The Writing Show 2006 Archives

Welcome to The Writing Show's first anniversary special. To celebrate our first year of podcasting, we thought it would be fun to take a behind-the-scenes look at the show: how it came about, how we produce it, and where we're headed.

Join Writing Show host Paula B. as she explains:

* How she and her husband Alan decided to start The Writing Show

* What her original plans for the show were, and how she's strayed from them

* How she selected author Michael Dean to help her kick off the podcast

* What she's done that she would absolutely, positively undo if she could

* How listeners have helped shape the show

* Whether show length matters

* What she does in a typical week

* How she finds guests

* How she and Alan record and post-process the show

* How they plan to expand the Web site and make it a comfortable place for writers to hang out

* How they plan to monetize The Writing Show

* How you can get involved with the show.

The Little Owl Mentoring Program is a joint effort between Hope Clark, editor of FundsforWriters.com, and Elisabeth Wilhelm, editor of Absynthe Muse, a writing community for young adults. The program connects young adult writers (13-22) with experienced adult writers who mentor them in an all-volunteer free program. Whether the young adult writer's interest is poetry, fiction, nonfiction, or drama, he or she will be paired with an approved mentor who will work with him or her on accomplishing an agreed upon goal. This goal can be big ("I want to pitch my poetry collection to a New York literary agency") or small ("I want to learn how to write authentic-sounding dialogue that fits in a murder mystery novel set in 30s Chicago.").

Little Owl (Athene noctua) is the bird species that used to hang around Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom, the arts, and warfare. Owls came to symbolize wisdom and clarity of thought. Ancient Greeks used to think that owls had special lamps in their heads that allowed them to see in darkness. The Little Owl Mentoring Program brings adult writers who have grown big, fuzzy eyebrows together with the young writers who don't plan on growing big eyebrows anytime soon.

Elizabeth Wilhelm is the editor-in-chief of online young adult writing community Absynthe Muse and co-founder of the Little Owl Mentoring Program. She started writing seriously after completing a homework assignment for US History which involved stained "old" paper and acrylic blood artistically spattered across old style print. Today, she spends far too much time arguing in third person in Model United Nations and other youth conferences around the world and writing articles on sex, stories about Greek myths gone horribly wrong, editing artsy-fartsy things, and working on so many projects she has a hard time keeping them straight and her friends have declared her insane.

Pam Lord has been writing fantasy, horror and scifi for over three decades. She alarmed her grade-school teachers by using her vocabulary lists to make stories of zombies and werewolves. For the past two years she has been living in Israel finishing two novels in a fantasy series, finding a publisher, and enjoying doing what she loves: writing.

Tiffany Lodoen is a 20-year-old education student who will be teaching English once university is finished. She has been writing since middle school. Along with working with Absynthe Muse, an international young adult writers' community, she is also a senior editor at kiwibox.com.

In this enlightening interview, Elisabeth explains the program, and Pam and Tiff tell what it's like to participate, including:

* How the program got started and who runs it

* What the program entails

* Who can participate

* How mentors and mentees are paired up

* How the program's organizers protect mentees' privacy and look out for their well-being

* What happens if mentor and mentee find they're not a good fit

* How their new outreach to incarcerated teens is going and how you can help

* How one pair works together

* How the mentee deals with taking criticism

* What they've learned from the experience

* How you can get involved.

In 2003, Paula Berinstein and her husband did a really stupid thing: they started an online bookstore. In 2004, humiliated and a great deal poorer (but wiser), they closed it.

In episode 6 of How Not to Run an Online Bookstore, Paula talks about what it was like working through Amazon.com's third-party marketplace, including:

* Why they ended up selling through Amazon in the first place

* How much it costs to sell through Amazon

* What's involved in listing your books for sale

* Why the physical condition of a book sold through Amazon is so critical

* How to clean dirty books

* Why it's so tricky pricing books for sale through Amazon's marketplace

* What they did about sales tax

* Why customer ratings aren't all they're cracked up to be

* How they managed to sell books they didn't have and what they did about it

* How Amazon could do a lot better by its marketplace sellers

* Why it isn't profitable to sell new books through Amazon's marketplace.

Join Paula for this multi-part series that will be aired a little at a time. And for heaven's sake, don't do what she did!

Writing games isn't just for programmers anymore. Increasingly, fiction writers are turning their talents to videogames, where they can see their stories produced in visual form.

What are the challenges of writing a story-based game? This week we meet a writer and a techie who have taken the plunge into this exciting new world.

Leander and Kristy Harding are a husband and wife game development team from southern New Hampshire. Leander is a software engineer and creator of the game Onslaught. Kristy is a writer, blogger, and full-time undergraduate student working toward her B.A. in English literature. The couple is currently developing an action role-playing game (RPG), Times Like These, to be released in spring 2007.

In this fascinating interview, Kristy and Leander discuss:

* How they got the idea for the game

* How they drew inspiration from literature and other games

* How they got started on their story

* What the development process has been like

* How writing for games is different from other fiction writing

* How they're integrating their story with the game play

* What they've done when they've run into roadblocks

* Whether it's possible to have rounded characters in games

* How they see the role of the player in story-based games

* How they're designing their game to work well for both beginning and experienced gamers

* How they plan to develop community around their game and incorporate player feedback into their design

* What it's like to work together on the game considering their different skills and interests.

What could be more fun than comic books? In this high-adrenaline interview, comic book writer Buddy Scalera reveals insider secrets of the comic book industry and explains how you too can write comics. Beware: you may be so inspired that you drop everything and start scribbling madly!

