a podcast about writing, work, and friendship
In this week’s episode, we had the great opportunity to quiz Tom Hodgkinson on all our questions about his life and work philosophy and his much-beloved (by us) books, How to be Idle and Business for Bohemians. We really enjoyed the conversation with him, and it got us all fired up to start a zine!
Listen and check out the full show notes here, or in your favorite podcast app.
In Episode 52, we cover some great real-life stuff in a candid (read: very lightly edited) conversation.
We talk about the big day job news we were super shady about a month ago, and then we talk about how that’s changed our approach to our writing. We specifically like how making a big choice in your personal life can take away the pressure of making choices in your creative life – it’s weirdly freeing. And we talk about feeling like a writer when you’re too busy/sick to write much, and how the daydreaming and thinking about your novel is part of the novel, too.
You can find the episode and show notes here.
In today’s episode, we talk to Paul Jarvis, whose new book Company of One: Why Staying Small Is the Next Big Thing in Business is all about growing in a way that’s best for you and your audience. We love applying his lessons – like how to sell and market if you’re an introvert, and how to know if you’re just scared or something isn’t right – to the creative life.
The full show notes are here.
We are going full-clickbait with this question in Episode 49, which you can listen to here, or on your favorite podcast aggregator.
We answer that question, and then turn to a discussion of what we’re loving about this podcast and our friendship. Finally, we finish up with our recent branding decisions – new colors and typefaces. We hope you like it, but let us know what you think!
You probably already know from the podcast that I love my Google alerts. So good for keeping up with poets you like but can’t Google every day, and for keeping up with concepts you’re curious about. (My favorite Google alert is about head transplants. Read about it – it’s a thing.)
Anyway, I also have a series of alerts about writing and day jobs, and so we are starting a monthly round-up of stories of other people who are writing their books and getting published – all while not writing full-time. Read about them, and know that you can do it, too!
The April Round-Up:
Financial Times‘s profile of corporate workplace novelist and HR professional Jillian Medoff. She wrote on weekends and in the evenings. Her website is here, and her latest book, published earlier this year, is This Could Hurt.
The Observer published this profile of Hanya Yanagihara, who works as a journalist in her day job and published the critically acclaimed A Little Life a couple years ago. The interview and profile are engaging and fun to read, and she’s a big advocate of the day job:
In Yanagihara’s case, returning to the magazine world was a question of disposition and financial necessity. While a big seller by the standards of literary fiction, A Little Life was hardly Fifty Shades of Grey and Yanagihara lives in an apartment in downtown Manhattan with overheads that serious novels don’t support. It’s a stylish life and while she is dressed today in workman-like denim, an advertisement for the daylight-hours side of her nature, elsewhere whimsy reigns.
Canada’s Globe and Mail published this profile of lawyer and author of 8 books Catherine McKenzie. Her latest book is The Good Liar; her site is here. I enjoyed reading about the different genres she’s written in, and her overall path to being more confident in her writing. I also liked how they played on the “on the side” theme for this bio:
Instead, McKenzie’s Montreal fans learned that the novelist is a lawyer on the side. Or rather that, on the side of her 18-year legal career, which has taken her to the Supreme Court of Canada five times, she writes novels.
FemaleFirst.co.uk’s profile of the UK writer and former medical secretary Sheila Norton. She wrote her first 8 (of 18!) books in her spare time while working. Her latest book is The Pets at Primrose Cottage, and this is her website.
This roundup of young Australian authors has a good blurb on Shaun Prescott, a tech and gaming writer, as well as a novelist of the new book The Town.
In this profile in the Pacific Daily News, Michael Perez worked for decades in the Guam Department of Education, and has just published a book about an autistic girl, The Scream of Innocence.
This is a little out of tune with our “keep your day job” theme, but I still enjoyed this Guardian profile of the UK novelist Sarah Perry, whose The Essex Serpent has been really popular there and abroad in the past year. It starts strong, and keeps going well:
My first book was published when I was 34. I was at that time a copywriter, earning a living by removing errant apostrophes from clothing catalogues, and drafting news reports for legal journals. Before then, I had been a civil servant (a job to which I was ill-suited in every respect), a minimum-wage shop worker, a nanny, an office temp and a legal administrator. Often I am asked what possessed me to join the civil service straight after graduation, and the frank answer is that I had supported myself financially since I was 18, and needed to earn a living: writing, my long-held ambition, would have to wait.
… It never occurred to me that I would be able to make a living from writing fiction, and I did not in the least resent my day job, though naturally I occasionally imagined finding a hoard of Saxon gold in the back garden.
And, it turns out Agatha Christie worked as an apothecary. Which makes a lot of sense for her books.
Meghan and I have both had a lot of work travel, and we have also been recording pep talks that we wanted to share with you. So, instead of a full-length episode, we have not just one but three pep talks to share:
Pep Talk #4 from our Episode 33 interview with poet and book publicist Abigail Welhouse, where she reminds us that people probably don’t care, but if they do, it’s such an amazing gift. And that writing is all about connection:
Pep Talk #5 from Meghan that should calm your nerves if you’re in one of those times where you’re not writing. Are you still “a writer”? Listen to this:
And Pep Talk #6 is a real-life conversation that Olivia and Meghan had, when Olivia wasn’t sure if she should continue with this novel, her first. Meghan had some great words of advice:
All our Pep Talks can be found here on our new Pep Talk page.
