Iain and Manuela Boyle look at the topic of personal branding for authors and seem to have slightly different points of view on the issue. It’s a tricky one. Should writers follow always try to be on their best behaviour? Or is that a pretty boring way to approach the world? Is there room for the odd maverick in the crowded social media house? Also covered is the upcoming World Book Night and a recent post by marvellous publisher of ebooks, Enhanced Editions.

On this week’s podcast Iain is joined by Kathryn White, widely published children’s author whose books include Here Comes The Crocodile and Ruby’s School Walk. They talk about the situation here in the UK, where great swathes of our wonderful libraries are faced with closure due to funding cuts. Also, a truly incredible rejection letter that was sent to Gertrude Stein. And writers think we have it tough these days? Pah!

In this latest podcast Iain talks about writing confidence, including how to deal with a lack of it and what you can do to get your confidence back.

Iain is joined by the marvellous Manuela Boyle and the theme is place. Interestingly, both come at the subject from opposite directions, which is kind of cool. Once they’ve covered the theme, there is ‘My favourite thing…’, where Iain and Manuela choose something they've recently seen, read or experienced and want to share.

Iain talks about what it’s like to write with an iPad. It’s not a review by any stretch, more a writer’s eye view of using this new and exciting piece of technology. And it is exciting, you know. Most of the talk at the moment is about the e-revolution in the publishing industry and the effect of the iPad (and more so the Kindle, actually) on how people read books. But Iain wants to look at what the iPad means for writers.

Iain takes to the mic to record a short podcast about what’s been going on in the publishing industry. He starts with the incredible scenes at Jonathan Franzen’s book launch, where some crafty punter pinched his specs and ran like the wind. All very amusing, but was the coverage of the incident a bit much? Iain moved on to e-readers and whether they are more environmentally friendly than good ol’ printed books. He makes a comparison with the evolution of the iPod. Finally, Iain defends the role of literary agents, editors and other publishing types who have a hand in getting a book to print.

Iain talks about how important it is to perform your writing. There are loads of benefits that can genuinely make a difference to your work. Me and a group of colleagues, including co-host Manuela Boyle and Justine Gaubert from the wonderful Silent Sheffield, set up a spoken word night called Words Aloud in 2006. Iain and Manuela talk about their experience of performing at and setting up a spoken word night.

Part one of this episode sees us talk about the terrible tussle faced by those writers who try to combine a copywriting career with literary ambition. Iain and Manuela Boyle agree, then disagree, and then Iain go through a little unintended writerly therapy. Everything turns out fine in the end. In part two (18:53) they talk about a couple of posts from other blogs. They reveal our worst writing distractions to follow up on 7 Writing Distractions I’m Kissing Goodbye, which featured on Fuel Your Writing (which I shamefully refer to as Fuel My Writing – sorry!) and was written by Suzannah from Write it Sideways. We then talk about whether writers should blog every day, following Bubblecow’s assertion that we definitely should.

Write for Your Life is only in its second month in the blogosphere and already it has its own podcast. This first episode is very much an introductory affair, where I tell you a little more about my writing background and my thinking behind the blog. In future episodes, there will be interviews, features and some hot, hot, (ouch my fingers) hot discussion about writing-related topics of my, or maybe your, choosing.