I’ve got into podcasts
recently. Mainly comedy and the one I’m going to rave about here. I listen to
them when I’m ironing, in the bath or when I’m driving to collect the kids.
(Not with the kids- some of the comedy podcasts are
filthy.)
The Bestseller Experiment is the one I want to put you onto
if you have any interest in writing. Mark Stay and Mark Desvaux are aiming to write, edit, publish and market a bestseller in a year, podcasting about it each week with
guests to help them along with advice. What’s more the guests are excellent;
editors, writers, agents (mine!), bestsellers- both indie and traditional. The
writers are top names; Maria Semple, Joanne Harris, Michael Connelly, Joe Abercrombie, Bryan
Cranston and Shannon Meyer, Michelle Paver to name a few. Sarah Pinborough this last week was brilliant.
They
cover all sorts of ground which all writers, who have any aspirations to be published
in whatever form, will find gold dust. And there are competitions!! Winnable prizes, like Bryan Cranston's tighty whities and signed books. Seriously, what's not to like?
I’m thinking most of us don’t
sit and listen to the wireless like they used to do – for me it’s generally music
in the background,- but if you look at the way your time works, I’ll bet there'll be an hour where you can listen to this, even if you have to split
it in parts. The commute? A run? The school run? Walking the dog? A bath? During the washing up? It’s definitely
helping me through the ironing and I feel lots better when the hour has done double
duty.
For the duration of the Experiment, there is a free e-book available with all the nuggets of wisdom the guests have brought to the show.
Go seek this podcast - there is treasure to be found!
I was listening to a writing podcast recently
(more on this in a few days), and one of the two presenters, musician & dream-coach Mark Desvaux, was talking about having aspirations and goals and how writing them
down makes them far more likely to happen. I might have written that wrong;
writing them down doesn’t make them happen. Writing them down makes it more
likely that you’ll do what’s necessary to make them happen. You know what I mean.
I’m sure there was a statistic, but it escapes me.
I’m ridiculously poor at sticking to New Year’s
resolutions, so I don’t make them. (Actually that’s not true. This New Year’s Eve
I distinctly remember saying “Next year, I intend to…” but by the next morning
had totally forgotten what I’d said. I still can’t remember. You get the
point.)
But I have, the last few years, been writing down my writing intentions here.
In 2014 I wanted to up my quantity and quality. No comment about the quality, but I did bat out three separate vomit-drafts.
2015 was
about doing something with them, and while abandoning one, I pulled another into some readable shape.
In 2016 the plan was to get it ready to submit which I did, in the hope of landing an agent, which I also did. Hurrah!
Can you see why I'm buying into the writing things down idea? (Looking back at the earlier posts, I can see I got scared when things were written down. Faced with it, it felt overwhelming - or maybe I was frightened of the commitment. Not so much any more. Now it genuinely feels helpful to have an intention stated. It's something I have to hold myself to.)
So what of this year? Things
have changed now, as with Agent Federica onside there’s a plan. My writing doesn't just fill
the hours while the kids are at school; it has deadlines and expectations to
meet, where it never did before. Effectively I have a job again and that is
requiring some alterations at home. I haven’t had employment (aside from child
management) for twelve years and when I did, I didn’t have four additional
lives to run at the same time. I’m not used to telling the kids to go away as I
don’t have time right now. It makes me feel guilty, though I know it shouldn’t.
So I have a learning curve to travel this year.
Also during this last rewrite I took myself
back to school and went through some how-to books, which made me question how
I’d been writing up to now. Going forward I want to be far more savvy with my
plotting and structuring, from the off. Essentially, like the last three years, I
want to raise my game again. I fully intend to finish this story I’m on as soon
as I can (but in as long a time as it takes to be good enough), then move on to
the next, while Agent Federica sends the first off into the stratosphere. Then
we’ll have to see what happens as it’s out of my hands.
(Yes that is a kitten pic. Do not judge me.)
So there it is, my 2017 pledge
of intention; To develop new a working practice that fits with all of us here at home and to
Write smarter, write better.
What about you? What’s your
plans? Write them down!
Am totally failing on the TBR pile at the moment. Just checked and I have 6 1/2 Christmas-themed books looking at me most unimpressed with my efforts...