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Yesterday I saw this article on TheMillions blog about Fiona Mozley, a writer with a 9-to-6 job who started writing her Man-Booker-Prize-finalist novel Elmet on her commute. I really liked this quote from her:
the sentences and paragraphs I wrote on my phone during my commute were very useful for keeping up the momentum. Sometimes when you’re writing–particularly if you’re working full time–you can have periods of writing nothing at all. Even if I found myself unable to write full sections, jotting ideas down on my phone meant that I felt a constant sense of progression.
I really liked this, and I liked her journey that she went on – from writing as an escape from a job and from a life that wasn’t working for her, to moving out of London and gradually building up confidence through part-time work. It is a good article just to get a sense of one writer’s journey.
I am not usually a commuter-writer; in my Eastern Europe city, I walk to work, and in London I was usually on a crowded Tube car. But I totally get the appeal – even apart from the obvious aspects that it’s just a chunk of time you can’t ever get back. I have done it a few times, when something was burning in my head, or when I just didn’t feel right and I needed to get it down. I have written a couple of really powerful scenes or parts of scenes in the Tube, and I always feel like I’m on fire, and like I have an important secret that is somehow also public (you’re surrounded by people, after all), and it does feel like magic.
As writers (and as podcast hosts!) sometimes we read the news about different writers’ routines to find out the magic formula, what can help us to finish our novel or inspire people. But when you really break it down, like this article does, it’s just about making small steps that turn into big leaps – and suddenly you’re writing a real book.
With Mozley, maybe if she’d thought about quitting her job to do a PhD when she first started, it would have sounded like too much, too hard (I don’t know, just speculating). But after she’s spent hours and days on this book, maybe it felt more possible – more and different things feel possible about writing once you start doing the actual writing when you can. Once you start working writing into your life, it also changes your life.
Writing on your commute, like writing during your lunch break or before or work or after work, is a signal that you’re taking yourself and your private, secret work seriously. And that can be hard when you’re working full-time, or when you’re caring for others full-time, or anything else you think you should pay more attention to than your own projects. But still we do it. We wake up early, or we huddle into our jackets and write away on a tiny notebook so no one can watch us on the train. We start typing ideas in our phones, or we try to type some sentences on the Tube or train.
It helps us to become who we are, and the practice of doing it helps us to find out who we are, too.
Today, we answer a listener question from Maria, who wanted to know how we approach research. We talk about how all books need research, not just nonfiction historical fiction, when to google and when to ask someone, the stages of research, and our tools and processes.
Next week will be our monthly writing prompt episode, so don’t forget to send in your responses! All our prompts are here, and even if you don’t want us to share yours on air, we’ll still send you a critique and enter you into our drawing for fun writer mail.
You can listen to the full episode and get show notes here.
Let us know — how do you handle research? What are your favorite tools and methods?
Good morning! A post from the trenches of margin-writing today. I wanted to write you a post called something like “How to get started writing in the morning if you can’t remember what your book is about.” But then I realized that I am in that situation right now and I have no idea how to start again, and only 28 minutes to write, so I would be a hypocrite if I wrote you a blog about that. And I don’t have time to both remember what my book is about and write a blog post.
So this post is what not to do when you’re staring at the screen early in the morning and can’t remember what your book is about.
First of course, don’t start writing a blog post. Is this your book? No, it is not.
Oh well.
Second, do not let your cats sit on your notebook and cuddle up with each other. They will look too cute and then you will not be able to move them. And if you do, then they will just start eating everything on your desk, and that is also annoying.
Third: definitely do not look at Facebook. You will not find your book on there. One time (literally just one time) I had to go on Facebook to check out someone who was a fashion inspiration for a character. The rest of the time, I was just procrastinating.
(Point 3 also goes for Pinterest, although I do use it more for research than Facebook. You can see proof of this on our Marginally Pinterest page, which is not my personal Pinterest. I had a serious Pinterest addiction and have had to separate my writing account from the one about beautiful bedrooms and vegan baking.)
Another tip: don’t organize anything. Organization is a great procrastination technique, but you don’t need procrastination when you have max 1 hour to write in the morning. Organization is a great thing to do in the evening.
Fifth, don’t turn on your phone. I keep my phone on airplane mode until after I’ve written (or at least theoretically). Days when I don’t do that, my brain gets fried and it’s super hard to sit down to write.
Sixth, don’t forget to light your candles and turn on the music that makes you know you’re ready to write! That’s your ritual! Why did you forget??
In short, writing isn’t working for me this morning, so I’m going to go meditate. I’m really thinking about shifting my writing routine to the evening.
PS – I’m going to put this smug quote from an Earlier Me here for a bit of irony.
Today we have award winner Brian Katcher on to talk about writing for young adults, starting new, starting over, and really killing your darlings — like, whole project kind of darlings — and how to move on from disappointment and celebrate success. We also talk research and balancing work with a day job.
Check out the full show notes here.