her reputation as a skilled communicator.
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Transcription:
Mahrukh Imtiaz
Today’s guest has experience working on projects that span Africa, Latin America, and South Pacific. One of her missions is to protect the Amazon from deforestation before it’s too late. How cool. Before all of this work though, she was a ghostwriter for a number of Latin American venture capitalists and entrepreneurs, where her work was published in platforms such as Forbes and Entrepreneur. Wow. She is currently a blog writer and active on Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn with over 2000 followers across all platforms. Very excited to have you on today, SoPHIA.
Sophia Woods
Thanks so much for having me.
Mahrukh Imtiaz
100% happy to hear happy to have you here.
Mahrukh Imtiaz
Oh, my God. I’m having a brain freeze. Because we had to like crazy cricket game this morning. I was telling you about this earlier before we started recording. And throughout I was like, Oh, my God, don’t sleep, don’t sleep, don’t sleep. And I feel like that’s kind of coming to this podcast, but it is what it is. So tell me a bit about your journey. What got you started on content creation? What’s your story?
Sophia Woods
Well, yeah, it’s a bit of a wild journey, to be honest. So I’ll try to neatly package it and into the content. It’s only one part.
Sophia Woods
When I was graduating from college, I ended up working with a company I work for now. I’m doing conservation in Fiji. That’s the South Pacific part for a short period of time. And when I got back, I wasn’t entirely sure what I was going to do next, I’d literally just graduated. But I was in touch with a college classmate of mine who had just moved back to Colombia to start a startup, a travel startup to bring people down to Colombia and learn about entrepreneurship. I was super excited about what he was doing. And I actually applied to be his marketing intern. And he turned me down. Because I had no experience in that I studied political science. And I have always loved writing, but I didn’t have any, like content marketing experience at all. And I was so adamant that I would work with this guy. Because I thought his idea was so cool that I asked him like, how can I get this experience? He sent me the HubSpot inbound marketing course. I took it in like three days, because I didn’t know what to do with myself. And so I went back to him and being like, hi, I took the course what’s next? And he was like, Okay, take this other course. So I did that, too. And so finally, after all of that, he was like, Oh, this girl just won’t go away. So I started writing from home. And I actually like long story short, I ended up as co founder of that startup and moved to Columbia
Mahrukh Imtiaz
Amazing
Sophia Woods
And the next part of that move was I needed a place to stay. And another graduate from my university, offered me a place in her apartment, in exchange for interning for her digital marketing company. And so I learned everything from her and her business partner, they were doing really cool stuff, helping Latin American startups get traction in the US market. So helping with English language marketing, mostly. And I worked with them for the next two years, three years almost. So really all of it, I think all the credit goes to them for teaching me everything that I know.
Mahrukh Imtiaz
No, wow, that that is like so many twists and turns there. And you said a lot of good things that I want to kind of dig deeper into. One thing you said you had a background in political science that you always loved writing. Can you talk a bit more about that? Where did that love of writing come from?
Sophia Woods
I don’t know where it came from. But honestly, like, if you ask my mom, if you go down to my basement now like it’s full of my writing, like to a point that’s a little bit embarrassing, she likes to say was very prolific. There’s like, illustrated books, poetry, hold journals full of like random stories about animals. I was really into animals too. Like every poem was about animals, but I just would spend my time writing I remember, I don’t know how I didn’t get nauseous. But I remember sometimes when I was a kid, when I learned about like short stories, I would sit on my like, horrifically enormous Lenovo laptop ThinkPad that I had, and write in the car, short stories about whatever, just for fun. And I think I lost a bit of that when I was in college, and I had to write a lot more not for fun. But I like I think I just really really always enjoyed it. I don’t know what sparked it, but it definitely was one of those things that was kind of like, naturally burst out of my soul.
Mahrukh Imtiaz
Yeah. And how does that translate into blogging? So you always were a writer and then you did some writing in college. How do you think that helped you become a blogger or the how do you think that translates?
Sophia Woods
I feel like with blogging, I’ve spent like the entire time that I’ve had my own personal blog like trying to get back in touch with that kid in me who like love to write and had no fear of writing like the randomness weirdest craziest things I really got into blogging when I moved to Chile when I studied abroad. I thought I would keep a blog just to like, you know, advise basically telling my dad’s friends that I was okay. And
Mahrukh Imtiaz
didn’t tell many people start.
Sophia Woods
Yes, very few people following me. It was like a Blogspot or WordPress, like very simple blog. And I would write every once in a while, like, pressured myself a ton to write. And I go back and read those blogs, and they’re very, like, guarded. And they’re very afraid of being vulnerable. Like it kind of undermined myself constantly. I was 19. But I wrote a ton. Like, I went through this recently, and I’ve been trying to actually gather some of those old blogs and put them on my current medium, because they’re kind of like lost in cyberspace right now. I was like, I don’t know, when I found the time to write this much like I wrote hundreds of blogs, about random things. And actually think the craziest thing is like, I started blogging again, when I moved back to Chile to start working in this VC firm. And I, when I started writing my medium I never like went back and looked at that old blog, but I actually had two or three blogs that were like practically the same two or three years apart.
