The Author Alchemist: Recent Episodes
KimBoo York
Writing is magic but that doesn't mean it is easy! In this podcast, KimBoo York aka The Author Alchemist focuses on the most annoying part of being a writer: writing! After all, you can't become a better writer if you aren't actually writing anything, amirite???!? With a focus on motivation, inspiration, hard work, and fanfiction, this podcast is for writers who are determined to Get Their Words Out.
Hey y’all, it’s KimBoo! Welcome back to The Author Alchemist! In this episode, I’m taking a quick break from getting ready for my presentation at Author Nation 2025 to talk about something every writer deals with sooner or later: decision fatigue.
This topic comes straight out of my book Out From Fanfic: How to Build Original Fiction from Fanfiction, where I look at how setting “guardrails” for your writing can actually give you more freedom, not less. Whether you’re a discovery writer, a plotter, or somewhere in the messy middle, a few well-placed boundaries can help you save energy and focus on the part that really matters—the storytelling.
I also talk a bit about how worldbuilding, character design, and even fan casting can make the writing process less overwhelming and a lot more fun. Writing shouldn’t feel like “bleeding on the page” all the time; sometimes, the best creativity happens when you’ve given yourself some parameters and permission to play.
💡 In this episode:
• How writing fanfiction can sharpen your storytelling
• Using structure to avoid decision fatigue
• The balance between planning and discovery
• Why limits can be the secret to creative joy
About The Author Alchemist
I created The Author Alchemist as a place for writers who want to build sustainable, joyful writing lives. It’s where I mix writing craft, creative productivity, and a dash of fandom energy to help you find your own creative alchemy. Produced under my House of York Studio banner, the show exists at the intersection of resilience, hope, and imagination — because we could all use more of those.
Learn More:
• AuthorAlchemist.com
• My blog, The Scriptorium
It's been a year! I feel it's been a whole year of "have a day!" every day. Which isn't to say good things haven't been happening. In this short update, I talk about what I'm working on, where I'm going (literally and figuratively!), and how much I love writing!
For more tools for writers, including books on craft and previous podcast episodes, visit my website: https://www.authoralchemist.com
I'm back! KimBoo checks in from the wilds of 2025 to update you on what's going on, what to expect next, and (most importantly) how Keely is doing.
Hey ho! Hear me ramble about my super-goth look! Special limited edition! ;)
This is a short episode where I talk about how important it is to find joy in your writing practice, and what you can do if you feel like everything is drudge work!
For more about me and my work, visit my site hub, https://houseofyork.info
In this episode, I discuss balancing world-building details with reader imagination in fiction writing, sharing insights from social media posts I've seen on different approaches to world-building and the importance of leaving holes in the narrative. Using my own experiences to illustrate how details can enhance or hinder creativity, I explore techniques for creating immersion, such as using cultural references and varying language. The key message is that writers should focus on engaging readers' imaginations rather than including every fact, and should feel empowered to start writing without letting the rabbits lead us too deep down the research hole!
What is the true source of writing mastery? As the old joke goes: "How do you get to Carnegie Hall? PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE!!!" In this episode I talk about what having a large goal like "writing 1 million words" can do for you, and why it is important!
My website: https://houseofyork.info
1 Million Words Club information: https://houseofyork.info/1mwc
Join me for updates on my own serials, the 1 Million Words Club, and advice on how to transition your idea/outline for a book series into a long-running serial!
Links:
My website
Serials beats spreadsheet
1 Million Words Club information
Subscriptions for Authors fb group
My book "By the Seat of Your Pants: Secrets of Discovery Writing" is out! I explain a bit of what it is about and why I wrote it, along with some updates of my fiction stories.
For more about me and my work, visit my site hub, https://houseofyork.info
RESOURCES MENTIONED:
By the Seat of Your Pants: Secrets of Discovery Writing
My new book all about discovery writing/pantsing!
"Writing for the Long Haul" at the Scriptorium
An essay about the mindset of writing long-running stories.
1 Million Words Club
Membership community of writers supporting writers!
Survival Kit for Writers Who Don’t Write Right
Patricia McLinn
The Pocket Guide to Pantsing [Full Audiobook]
M.L. Ronn
Write Into the Dark: How to Write a Novel without an Outline
Dean Wesley Smith
A quick update on what I'm writing, what I'm working on, and what kind of money I am making. I talk about Kobo Plus, sales numbers, and the launch of Dragon's Grail on Ream!
For more about me and my work, visit my site hub, https://houseofyork.info
Here's my first podcast of 2024! I'm excited to announce the launch of the 1 Million Words Club, a community created by writers FOR writers to help us get the words out! It's focused on accountability and productivity as well as craft and mindset, and welcomes all writers of every genre, professional or amateur!
I also update you on Dragon's Grail (it's been a hot minute!) and progress on my next craft book, By the Seat of Your Pants: Secrets of Discovery Writing which is coming soon!
Links:
1 Million Words Club info page
My Ream community
Back from a lovely writer's retreat held on the Gulf Coast of Florida, I'm thinking a lot about "what makes a writer" and the importance of creativity in our lives. There are a lot of definitions of what makes a "real writer" and most of them are about gatekeeping, so instead I propose that a real writer is someone who invests time and energy into their practice.
For those who feel overwhelmed by it all, I offer this simple goal: 1 million words. Maybe you'll hit that goal, maybe you won't, but you'll learn important lessons along the way!
This episode was inspired by my colleague and friend, Matt Posner! He is both an author and a teacher who asked me to record an episode roughly on this topic. Hope it fits!
For more about me and my work, visit my site hub, https://houseofyork.info
First off, apologies in advance for the tapping noise that occasionally shows up, I think it was my headphones' cord knocking against the desk. I'll be more careful in the future!
This is an update, overview, and discussion about all my current writing projects. I get sidelined talking about discovery writing, but then again, I'm writing a whole book on the topic so I'm just calling it "advanced marketing"! So there!!!!
I also introduce you to my newest project, and one that will likely be ongoing for a while, the grief memoir The Empty Bowl. I don't have a completion date set for it, either. (Just a heads up, this topic about grief, mourning, and my parents' mental illnesses, so it's pretty heavy.)
Thanks as always for listening in!
A short episode about a question I was asked last week, and how answering it has changed the course of my writing career.
Check out ALL THE THINGS! It's all at House of York!
She's BAAAACK! After a full year of letting this podcast languish, I decided I needed to jump back into the saddle. I have a lot going on, including new author platforms and new stories and new goals.
If you've wondered where I went and what I'm up to, this is the episode for you!
Better late than never! I'm back with an episode I recorded last year, and is the final episode in my mini-series about our deepest fears. Stay tuned for my next episode, which will go over "What the heck has KimBoo been doing since 2022????"
But for now, in THIS episode, I talk about why it is so important to love your characters deeply and passionately. Yes, even the characters who are unlikeable or problematic! You need to hold emotional space for them so that you can write them compellingly and avoid flat characterizations. Save the objectivity for the editing stage!
The third installment of my Deepest Fears series focuses on "writer's guilt" and, in a round'about way, our fear of guilt. Oftentimes we slap a label on what is holding us back from writing, calling it perfectionism or guilt, when it is in fact a deep-seated fear of those very emotions. It sets up a dangerous feedback loop of negative emotions that can be hard to break! Hopefully this episode will help you identify what your real stumbling block is and provide you with ways to deal with it!
Links referenced:
A very very old blog from 2012 on Writer's Guilt
Building your support network (Ep 007): An early Author Alchemist Podcast discussing the positive and sometimes negative aspects of your support network
Welcome to the second episode in a mini-series I’m doing about confronting our deepest fears as authors! Fear of being vulnerable is at the core of many of the fears that keep authors from writing, and in this episode I am taking aim specifically on the fear of being seen and of being shamed.
I cover the ways guilt and shame are not the same thing, and techniques you can use to understand what you are feeling and how to deal with it. The goal is always to get you back to writing what you love!
Welcome to the first episode in a mini-series I’m doing about confronting our deepest fears as authors. This is not simply about the fear of being bad at writing, or the fear that no one will read our work, but rather about the fears that keep us from writing in the first place…which often circle back around to simply one word: vulnerability.
Fear of vulnerability can take many forms, though, so I’ll be diving deep into the types of fears we may have about being “seen” for who we are as writers and as people. First up: fears about being labeled as “self indulgent” a.k.a. writing self-insert/mary sue characters. Yes, I talk about James Bond. Yes, I talk about Rey Skywalker. No, I don’t believe writing mary-sues is intrinsically bad. Fight me!!!!
References:
Fanlore entry explaining “mary sue”
“2018 is the year we stop wasting our time on discourse and start writing the self-insert naruto fics we’ve been planning since we were eight. Thank you.” Source: http://kimboosan.tumblr.com/post/169561118551/harpygf-2018-is-the-year-we-stop-wasting-our
A recurring theme in a lot of advice about creativity is "show your work/share your work." It is often hailed as a great way to "grow your audience" but I want to go a step beyond that and talk about how it is a great way to stay motivated and find inspiration, even if what you have to show is not polished and perfect yet.
I've grabbed three classic modern stories that were created and molded on the internet as examples of how wonderful and inspiring it can be to simply show your work!
