Unpublished

This is one of those episodes where we'll be working through an issue in real time. Join us as we try to understand how artists progress their skills, how long it might take to get better as an artist, plateaus, and why you're often progressing faster than you think.

Credit to James Clear for the concept of non-linear improvement (I can't remember if we actually name dropped him in the episode). We highly recommend his book, Atomic Habits.

Our Write Your F***ing Book course is on sale now! Don't forget, if you sign up before September 9th, you can submit any additional questions you have to us and we'll post our answer to the course page as a video.

We are so excited to have recorded our first IN PERSON guest recording ever for today's episode. I want to give a little warning too about the sound. Since we only have two mics, we had to share! The audio might be a little choppy in places but I think it holds up.

We were so pleased to have father-daughter bakers, Kitty and Al Tait from the ORANGE BAKERY, around our kitchen table.

Kitty and Al are the authors of the award winning cookbook and memoir, Breadsong, where they not only share their amazing recipes, but also tell the incredibly moving story of how the creative act of baking completely changed their lives. Their story is so moving and I can't wait for you to hear them walk you through some of it in their own words.

We talk about: the life changing magic of baking, going into business with your Dad at 14, pivoting when something that is working on the surface isn't serving you, 20 year plans, and so much more!

I'm also very sorry it's such a short episode when we could have easily chatted to them for hours. They very generously gave us an hour and a half window, but I (James) ate up half of it talking about how good Australian coffee is before we started recording!

You can find Kitty on instagram and the Orange Bakery website here.

If you've ever wanted to hear Amie and James have an argument in podcast form, we have a treat for you! This podcast was inspired by a few podcasts and interviews with celebrities lately where they just seem to never be able to enjoy their success. We ask whether it's even possible for humans to enjoy their wins, or if we're doomed to always be chasing the next thing.

Our new course, Write Your F*cking Book is out on August 9th! You can check out the sales page now for more info.

This is the non-fiction partner to our favourite fiction books episode!

We talk about reading to develop lateral thinking; changing your underlying assumptions about things; choosing books that will help you see the world in new ways; why we don't get much out of traditional "business" books; why we've been reading more fiction than non-fiction lately; and more!

We're interviewing writer, Instagram sensation, and famous "scammer" Caroline Calloway today on the pod.

If you don't know who Caroline is, there are barely enough words in a 5000 word article in the Cut to even begin to explain it to you. Amie will give you a little intro to her for the first few minutes of the pod (before the interview begins), so if you're already a Caroline Calloway scholar, feel free to skip to the 4 minute mark.

Regardless of your opinion on Caroline, there is so much to get from this conversation. We talk about running a creative business, the craft of writing, how we motivate ourselves to write (tasty treats!), finding the right level of rage to sustain your creativity, Caroline's incredible and unique approach to self-publishing her first book, and so much more!

This was maybe the most fun we've ever had in an interview. Amie and I both came away with ear-to-ear grins that we couldn't wipe off for days. There is so much value here for creatives. Caroline is often misunderstood and I hope this interview will help you see some of the method to what can seem like madness at times.

We loved Caroline's book, Scammer. It sucks you in and delights you from the first page. You can find the luxury first edition on Caroline's website.

We have the joy of interviewing, author, Youtuber, absolute legend, and receptacle of pure creative wisdom, Campbell Walker.

Topics include: how we self-sabotage when we get too close to success; how being a parent has made Cam a better creative; perfectionism; youtube; his experience writing a book and working with publishers (and the pressure of following up a successful book); his writing process; and much more!

Something I loved about this interview was Cam's curiosity about my and Amie's creative practice. We learnt a lot and you might find some of our answers to Cam's questions interesting too!

I highly recommend Cam's youtube channel. We've turned to it a lot for help on our creative journey. If you like Unpublished, you'll love Cam's videos.

You can find Cam's book, Your Head is a Houseboat: a Chaotic Guide to Mental Clarity, here. Check out the world's best reviewed goodreads page for it here.

And Cam's Instagram.

Today we're talking about authors we've enjoyed reading lately! This is not a ranked list or even an all time favourite author list. It's just a few people we've been liked recently! We go into why we like these authors, whether it matters if someone is a "good" writer (whatever that means), the joy of a great plot, how much we love a book with a strong "voice" and much more!

Today we're discussing Amie's decision to relaunch her second novel 6 months after its initial release. Sub-topics include: how the concept of a single launch is driven by legacy institutions and gatekeepers; whether a "launch week" is important; strategies we're using to launch something a second time; the timelessness of your art; the benefits you might get from doing several launches rather than one (or how your ability to sell can improve with each launch of the same product); and more!

I was really late putting this up since we're still feeling a little out of routine with the move. Hopefully you all enjoy it!

We would love if you caused some trouble and bought Amie's book.

Welcome back! We took a few weeks off while we moved country but excited to be back!

Today we're talking about whether it's possible to be too precious about our creative process or if we should be more workman-like when we attempt to make art.

Also see a life update and some ramblings on our move to England (a good 5 mins of this)!

NOTE: James is very conscious that, in this episode, he said Australia didn't have much history. This is, of course, incorrect. Australia has tens of thousands of years of history, most of which was erased by European settlers. What he meant was that we have very little visible history in our cities (due to colonisation).

We have another Artificial Intelligence episode. We try to address some of the concerns artists have about AI like Midjourney and Chat GPT. We discuss the dark side but also try to talk about all the cool things that could potentially come from this weird explosion of machines that can seemingly think. Sub topics include:

- Why we will probably always want to know the HUMAN story behind art and how that gives humans an edge over algorithms.

- Whether or not it's cheating to use AI to support our artistic process.

- How artists might be able to use AI.

- The ethics of using AI that has been trained on the work of artists without paying them royalties.

- The importance of speaking openly about this topic and not letting fear rule the discourse.

- Possible regulations we could put on AI to help artists.

- Building the future society we want.

And more.

Disclaimer that Amie and I are not experts on this and this are are just a collection of our random thoughts. No one knows what the future and this is a crazy fast moving new technology. We expect to be wrong about almost everything here.

The wired article mentioned.

An interesting podcast with the CEO of open AI from the Lex Fridman Podcast that you might find interesting.