Mahrukh Imtiaz
Wow,
Sophia Woods
Apparently, I was still thinking about the same things.
Mahrukh Imtiaz
And you know, that’s interesting, because I feel the same. In general. Like, I feel like I journal a lot every day. And I feel like if I read my journals from a year back, which I rarely do, but once in a while, you get curious, because I’ve changed journals. And I go back to the old journal kind of were like that. I’ve noticed my thoughts remain similar, like, you know, and and there’s a similar theme, and they’re similar pattern. And I’ve noticed that about my content. You know, if I go back to a year in Tik Tok, and I’m like, ooh, look, I had this idea to create this video, but I’ve kind of created a video similar to that a year back. So that’s, that’s kind of fairly interesting that you had a similar experience. And you you said that raw blogging was a childhood thing, it brought back the child in you, has that changed now that you are taking blogging a bit more seriously, like, you know, trying to write blogs, finding things in cyber space and putting them together? Has that changed at all?
Sophia Woods
I actually think like the practice of going back to my blog from Chile has been like me trying to get back to the way I was writing more freely when I was younger, I’m trying to actually like, half of what I’m doing when I take these blogs and put them on medium is just like, edit out all of the, like, random Sophia sub text in there that’s like, this is too strong of a statement, or you are probably going to think that I’m ridiculous for saying this, that’s like, one kind of gets to the point where you realize that that’s unnecessary to like, undermine yourself, it can be really hard. But I think like a lot of me has been like, no stand behind what you say. And you know, people are gonna hate it no matter what. So they’ll love it, too. But some people are gonna hate it no matter what. And you can’t like avoid that by just kind of going in lukewarm. And that’s been really important. Because I think, you know, at the beginning of the pandemic, I kind of really slow down my freelancing because I was freelancing for a really long time. And was like, I’m going to start my medium blog, this is my own thing, I’m, you know, gonna see where it goes. And I put so much pressure on myself to like, write about things that I, you know, think are important to me. And it was torture, like, I hated it, I found it really stressful. I was getting writer’s block that I very rarely get. And I was really angry. Because I was like, I have I’ve written 12 articles, sometimes in a day, like I’ve now pumped this stuff out when it’s been for work. And now I’m sitting here on a topic that I know a lot about. And these work articles were like about auto tech or something like that I knew nothing about and I’m here sitting like in front of my computer all the time in the world topic that I love. And I’m like, nothing coming. So I have had to do like a bit of a restructuring of my own approach towards blogging because the forcing myself isn’t working anymore.
Mahrukh Imtiaz
Right. And that’s, that’s something I really want to dig further into. Because writer’s block is a thing, especially for people you mentioned earlier that you went from writing your thoughts really to, you know, then filtering out some of it and then realizing, Okay, fuck that. We’re not going to filter out anything. We’re just going to post what we’re what we want to post. And it’s interesting that you were able to do 12 articles for work, but then when it came to something that you wanted to write you were unable to do that. So can you break that down for us? What did that look like in that moment when you were unable to do that? Well, what was that day looking like for you?
Sophia Woods
Um, well, I think you know, I’ve literally written again, twice the same article slightly different about like getting through writer’s block if you go through My medium and then also my like other blog, and I’ve had a really good system for dealing with it in the past, which worked for me for work like I was, I have always liked to exercise first thing in the morning, I’m a total morning person, listen to one or two podcasts in the morning, it doesn’t actually really matter too much what they are, I’ve noticed like, it can be something that makes me laugh, it can be something that makes me think, but like, get some content into my brain first thing. And then like, I think honestly, one of the best pieces of writing advice I ever got was from one of my thesis advisors who was like, you know, writing, especially long pieces is like a competitive sport. And you don’t go into that without warming up. Like you don’t just hop in and like write your thesis, you know, you have to start, like doing the smallest possible pieces of writing that you can do. So like edit your citations, or fix a couple of quotes, like edit two or three sentences, or two or three paragraphs that you finished off yesterday. And then you can like actually get into your brain thinking in writing terms. So I’ve always found that really, really helpful to me. And I’ve kind of like expanded out. Sometimes it even works like writing a couple of emails, not usually but you know, sometimes it gets you going. Um, and so I’ve tried, like, you know, basically me sitting in my in front of my computer, like, gone from my run, I’ve listened to my podcasts, like I’ve had a cup of coffee, I’ve had a good breakfast. And you know, my most productive hour of the morning, I you know, reread an old blog and edited four sentences of it. And I’m right here going like,
Mahrukh Imtiaz
yeah, totally hear that telling her that, you know, like, I was going through something similar two years ago, and I had to read that book Bird by Bird. Have you read that one?
