Today’s special guest is writer Gisela Hausmann to talk with me about her non-fiction motivational life-skills book, Naked Determination: 41 Stories About Overcoming Fear.
Bio:
Proverbial adventurer Gisela Hausmann was born in Vienna, Austria. Her first career was in the movie industry where she learned to solve the many problems of directors, movie producers, and some better-known European movie stars.
After meeting her husband, she switched industries and together, they successfully produced and published two aerial photography coffee table books (and two beautiful children). Tragically, Gisela’s husband died when their children were only seven and eight years old.
Because the Hausmanns had immigrated to the United States, Gisela was now all alone – with two young children, nonstop battling “issues” and “problems.”
That’s when the old problem-solver skills came in handy, helping Gisela not only in tackling the issues but also publishing two dozen nonfiction books. Some of her work has been featured on Bloomberg, in SUCCESS magazine, and in Entrepreneur.
Welcome, Gisela. Please tell us about your current release.
This is an updated (Nov 2023) edition of my life-skills book, Naked Determination: 41 Stories About Overcoming Fear. When I originally published it in 2012, the “new fears of the 21st century – climate disasters, ever-increasing corporate power, as well as robots & AI, which eliminate or degrade our jobs, weren’t as threatening or did not even exist. Now they are/do and so I felt I needed to update Naked Determination.
What inspired you to write this book?
I wanted to write a real life-skills book – for real people. All too often, life-skills and self-help books are written by people who are in a completely different orbit.
For example, Sheryl Sandberg, who also lost her husband at a young age, and who also had two young children like I did, also wrote a life-skills book – “Option B.” But while, in a way, our situations were similar, they also were completely different. At the time when tragedy struck, Sandberg had 1 billion dollars in the bank. Can she even imagine the issues we “regular people” encounter?
“Regular people” need a completely different set of skills to overcome the fears which threaten to derail us. That’s why I decided to reveal what I learned in the years since disaster threatened my and my kids’ future.
What exciting project are you working on next?
A few years ago, I published “Are We Nuts?,” a fable in the vein of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm.” My fable’s protagonists are squirrels, who “relive” the history of the United States and discover a huge scandal the Sciurus States’ squirrel politicians are trying to hide.
I’ve been working on the second book of the series for quite some time and hope to release it mid-2024.
When did you first consider yourself a writer?
During my first career in Austria’s movie industry, I used to work (writing/editing/reediting) on commercials. Then, I worked in marketing and penned marketing brochures, flyers, and postcards (‘snail mail direct mailing’). Finally, in 1988 and 1993, I wrote the descriptions for the pictures of the two coffee-table books my husband and I published in Austria. By that time, I felt solid about writing all sorts of texts, but it took until 2010 until I started writing my first book rather than “write for hire.”
Do you write full-time? If so, what’s your workday like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?
Unfortunately, I still have to work because my husband died so young and I had to raise our children alone. As for finding the time – I just cut out everything else. Since I work in logistics, which can be rather dull, writing is entertaining relief for me.
What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
LOL, I figured out how to beat writer’s block. Like most people I am not a big fan of cleaning, and I am using this “condition” to my advantage. Whenever I get stuck with my writing I start some annoying cleaning job, such as wiping the baseboards or cleaning the space behind the refrigerator, and – almost miraculously – as soon as I begin such a task, my writer’s block “evaporates.”
As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
My first job choice was archaeologist and then oceanographer. Eventually, I decided to make a career in the movie industry. The highlight of that career was working on a movie with Armin Mueller-Stahl in the title role. The readers of your blog may remember Armin portraying Cardinal Strauss in the movie adaptation of Dan Brown’s “Angels & Demons.”
Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
I just wanted to remind your readers to “Never wait!” when an extraordinary opportunity pops up. Opportunities have a habit of disappearing, today even faster than only twenty years ago, because of the many technological advancements.