Links! God of Arepo
Original tumblr posts
The lovely comic
Neighbor Steve (Antler Guy Saga)
- On AO3
- Original tumblr post
Stabby the Space Roomba
- Example 1
- Example 2
Set Godin’s Akimbo podcast
My podcast on the War of Art
Struthless on YouTube ("Weekly Videos about Creativity")
Giving yourself permission to sit down and write is a major hurdle most writers face...but then what? The next step is giving yourself the permission to succeed as a writer, however you want to define "success."
That can be just as hard, though. We all say we want to be successful, but do we feel like we have earned that right? In this episode I use Elissa Altman's fantastic post from 2016 "Writing and the Permission to Succeed: The Intersection of Art and Shame" as a jumping off point to talk about struggling with expectations, hopes, and dreams.
Resources:
- Elissa Altman's award winning blog
- Discovering the Inner Mother: A Guide to Healing the Mother Wound and Claiming Your Personal Power by Bethany Webster
- Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life by Dani Shapiro
There are a lot of tools out there which are designed to help you be a better writer, but did you know there are also a lot of tools that can help you simply write the words? There are! In this episode I talk about apps, communities, and systems that you can use to help you get the words out of your head and into a document!
Resources mentioned:
- https://www.putwordsdown.com
- https://v2.writeordie.com
- https://4thewords.com
- https://writingstreak.io
- https://www.writetosmite.com
- https://imissmycafe.com (w/ pomodoro timer!)
- Sprint bots on discord servers
This is all about one of my favorite motivational books for writers, The War of Art by Steven Pressfield (Note: this is an affiliate link with bookshop.org!). This is justifiably considered a modern classic in the field of motivating and inspiring authors, with great insights into productivity and our eternal nemesis, Resistance. However, it's not perfect, and in this episode I talk about the good, the bad, and the ableism.
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Transcript [in progress, coming soon!]
Too often, well meaning people discourage writers from "thinking big," or getting too big for our britches. They want to protect us from disappointment, but what they are really doing is crushing our inspiration and motivation.
I want writers to get clear on what "thinking big" means to you (bestseller? award winner? literary journal renown? mid-list lifestyler?) and embrace it! Doesn't matter if you don't "make it" or not, what matters is creating the kind of life as a writer that you want to live!
As mentioned in this podcast, here is the link to my freebie booklet, Write to Market!...or Not?
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Transcript
Transcript Episode 34 Think Big
Promo Intro: It's KimBoo, and welcome back to the Author Alchemist podcast! Today were going to be talking about, or I'm going to be talking about, thinking big, which may or may not be exactly the kind of thinking big that you're thinking about. So hang in there with me and let's talk about motivation, aspirations, and creativity!
Intro: I'm KimBoo, the host of the Author Alchemist podcast. I'm bringing my years of experience as a fan fiction writer and a professionally published author to the problem we all love to hate: the act of writing. You can't improve on something that doesn't exist, which means the most important thing you can do is simply write. Anything. Just write something. I'm here to help.
Podcast: So here we are, and if you listen to the intro, I am going to be talking about thinking big. One of the reasons I want to talk about it is because too often authors are discouraged from thinking big. There is very good reason for that in the sense of just hitting a bestseller list or becoming the next incredibly popular author is a gamble. It's a gamble because there's so many variables, and if it was possible to, like, make a spreadsheet to become a world famous best-selling author whose books are optioned to be made into movies and you're beloved by all your fans, then the traditional publishing industry would have discovered that formula a long time ago. They are still looking for that formula, actually. As are a lot of independent writers, I mean, that is the goal for some people. That's not to say that that's a bad goal but it's like aiming for the Olympics. You've got to not only just work your ass off, but you have to hope that a lot of things that are basically down to luck, fall into place for you, including not getting injured, having the money to pursue the training that you need. Yada yada yada. The Olympic metaphor. You kinda get what I'm talking about here. So the important thing is that you understand that a lot of time some of those types of goals are, I don't know how to say exactly but had weighted on things that are out of your control. You can only do your best and move forward. The people who are around writers take that information and, well, you know leverage it as a weapon. I think often times they do so from the goodness of their heart. They don't want to see someone they care about be disappointed because the book didn't become a bestseller, because their writing career never really takes off in the way that they dream about. Fair enough. I don't want to see people I love get hurt either right?
But the damage of holding writers back from dreaming big is profound. I think it affects motivation more than almost any other thing a writer can come across. The idea that you're not allowed to have dreams or goals or aspirations because you might be disappointed down the line at some point is...just honestly when you look at it on the surface, when you when you read the label and packaging on that, you realize some yeah that's that's not how you go about this, in any way shape or form. This is not how you go about supporting someone is trying to write, including yourself. Remember you are your biggest supporter.
Of course it's easy to talk about dreaming bed when you're talking about a specific project. You have a book that you're dreaming big about, you either have big plans for the book or the book itself requires big plans if it's a epic fantasy series or, you know, a multi generational literary epic. There is a lot of dreaming big has to go into projects like that. Maybe it's a short story or novella, but you want to dream big and get it into a prestigious literary journal like Granta. It's easy for us as writers to focus those dream big aspirations on a specific story with very specific parameters, and even that if your goal is to be traditionally published can lead to a lot of disappointment along the way, but yet you got it going a certain direction right? So you have your story and you're dreaming big for that story. I want to encourage you to dream big for yourself as a writer. I am here, KimBoo York, the Author Alchemist to give you permission to dream big whatever shape that dreaming big takes for you it might be best-selling world-renowned author. It might be respected author with many awards to your name, sitting on your mantle at home. It might be the type of author who, like Nora Roberts, is just revered in her genre, even if those outside of her genre may or may not have ever heard of her. I mean, Nora Roberts, they probably have, but you understand what I'm getting at. There is, like there are probably people out there who've been through bookstores and yet still don't know who Nora Roberts is because those are not the kind books they read. So that's a valid goal. Best-selling fantasy author...Okay, everybody is thinking of Brian Sanderson and his KickStarter. Yes, I get it. And hey, maybe that's your dream as well. Legendary kick starter. Why not? Go for it?
My dream if you're wondering, is to basically support myself in the lifestyle to which I become accustomed. Which is pretty modest, honestly. I would love to get to the point where I can pay off my student loans, and by house or buy some property, I could build a house. I want a house! But mostly because I want dogs, I want more dogs, and I need a yard for that. So that's where the house idea comes from, mostly for the dogs. So for me, the goal is not necessarily fame or renown or awards, but being able to make a solid living independently as an author, which does affect the decisions I make on the stories that I write and how I go about selling them. I am not looking to be traditionally published in the way that most people think about it, where I get an agent, you shop around for an agent for a few years and then have the agent shop around one or two of my books for a few years, eventually get a contract and fight over it a lot so that I get to keep most of my rights, and then wait another few years the book to be published and hope that the publisher actually deigns to budget some money for the marketing of the book. That is actually a very solid path for certain variables in your goals, so, like, if your goal is to be nominated for a lot of words, or to be placed prominently in bookstores or just to be able to say, you know, why my book was published by Penguin or something like that. Then fine, then that's great. Go for that. That's your dreaming big. My dreaming big has different needs. So for me it's about writing, not just stories I love, but stories in specific genres, niche stories in a lot of ways for me. I don't think I'm ever going to write a story that's going to be massively popular along all lines of bestseller lists. That's just not something that's in me, even. But as a self published independent author, I can look to trying to create streams of revenue that help me live the life I want to lead. T though. My goal is is less a literary goal than a lifestyle goal. I want to be able to write the stories that I love and make enough money selling the stories that I love that I can keep writing the stories that I love. It's kind of a feedback loop, if you pick up on that. It is my dream big goal and it's a lot more modest than some other people's big dream goals.
I listen to a lot of entrepreneurial podcasts because I am, at this point, my own business, and the goals there are often very much along the lines of six-figure income, seven-figure income, building up a business so you can sell it for millions of dollars and obviously that's not where I'm at, but what I do appreciate about listening to those podcasts and reading those books and articles and watching those YouTube videos is how much they hammer home the idea that you need to plan for the future you want. And again this is something most authors are discouraged from, because writing and popularity in writing is so variable and unreliable, and yet you never going to get what you don't ask for, right? At least that's what I was always told.
So I'm telling you here now to ask for what you want, not just for specific book but for the life you want to lead as an author and that can be maybe just the prolific fanfiction writer with lots of, you know, fans of your fanfiction. Absolutely valid. The point isn't to weight what you want against what other people want, which is what so often happens when people are advising authors on how to think about the future, but to think about what you really want.
So another different example was a friend of mine on Twitter — fandom friend, I don't know them personally, but we've interacted on Twitter for a while now — and they had an original story that they wanted to put out there, so they were asking for the best platform. My question to them was: what do you want out of it? Do you want people to leave comments and interact with your story and you as the author? Do you just want to get your story in front of his many eyes as possible? And you don't really care about people leaving comments or even making money off of it, you just want people to see it. Or do you want to make money off of it? Do you want to put it somewhere where, when people read it, you might get a couple of cents...now maybe, maybe down the road, a few bucks put in your account, because people like your story? Those questions affect the decision on where that writer should post their story. And for instance if they just want to get it out there to the widest group of people possible, then probably something like Wattpad or Medium, even tumblr still has still has an audience these days, it is a good way to get popular. Get seen, anyway. Those platforms aren't quite as great for direct interaction and comments, right? Nor are they that great for making money. You want to make money off of short stories and novellas, and you're going to have to go to Vella or Radish or Scribd, I think also asked that option or even Patreon, if that's the way you want to go.
