Episode 305: Matt Bell

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By Brendan O’Meara

Matt Bell (@mdbell79) is here. Why? He’s got a great craft book out called Refuse to be Done: How to Write and Rewrite a Novel in Three Drafts.

What a great handbook to walk you through the generative pages and then the arduous task — the REAL work — of refining, rewriting, and revising.

This book will teach you patience.

This book will teach you perserverance.

This book will teach you the meaning of work.

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Episode 263: Michelle Weber and Catherine Cusick Break Out the Pipe Wrench

Michelle Weber, editor-in-chief
Catherine Cusick, publisher
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By Brendan O’Meara

Michelle Weber and Catherine Cusick are the editor-in-chief and publisher of Pipe Wrench Magazine, a new venture that aims to fix what’s broken in journalism and publishing.

This is a fun conversation about the founding of the magazine and Michelle and Catherine are doing to help change the culture. You can find Issue 1 here, and they just went live with Issue 2 this week.

The pair overlapped at Longreads and parlayed much of that experience into Pipe Wrench, so we talk about that, among other things.

At one point Cartherine brings up this notion of “ramen startups,” and she’s referring to a blog post from Paul Graham. This means keeping things lean and nimble and not overextending and growing too fast.

Great talk!

OK, so keep the conversation alive @CNFPod and consider becoming a CNFin’ member at Patreon. There’s where you get exclusive access to the audio magazine, get asked to ask questions of guests, transcripts, coaching, and more. For just $2 a month, you get access to a killer audio product, and we’re going live with Issue 2 in mere days! Patreon.com/cnfpod

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Episode 257: From the Backside to the Vatican with Joe Drape

Joe Drape

By Brendan O’Meara

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Joe Drape is back to talk about his latest book, The Saint Makers: Inside the Catholic Church and How a War Hero Inspired a Journey of Faith.

Joe is a sports writer for The New York Times covering college football and horse racing, among other feature assignments.

In this episode we talk about diagramming stories the way you would diagram a sentence and

Joe is the author of several books including American Pharoah, Our Boys, and Black Maestro.

I want to give a shoutout to Hippocamp 2021! It is happening! Registration opens May 15. It’s a writers’ conference for CNFers like you. Check it out.

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Episode 253: Julie DiCaro Won’t Be ‘Sidelined’

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By Brendan O’Meara

Julie DiCaro came by the show to talk about her new book Sidelined: Sports, Culture, and Being a Woman in America.

It’s a fine read, written by someone who definitively has something of value to say. You can find her on Twitter @juliedicaro.

It’s an engaging, entertaining, and sobering read about feminism and the sorry state of women’s representation in sports journalism.

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Episode 249: Ximena Vengoechea on Life Audits, Listener Drain, and Reclaiming the Lost Art of True Connection

Ximena Vengoechea
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By Brendan O’Meara

Ximena Vengoechea is here to talk about her new book Listen Like You Mean It: Reclaiming the Lost Art of True Connection (Portfolio).

I’ll be honest … this book made me realize what a horrible listener I am. For real.

But I put on my big-boy pants and started applying many of the tools in this wonderful book.

So far as self-helpy-type books go, Ximena’s is right up there with Seth Godin’s The Practice and Annie Duke’s How to Decide.

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The Only Writing Lesson You Really Need

By Brendan O’Meara

If you read and/or listen to this little show, you’re likely a writer of some kind.

In an age of life hacks and the seduction of short cuts and quick hits, we often seek answers to questions that will take out the growing pains, smooth over the pavement when what we really need to do is drive over those potholes and feel the chassis rattle.

And I guess what I’m saying is the answers are already on your bookshelf. I’m looking over at mine right now. Who do I most want to emulate on my way to finding my voice?

Pull down the book. 

Get in there and read it with intention. Stew over it on a low heat. Stir the words around. Write in the margins. Take a big-picture view of the structure of the book then the micro-structure of each chapter.

The answers to how to do this are in the books. They aren’t how-to or prescriptive in the traditional sense. Rather, it’s a whole lot like Jeopardy

The books have already given you answer: You now have to engineer the question. And it’s along that journey that these books will teach all you ever need to know about this silly little game.

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Best Book Marketing Tip Ever!

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You’ll pardon the click-baity feel of the title to this little post, but hear me out.

The best book marketing tip ever is this: Write a damn good book.

Write a book that you want to read. Write a book that is so charged with your passion and expertise that the energy spills out from between the covers. 

And write a book people will talk about. Write a book that people will buy five copies of so they can talk about it with their friends.

You can have the biggest audience on social media. You can have an email list of 20,000 people and maybe that buys you 10,000 books sold. Not too shabby, but you won’t get on any best-seller lists. Not that you should want that to be your goal anyway.

Point being, the way to sell a lot of books won’t have anything to do with social media reach. It’ll be because you wrote something so good, so important, that good old fashioned word of mouth moved mountains for you.

Tweet that!

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An Editing Hack

By Brendan O’Meara

With a hat tip to the writer and editor Glenn Stout, a great editing trick is this:

Change the font and the change the size of the font.

I typically compose in Times New Roman, but to change the “eye level,” to borrow a baseball term, I then edit in Comic Sans size 14. 

I know, there’s all kinds of hate for Comic Sans, but let me tell you, I almost never miss a mistake.

Convert it back and ship your clean draft. Easy peasy. 

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Subverting Social Media

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By Brendan O’Meara

This isn’t a tip on writing, but then again maybe it is.

I won’t bore you with what you likely know, but social media as we know it: Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and others are doing way more harm than good. The details of which I can’t and won’t get into here.

My real quandary is how do we get notices and broadcast our work if we’re in the digital sphere. After all, I make podcasts and blog, so how can I get the word out if I’m not findable in the context of social media?

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Episode 237: A Fiction/Non/Fiction Festival with V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell

V.V. Ganeshananthan
Whitney Terrell
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By Brendan O’Meara (@CNFPod)

V.V. Ganeshananthan is the author of Love Marriage, an essayist, and a journalist. She also teaches at the MFA program at the University of Minnesota. She’s on Instagram and Twitter.

Whitney Terrell is the author of The Good Lieutenant. He also is a journalist who covered the Iraq War. He teaches at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He’s on Instagram and Twitter.

They co-host the Fiction/Non/Fiction Podcast as part of the Lithub network of podcasts. It’s on Instagram and Twitter.

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