Sophia Woods
No.
Mahrukh Imtiaz
So I love that book. I don’t know, I don’t remember the author. I’m horrible with author names. But I remember like, for one thing that was mentioned this lot of things that I mentioned the book and I read too many to like really remember everything but the one thing that you mentioned was writing your shittiest draft. And that’s somehow has really helped me weirdly enough, and I’m like, Alright, nothing’s coming out. Okay, same thing with video. Same thing with audio. Nothing’s happening. How can I make the worst possible draft like you know, and weirdly enough, a lot of times I start end up posting that stuff. Like it I’m just like, alright, Shit shit shit, like, you know, goes back to my master and disaster philosophy, like, total disaster. Let’s post it. What’s the worst? The I don’t know, that’s something that I feel like, helped me a lot during writer’s block. And there’s something interesting. You said earlier as well, you said you had a routine. You went for a run? Did your podcast and sometimes that routine was really, really helpful? Because did your kind of writing warm up where you checked a few things edited a few things? And sometimes it wasn’t. So what did you do when it wasn’t helpful?
Sophia Woods
So I also wrote about this, because I was getting so frustrated, like, I know, you know, Erin, who’s my coach, and I talked to Erin about it endlessly. Like I’m getting to the end of the day, and I have no energy or like, I can’t get, you know, the creative juices to flow. This is so frustrating, like, I really want this to be a side project I love to write, it came up in many, many sessions. And, you know, they had me do 50 different things to try, like, you know, writing about where my energy was going. And, you know, thinking more of like trying to focus in on, like certain objects, or take some time out of the day, every day to not meditate, but like, really slow down, which is a major problem of mine. And although I don’t know that that actually got me to the point where I was able to start writing more, which I still I don’t know that I’m even there yet. I did think I do think I got to the point where I got clarity on what was happening. And I realized, like, for me, one of the best times that writing really flows is when I’m in nature, and when I’m out in nature for like, really long periods of time by myself or with few other people, which is a huge part of my job. And I obviously was not able to do that job really for two years during the pandemic. And I also travel a ton on my own and for work. And that just like being thrown out into the world with unknowns and weird interactions with people is I think what sparks a huge number of of stories.
Mahrukh Imtiaz
So true.
Sophia Woods
Yeah, I did a master class. I can’t remember who the author was now.
Mahrukh Imtiaz
The damn girl same
Sophia Woods
today as master class, and he was talking about this, like, you know, he asked people random questions in public just to get inspiration for writing or like to hear, you know, what they think and how’s like I’m just not in the world enough like and obviously this is not kind of outside my control during right COVID And that’s a lot better now. But
Mahrukh Imtiaz
you It’s so true. It’s kind of why like a lot of people, they have this thing with Uber drivers, they will, they’ll just spark conversation Uber drivers who get their mind working. For me, I try like going through age groups. I’m like, What was I doing when I was five? What were my stories that I wasn’t doing when I was 10? I feel like that kind of does it. But sometimes it really doesn’t mean good on you for understanding that this is where you needed help. But I think that’s been the theme that’s been coming up with what you were saying even throughout, when you earlier talked about, you know, you go into Colombia, asking for that internship, and then not getting it and then realizing, okay, what do I need to do to get here, and then taking the courses that were recommended? Same thing here, when there was a writer’s block, realizing Okay, well, what I’ve been doing so far isn’t working, going to your coach Erin, Erin Baker, by the way was on this podcast, episode two and three, if you go if you want to go check her out. And so where does that attitude come from? That’s where a lot of content creators struggle, like, you know, they, they feel like they just have to do it all by themselves. Or if they ask for help, and not gonna, it’s there, it’s not for them. What helps you ask for help?
Sophia Woods
That’s a great question. I don’t know that I’m that good at asking for help. I do you think I’m not that good at accepting? No, when I want something. And when I think it is within my control. I also, apparently, as I’ve learned through many conversations with Erin as well have a very, very large locus of control, internal locus of control. So I basically, like think everything is solvable by me, which isn’t necessarily a good thing. And that sounds really arrogant. The way I put it is really donorship face.
Mahrukh Imtiaz
Its ownership
Sophia Woods
Yeah. Money. But like, the first thought that comes is always like, How can I fix this? Or how can I do something about this? And I think I’m trying to think, you know, with asking for help, I do think taking on really big challenges in the last few years has helped me a lot in just getting to the point where I have no other choice. I don’t think I’m that good at asking for help. Like, you look at what sports I did in high school. I did swimming and running. How many other people do that with you? Zero?
