Sponsors: West Virginia Wesleyan College’s MFA in Creative Writing and HippoCamp 2021.
Become a Patron!Alison Herman (@aherman2006) is a staff writer for The Ringer, who writes about all kinds of TV and movies and the like.
What prompted this conversation was her piece about David Gelb, the filmmaker behind Jiro Dreams of Sushi and Chef’s Table.
In this episode we talk about:
Continue reading “Episode 268: Overcoming Bad Viewing Hygiene with The Ringer’s Alison Herman”Become a Patron!View on Zencastr
Kristen Radtke is the author of Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness. Let me tell you, CNFers, this book spoke to me like few others do. Such is the life as a lonely podcaster.
Continue reading “Episode 266: The Expansive Nothing You Have to Fill with Kristen Radtke”
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
“I. Will. Write. This. Book. There’s no turning back,” says Bob Welch, @bob_welch23 on Twitter.
Bob is the author of several books, most recently is Saving My Enemy, a story of an American and a German WWII vet who forged a friendship late in life that led them down the path to forgiveness. Great book.
Bob was a long-time columnist at The Register-Guard in Eugene and has written books like The Wizard of Foz: Dick Fosbury’s One-Man High-Jump Revolution and Resolve.
We had a great conversation about “hiking your own hike” and how the famous writer Jon Krakauer actually stole Bob’s girlfriend back in high school in Corvallis, Oregon.
Great talk and good, good fun.
Keep the conversation going on social media @CNFPod and consider becoming a member at the Patreon page. It’s how you get access to the audio magazine, as well as transcripts and coaching. You dollars go directly into (50% goes to Patreon and Uncle Sam) the making of the podcast and paying writers. If you freelance, you get the titanic tax burden that’s on the freelancer. Oh, you got a $1,000 check! That’s nice! $500 of that needs to be skimmed off and goes to taxes, sooooo….
Anyway!
Enjoy this conversation and let me know what you think. HMU!
Wudan Yan and Jenni Gritters are back!
They host The Writers’ Co-op Podcast, and it is back for Season 3, a season in which they focus on coaching.
Lots of good stuff here including:
Follow Wudan and Jenni on Twitter, as well as @CNFPod, and learn more about them, their work, and their services at their websites.
Lilly Dancyger (@lillydancyger) is here to talk about her new book Negative Space. She also edited the collection Burn It Down: Women Writing About Anger.
Negative Space is a detective story as Lilly seeks out her father’s past. He passed away when she was a very young girl. He was a brilliant artists, but tortured by addiction.
Continue reading “Episode 259: Lilly Dancyger on Building Community and Finding Her Father in ‘Negative Space’”
Every now and again you read a book that blows your brains out. Brian Broome‘s (@bbromb) Punch Me Up to the Gods is one of those books.
It deals with identity, Black masculinity, shame, family, oppression, racism, and community. What a book, man, what a book.
We also dig into Brian’s writing process and how he goes about the work.
“I’m the queen of the run-on sentence,” he says.
And the grind of it all.
“I’m the queen of quitting,” he says.
Consider becoming a patron at patreon.com/cnfpod for transcripts and for exclusive access to the audio magazine. Your dollars go into making the production possible and put money in the pockets of writers. Patrons also get a chance to submit questions that I ask of guests and coaching.
Sponsorship for this episode is brought to you by West Virginia Wesleyan College’s MFA in Creative Writing.
Promotional partner is HippoCamp 2021! Go register!
“My mind is a very bad neighborhood and I should not go there alone,” says Bronwen Dickey in her fourth trip to the podcast
She was here for Ep. 21, 45, 137 and now 248.
It’s always a good time when I get to catch up with her.
Continue reading “Episode 248: Humble and Important Gifts with Bronwen Dickey”If you’re anything like me, you get a bit distracted by the shiny new thing.
You get excited at the possibilities of the new hobby, the new story because it’s that thing that’s going to bring you the satisfaction you want.
If I shared with you the myriad things I do and/or want to do, you’d wonder how I get anything done at all.
And that’s when I always go back to professional athletes or people with singular drive and singular vision. Prima ballerinas aren’t consumed with baking bread or writing or drawing or web design. Bodybuilders aren’t consumed with woodworking, welding, or making baked goods. Professional athletes, let’s just say in season, focus on their game, preparation, study, not gardening, painting, or book binding.
Yes, we need hobbies. We need ways to distract ourselves and to relieve tension.
But I think many of us stay in the mud because we lack a certain ruthlessness to finish the job, to truly master our craft. While we flitter over here, our main skill, the main reason we got into whatever mess we got into, it operates at a fraction of its potential, and yet we wonder why we don’t thrive.
I guess what I’m saying is this: It’s a long life, if we’re lucky, and I think we’d be better served giving our entire selves over to the thing for as long as the thing means something to us. Reevaluate. Does this still serve me? If not, there’s no shame in quitting. Your identity isn’t tied to your art. Your identity is tied to your generosity and willingness to share.
Subscribe to Casualty of Words wherever! How about here.
You remember quidditch, right? It’s the wizard game at Hogwarts that is sorta like lacrosse and hockey and soccer and capture the flag … but on brooms.
It’s really cool. That said, it’s only cool for so long when it comes to the story.
J.K. Rowling described quidditch matches in great detail early in the series. As did the movies. The movies used them as bigger set pieces early in the run.
But what can you really do with them after the novelty wears off? It’s like any sports book. You might want to recount all the games, all the races, all the events, but what you’ll find is they get very repetitive. They start sounding the same. There’s only so much these games can show the reader or the viewer.
So you need to use them sparingly. Once that novelty wears off, they must only be used to illustrate character and to move the story forward.
Otherwise, you’re left with what I call the Quidditch Problem.
So ask yourself: Am I putting in a game of quidditch because it moves the story forward or because I just think it’s cool?