When you consider went you want what how you would define dream big, that's going to define a lot of the steps that you take down the road as opposed to people telling you. Oh well, if you want to sell things you need to put it in Kindle Unlimited...and sure yeah, some people have made lots of money putting things in Kindle Unlimited, but there drawbacks that and it may not be satisfying to you. It may not be the thing that you want to do. I always say write what you want to read or write what you love, not necessarily the same thing but generally the same thing... But if you write what you love, it's because you already have a dream in your heart how you want to live as a writer. I am telling you to embrace that. Whatever your long-term goals are right towards them. Don't write in spite of them and don't put writing aside because other people tell you dreams are unrealistic. They are important and they are necessary for you as a writer.
I think it's very important for writers to nourish that small flicker of flame of optimism that lives deep in our hearts, and it does live there because honestly nobody would write anything if there wasn't the optimism of the idea of sharing the story that you finish, that someday when you write that story. You'll get it out there and somebody somewhere will love it so nurish that, nurishe that faint light in the deep dark recesses of your heart, of your creative soul, and nourish, furthermore, the hopes and dreams that you have as a writer down the road. Short-term, medium-term, long-term, think about it for a little while. Think about it and embrace it. Dream big, or hey dream small. Either way, figure out what your dream is and hold onto that. That's fuel for the fire and that'll keep you writing when everybody else tells you: don't quit your day job.
I quit my day job, so you know, it's possible. That was my dream for sure and I'm living it!
Thank you for hanging out with me today. I hope I gave you some encouragement to move forward with your dreams, your big dreams, your small dreams, whatever your dreams as a writer and that gives you motivation to write because as you know, that's what I'm here for.
As usual, I invite you to check my website I store now has a couple of online courses there out from fanfic for writers who try to make the jump from fanfiction into original fiction. I've also got the Author Website Toolkit. If you've already made that jump and are ready to build your author website this is an invaluable tool for you and it's pretty affordable. It's only about $35. And of course you go to my website also there's options for you to sign up for freebies, I have freebies! I'll include a link in the show notes to this for the freebie "Writet to Market...or not?" which people really like, I've gotten some good feedback on that one. So encourage you to check it out if that's a question you're wondering about. Thank you so much. I appreciate you being here with me. Appreciate your trust in me, and I mean that sincerely. There's a lot of advice out there on the web for authors, and if you're listening to what I have to say, then I really appreciate your time. And that's it for this week. Certainly, I need to go follow my own advice and get some writing done.
Outro: Thanks for listening to me ramble on about writing here on the Author Alchemist podcast. I'm KimBoo York and I hope this episode has helped clear away the cobwebs from your inspiration. For more podcasts and other tools including self-paced online courses, please visit my website www.authoralchemist.com (no dashes!) Or email me at kimboo@authoralchemist.com I love to read your questions and feedback! Now, time to get some writing done!
What happens when you get in a fix and a story stalls out on you? Or runs away from you? Or forgets to that that left turn at Albuquerque?
In this episode I talk about the metamorphosis of my in-progress novel, The Bones & Brews Café, which was originally envisioned as a trope-tastic rom-com novella. Turns out it was anything BUT, and because I did not sit down and really look at what I was working with, didn't trust my instincts, and stalled myself for over a year on it. A sordid tale! Come enjoy my misery! And hopefully grab some advice you can use in your own writing life!
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Transcript Promo Intro: Welcome to the 12th episode of the Author Alchemist podcast. My name is KimBoo York, and today I'm going to be talking about trusting the process, specifically how to deal with your story when it starts to run away from you. I talk about some personal experiences and my kind of perspective on both the good and the bad of when that happens. So thank you for joining me, and let's get to it.
Main intro: I'm KimBoo, the host of The Author Alchemist podcast. I'm bringing my years of experience as both a fanfiction writer and a professionally published author to the problem we all love to hate: the act of writing. You can't improve on something that doesn't exist, which means the most important thing you can do is simply write. Anything! Just write something. I'm here to help you do that.
Podcast: Hi, it's KimBoo, and I am back. I'm recording this on a Thursday, which is kind of new, now that I've got my own schedule and I complete control of my own schedule. This is being recorded in late March, where I'm about the third weekend into being not employed by Florida State University anymore — by choice, which as regular listeners will know all about that story. Won't go into it now. So I've switched up the schedule a little bit, I don't have to give up my Saturday mornings to recording a podcast. But I do have to give up my Thursday mornings to recording a podcast. Here we are!
As I said in the intro, today's topic is about trusting the process. And there's a lot of different levels to that trusting the process is trusting yourself, right? So there is the fact of trusting how your brain works or trusting how you approach writing, trusting the skills that you have — you could go into impostor syndrome with this, but I'm not here to do any of that. I'm here to talk about trusting the process when your story goes off the rails, and I'm going to use a personal example of a story I'm currently working on. So if you want a little sneak peek about what might be coming up in the publishing world of KimBoo York, or specifically Cooper West, as this happens to be under that name, under that pseudonym, then stay tuned. So here we go.
And how am I starting this off? I'm talking about the way a story can get away with you. And this happens, not just a Pantsers, but it does...or discovery writers, I think it's the new term...It also does happen to planners or outliners. People who spend a lot of time trying to figure out what their character motivations are, and what happens after they cross that bridge and come through the new door to the castle, whatever. You get my point. They deal with it too. And I know this because I hear this from writers all the time, when we're talking about our stories, a writer who has carefully outlined everything will sit there and go, "Oh, my character just did X. And I don't know why it wasn't in the plan. And now I don't know what to do gonna have to shuffle things around!"
The approach might be different between discovery writers and planners, but in a lot of ways, we're dealing with the same issue, which is learning to trust our creativity to not be wrong. And that's a hard one, even for Pantsers. Because we still have ideas about where we wanted the story to go, at least for me as a pantser. I know that's true. I know, there are probably some pantsers out there who have just a completely blank slate on how they want to do it. But even then, I think they can get surprised, and they can end up writing themselves into a hole, which I've certainly done plenty of times as a pantser. And you're sitting there and you're in that hole, and you're like what now? If you're a planner, you could go back to your outline and start figuring out, well does this change things remarkably? Does this have a lasting effect on the plot? Is this just a little by play that gives me some character development? For Pantsers it might just be railroading through it and going to the next scene, or skipping three scenes and trying to find out where they end up and then going back and filling in the holes. Or it could be, as I often do, which is just kind of let it percolate for a while. Just let it sit there trying to figure things out. And sometimes that percolation takes a few days, and sometimes it takes a few months. And it has actually taken years in some cases, but those I think are outliers. Usually within a few months, at the most, I'll figure out what the problem is. And that's the story we're going to talk about today as kind of case review of the problem, which is my current book, Bones and Brews. As I describe it, it's a diesel punk urban fantasy romance novel, male/male romance. But it was originally, way back in 2021? 2020? 2020! Yeah, because it was, it was during the summer of the lockdown. Here in Florida, we only had one and it was that summer, that spring and summer. I started writing a personal challenge to myself a novella rom-com based on the trope fake dating. I figured, let me see if I can just hit that mark.
Readers, I'm here to tell you, I failed to hit that mark. I was 25,000 words into it when I realized this is not a rom-com trope-tastic novella, this is much more than that. That derailed me pretty hard. I remember sitting back from the story and thinking, I don't know what I'm writing, actually. My characters aren't being very revealing, either. What are they doing? They're not helping me at all. It's their job to help me, what's going on? I sat on it for a long time. A few months, not not years, but a few months. And I realized, Oh, I get it! I'm doing lots of world building. I've got some subplots going on. Yeah, this is an epic fantasy novel. I mean, sure, diesel punk, fantasy novel urban magic, but it's still epic style, right? I'm like, okay, this is going to be at least 100,000 words, it's going to be possibly twice that. And there's going to be a lot of political intrigue, and there's going to be a lot of mystery involved and all these other things. And I started lining up the domino's, you might say. Obviously, as a pantser, I don't create outlines, but I started thinking about these characters a little bit more grandly, shall we say. And that actually worked, I got about another 10 to 15,000 words written with that goal in mind.
And I hit the scene...when you get one of the book gets published, I think if you've listened to this episode, you're gonna laugh because this scene has actually become the final scene in the book, and I'll get to why in a second. But when I was writing this one scene, where it was a garden party, the start of the social season, it was supposed to be an introduction of some other characters. And it just kept turning into kind of like a grand reveal type of scene and I just could not whittle it down, I could not make it less important, is what I couldn't do. This is a very important scene, and I did not know why. It wasn't supposed to be important scene when I started writing it. So again, I hit that wall.
And I think it is a good, you know, metaphor to use here, talking about these kinds of things as a wall. Because walls aren't deadends, right? Walls, just stop things like if there's a wall in the middle of the trail, or there's a wall around the house, you can't walk through the wall, which is not true, you can walk through the wall, you might have to break the wall apart to do it. But you can. Or you can go around the wall, if you're in a house, you can go, you know, through the doorway to the living room, you can go around, walk down the wall until you get to the next field over where the wall ends, or changes into something you can climb over. Or you can look for a door. You can look for gate, however you're imagining this wall in your head, whichever one works. So there's multiple approaches to take to it. I was really trying to take a sledgehammer to this wall. I do know that there are authors for whom when they hit walls like this, that works. And honestly those authors do generally tend to be planners/outliners. They know where they want to go, they know where they're going. They just need to get there. They take a sledgehammer to whatever wall is blocking them, fight their way through it and get back on the trail that they have already defined as the route that they're taking. That wasn't working for me, I didn't have a route to get back to. It was like I'm breaking the wall down and on the other side is this big ocean. I'm just like What? What? Huh? Cue another long break in writing this story now, I didn't stop working on this story, my friend Kim McShane, who I often do plot development with. We spent many a Sunday brunch over mimosas, or actually KIMosas, which is the Mimosa without the orange juice, because neither one of us likes orange juice. So it's just champagne. So we spent many a brunch over KIMosas talking about the plot to this story and the characters. What I could do, to figure out what was going on. We ran through a whole series of different plots and ideas and events and other characters. Nothing was gelling for me. It's not that those ideas weren't good, but they weren't for this particular story.