Mahrukh Imtiaz
Wow. Yeah,
Sophia Woods
you know, I’m a very, like, independent and not that good for not that good. You know, depending on other people, I’m very good at like turning inward and trying to figure it out myself. And I do think like, to some extent the pandemic has pushed me to get in touch a little bit more with when I’m having trouble and lean on other people. Like I think it was obviously pushed almost everybody a little bit to their limits of whatever limit they had. And you know, it? I don’t know, I think before that, I think I didn’t think I had limits. Like yeah, just go keep going. Keep going. And
Mahrukh Imtiaz
you can do one more thing. Who cares? One more day, one more hour. Yep, in there.
Sophia Woods
And once you hit it, it’s kind of like, alright, sink or swim, got to figure out something else. And I’ve slowly been realizing Thank you, Erin, that, you know, I can ask for help before I’m sinking.
Mahrukh Imtiaz
I love that. And one thing that really came up for me, as you were saying that it felt all a lot like growth mindset. You know, I didn’t hear well, this is not for me. Maybe I should stop. It was very well, how do I fix it? Like So has that has that thought ever come to your mind? Like, you know, you’ve been blogging since ever your since childhood? From what I understand. All through out that writer’s block all writing through has it ever been like maybe I’m just not meant to blog? Maybe I shouldn’t just be blogging? Has it ever come to you?
Sophia Woods
Probably when I was writing my first few articles for this startup that, you know, I’d taken this course. And like I was, you know, I was very lucky that my high school put a really strong emphasis on writing. And so I was very lucky to be a quote unquote, good writer in terms of, you know, good grammar, nice sentences. But what I was writing was incredibly dry and academic. And as we know, that’s really very much not what goes in a blog. I’ve had lots of conversations with other content creators about this, like coming out of college, you start writing and you’re like, hence they’re two, four. According to Baker, citation, Page nine are the future. Um, no, I was like that. There. And, you know, the feedback from the people I was writing before was, you know, this is incredibly boring. No one’s gonna read this on a blog. And when I was previously blogging for myself, I wasn’t trying to inform anybody of everything of anything. It was basically like a journal. Have my thoughts. So it wasn’t, you know, the same kind of work, there was no middle ground. So I think, you know, with the first few, I was like, wow, I really suck. But, you know, also, I think like, I’ve always been someone who’s super curious and loves to try new things. And like, I’ve always thought that there was some great power in doing things that you really, really suck at. I’ve also blogged about this love. So I was just like, alright, well, let’s
Mahrukh Imtiaz
go when I know when I remember reading, so yes, I love it. I love it. And, you know, I think I think that’s, this is so important. Like, for me to mention this, again, despite your writing since childhood, going to college political science, where you wrote a lot more than coming out writing a lot 12 articles in a day at times, you still had that moment of, maybe I suck at this, maybe I shouldn’t do this. So and it’s just so normal for everyone to feel that way. And that’s why I’m like, pausing to make sure that everyone here is it like nobody ever feels like I got it all the time, all the time. Like, you know, hey, I got this, this is this is for me, it’s you will always have those moments of shit. Maybe I should quit. And that’s where you kind of have to push and push and push and like, what’s the actual problem? You know? So I love that you did that. And I’m going to take a bit of a tangent here. So I know you earlier mentioned that you were a ghost writer. And I would love to dive deeper into that. It’s tell us more about what does that look like? First of all, what is it ghostwriter from for people listening? And what does that look like? What does that career look like?
Sophia Woods
I’m glad you brought that up. Because I was you were making me think of a time one of one of the people I was writing for thought something I wrote was like so out of left field. And I was like, Well, I actually don’t know what this thing is that you’re asking me to write about. That happened to me a lot. But that was one of the ones where I was like, I tried so hard to understand what I was supposed to be writing about. And I could not figure it out for the life of me. So I wrote some like complete bullshit. I still wrote something. They were just not really correct. But anyway, um, so ghost writer is somebody who writes on behalf of someone else, usually a public figure, someone whose name is going to be a lot more recognized. And obviously, to some extent, the idea is just kind of to like be their hands and their time, that they may may well be able to, like create that idea, or they have the idea. They don’t have the time, or they’re not great writers or they don’t have you know, the Yeah, mostly the time or writing ability to enunciate their ideas on paper. And, you know, it’s, it’s how I started my career, which was really exciting to sometimes see my work, although it wasn’t under my name, like in these big magazines. I will say like, my name was in TechCrunch. So that makes me feel a little better.
Mahrukh Imtiaz
Yay. Nice.
Sophia Woods
Yeah, outside my own column and TechCrunch for a little while.