Buddy Scalera is a professional comic book writer and journalist. He is the author of 7 Days to Fame, a comic book series about a reality show in which contestants win by committing suicide. He has also written stories for the comic book series Deadpool, X-Men, Marvel Knights, and Marvel Millenial Visions as well as more than 100 articles on the topic of comic books. He also wrote and hosted ComixVision, a cable-access television show that explained the comic book hobby to mainstream viewers. And, with his partner Darren Sanchez, he has released the graphic novels Necrotic and Celestial Alliance. Buddy is also self-publishing Visual Reference for Comic Artists, a series of multimedia art-reference CD-ROMs.

Join Buddy and host Paula B as they explore the fabulous world of comics, including:

* What the characteristics of good comic book writing are

* How comic book writing differs from other kinds of writing

* What the process is, from idea to production

* How comic book writers work with artists and editors

* How comic book writers decide on the number of frames per page and what goes in those frames

* How long it takes to produce a comic book

* What it's like to break into the business

* Whether comic book writers can survive financially

* How you can produce your own comics

* How comic books are marketed

* Who buys comic books

* How comics have changed over the years.

From Summer of Champions:

"Greg had made me cry until third grade when Mom explained to me that he had been adopted from an orphanage in Albuquerque. I was to pay him no attention, but I found that hard to do. He could come up with scary things to think about! So scary that I imagined his real parents were Bonnie and Clyde, the bank robbers. When they were shot to death at the roadblock in Louisiana, their hoodlum baby Greg was in the backseat in a bulletproof crib. He was put up for adoption in New Mexico where no one knew what a public menace he would grow up to be."

Experienced writers often counsel "Write what you know." But it's difficult to write about yourself or your own experience and weave a compelling story. It's tempting to throw in too much, or to insist that because that's the way it was, that's the way the story should be. This week we visit with one author who, in his very first attempt, got it right and produced a riveting coming of age story.

Dewey Johnson was born in Lubbock, Texas, and grew up in Roswell, New Mexico. He is a pastor, standup comedian, and the creator of the High Desert Home Companion as well as the coming-of-age novel, Summer of Champions.

In this breezy and inspiring interview, Dewey discusses:

* How he approaches turning autobiography into fiction

* How he reveals his characters

* Why some of his characters were easy to write, and some difficult

* What his greatest writing challenges are

* How he edits to achieve a clean, tight style

* How his consumer book came to be published by a university press.

Welcome to The Writing Show's very first Q and A podcast!

To kick off our new series, we examine what happens to self-published authors who want to pitch their work to traditional publishers. We asked three publishers for their take:

* John Bryans, Editor-in-Chief and Publisher, Information Today, Inc. and Plexus Publishing

* Olga Gardner Galvin, publisher, ENC Press

* Sue Lutz Hamilton, publisher, Dialogue Publishing.

Many thanks to Steve Tupper, a 2005 NaNoWriMo participant, for submitting the question:

Suppose that an author has self-published through Lulu, etc. but the author still wants the validation of being published by a major publisher. Does the fact that the author has self-published the book (print, e-book, etc.) that the author is submitting turn off publishers who might otherwise consider picking up the book? Would the author be sticking his thumb in the eye of a major publisher by submitting a copy of the Lulu-published hardcover instead of the 8.5 x 11 manuscript? Even if the author submits his manuscript on 8.5 x 11 paper like everybody else, does professional courtesy require that the author tell the publisher up front that the book has been self-published and marketed on a small scale (and I suspect that it would, being that the publisher wouldn't be getting the actual first distribution of the book and probably deserves to know that).

All writers have a favorite way of editing their work that fits in with their personality and temperament. Today we talk with one writer who is perfecting a fascinating new method: reading his work aloud, recording it, and asking the world for feedback.

Micah Dubinko is a Senior Research Developer at Yahoo!, published nonfiction author, and geek. His book, Xforms Essentials, was published in hard copy by renowned tech publisher O'Reilly, and also online under an open content license, making it free for others to copy and modify.

Micah is currently editing his first novel, written last National Novel Writing Month, aloud on the Web.

In this fascinating interview, Micah discusses:

* Why he decided to edit his novel aloud on the Web

* How a typical editing session works

* What he's learned from editing his work this way

* How editing aloud can help a writer produce perfect work

* How editing a novel differs from editing a nonfiction book

* How listeners can offer feedback on his novel.

Storytelling is becoming increasingly important in games. Changing gamer demographics, increasing sophistication among developers, and other factors are helping to expand the field so much that game companies are now hiring writers to work alongside programmers and artists.

This week, we visit with Tim King, a software engineer, writer, musician, and story enthusiast, who has had a long love affair with story-based videogames. Tim produces "be the story," a podcast about stories and telling them.

In this fascinating interview, we explore the world of story-based games, including:

* Which types of games feature stories

* How developers integrate game play with storytelling

* How players interact with and experience games that feature strong stories

* What makes for good and not-so-good storytelling in a game

* What cut scenes are and how they affect game play

* What some of the best games with stories are.

This week's show is about how to get that green stuff: money. Most of us are familiar with the usual sources: publishing contracts, magazine gigs, selling a script to Hollywood. But there are other ways of making money writing.

C. Hope Clark is editor and founder of FundsforWriters.com and author of The Shy Writer: The Introvert's Guide to Writing Success. What started out as helping a few writing friends, evolved into a newsletter and ebook business online that serves 17,000 writers each week. Hope has 25 years in federal service in lending, grants, and personnel management and uses this background often in her work advising other writers.

In this exciting interview, Hope reveals:

* What grants and fellowships are

* Who awards grants and fellowships

* How to increase your chances of getting a grant

* Why you should contact your local community foundation

* What some of the lesser-known markets for writing are and how to find out about them

* How you can maximize your earnings as a writer

* How to write a foolproof query letter.