A year passes at this point, more than a year, but a year from the time I thought it was an epic fantasy novel. Moving on. Still talking about it with people who I'm sure were very sick of hearing about it. They're just like, yeah, it's not working, why don't you just let it go? I couldn't let it go. I love the characters. Do you have that? Do you have, I'm sure you do, where you have a story that's not working, but you love the characters so much. You just don't want to give up on them. I love the worldbuilding. I loved everything that I was doing with it except what I was doing with it, which was obviously not what I was supposed to be doing with it.
I wasn't trusting the process of the story. I was really caught up with the idea that I need to know what's happening. As a pantser, that can be a bad thing to do if you start getting too granular with it. And of course, every writer is different, so I don't want to sound like that's true for every pantser out there. But I think a lot of times with people who are writing into a story and letting in a role as it happens if they start focusing on the little things, as well as the big things, then you might as well just sit down and write an outline because you're not actually trusting the story anymore. I think maybe this logic goes for outliners in that you need to trust your outline. I don't know, I'm not an outliner. But I'll ask my friend Gina, Gina Hogan Edwards whom I do the podcast Around the Writers Table, I will include a link to that in the show notes for this one because it's a new podcast, we just started it. It's a lot of fun. Not like this one at all. It's not just me rambling on.
I finally put down the story or rather put down my expectations for the story, and stopped trying to force. I stopped breaking down the wall more and more and more and just seeing more and more ocean ahead of me. And if we want to kind of visuallly I kind of think of it as I instead of trying to go through the wall over the wall, I just sat down, put my back to the wall. And look where I came from. I wish I could give you the inspiration for the insight I had on this story that made me realize what was really going on. I'm pretty sure it was a YouTube video. I don't know if it was... Yeah, I can't say but I do watch a lot of YouTube videos about writing different, lectures, different YouTubers talking about planning and development. And for some reason, for some reason, I was watching something about cozy mysteries. And if you imagine me sitting there at that wall with my back to it facing where I'd come from, and I look back over the horizon of my story, imagine me jumping up and going, Eureka! Because I realized everything I had set up, every element of the story was perfect for a cozy mystery series. And I'm seriousl, every element was there the sleuth main character — the quirky sleuth main character, the funky funny sidekick, the junior sleuths who act as comedic relief a little but also can act as ways to get to different parts of other characters' stories or backgrounds that our sleuth wouldn't have access to write. The love interest, who is a themselves an important person, who is looking... is not really an investigator, I'm getting into world building there, but let's just pretend like it's an investigator who works with our amateur sleuth to solve these crimes. I did not have anybody murdered as of yet when I had this eureka moment, but it was very easy to murder somebody because I had the setup completely in place for why a murder would be taking place at this point in the story. It was all there, it was all there, it had always been there. I was too busy trying to break through the wall and not fall into the ocean to step back and really look at what my brain had come up with, what my brain was telling me. My brain, the independent organ, telling me to write.
So yes, Bones and Brews is now the first book in a cozy mystery series, I think it's probably going to be at least three, possibly five stories. There's bigger love story arc, going into it. There's a lot of politics in the background that our main sleuth, whose name happens to be Abby, he is trying to avoid getting involved in those politics. There's a lot of world building and backstory. As I said, this is diesel punk, urban fantasy set in a completely speculative fantasy world not set in our world. So it's just just a lot of fun. And I hope people really love the characters as much as I do now that I'm not as frustrated with them anymore.
So maybe that metaphor might help you — instead of trying to break through the wall or even trying to find a door or maybe sit down, put your back to the wall, look at where you come from, figure out maybe what you missed, that your story is trying to tell you that it wants to be, whether you're at the outlining stage, or as a pantser, discovery writer, the stage where you're actually putting words into the page, and making things happen. It's worth the time when you hit these humps, walls, whatever you want to call them, to stop fighting for a little bit. And that could be a day, it could be a month, it could be much longer. Unfortunately, that's just sometimes how it has to go. But if you could do that, if you could take that time, maybe watch some YouTube videos about writing, watch series that you haven't watched in a long time that you know you love, you never know where that inspiration is going to come from. And that's why you have to trust the process, even when it feels like you're banging your head against that wall. It's there for a reason. That's part of the process. And perhaps I haven't made it clear, but if you don't hit those walls, sometimes you're not going to have the insights and the eureka moments that will improve your story. It's all part of the process as much as we hate it. It's kind of like exercising, you know, it's like if you want to get stronger, you do have to exercise even if you hate it, that's just what you have to do. So sometimes you have to work really hard at the exercise. And sometimes you have to take a rest day and let your muscles recover. Yeah, you could do the analogy every which way you want. Very true for writing as well.
As always, my goal is to convince you that maybe you're not always wrong about everything. And maybe things aren't hopeless. Maybe just give yourself a break. Allow for the fact that this is what needs to happen right now. And follow it through until the wall isn't there anymore, whether it's because it's a gate, or you did break through it with a sledgehammer, or you just found a way around it, or you backtracked like I did, and found a completely different road going in a different direction! Might be the solution to all your problems.
So thanks for joining me here today. I appreciate you taking the time to listen to me ramble on. Always glad to have listeners. If you want to be updated about new podcasts that are going out, please visit my website, author Alchemist and sign up for my newsletter. It doesn't go out very often but it does go occasionally. I send updates to people about new podcasts, although this is available on most podcasting platforms so you can also subscribe there. I have the course Out from Fanfic use what you know to write what you love available. That is live. I've got a couple of ideas go in and brewing for courses I've talked about before that's ongoing. Also the freebie "Write to Market or Not" if you are a fanfiction writer who is going into writing original fiction and concerned about how to write to market, then that's the freebie for you! 16 pages of free advice and insight that might help you. So go to my website and sign up for that as well. Again, thank you for listening, but you can't drag it out any longer my friends: it is now time to get to writing. Have a good day. Thanks for listening to me ramble on about writing here on the Author Alchemist Podcast.
Outro: I'm KimBoo York and I hope this episode has helped clear away the cobwebs from your inspiration. For more podcasts and other tools including self paced online courses, please visit my website at www.authoralchemist.com (no dashes )or email me at KimBoo@authoralchemist.com. I'd love to read your questions and feedback. Now, time to get some writing done!
A deep look at outlining from the perspective of whether it is actually helping you or not, and why it is helping you (if it is!).
NOW WITH TRANSCRIPTS! Thanks to otter.ai I am getting easy, fast, quality transcripts for these podcasts now. whew!
Links discussed in this episode: 10 Different Outlining Techniques
Brian Sanderson's BYU 2020 class lectures
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Transcript Promo Intro: It's KimBoo! Welcome to the 11th episode of the Author Alchemist podcast, season two, where today we're going to talk about outlining. Specifically, we're going to be talking about the type of outlining that works for you, that keeps writing fresh and interesting, and helps motivate you, as opposed to weighing you down with the burden of doing something the way other people tell you should do it. Let's get to it.
Main Intro: I'm KimBoo, the host of the Author Alchemist podcast. I'm bringing my years of experience as both a fanfiction writer and a professionally published author to the problem we all love to hate: the act of writing. You can't improve on something that doesn't exist, which means the most important thing you could do is simply write. Anything, just write something. I'm here to help you do that.
Podcast: So yeah, good morning! It is morning, as I am recording this beautiful gray morning. That's really the last of the Florida winter here, we're into mid March, and so temperatures are creeping back up. Which means that summer is right around the corner, and I try not to think about that too much. But despite the fact that the humidity is also creeping back up, it's still really nice out. So I have all my windows and doors open, letting the air run through my house. I know a lot of people in the rest of the country live in the USA, but they open their windows when spring comes. Because they're warming up, they're wanting, you know this, the warm spring breezes to come through their house and chase out the chill. Whereas for me, I usually do the opposite. I started opening up my windows and doors in October there abouts, and keep opening them up until March or April hits, and then everything shuts, closes, and we keep the air conditioning running as much as possible without going bankrupt for the bill. So that's where I am right now, enjoying the day as much as I can.
Today we're going to be talking about outlining. And as usual, I'm not going to focus on the craft of it too much. I will talk about different styles of outlining a little bit later. But one of the reasons I brought this up as a topic is because you hear so many pieces of advice and so many different experts telling you how the perfect way to outline a story should happen. And usually I'm pretty dismissive of all that because I figure once you've been writing for a while, and if you're a fanfiction writer you've been writing for a while, then you pretty much know how things work for you. But unfortunately, what tends to happen whether people are previously writing fanfiction, or have not previously written anything, so they get into original writing, and suddenly they feel like they don't know anything. And they go looking at the books and they go looking through the blogs and YouTube videos and they stumble across something that sounds like it might work for them or that an expert they trust tells them they should do it. And then they try it out and maybe it doesn't work.