Mahrukh Imtiaz
Wow, did you apply for this? Like, what did that look like? Is it is it like someone? Did you wake up and be like, Alright, I’m gonna be a ghost writer. How did that happen? So,
Sophia Woods
so the ghostwriter thing came from this, this place, I was able to stay in Colombia. So it was really kind of part of my work there. I started just doing research for them. I started like outlining articles, and they would write them and then they taught me how to write. I said, like, owe them everything. And that kind of blossomed into this really niche skill set of understanding these Latin American startups and helping them you know, explain what they were doing in English in the US. There’s not a lot of native English speaking writers running around Latin America, especially like tech writers, but also speak fluent Spanish. So I had like, I realized, like, I kind of developed this very unique skill set. It’s sort of by accident, it wasn’t really a plan that I had. But it turned out to be incredibly useful. And actually, when the startup went under, I was I just gone to Chile back to Chile to visit some friends. Luckily, this VC that I ended up working for, was based in Chile. I reached out to them, I was still writing a bit but freelance part time, I needed work. And right away, I was able to talk to a bunch of different startups that were like, Oh, you speak English and Spanish and write and understand tech. Hi. We’d like to talk to you. And I was like, that’s fantastic. That’s great. So that’s kind of how that started. I can get into the TechCrunch thing, but I don’t want to drone on.
Mahrukh Imtiaz
No, I love it. And would you say it was good experience? Would you recommend it to people who are beginning their careers in blogging or really want to be bloggers? Is that something that you like? What was that experience like for you? Would you recommend to others
Sophia Woods
I’m not sure that I would recommend it to others not because it was not because I regret it, but because it was extremely scary. Like, I, I’m very lucky, I think that I, you know, come from a privileged background in which, you know, if I were to completely and entirely crash and burn, like, I would have a place to go home, but I have always had that kind of backup plan, not the not plan a obviously. But you know, when I went and did this startup, and then, you know, was writing, I was taking a huge risk, just like moving and I just graduated from college, I had no money at all. I think I drink one beer the whole time I lived in Colombia, because I didn’t have money. And I think it was just like, there’s a lot of putting yourself out there, and myths that I think I kind of under estimate, because that’s kind of just how I am. I’m very outgoing and gregarious. And I think I also like writing for this first startups and starting to write a little bit more and getting critiques and understanding how writing with editors worked, I have a pretty thick skin, about getting rejected. But you do have to, you know, really put yourself out there and like, pitch yourself and be willing to be rejected or like try to do things that you’ve never done before. I remember, like, right, when I arrived at this VC office, one of the startups tried to contract me to do their PR in Chile. And I was like, I have no contacts, I’ve never done PR, I literally created them a proposal about why I should not do it. And I’m like, I just think there’s a lot of unknowns, and there’s a lot of fear. So you have to be very aware of like how unstable and stressful it can be if it’s going to be your main source of income. Because I, I went through a lot of stress, when as well, obviously, a part of it was the startup failing, but then like, it wasn’t my it wasn’t enough income for me for a really long time for me to live off of it. And like one of my I think my rock bottom memory is running to a Chilean grocery store at about 8:30pm. This thing’s closing at nine to buy a Mr. Potato Head and some card like some construction paper to decorate my room so that I was ready for my 4am interview to teach English to Chinese kids. Because I didn’t know where else I was gonna make money. I didn’t have any of these jobs lined up yet. And I think like, there were some hard knocks like, right not it was not like, Oh, I was just writing my whole life. And then I had this great job and everyone, you know, wanted to hire me that was very much not it. So I’m very realistic about it. But like, I’m glad I did it. Would I tell other people to accidentally move to Chile, to an apartment with a bunch of strangers and try to make it work with freelance writing? Probably not.
Mahrukh Imtiaz
Right? No, I totally, totally get that. And thank you so much for being so vulnerable there and honest, and really letting people hear what some of those challenges were, as you went through your career and ghost writing, and I 100% believe you did learn a lot. But you’re Yeah, it could be something like a side hustle or something on the side. But it shouldn’t be a main line of income. So that’s, that’s super helpful. And the thing that I keep hearing is your persistence, your resilience, you know how you’re willing to just keep learning. And I know earlier, you mentioned that when you were blogging, you had a lot of stuff, and then you filtered it, and then you decided not to filter it. So I kind of want to take a bit of time, kind of going into that a little bit. Because that’s what happens to a lot of creators when they start. They want to, they want to create something and then they filter it out. And then they post it. So what helps you get over that, like, Hey, this is this is the post. I don’t need to filter it. I’m just gonna post it the way it is.
Sophia Woods
Um, before I say that, I just want to say like, I absolutely have nothing against teaching English online. I just thought was not
Mahrukh Imtiaz
Yes. 100%. No, no, no, I did not get that at all from it.
Sophia Woods
I just want to clarify, but yes, you know, nothing against it. Just I wanted to, you know, be a writer and work with startups. And that wasn’t that wasn’t my plan going the way it was supposed to be going?
