The Author Alchemist

Ways of Writing (012)

Pantser? Plotter? How DO you write, anyway? In this episode I meander around the different approaches to how a writer can write, and talk some about why it’s important AND why it’s not important. After a long introduction talking about how I was sick with a cold and full up with chicken soup, I get to the meat of it: explaining the difference between pantsing and plotting/outlining and how knowing your preferences is more important than hewing to any instructions on how you “should” do it. We all hate that word “should”, don’t we? Good.
I have to apologize a little for this podcast, since it’s pretty clear to me now that I was doped up on cold meds when I recorded it, and so it is a bit rambly. I also introduce it as episode eleven, not twelve. Listen, y’all, that was a rough week for me!

(don’t) kill your darlings (010)

You need to love what you write, or you will never get through the hard work of finishing and then editing your stories. But how do you love something when all the experts are telling you to “kill it!”? 
In this episode, I look at the history of one of the popular lessons new/young writers are told: “kill your darlings.” It’s well intended, but what does that mean in the context of “write what you love to read”? 
The history of this advice is not as clear cut as you think, and I look at the ways that it can both help and hinder a writer. As with most pithy aphorisms, it contains a kernel of truth, and I explore the value of questioning your “darlings” in the context of story elements such as plot, character development, and world building. Then I take it further and question what it means to have “darlings” as a writer, and why that is actually important.
LINKS:
Jeannette Ng’s fantastic twitter thread on self-censoring and self-limiting beliefs
“Who really said ‘Kill Your Darlings’?” article at Slate:
Joss Whedon quote referenced in the podcast:
“If something isn't working, if you have a story that you've built and it's blocked and you can't figure it out, take your favorite scene, or your very best idea or set-piece, and cut it. It's brutal, but sometimes inevitable.” 

The right writing guide for you? (009)

Back in the old days, walking into a bookstore and looking at the “writing” section with shelves filled to the brim with self-help books about how to write, and what to write, and where to market, and...it was overwhelming. 
At least these days you can just jump online and go to your fave distributor like Amazon and find exactly what you need with no distractions or clutter confusing you!
AHAHAHAHAHA! NOT! 
There are exponentially more books and guides on writing available nowadays than there were on those measly two to five shelves that lived in the bookstore. So many. So VERY many. 
How do you choose? 
I think a key part of that decision is figuring out what you don’t know. In this podcast episode, I help you do that by winnowing down the types of writing guides that are out there. Books, online courses, and even podcasts (like mine) fall somewhere in these categories: 
Inspirational guidance
Creative mentorship
General guidance 
Specific guidance 
You generally only need one of these types at a time. For instance, my podcasts and website fall under “inspirational guidance.” I do creativity coaching too, and that’s more “creative mentorship,” but in general my goal is to get you to the starting line, and then the finish line! What you write and how, specifically, you write it doesn’t matter to me!
I go over other examples in more detail in the podcast so you can figure out what might be the best choice for you, and I remind you that what works for everyone else may not work for you, and that’s okay!
If you’re intimidated by all the advice out there for writers, I think this episode of the Author Alchemist Podcast might be the help you need in choosing what help you really need!

DO what you want to be! (008)

If you’ve stopped writing because you think you’ll never be good at it, or you think you are unable to change your (non)writing habits, this episode is for you! If you’ve stopped writing because you think you’ll never be good at it, or you think you are unable to change your (non)writing habits, this episode is for you! We often lock ourselves into patterns and habits that do not serve us. This episode is about recognizing how we do that, and what we can do to change it, but even more importantly: WHY.  
In regards specifically to writing, I talk about how my own need to “practice” escapism sometimes overwhelmed my life, and months would go by without writing a damn thing. When dealing with mental health issues, it is not uncommon to be riding the bus that is your life instead of driving. I had to learn was that it was okay to be someone who needed escapism. 
What I had to do first was simply ask myself this: why?
When I ask you to step back and look at habits you have that you feel are not productive, or are frivolous, I’m not asking you to jump immediately into criticising yourself for doing those things. Asking “why?” is about looking holistically at your life and figuring out what is going on. 
Writing with depression is hard. Writing while being a caretaker is hard. Writing while sick, or holding down a regular job, or two jobs, or dealing with financial hardships is hard. 
But in the end, doing the thing at all is a triumph. Every sentence you write brings you closer to excellence, even if you can only write a sentence a day. No one starts out where they want to be, after all. This podcast is about examining what we think “excellence” is with a classic quote generally attributed to Aristotle (but probably wasn’t anything he ever said!) and then breaking it down with “why” and “how.” 

Building Your Support Network (007)

This was a hard episode to record. I think every creative person who has tried to follow their dreams knows what it feels like to be let down by the people we expected to be our strongest supporters. 
Sometimes it is very direct: they disapprove of our “hobby” and make it known that they think you are wasting your time, or worse. 
Other times, their concern and love for us manifests as cautionary tales or advice like “don’t quit the day job” which, while well meant, does so much more damage to us than any failure we might encounter by investing in our writing. 
Basically, knowing that the people we respect and love do not support us wholeheartedly the way we want them to hurts. It’s hard to be creative from that place, where we feel alone and uncertain of our chosen path. 
In this podcast I talk about those feelings, and what we can do to change the situation. Sometimes it is not what we wish it could be — you can’t force people to become the emotional support network you need. Instead, I focus on actionable steps you can take to build the community YOU need to give you the support and encouragement you need to start, and stay, writing!