So here I want to talk about outlining as a motivational tool, because I think that is the key that's really missing. We talk a lot about in the community, in the writing community, the using templates, certainly Scrivener has templates, plotr has templates, world anvil, and camp ire. They all have built in templates that you can just plug and play for using, and there's save the cat for novel writing as well as script writing. And there is the hero's journey, which if you're in the fantasy and science fiction genres, is used a lot. So there's lots of different ways to do it.
I was listening recently to Brandon Sanderson's 2020 lectures, well it was a course he taught at Brigham Young University. Great series, I'll post the link to the playlist, it's on YouTube for you to watch, he really does a fantastic job. The man is prolific and he's good. Those two things that don't always go together, but with him they do. And I think a lot of people, if you aren't in the science fiction fantasy community, you might know him, at least from the recent Netflix adaptation of Wheel of Time. He was the person who finished that series after the original author, Robert Jordan died, and the series was finished. He was hired to finish it by the family estate of Robert Jordan. And I believe he's a producer or executive, somehow he's involved with the Netflix show. So a lot of people know him for that. It's really a good series. And recently, he was talking about different ways of outlining a story. He gave a couple that he uses personally. But I think the important thing that he brought up, which is just, it struck me because you don't hear it too often, is that he said, "You have to outline in the way your brain works."
And I really think that is crucial. I'm saying this as a pantser. I don't do outlines in the traditional sense, I don't sit down and figure out the first scene and figure out the next scene, and then do the little, you know, one, point A, B, C, D, and I don't, I don't do that. I instead tend to prefer to work with very loose beats. Or you can say, acts, but either way, you're like this is the, you know, character introduction act, or arc or beat and gives me a lot of freedom and say, Okay, well, I need to get from this stage to this stage. But as a pantser, and this is true for a lot of pantsers or discovery writers, I think they're being called these days, you know, because panters are, I guess, is unprofessional sounding, but whatever. Pantsers, discoverers, it's all the same. When we outline something too much, our brain does this weird thing where we feel like we've already told the story, so we don't want to write it anymore.
The first time that happened to me, I spent so much time on this outline for this absolutely epic fantasy novel that I was not qualified to write. At the time this was in the 90s. So it was like in my late 20s, nowhere near experienced enough or had put in the time to write something as epic as I was envisioning, and I wrote this three page outline, single space, very detailed. I, you know, parts were being pulled out as it was. It was a mess. But by the time I got through to the end, I was like, "All right, now I'm gonna sit down and write this thing out!" and I just couldn't. I was done.
Because wasn't this what I was supposed to do? Isn't this how you're supposed to write? And of course back then there wasn't a YouTube video of Brandon Sanderson telling you that you don't have to do that. I was in the woods. I was going through, back then it was Borders bookstores, prowling the writing section looking for advice on how to do this and and realizing, you know what, my brain does not work this way. Wasn't until years later that I fully embraced the idea that my brain works a certain way and that I need to follow that. I think it really hit home for me with one of my most popular fanfiction ever — is a Clint/Coulson Marvel Comics Universe fanfic called Bureaucratic Nightmare. A little bit of an AU, won't go into details, won't bore you with that. But it was literally written by the seat of my pants, I did not know at the point that I got to the end of a chapter what was gonna happen in the next chapter at all. I think it's pretty obvious when I go back and read it now, to me anyway, it's like, yeah, the pacing is not great. But it's one of my most popular fanfics I've ever written. People who don't even like that pairing, that ship as we call it, still read that story and love it and leave comments for it. And it really, that was the culmination, I think for me, embracing the fact that my brain does work in a storytelling way. And that if I trust myself a little bit, but then you know, go back and clean up afterwards, I can have a really damn good story. And that is how I've been writing.
That said, for instance, as I'm looking at this podcast right now, I actually have an outline of the podcast beats that I want to hit open in front of me. Outlining isn't a bad thing in in doing a podcast or doing blogs. I use outlining pretty extensively. But for fiction, I can't do it.
The important thing, always, always to remember is to pay attention to how your brain works. There are lots of options for outlining story arcs that you can use: the three act structure, the five act structure, the seven beats structure, the save the cat, as I mentioned before, you know, I just there's there's lots. In fact, there was one I really liked, I found on Tumblr years and years ago. And it listed 10 different methods for outlining or pseudo outlining, as you might want to call it. There was the snowflake method, where you start with a one sentence description of the novel, there was the reverse method, which I really liked it, it's like write a description or actually write the chapter, that is your story. Like actually sit down and write the denouement of your story, the characters, what they've been through, what they're talking about, if it was a mystery, talking about the clues that they saw, or if it was a science fiction, epic adventure, the recovering from the trials and tribulations they went through, and then work backwards from that. I've actually done that a couple of times in my fanfiction writing. And it's just a really good resource.
And a reminder, that however you choose to outline, and I even hate the word outline, I wish there was a structure, however you choose to structure your pre-writing tools, and we're gonna have to find a better term than this. But however you choose to do that, it needs to be in a way that engages you with the story. Don't be me in 1998, writing this massive outline, not even thinking about what I was really doing, just doing it because the books I read, the magazines I read, were telling me that this was the correct way to do it. And that's what I did. And I wasn't paying attention. And then the story was done, over, whoops, sorry, no can do, I was like...what? Don't...don't be me. Do as I say, don't do as I do, but actually do as I do now, don't do as I did then, I guess I would be a more accurate description of that. Try them out, try different ones on for size, take the same story, possibly, and try different ways of approaching the structure of it.
See, maybe you do beats, well, maybe you really do like full outlining, what you really need is to have each piece broken out specifically. Maybe you just want to start with a group of words and kind of like a poetry slam, just split those words into a certain structure, and then go from there.
I'll link the blog post or the Tumblr post that I talked about earlier in the show notes. And along with the link to the playlist for Brandon Sanderson's series of lectures, or course, whatever... you want to call...I need more coffee, y'all it's too. It's a beautiful morning, but it's a little still a little too early. I'm just... my brain is just now starting to come awake.
Find the way that engages you. That's the point I'm trying to make here. Because motivation and inspiration are really magical, trippy, weird things in our brains. And I think we can tap into them at will if we train ourselves to do so. But we can very easily squash them and choke them off inadvertently by doing things that aren't designed to help our creativity or assist us in expanding our creativity. And as you know, I am less worried about the craft of writing, which there's lots of guides out there for you to do for check. There's lots of guides out there for you to check all your, you know, grammar and structure and character development issues. I'm concerned about you actually writing the thing.
If you're a true true pantser or discoverer, Dean Wesley Smith is one, Stephen King has talked about how he's embraced that as well, where you just sit down and do like I did on my fanfic Bureaucratic Nightmare and just write from one to the other to the other until you've got a full story then you go back and fix it. Or if you're somewhere in between, where you... those are the called the gardener's I believe, they're they're more like people who either have a general rough outline or a beat sheet that they plugged in some some scenes, and then they kind of garden in between them. I used to call it bridging as a technique because I would write a late scene or a final scene or a big showdown, and then I would write the introduction and then I would bridge scenes between them to create a full story. Like, how did this scene get to this other scene? You know, how do we get from a picnic in the park to people, you know, hanging off a cliff face for their lives. I was bridging it by writing the scenes in between, knowing where I had to go, in a way was kind of sort of like outlining, I guess, you know. But it worked for me, because it still allowed me a lot of the creativity and the freedom for my mind to just reel off the scenes, which is what I personally need.
Try out different methods not to find the one that's correct, but to find the one that works for you, and the find the one that inspires you, that gives you energy, makes you excited about writing this story, not the one that's just the way you're supposed to do it.
Okay, I think I've hit that theme a lot over the head for this podcast, and so I'm going to wrap it up for today. It's not too long of a one, but hopefully it helped you or maybe expanded your perspective on outlining. Like I said, I'll include those links in the shownotes. Meantime, I would love it. If you checked out my course that's for sale, if you're a fan fiction writer who has been struggling to write your own original fiction, then the course is designed for you. It's "Out from Fanfiction, use what you know to write what you love." That's right here on my website. So check it out. Also, if you're just wondering if what you want to write as original fiction is marketable at all, I have a freebie for you! I'm going to delete that as well. It's called "Write to market...or not?" and it's about looking at your fan fiction and what you love to write about and what you love to read to see if you already have marketable skills, which I suspect you do. You're just reading a lot of those how to write to market blog posts and don't do that, that's corrupting influence. I mean, yeah, writing to market is very important if you just want to become an incredibly prolific and big selling author. But you know, if you're just wondering if that story you love in your heart is marketable? Yeah, then this is the this is the freebie for you. It'll help you look at that in analyze and see if maybe, yeah, might be a little bit more marketable than you thought, and in what ways so really hope you check that out if that's something that interests you.
Meantime, I'm wrapping this up. spend enough time talking your ear off about writing and motivation. And now guess what that means. It's time for you and for me to get to write and talk to you next week.
Outro: Thanks for listening to me ramble on about writing here on the other Alchemist Podcast. I'm KimBoo York and I hope this episode has helped clear away the cobwebs from your inspiration. For more podcasts and other tools including self paced online courses, please visit my website at www.authoralchemist.com (no dashes) or email me at KimBoo@authoralchemist.com. I'd love to read your questions and feedback. Now, time to get some writing done.