Mahrukh Imtiaz
you had to make ends meet. And I think that’s what I got out of it that you were you were kind of letting us know that hey, this wasn’t my only job. I had to do other jobs. That’s what I actually did. And I hope the listeners get the best part. Exactly.
Sophia Woods
So in terms of like filtering, I think you know, there’s two layers to that for me. One of it is one Like, because I was writing under other people’s names for a long time, I didn’t have to worry as much about, you know, saying something controversial, that would blow back on me. Because, you know, they weren’t getting, they would receive the comments positive or negative, which also like has its drawbacks kind of, you know, obviously, you know, that tiny little, like, twinge, at least for me, who really likes to be recognized for my work, which most people I think do, like that tiny twinge of like, wish they would, you know, write my name on there. But, you know, it kind of does help you realize like, oh, you know, I’ve written this controversial thing. Yes. So white man saying it, so maybe they’ll be less criticized than me, but they’ve survived. So it’s probably okay. I will say, like, I don’t know. So the other layer is, like, in my own personal writing for my own blog that comes out under Sofia wood. I still feel really scared when I post stuff about my job, or post stuff about like, my outside work, you know, conservation work, working with indigenous communities, stuff like that, I think like, it just feels very sensitive and vulnerable and scary to me. And so actually, like, if you read, I don’t write that much about it. Or I try to kind of like distance myself from it. And I have about 14, six word articles in medium right now that have titles about things that are in those topics that I opened, and I’m like, can’t do it yet. And I’m not there yet. I think like, what I’ve had to learn, is to have some compassion with myself about that. And just say, like, you know, what, I’m gonna write about things that I feel comfortable with for now. And that I feel confident about, and there will be a day that I feel confident enough to write this article, and it will hang out here. And you know, until that time comes, and there’s really no point in publishing something that really, I mean, it’s fine to publish something that scares me. But there’s no point in publishing something that I don’t feel comfortable with right now. So I have kind of like pulled back a little bit there that not to say, I haven’t posted some fiery stuff under my own name. But only about things where I’m like, sure that either nobody knows enough to criticize me or probably won’t care.
Mahrukh Imtiaz
Right? No. And I love that, that your comfort level with Hey, this is where I’m at right now. And I’ll take it in the future. But what can I do? What can I do with what stuff that I have? And I love that. And the other thing I wanted to ask is in terms of blogging, and you know, you blogging under your name now, creating content, what opportunities has that opened up for you?
Sophia Woods
I would say before, even my personal blog, one thing that I didn’t really get into, and probably like, my biggest ever writing project, is a website called LATAM list, which was basically like what I founded or co founded with the VC firm where I was working, that was like, kind of how I started working with them. And it was created to be like the Latin American Tech Crunch, basically. And that literally, I you know, wrote the first 350 articles on my own, they all got under my name. And that, you know, then we had help, and actually the woman who’s in charge right now, like, started as an intern with us and, and she’s super awesome. I’m really glad that it the project has continued. But it grew a ton. While you know, while I was working there, it was two years that I did this project. And I gained a ton of recognition from it like to this day. So I really appreciate obviously, like the opportunity for my boss as well to like elevate me, he was really the one who, you know, helped us talk with TechCrunch and have this column for Latin American tech news and TechCrunch that was month for you that I wrote. And that was a huge opportunity, obviously, but I think just being you know, running late on list, co founding it being the name behind it, like people were sending me news, people recognize my name. My name was on, you know, the newsletter that was coming out every week. And literally, I still sometimes get like inbound about that. And, you know, we got blowback on some articles like even some of them that came out under other people’s names. Once we had other people working there. I would often be the person who received the comment As I knew I wasn’t, you know, the editor, and I got yelled at once, like called and yelled at. I just got this number off the internet, I’m so sorry. But, you know, I think, starting from there, it was a huge, you know, that was that was really the big, big, big opportunity that writing under my own name has given to me. And the medium blogging is still kind of like very small and new. But people seem to read it, people seem to like what I write. I wish I could dedicate a little bit more time to it. But I think it’ll eventually go somewhere. It’s one of those things like, I think back to the beginning of Latin bliss, which felt so slow and so hard. And now, you know, there’s 1000s of visitors a week or a month on our website, that anything needed to just kind of like, pile up.
Mahrukh Imtiaz
And that’s the thing about content in general, right? Like some of it just flies, there’s viral for a reason. And there’s some that takes its time, you know, you can write or create a video or do an Instagram post, maybe six months back, and somehow it catches fire a lot later, you just have different followers, you have different people different timelines. So yeah, totally. I totally understand that.
