By Write Right
Your weekly pep talk on living the writing life.
In a world as overwhelming as ours is, what does self-care look like? What is “escape,” and how does it compare? How do you balance self-care with remaining connected and productive? Episode recommendation: Visit Tara Brach’s website at www.tarabrach.com for some...
Attentive listeners may have noticed that we disappeared for three months. What happened? What do we do, as writers, when life gets in the way and we finally decide/have time to return? How do we reintegrate into our own lives?...
The idea of “breaking in” has changed completely since the rise of digital publishing. In the “old world,” authors built a reputation with short fiction in monthly publications, after which point they’d have a better chance of getting agented representation...
Each of us defines success differently, and our definitions aren’t set in stone. How do we maintain our momentum while adjusting our direction mid-flight?
After a very long (unplanned) absence, Write Right is back! Keep an eye out for the next two episodes, which will be available on Friday, June 29. After that, we’ll be back to our regular weekly programming. Thanks for sticking...
New month, new theme! For March, we’ll be talking about processes, goals, the daily grind, and how we define success. We call it The Long March. Our guest for the month is Andrew Wood. You can find Andrew on twitter...
Are romance and erotica the gold mine they are believed to be? Should writers try to build a career in romance or erotica under a pen name? It might be harder than you think.
Content warning: this episode includes coarse language and discussions about sexual assault in literature. Continuing the conversation from episode 3.6, we explore sex in non-romance fiction. Sex scenes should not be any different, fundamentally, from any other scene in a book....
Content warning: this episode includes coarse language, (terrible) descriptions of sexual acts, and discussions about sexual assault in literature. Sex and physical intimacy in literature is a slippery slope. Inclusion of those elements for shock value alone is counterproductive and generally...
This month, Write Right will dive into discussions about romance and erotica. That being the case, we are going to flag the episodes for February as explicit. If these topics aren’t your cup of tea, join back up with us...
Starting a new story can be an intoxicating thing. It’s my greatest strength as a writer, and that’s why I have so, so many stories on the backburner. At a certain point, there’s got to be a limit to how...
John is taking a break between the fourth and fifth drafts of A Thousand Roads. How does he bring excitement to reworking something he’s been working on for a long time? How dooes he manaage drafting processes?
Resolutions for the New Year can be a controversial topic. One thing’s for sure: they don’t work for everyone. For many of us, they can be downright counterproductive. If the concept of the resolution doesn’t work for us, is there...
Here we are, at the very beginning of the third season of Write Right. We're joined this month by Elayna Mae Darcy, during which we'll be talking about beginnings and newness. This time, we talk about new podcasts each of...
What does self-care look like?
How do we catch up on everything when we've fallen behind?
Is the old strategy of publishing short stories before going for novels still viable?
Success isn't just fleeting, it's in constant motion. How do we stay on target?
There are many avenues to building a writing career. Fortunately, a few of them are represented in this podcast.
New month, new theme! Let's talk about middles.
Is romance and erotica the gold mine it is claimed to be?
Continuing the conversation from episode 3.6, we explore sex in non-romance fiction.
We start with the "Bad Sex in Fiction" awards, and go down the rabbit hole from there.
Gettin' steamy at the start of February with our guest Mariëlle Smith.
Is there a point at which having new ideas and new projects is detrimental?
How to do you recalibrate yourself between drafts of the same project?
New Year's resolutions are an often controversial topic of conversation.
New year, new beginnings!
This is the the thirty-fifth and final episode of the second season of Write Right. It's been a wonderful, strange, difficult, and expansive year. The podcasters talk about their years in writing, reading, working, and living. The next season of...
Oh dear. Here we go. Not too long ago, we talked about NaNoWriMo, that magical, stressful month where hundreds of thousands of writers around the world go wild. How did our collective Novembers go? Did we win? No. We didn't...
The great and terrible evil of the day job is this episode's topic, and while the initial intent of the episode was to talk about how we balance our day jobs with our writing endeavors, the episode took a turn...
Elan tells a tiny lie at the episode's opening, but once that fib's behind the crew, they dig into talking about NaNoWriMo. We've been NaNoRebels, NaNoLameOs, and NaNoJudgeMos when the need struck us, and for better or worse, we're all...
We have talked extensively about daily writing, techniques for achieving it, and the ostensible benefits of it. Let’s take a step back and discuss what it’s like in the trenches of daily writing, the frustrations that may arise, and the...
When John mentioned the term “Fractal Outlining” several episodes ago, Elan’s mind exploded. Because he still hasn’t recovered, the Write Right crew was gracious enough to dedicate a full episode to the topic, wherein Elan will pepper John with questions...
From July 28th through August 15th, Elan was away, on both the Writing Excuses Cruise and in Finland for Worldcon 75. In this episode, Elan talks about his experience and John and Craig do all the question-asking! Prompt & Recommendations:...
There’s a well-known adage in genre fiction, whereby worldbuilding is like an iceberg. You only see the 30% that is above the surface, but you build the entire thing, and that other 70% is what makes your world feel real....
Pen and paper. Word. Scrivener. Ulysses. Aeon Timeline. Notecards, voice recorders, lap-desks and more! What are the tools you use to write?Recommendation: www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com
Writing every day isn’t for everyone, but most people want to build a daily practice. But it’s a difficult thing to do; forming any kind of habit is hard. How do you make sure that you write every day? How...
We live in a world of distraction. Distraction is an enormous challenge for almost all of us, rearing its shiny head to peel us away from the work we care about or need to do. We recently talked about active...
Day to day, choices are forced upon us, from the moment we get up to check our inbox and messages, to the many interruptions at work. Often, we get few opportunities to do the work we really want to do...
Plotting and pantsing are often described as diametrically opposed concepts, incompatible with each other and mutually exclusive. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. In reality, we all fall somewhere in between on the spectrum of plot and pants. We...
Discovery writing! Gardening! Pantsing! How do you do it? What are the benefits and difficulties? Do we write linearly? How much do we know when we sit down to write? Recommendation: Author Accelerator (authoraccelerator.com)
Let's take a closer look at plotting: techniques, benefits, issues—the whole thing. How do you do it? How do you not? Recommendations: The Snowflake Method and 2K to 10K by Rachel Aaron.
Writing can be a solitary activity, but the reality is that the world of writing is vibrant and dynamic, with conventions, seminars, cafes, readings, and more touching the world of writing. Should you venture out?
. Where do we fit writing in? Recommendation: The Magic Spreadsheet! Look it up or get in touch to receive an invitation to our private sheet.
The great debate with no correct answer: plotting or pantsing? The answer is often a combination of the two.
Making a living on novels alone is difficult—in fact, the odds are stacked against such success. But becoming a full-time writer who can support themselves doesn’t mean hitting the bestsellers list with every book you write, it means diversifying your...
How do we measure our achievements against personal goals? How do we learn to feel proud of our writing achievements without throwing the rest of our lives out the window? Recommended activity: write for one hour every day.