(FYI: I recorded this back in January, and it was originally supposed to be the 7th episode, which is what I say in the opening, but nope! It's really truly the 10th episode of season 2!)
Inspired by part of a graduation ceremony speech Neil Gaiman gave wayyyyy back in 1997, this episodes starts from there and spirals out into talking about the value of your obsessions to you as a writer, not just as "things that you can talk about in a story" but as things that inspire you on a daily basis to practice your creativity.
“Go where your obsessions take you. Write the things you must. Draw the things you must. Your obsessions may not always take you to commercial places, or apparently commercial places. But trust them.” ~ N.G. Along the way I mention a couple of books I was reading, which you can find out more about here:
Reality is Not What It Seems: The Journey of Quantum Gravity
The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe (Bonus! Co-author David M. Perry's twitter account)
NOTE: This are affiliate links, so buying from Bookshop.org helps not only independent booksellers but also me! And we could all use the help, yeah?
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TRANSCRIPT The Author Alchemist Podcast Episode 10, Season 2 Title: Trust Your Obsessions
Intro: I'm KimBoo, the host of The Author, alchemist podcast, I'm bringing my years of experience as both a fan fiction writer and a professionally published author to the problem, we all love to hate the act of writing. You can't improve on something that doesn't exist. Which means the most important thing you could do is simply write anything. Just write something. I'm here to help you do that. Good morning.
Podcast: It is Saturday, and I'm recording the podcast like a dutiful podcaster. on schedule. Will this get posted on Monday? That's an entirely different story. And I'll keep you posted. For sure. You know that I am absolutely devoted to y'all because I had to turn off the heater to record this podcast because my mic was picking up the noise of the heater running in the background. So I had to turn it off. And it's very cold, I think it's just under 40 degrees, despite the fact that it's 10:30am. And for me, as a Floridian that's pretty much Arctic temperature. So heater is off, but I am wearing a hoodie. I've, of course fully dressed, got a blanket wrapped around my legs to keep my feet warm. I have socks on. So I'm about as bundled up as I can be and actually not have my teeth chattering while I tried to record this. So moving on, this is episode seven, of the author, alchemist. And today we're talking about trusting your obsessions. This podcast idea was inspired by actually the confluence of two different things. One was an old tumblr post that I had saved, that was quoting an old, even older speech by Neil Gaiman. What is it 1997 or so about trusting obsessions in the value of going down research rabbit holes. And I'll get to that in a sec. But the other part of the inspiration of this was me on Twitter. Of course I I'm Mutual's or follow a lot of writers who talk about writing, that's what we do. And there always seems to be a theme, when writers talk about writing, of how we're not writing, how we are not actually doing the thing, how we are doing something else, how we're tweeting, instead of writing, how we're writing a book, instead of writing, how we are learning some new obscure trade or skill, and we're learning how to cobble shoes, instead of writing. Alright, that's all fair. We do need to write at some point. But I think sometimes we tend to get away from the fact that writing is energy intensive, brain intensive, and we can't do it 24 hours a day, as much as honestly, I would love to. We can't, brains just don't work that way. Even writers with incredibly high output on a daily basis, two to 10,000 words a day -- And it's possible to do -- to need breaks scheduled into their life, whether it's a day off, or they write long and hard for three months, and then take another full month off. Breaks need to happen. Distractions need to happen. And we spend all this time and energy focusing on things we're doing instead of writing. And it just made me think of this pullout from Neil Gaiman speech because he was saying that even though you don't always use your obsessions, sometimes they can become really valuable, and turn into something that is useful, usable, enriching, for your writing. So that's why I wanted to talk about this. The quote that really grabbed me from his speech is this part of it: "Go where your obsessions take, you write the things, you must draw the things you must. Your obsessions may not always take you to commercial places, or apparently commercial places, but trust them." If you are doing something that is not writing, please allow yourself the grace and the freedom to do that thing. Not long ago, I was seem to a book that I was really enjoying. And as I was walking the dog, I listen to audiobooks as I walk the dog, just because it's a way to keep myself from being incredibly bored, while Keeley stops to smell yet another bush along the way. So listen to audiobooks. And interestingly, I only listen to nonfiction audiobooks. I've tried to listen to fiction, audio books, I really just can't get into it. I have listened to some podcasts, not audio books that are produced stories that can be really good. And I've enjoyed those because those are really harking back to the old radio shows, right or even further back, you know, to storytelling around the fire in the the early stages of humanity. When all stories were oral traditions, though, in that sense, I do enjoy listening to fictional stories, but for some reason, audio books, fiction, audio books, I've never been able to grab onto that is something I enjoy. Nonfiction though, gosh, I've read a lot of nonfiction and a broad spectrum. It's not like I just listened to memoirs, or I just listened to science textbooks or biology books or reviews of archaeology or something like that kind of all over the place. I'll grab whatever interests me, something that sounds really good, has a good narrator. You know, I've read about Occupy, I've read about Noah, several books about the actual historical analysis of what Noah's Flood might have been. One of my favorite ones was about quantum gravity, beautiful, beautiful book by an Italian scientist. And I will actually leave the link to that one in the show notes. Because it's just a mesmerizing story I know about quantum gravity, which I can't even claim to be able to explain what quantum gravity is, even after listening to this book, but it's worth a read. And I was thinking, you know, I listen to all these nonfiction, I should listen to some books about writing. You know, there's some books out there that should be really useful to me, as a writer about craft, or as, you know, self publisher, which I primarily am at this point, marketing, branding, even the tradesy part of it, like formatting books and, and distribution channels, things like that. And so of course, I did that. And I was so bored. I was so bored, y'all, I was just like, you know, even if this is useful information, I am not ingesting it, I'm not enjoying it. I'm like listening in to five minute increments, and then getting impatient and switching back to one of my nonfiction books. And if you're curious, my most recent nonfiction book is the bright ages. A new history of medieval Europe by David Perry and Matthew Gabriel. I follow David and Perry on Twitter and have for a long time, really great guy to follow. Very interesting book like this isn't a deep scholarly, you know, PhD thesis book. It is written for a mass audience mass consumption, and some of it I already knew, but it's really just very enjoyable to, like, pull the covers back and really look at the real history of medieval Europe, as opposed to a lot of the lies and mythology and ridiculousness that's built up around it over the years. So anyway, I'm gonna plug that one a little bit. Back to my point, though, then in trying to push myself to do something productive. I was actually making things worse, because I was inhibiting my creativity. One of the things that I've realized as I read this little post, and I'll link to it in the show notes, from the excerpt from Neil Gaiman speech, and thinking about my obsessions, and the things that I love to explore, is that I was feeling guilty because I couldn't figure out how it applied to my work my job, both as a writer and as somebody who's writing or creating online courses for writers. I feel guilty about something that brings me joy. And you know, that is no way to live. That is no way to live as writers. I'm certainly not opposed to doing research and study of craft. I think it's very important, obviously. But I think we do have a tendency to get swamped by our experts. that that's what we need to be doing all the time. I need to be writing all the time, I need to be studying about writing all the time, I need to read books about writing, I need to listen to podcasts about writing, I need to only talk about writing. And it's just antithetical to the creative impulse to try to corral it 24/7. And to try to only focus on this one thing that you feel is a requirement for you to be a better writer. You know, if you listen to my podcast, at least, I hope you know. But now that my focus is on getting you to write. There are a lot of other resources out there for helping you to write better. And I certainly do want you to write better, because I want to read what you're writing. And, you know, you need to be at a point where you feel comfortable putting it out into the world, either as a blog post, or, you know, an archive of our own. If it's fanfiction, or self publishing, or sending it to an agent, writing better is crucial to all of those goals. But the first thing you need to do in order to write better is to write ironically, sometimes, when we get into these obsessions, they can also serve as a distraction from writing. And I admit that too, sometimes I would rather listen to an audio book all day, then sit down and write sort of a different issue than what I'm focusing on in this podcast. But I think it's important to realize that maybe that instinct to procrastinate that instinct to, you know, not right might be born out of trying to corral yourself too hard trying to whip yourself into shape, so to speak, to the point where you're exhausted and you just can't do it. Trust your obsessions, follow your obsessions, but also understand why they're there. They're there as part of your creative urge. And it can be anything I include knitting, and crochet and the fabric arts, woodworking, anything doing with your hands cooking, if you want to explore a lot of different recipes, baking anything where you're using different parts of your brain, different parts of your experience, and engaging with something that is giving you that kind of learning Hi, oh, my gosh, you know, I'm doing this thing and I'm, and I'm succeeding at it, maybe I'm not where I want to be. But well, this cake looks great. Or, you know, this knitted cap is really neat, I can't wait to give it to my significant other or one of my family members or my friend. All of that is energy, all of that is juice for your creative impulse. And going back to what Neil Gaiman's pointed out, it can also be something that you pull into the creative work that you're doing. It might be a character who loves to cook. And so you love to cook. And you're like, Well, you know, I don't, I don't want to make this character into a self insert type of well, you don't, you don't have to, that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about creating richness and depth to your characters. Somebody who learns knitting as a way to perhaps understand math, you know, to me, knitting is math made large, real, you know, concrete, three dimensional. And so I don't understand it at all. But I could see where somebody who does knit a lot, or sews or something like that can pull their understanding of that craft, into a story into the idea of knitting a story or character who's knitting their life together. I mean, they could go on there. There's a lot of shallow metaphors that we can pull into this discussion from there. And I'm trying to be a little deeper than that. But my point is, trust your obsessions. allow them time to breathe. Focus on what is giving you joy, and inspire you creatively. Because you can't write all the time. And you can't study writing all the time. Because if you try to do that, it's actually going to be counterproductive to writing the stories you want to write. Am I encouraging you to procrastinate on writing? Maybe a little bit like sometimes you do need a break as I was saying earlier. What I'm really encouraging you to do, though is to trust yourself. You can't put words on the page until you trust yourself to be able to put the words on the page. Vicious Circle, but a breakable one. That's what I want you to think about. Next time you sit down to do a puzzle, or read a romance novel, or bake a cake, or garden Outback is not necessarily think about, well, how can I use this in a story, but think about how this is creating much more complex tapestry in your life, that can be fuel for your creativity, which of course means fuel for writing. I hope I gave you a little bit of insight today into trusting yourself trusting your obsessions, the joys of writing, the importance of actually getting words written. That's, that's always the goal, right? So if so, thank you for listening. Please subscribe if you haven't. If you can give me some nice votes up on the different platforms of Spotify, you can give a thumbs up or something to nowadays, and of course, Apple, you can leave a review. So we'd really love it. If you could do something like that. I am trying to make this business a success. And keep having time to write my own stories. Anyway, coming up soon out from fanfiction might even be live by the time this podcast gets posted. And then after that when I'm working on whip into shape secrets of an alpha reader, that's about halfway done. And so that'll probably go up in February. And then after that I thought of a new course I'm really excited about it, the percolator method, which is going to be advice for Pantsers on how to organize their writing life in their writing goals. A lot of times we get told as pantser. So if you get stuck, just create an outline and like, you know, that's the whole, that's the whole reason I'm a pantser is because I don't want to create an outline. So I'm going to be working on that I'm not really solid on how that course is going to go. Might be really short one, but I'm excited about it. So stay with me, subscribe and all that sort of good stuff. And I will talk to you next week. Thanks for stopping by now. Go get you some writing done.