Sophia Woods
Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s kind of one of the things that always makes me like think about continuing to write that like the consistency is really what matters. Just continuing to publish, it doesn’t really matter who liked it doesn’t really matter who shared it doesn’t really matter who read it, or like you don’t even know who read it again, like going back to air. And I feel like it always talks about you know, you never know who you were touching who needed to hear that. And like two people reached out to me that I hadn’t talked to in like, five years after I posted one of my articles recently, that was like a completely random article. And you’re like, I really needed to read this today. Thanks so much for sharing Sophia.
Sophia Woods
And I was like, oh, that’s, that’s awesome. Like, a few of the articles we wrote on Latin was went super, super viral, which was very exciting. That has not yet happened with my medium, I’d love it to happen, it will keep posting
Mahrukh Imtiaz
exactly, it’s gonna be the one that you least expect it, you’re like, Oh, this one’s not gonna. And then that’s gonna go viral. So we will 100% believe that I’ve loved I’ve loved every part of this conversation, I think you’ve just completely talked about all your different careers. I loved hearing about ghost writing. And before this, I thought it was pretty cool gig. But I mean, I’m pretty sure it’s still cool. But it’s good to hear about the pros and cons of it too. So it’s kind of really important for everyone listening to understand, hey, someone can be doing a few things they might really love about it. And then a few things that they they will hate about it. So you have to get into whatever you want to get into knowing everything about it. Or be willing to see what what comes your way with it. The other thing I really loved is you’ve been writing for such a long while and you constantly bring that back in because you want to be in that space of this is this something I love doing. And I think that shows in your blog posts and your medium posts like you know, it just that this child is just like not not like calling your child but you know, you can see the fun and the excitement and the joy and even sometimes a sadness, like you know, in your writing. I think that that definitely takes a lot of skill. So before we get into our final question, could you please let the listeners know where they can find you online?
Speaker 1
Sure. My medium is I think, Sophia R wood. So you can find me on medium is Sofia R wood. My Twitter is the same. Obviously. Those are probably like the best places to follow me. If you’re looking for specifically my writing. My Instagram is private and pretty boring. Just pictures of me traveling around South America.
Mahrukh Imtiaz
Sounds exciting.
Sophia Woods
Yeah, if you want to book with my wild travels for work, and otherwise, you can I guess you can follow me at Sofia_Mereira. And, yeah, I think those are the main places really the medium blog is the place to be. I think that’s going to be the most the most interesting.
Mahrukh Imtiaz
I love it. I love it. And as Sofia mentioned, she’s written two articles on writer’s block. So I know we touched upon that in this episode. If you want to learn more, definitely go check it out. So final question for you, Sofia. What’s one piece of advice that you would give to Sofia, who was coming back into the world of blogging and starting her blog again?
Sophia Woods
That’s a good question. I was gonna say if you want if you want the child like me, you can go over the knee tree, which I think is probably my favorite poem that I’ve written a long time I wrote by myself while hiking in the woods in Patagonia. About a tree that looked like my knee. Let’s see advice for young, or even just currently. Yeah, I was struggling to keep getting into the world of medium. I’m
Mahrukh Imtiaz
about that one a little bit. Yeah, yes, it’s step one you can give them it could be one piece, it could be a couple of pieces of advice. Like,
Sophia Woods
I mean, yeah, I think one major one is, like, really just recognizing that all writing is not the same. Like, it could be that, you know, I was able to write 100 Page thesis, and then was able to write these articles for people which like, for, you know, on behalf of other people, which I found, you know, again, a very educational and interesting experience, despite my occasional desire to be recognized. And, like writing on my medium or writing personal pieces, fictional pieces is just a very different ballgame. And not thinking that like, or maybe not beating up on myself that because one of them can easily or can easier, the others should be the same. So I think that’s one of them. Like recognizing just because you know, you can write something in one form doesn’t mean that the next form is going to be easy. Like, it’s just like, starting over again, you have to be compassionate and patient and slow with yourself, which like, Sophia fear that right now, please. And I think also, like, you know, looking for just the, like, pure joy of it has been one of the things that I tried to come back to that I really struggle with, I think, maybe just like sitting in front of a computer, maybe it makes me feel a little bit of like, unhappy pressure. Because, like, I think the the modern, like iteration of my childhood, ridiculous rhyming poetry is like, my favorite thing to do while I’m working in the field is to write ridiculous sonnets about things that are pissing me off, which are usually about like mosquitoes, rain, invasive species, conservation. And like, that is so much fun. I don’t feel like that’s work. I don’t feel like that’s writing. It’s super ridiculous. And there’s no like, reason for it. And that I think that’s, like, probably healthy compared to what I like, put a lot of pressure on, like, you’re gonna make money, or you’re gonna be famous, or people are gonna care. And like, when it comes down to it, I just have to remember that, like, I love to write, and it’s super fun. I actually enter like fiction writing competitions, just, ooh, just because of that, because I’m like, I need you know, three prompts, that I’m gonna write the wildest thing that comes into my mind.
