Freelance Pod

Journalist, poet and publisher / writer of media criticism newsletter Conquest of the Useless, Mic Wright guests on this episode. This is the last one of the current second season. Don't worry though, I'll be back with more great guests later in the year! 

Mic both works within the media, and makes a living critiquing it, through his newsletter and Twitter feed. On this episode, he tells me how he does it, how it impacts upon him and what advice he'd give to a new journalist.

Lauren Razavi joins me on this episode to talk about the future of work, how writers can use influencer tools to benefit their careers and what the digital nomad lifestyle might look like post-COVID-19.

At a tricky moment when we're gingerly leaving lockdown and wondering how our offices are going to work, it's helpful to speak to Lauren, who's spent a lot of her career writing and speaking about what work could look like in the years to come.

In 2011, two years after American radio producer and reporter Kim Fox had moved to Cairo to take up a teaching role at The American University of Cairo, the Egyptian Revolution happened, in response to increasing police brutality on what would turn out to be the dying days of President Hosni Mubarak's presidency. 

Kim spent time at the demonstrations in Tahrir Square, which involved up to 2 million people.

Alex Bertulis-Fernandes is a comedian and writer. She's been doing stand-up for the past year, and she is writing a memoir while being mentored on the Penguin WriteNow mentoring scheme*. We met at the late, much-loved Clean Prose writers' space a few months ago, at a memoir-writing workshop taught by writer Cathy Rentzenbrink. Alex was actually the person who broke some comedy news to me last week - that I was a nominee for the Funny Women Stage Awards 2020.

Freelance writer and author Flora Baker has combined memoir and a self-help guide in her first book, The Adult Orphan Club.

Flora lost her mother at 20, and her father at 30, just a few years ago. We 'met' via the Young Orphans Whatsapp group, although thanks to lockdown we have not yet met in person. 

After her mother's death, Flora went travelling for five years, and detailed her adventures on her blog, Flora the Explorer. Travelling allowed her to postpone doing the work of grieving.

MEL Magazine's deputy editor Alana Levinson joins me on this episode to talk about how necessary editing is for good writing - but it's been devalued in a digital world where any of us can press publish whenever we like. 

And yes, she also delves into the origins of The Great Solicited Dick Pic Experiment by MEL writer Miles Klee, and what the piece revealed about the difference between male and female experiences of the internet.

When I saw Marie Foulston's tweet about the lockdown houseparty that she threw in a spreadsheet, I knew that I had to invite her onto the podcast to hear all about it!

Marie is now a freelance creative producer and playful curator, and was most recently Curator of Videogames at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

Marie tells me about the anxiety of organising the spreadsheet party and waiting for her friends to arrive - just like hosting an IRL soirée!

Joining The Writers' Hour every morning for one week early on in lockdown helped me break through the cobwebs and write the outline of the book that I've been working on for the past year, in fits and starts. I used the hour to write longhand, which always helps unlock my creativity. 

The Writer's Hour is a simple idea: every weekday morning between 8 and 9am BST, the founders of The London Writers' Salon, Parul Bavishi and Matt Trinetti, hold a Zoom meeting where writers turn up and... write.

We're tackling some big subjects on this episode of Freelance Pod: imposter syndrome, how social media leads to 'compare and despair' and how living under a pandemic lockdown affects our sense of self.

Joining me for this episode is Dr. Richard Orbé-Austin, author and licensed psychologist in the state of New York. He's particularly interested in how freelancers and creatives can build strategies to combat imposter syndrome.

This is the live show from November 2019, when author Gemma Milne joined me onstage at the beautiful Boulevard Theatre in Soho, London. 

Gemma's book Smoke & Mirrors: How Hype Obscures the Future and How to See Past It is available for pre-order now, and is out on 23rd April. It comes in audio form too, narrated by Gemma herself. 

It's the perfect book for the Age of Covid-19.