Outro: Thanks for listening to me ramble on about writing here on their author Alchemist Podcast. I'm KimBoo York and I hope this episode has helped clear away the cobwebs from your inspiration. For more podcasts and other tools including self paced online courses, please visit my website at w w w dot author alchemist.com no dashes or email me at KimBoo KIMB o at other alchemist.com I'd love to read your questions and feedback. Now it's time to get some writing done.
1 Million Words! Have you written that many? Do you know, or are you guessing?
Thanks to the stats page for my first fandom account at AO3, I knew pretty close to the day when I went over the 1 million word mark officially. However, I'm fairly certain I had hit that mark years ago, given how many stories I have written since I was a kid. My first "book" was a Jack London rip-off titled Timber Trails and Wolf Wails (I was super proud of that title, dontchaknow) and was 40 single-spaced type written pages...I think I was nine or ten? Or so?
Unsurprisingly, most authors I know have similar tales about the stories they wrote when they were young! But then we get older and start believing that we need to write better before we can write more, which is a complete reversal of reality. In this podcast I talk about how setting any kind of quantitative goal (hours, word counts, timed sprints...whatever!) is the secret to honing your craft and finding your voice.
The parable of the "quantity vs. quality" pottery experiment/class is in the book Art & Fear by David Bayles.
Transcript: The Author Alchemist Podcast Episode 9, Season 2 Title: 1 Million Words
Main Intro: I'm KimBoo, the host of The Author Alchemist podcast, I'm bringing my years of experience as both a fan fiction writer and a professionally published author to the problem, we all love to hate the act of writing, you can't improve on something that doesn't exist. Which means the most important thing you could do is simply write anything. Just write something. I'm here to help you do that.
Podcast: And yes, this is KimBoo York, wide awake early in the morning. Actually, it's about 10 o'clock in the morning. So it's not that early, but it is for me. I am welcoming you back again to the Author Alchemist podcast.
For regular listeners, I know there must be a few of you out there, this is going to be something that I've kind of alluded to in previous episodes. It's an idea I have about possibly forming a membership group down the road, that's later for 2022. The genesis of this and if you've read the title, you know that you write 1 million words as in the title so you know where we're going with this.
The conversation always comes up over and over again, on book-twitter, on writer-twitter, on Tumblr, in, you know, writing groups I've been a part of: how much do you need to write? The answer, of course, is always "you need to write every day." That's been a popular answer for as long as I've been a writer. If you've read the Artist's Way, then you know that the daily morning pages are a critical component of that philosophy, that approach, to creativity for writing. And if you don't know, if you aren't familiar with them, it's simply the idea that you write first thing when you get up and first thing. That don't mean after you've gotten up and had your coffee and walked the dog and used the bathroom or brushed your teeth, it means literally sitting up when your alarm goes off, grabbing a notebook and a pen or a pencil and writing three pages in your journal or your notebook. I think the assumption too, is that it's a full size notebook. It's not like one of those teeny tiny, you know, A-5 little notebooks. That's actual three pages of something like a legal pad.
Over and over again, as a writer, you hear the refrain: write every day, write every day. I'm here today on this podcast, which you may not be listening to anytime soon but hopefully, you are rolling along with me as we go through all of these podcasts, I'm here to say that your goal should be write 1 million words. I prefer this to the "write every day" goal. And they may work together as well. Although they do work well, in tandem, after all, you can write every day to get to 1 million words.
But not everybody can write every day. And I mean that in a very factual way. There are people who are dealing with mental health issues, or they're dealing with chronic physical body health issues. They're dealing with disability. They're dealing with having young children in the house, they're dealing with moving, they're dealing with elderly parents, they're dealing with, you know, life in general. It is a privilege to be able to write every day. And so we have to look at the practice of writing sometimes through the lens of what would work best for as many people as possible.
And truly, yes, writing every day will get you to your goal. It will make you a better writer, de facto, because you are practicing it every day. That is true for any art. But again, if you can't practice every day, if your brain doesn't work that way, if your life doesn't work that way, what is the goal you can aim for? And I think writing 1 million words is a great one.
I built this off of my own experiences. I'm not just pulling this number out of a hat. And I think I probably wrote 1 million words long before I had the math to support the fact that I had actually written 1 million words. After all, I've been writing stories since the time I could start actually reading, which I guess is about six years old. As we've gone over before in the past, I was a late bloomer! So I know I wrote a lot prior to actually keeping track of how many words I was writing. And in fact, to be honest with you, I wasn't keeping track of how many words I was writing. The Archive of Our Own (AO3) was doing that for me. I was astounded the day I discovered the statistics page on my original AO3 account. I know some people are kind of obsessed with that page, and numbers and things like that. I'm not. I checked it a few times as I went along, like, "Oh, I've written 200,000 words, oh, I've written 500,000 words." And then one day I checked, and I'd written a little bit over 1 million words.
And when I had done that, at the point where I tipped over into 1 million words, was also roughly about the time I was starting to publish, or have published at the time through a publisher, my own novels. I do not think that was a coincidence. I've talked before how going into fanfiction, or re-entering the fanfiction world, like coming like coming back or re-entering into orbit or something like that, really set me on the path of becoming a writer, as a person, not just somebody who writes sometimes, which I really was before that even though writing was an important part of my identity, and I'd written fanfiction, and written original stories. That was all just kind of on the side and reasons I didn't pursue it professionally.
After I spent all that time writing all those stories, I realized I had a voice. I had come into my own writing, with my own style and my own practice. And my own perspective. I really do believe that writing 1 million words was what got me there. Does it really matter at which point precisely in time, I hit the 1 million word mark? As I said, before I hit the 1 million word mark — definitely long before those numbers showed up on my AO3 profile statistics page — but knowing at that point, that I'd written that many words, gave me the confidence.
And trust in my own writing that had been absent before then. It's like, I wrote 1 million words, I can write another 1 million words, I can do this. And people will read my stories and love them — which is important to me, may or may not be your goal. But that was important to me.
An alternative metric, of course, is the 10,000 hours metric, which was really popular a few years ago when it was first, you know, revealed into the world. As you know, you become a "master" of something after you have 10,000 hours of practice. It's been debunked a little bit over time, I think. Honestly it's still a pretty good rule of thumb, you can't do something for 10,000 hours and be bad at it. Unless you're working really hard to be bad at it, you're going to learn something over the course of time.
There's also the experiment that was done that a lot of people talk about, "the quality versus the quantity", where a researcher gave people a task to create clay pots, and they broke it into groups where one was going to be judged on quality, how good the final clay pot was. And the one other group was judged on quantity, not just how many clay pots they made, but actual weight. I thought that was interesting when I read about it, that what he used as the metric was how many pounds of clay did your clay pots weigh. That was the quantity not just the number, but the weight. So very, very, you know, precise measurements of what is the quantity involved here. And in the end, it was decided, it was seen, I guess judged by people who do pottery, that the people who did the quantity, who were just making pots one after another to try to use up as much clay as possible, actually ended up making better pots, better designs, better stability, just better clay pots overall than the ones who spent a lot of time in the theory and the design and trying to make the one perfect pot.
So yes, there are lots of ways to quantify your progress. By quality, by quantity, by hours, by how many words you write, by whether you're writing every day. Any of those will do. I'm not saying that my 1 million words goal is the perfect solution, but I think for writers, it is easy to quantify, especially if you're using tools, digital tools, such as Google Drive, or Scrivener or AO3, posting your work there. There are ways to count those words and figure out how many you've written.