Mahrukh Imtiaz
I love that I love that piece of advice is just doing it for the love of it, and not going after Oh, fame, or virality? Or what will people think it’s because at the end of the day, from my understanding, at least from my experience of content creation, there are a lot more bad days and good days, in general. And to put up with that, you can’t be going after the money, at least, that’s what I’ve realized, it’s like to put up with that you must really love this, you know, so 100%,
Sophia Woods
I struggled, I struggled so much with the like, publish every day versus work in Polish. And I’m like, work on something really nice and fancy. Because there’s benefits to both, you can’t just like sit on an egg forever, and hope that this beautiful little polish thing is going to come out to some extent, that like that’s, that’s the tough, that’s the thick skin thing that like, if you’re going to be putting stuff out there, it’s, it’s a tiny piece of your soul. Always, even if you feel you can be separate from it, it is yours. And someone’s gonna have something to say about it. Or at least someone could say something about it. And you’d have to be ready to like, let it blow over or edit it or do whatever you were going to do, but like not take it personally.
Mahrukh Imtiaz
100% and the other part of that is like you’re right, it is part of you that you’re putting out there. There might be people who have something to say about it, or there might be like crickets. No one says anything about it. That’s gonna hurt his man much, right? I mean, he’s just like, alright, well, that sucks. Like, you know, so, I mean, that’s just a reality of it. And then you get a few posts in where there’s like 19 to 25 comments and you’re like, oh, okay, so this like it’s going back to that lot more bad days and good days and people coming into this. You must really love it like you must Just love the process of it and not go after the virality and the fame and the money. So yeah, love exactly
Sophia Woods
articles have all come out of that attitude of just like, this seems fun. This seems like a place where I can add value or where I can explore something deeper, or, like, this seems exciting to write. So I was gonna say like, last thing, you know, one of the blogs on my medium is about you inspired me to do like more writing just for the fun of it. And, you know, trying to make it fun again, like almost some extent, like engineer the fun, when it doesn’t seem that fun. I know you create way more content than I do. But I definitely was, especially like, you know, depths of pandemic, kind of like where, you know, I’m just scraping the bottom empty watercop here, like trying to put something out there, and there’s nothing there. I will say, I did find myself a lot of new clothes based on our system.
Mahrukh Imtiaz
You know, thank you for mentioning that. And I do remember reading that article. And I was I was honestly taken aback. I was like, Oh my God, this feels amazing that someone heard it was Erin’s podcast, ship starters. And they were inspired. And, you know, it’s just, it’s so nice to hear that. And you’re right. It’s kind of what I have to apply. And, I mean, we’ve been trying to get on this podcast for a bit and you know that you’ve been very patient with me. And it’s one of those things where, if I wasn’t having fun with all of this with my current schedule, I wouldn’t be doing it. Like, you know, it’s, I have even this carnage and I had so much fun, like, you know, and I think a lot of it has to do with, like, you kind of don’t have to give a fuck when you mess up. Like, you know, you kind of have to be in there. Like, I fucked up, they’re probably think I’m shit. But who cares? Let them think I’m sure like, you know, because at the end of the day, I still get my weekly podcast done. At the end of the day, I still get posts on Instagram don’t still get post on LinkedIn done. So I just feel like the mastering disaster thing. This really helps me it’s your going to be more of a disaster than the master and being so okay with it. It also allows me to have fun again. Do I know if I’m a great podcast? Yes, I think I am. But people can think you can think differently. And that’s okay.
Sophia Woods
So you dont have to listen,
Mahrukh Imtiaz
exactly, you just put the earplugs in, like, Fuck off, I got this. I’m doing this. And it’s kind of put for me. I don’t know if this happens to you. But just kind of. For me, I always think it’d be so cool to listen to this and five years and see where I am. Oh, see where the guest is like, you know, and I plan to totally do that. Like, you know, five years of like, before and after, like, you know, so no pressure, you know,
Sophia Woods
hope to be a medium millionaire by then it will be
Mahrukh Imtiaz
you will be. I’ll take some of the profits. But you know, we’ll talk well, we’ll talk through details.
Sophia Woods
Scott, I have an agent already.
Mahrukh Imtiaz
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being on here. Thank you so much for bringing all of you thank you so much for being so honest about all your different experiences. For everyone listening if you’re a writer, if you want to learn more about writer’s block if you want to learn about how to go through different experiences as your writer, please listen to this episode. If you were inspired, share this episode with your friends and definitely check out to fee as blog hint, the one that I was in that’s even better, but if not, definitely check out her medium blog. She writes with passion, joy and emotion and I’ve absolutely loved it. So thank you again for being on here Sophia. And thank you. For everyone else. I will see you next week. And like I say always, you got this beautiful
