Iain and Donna talk about the recent press coverage of author earning, including how authors might need to think outside the box to fund their work. They also look at the real-life pomodoro productivity technique and a great piece of screenwriting advice.

Iain and Donna talk about Wattpad, rejections and how many agents to submit to at a time, whether a career in writing now is more tricky to come by than it was 15 years ago (it is), and how to explain why things are the way they are.

Iain talks about his time at the Coventry Book Awards; quantifying your data and writing 400k words in a year; different types of criticism and how to handle it; one journalist's experience of digital publishing.

The just-announced Amazon Fire phone launched from the Amazon Deathstar; the new American poet laureate and the idea of 'representing' your genre; self-deprecation, confidence and talking about your writing in a positive way; writing lyrics versus writing poetry.

James Franco's short story; a new web-to-print service called Paper Later; Iain's new fictional podcast project and the screenwriting apps he's using; book endings, including how important they are and how to write them; allotting reading time.

Iain and Donna talk about the great Amazon-Hachette battle and the former's grip on the book world, Eimear McBride's stunning achievement in picking up the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, and writing those all important openings (as in first lines and pages).

The selfie that made the national news (in Denmark), great writing epiphanies, treating creative writing like a job, performing your work off by heart, poetry podcasts, and the literary critic versus the average reviewer.

Iain and Donna talk about selfies, Jedward, social book-selling, crowdfunding, book launches, and knowing what type and genre of book to write.

Iain and Donna talk about Eurovision and Miley Cyrus (naturally), Studio Ghibli and writers' influences, keeping up with the internet and staying close to our stories, plus whether translators are writers. Also: part three of the publishing process!

This week, Iain and Donna talk about the death of the novel and the trials and tribulations of working from home. You can also listen to the second part of our look at the publishing process, this week focusing on what exactly it is that agents do for writers.