Let Go of the Past (006)

In this episode I start getting a little personal about my own story as a writer. I don't think my experiences are particularly unique because I know a lot of writers, both amateurs and professionals, who suffer from The Dread Malaise of Regret.
Unfortunately, a lot of us look to regret as an inspiration. But it’s the worst place to go, emotionally, for inspiration, and I explain why.
I beat myself up for years thinking that being hard on myself would push me to do more and do better. It never worked, though, because the other side of the coin when it comes to regret is not inspiration or productivity. The other side of that coin is anger.
Don't get me wrong, you can do a lot of great writing being angry. Some of the best novels ever written were born out of pure fury. But that is a hard emotion to write from consistantly, and more often than not is oppressive to the creative spirit. I talk about my time not writing and how it affected me, and how my regrets created a negative feedback loop of negative emotions creating a cycle of not writing > regretting > not writing > being angry about my regrets.
In this podcast I talk about how I got over that and what I have learned about confronting regrets. I also give you advice based on my experiences on how to move forward into writing what you love to read!

The Rules for Writing (anything) (005)

“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.” ~ W. Somerset Maugham
If you know me, then you know my life-story involves a lot of baby Kimboo reading many writing guides as I attempted to figure out what kind of writer I am. One of the things I learned early on was that there were (are!) rules for everything. 
It did not take me long, though, to figure out that many of these rules contradicted each other. Not always, of course. There do seem to be a very few “universal laws” that get repeated often, such as the demand to write everyday. There are also the strictures about using outlines and to always have an editor read over your work. Universal constants, at least!
Every writing guide seemed to have its own take on how to be a writer, though. There was a lot of variation depending on what I might want to write, but there was also a lot of variation based on what the author of the writing thought was important. While I could figure out that some of the advice was not good for me personally, it proved that all the expertise in the world would not result in agreement on how to write a book. 
In this episode, I dig into the idea that there are rules for writing a novel and, using the wise words of W. Somerset Maugham, I explain how there are no rules.

Writers write from empathy (004)

I finally got this podcast edited and uploaded for you! I don't know why each episode seems so monumental to me but they do, and I always have a minor celebration everytime I get one done. *chair dancing*
The working title for this episode was “you don't need to be it to write it” which sums it up generally, but misses a lot of nuance (as generalizations often do). In it, I take on the old saw “write what you know!” and it’s a heck of a battle!
There is a reason that this saying is brought out and used to slap around every next generation of writers. I talk about the value of this idea in this podcast, with a little bit of wisdom courtesy of poet nikki Giovanni who has excellent insight into the writer’s experience. Launching off of a quote she made about writing, wherein she says writers write from empathy, I discuss the true value of our imagination as well as the importance of compassion and empathy to our creativity. 
This is an important lesson I have to relearn regularly myself, even having been published in many different ways over many different years. We can swamp ourselves with our insecurities and our fears, and that is as true today for me when I was first learning to treat my art seriously. 
This year has been a watershed for me personally in that I've made some major breakthroughs in therapy and in my personal relationships that directly affect my goal and as an entrepreneur. I've always wanted to be my own boss, to greater or lesser degrees, and I've always wanted to help other writers and other creative people manifest their goals in their art. I have often served as a cheerleader for writers, mostly my friends in the fanfiction community, but not until this year was I able to take the step to start this business, the author Alchemist, in order to support both writers and myself! 
What does that have to do with “write what you know”? It's the idea that we know more than we think we do, and we don't give ourselves credit for knowing those things.
Writers don’t write from experience, although many are hesitant to admit that they don’t. …If you wrote from experience, you’d get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy. - Nikki Giovanni
Resources: 
Nikki Giovanni on Wikipedia
 

The Power of Self-Indulgent Twaddle (003)

Based on a tumblr post from 2017, this episode explores the reason why we write to begin with: the love we bring to a story. 
When I was recording this podcast I really had fun, and might come across as a little bit silly. I perhaps repeat the word twaddle a little too often! eheheheh!As we get further along in these podcasts you'll find that I often refer to tumblr for inspiration and ideas. I have been on that platform for many years now, and in fact I have at least three blogs on Tumblr. It was a huge change from livejournal but I have enjoyed using it and being inspired by the many creative posts that are made there. It is amazing what people will come up with and how they exercise their creativity when given an arena to do so that is, by and large, full of encouragement and inspiration. That is a long-winded traduction to this podcast, where-in I was inspired by a very short comment style post on Tumblr to talk about the selfishness of being a writer. But you need to get used to it, because this is a topic I will return to a lot: Owning our creativity. In this podcast I talk about the concept of “self-indulgent twaddle,” and how it has been used to shut down writers, especially women, who want to write genre fiction such as romance novels and science fiction and fantasy. Writing is in many ways an act of improvisation, and oppressing our creativity in order to fit the molds that other people make is self-destructive and counterproductive. Join me as I talk about how we can own our self-indulgent twaddle, become better writers, and also become happier writers in this third podcast of the Author Alchemist!