And of course, it's going to take a while. I did the math that I think is like, if you do write every day, and you write 500 words a day, it'll take five and a half years to get to 1 million words. If you write 1000 words a day, of course, it will take two and a half years, give or take to get to 1 million words. And that can be a little defeating. But I think the goal here is to remember, kind of like 10,000 hours, it's not necessarily that you're trying to hit that particular mark, but you're aiming in that particular direction, of whether you write every day 500 or 1000 words, or whether you write once a week, and you write 500 or 10,000 words in that setting. The point is that you're moving forward to the goal, not because it is an end goal in and of itself. But the act of going there is what's going to improve your writing, give you more confidence in yourself, and allow you to expand your creativity, to explore a bunch of new things that you had never even contemplated, when you first sat down to write your first fanfic, or your first original short story, or your first original poem. I don't know, whatever gets you off, my friend.
That's what you need to be doing. Whatever you decide to do as a goal, whether it's to write every day, or to aim for 1 million words, I don't want you to think of it as your only goal for that reason, like it's easy to get really wrapped up in hitting the numbers. And in that sense, just the idea of writing every day is kind of low key, except for when it isn't, and it's really stressful. Even I don't write every day. And I try to, for me writing every day works really well. But again, it's a little ephemeral, and it's not as concrete of a goal have something to aim for, that I feel like will make a difference. So of course now at this point, I'm working on my next 2 million words, whether it's actually made me a better writer or not, I'll leave for others to decide. But for me personally, I think it has made the writing process easier and it has (subjectively of course) I think being by writing better, it's allowed me to move on to more complex stories that I want to tell. And to me that's important.
As I said at the start, this is something that I eventually want to turn into a group project or a membership project, the 1 million words club where you know, we come together as a community and aim for writing 1 million words, however you want to track that. Kind of a more low key ongoing thing than NaNoWriMo which is 50,000 words over the course of one month. Which is obviously very doable. I think that comes out to a little bit over 1300 words a day, which once you get in the groove is actually not hard to write that much. But to write that much every day is a challenge, I'm not gonna say it isn't. So with the idea of creating a community where our goal is to write 1 million words together and I'd even be willing to start from scratch and and just you know, jump in like everybody else with the number zero or possibly you can count your fanfiction numbers to that...and I could possibly, that's an interesting thought because like I could...I have my old AO3 account which is under Cooper west but my new AO3, which is KimBoo York, and I haven't been anywhere near that much for that account. A few "Nirvana in Fire" fanfic and things like that, but nothing, nothing quite as intense and long range as my original fanfic fiction archive which goes back to I think 2007 at this point, truly some humiliatingly embarrassing fanfic on that account. And, but, you know, it's up there. I wrote it. It got me where I am today, so I can't be too upset about it. Right. Think about it.
As I close out this podcast, just please think about what kind of goals you are setting for yourself, if they really fit the way you live and the way your brain works. If writing every day is a challenge for you, and not accomplishing that, is defeating you, and making you feel like you're not a writer and feeling like you're, you're just, you're not, you're not living up to your potential and feeling shame for not meeting that one goal, it's time to consider changing the goal. If writing every day isn't going to work for you, think of the 10,000 hours metric. If that doesn't work for you think of the 1 million words metric. Go back to the experiment I was talking about earlier, I tried to find a link for that for the show notes. But about the pottery, where quantity versus quality, sometimes the quantity, oftentimes the quantity will get you to the quality faster than just focusing on writing the one perfect sentence. And then going on to writing the next perfect sentence.
I have friends who have spent decades writing a single book because they are looking for the perfect words. Maybe that's what you want to do, too. I'm not saying that that's the wrong way to go about it. It's working for them. Again, think about your own personal goals. Think about what you can do, what you're willing to commit to, and what makes you feel good about writing. You can't write if you coming from a place of shame, and anger and frustration. I mean, you could write a journal entry about that about how angry and frustrated you are and how that makes you feel ashamed. But that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about writing fictional stories, and using your creative energies in a positive way. So let's keep the focus on that for now. Do some journaling and talk to your therapist about all the other stuff. That's not what I'm here for. But certainly, I'm here to help you pull out of that and get on to writing 1 million words.
So that's it for today's episode. Thanks for listening along. Trying to kick these out a little bit more regularly. I say that every single time don't I? It's terrible. By the time this goes live, though, the course that I've been working on and working on and working on working on out from fanfiction will be available for purchase. That is love child of mine, I've been working on it, but the idea came to me years ago, but I've actually been working on putting it together. All last fall. It's the first online course I've ever done. So if you do take it, please be a little forgiving. I'm trying to figure out how to do all of it. But it is pretty intense. It is for people who are having difficulty with the writing aspect of jumping from fanfiction to original fiction. It's not a marketing thing. It's not telling you how to self publish. It's about the writing and how to make writing original fiction as much fun and as engaging and as rewarding as writing fanfiction because writing original fiction can get frustrating really quickly. And you don't have those automatic rewards centers such as immediate reader feedback that will help you get over the humps and fanfiction. So if that's where you're at with your original writing, I hope you check out the course. I'll be having some specials on it. And if you like it, let me know. If it's not for you then tell me what kind of course you are looking for. Again, I'm not necessarily the craft maven, I am the motivation maven. So let me know what you're looking for. Maybe we can get a course together for you and help you out. So take care be well and you know, go get some writing done.
Outro: Thanks for listening to me ramble on about writing here on their Author Alchemist Podcast. I'm KimBoo York and I hope this episode has helped clear away the cobwebs from your inspiration. For more podcasts and other tools including self paced online courses, please visit my website at www.authoralchemist.com or email me at KimBoo@authoralchemist.com I'd love to read your questions and feedback. Now it's time to get some writing done.
Hooo boy! Another unplanned, unexpected episode to delight and amaze! ...well, it should be interesting, at least?
Herein I talk about quitting my day job — why, how, when — and what my plans are now going forward as a "solopreneur," as the kids call it. ;)
Hit "play" to get the inside scoop and why I prefer working from home as well as what you can expect from me for the rest of the year (courses! books! more podcasts!!!). I value your support and appreciate you taking the time to listen in.
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TRANSCRIPT Promo Intro: This is episode eight of the second season of the author alchemist. I'm KimBoo York, and today I'm going to talk about why I quit my day job. Hang in there, it's going to be a ride!
Main Intro: I'm KimBoo, the host of The Author, alchemist podcast. I'm bringing my years of experience as both a fanfiction writer and a professionally published author to the problem we all love to hate: the act of writing. We can't improve on something that doesn't exist, which means the most important thing you can do is simply write. Anything. Just write something. I'm here to help you do that.
Podcast: Hi, y'all, it's KimBoo, and welcome back. It is a lovely morning, in spring, early March, when I'm recording this. Who knows when you'll actually be listening to it. But today's podcast is super special! I want to get — just like I did last episode, for those who've been following along, I shuffled up episodes that were planned originally to make room for last episode, where I was talking about the launch of my first online course, Out from Fanfic. If you're curious about that, I encourage you to go listen to the unexpected, unplanned Episode Seven (ep. 28), where I talk a lot about it.
This is the unexpected, unplanned episode eight (ep.29), where I decided to actually talk a little bit about what I'm doing and why. This relates to motivation and creativity, I think in a lot of ways, because it's not just a personal decision on how I choose to live my life, but is also related to my need to be creative, my drive to create things, and how much time there is in the day, and how much energy we have in the time that we have in the day. All of these things are related.
So a little bit of backstory. I have had a day job. Well, you know, since I was a teenager, my first job was at Winn Dixie, I was a cashier. I'm sure I was adorable. But I was what 15,16? I've always had jobs, off and on, obviously, always also tried to do side hustles off and on. This job came about in a way that kind of fell in my lap. I wasn't planning to work in higher ed in the sense of working with Disability Services. That was never the intention. But I got a part time job in the Student Disability Resource Center, as it was then known in 2011. About that? 2012? Anyway, working part time on a massive textbook conversion project. We were converting a math... graphing math calculator... Wait, no, wait, hold on. It's been so long now. Okay, graphing calculus math textbook, into Braille math project. After the project wrapped up, the person who hired me essentially walked off the job. And in desperation, the current director, the then director Martha asked me to put in for the position. So I did and I got it.
It really wasn't what I wanted to be doing, in the sense that I had actually gone to get my degree, a master's degree in Library and Information Studies, because I wanted to work with rare books. I got very interested in archives along the way, so I would have been happy to work in an archive job as well. And I did for a little while at the Claude Pepper congressional library on FSU campus, shout out to Robert! I enjoyed working with him, it was a great position. But it just didn't leverage into anything better for me, I tried, but the market was really tight. And it is always really tight in those fields, because even though there's very few people with those skill sets, they're also very few jobs. So unless somebody retires or runs away to you know, start a goat farm or something, those jobs just don't open up. And I was desperate for a job. So, that's the story. Nothing special about being desperate for money. I had come out of my master's degree program with a degree but also with whooping cough and other health issues, and massive student loan debts and absolutely no resources and no help because as friends of mine are aware, where I got divorced right before I started graduate school. So there it was, there was no fallback there.
For many years, it was a very good job. It was very comfortable job. I did like the work that I was doing and I liked assisting the students who came in and wanted to use alternative or adaptable technologies. It was interesting to work on the back end with different publishers on getting alternative texts, files, usually digital files, either PDFs or ePubs for students to use. I mean, a lot changed over the time I was there, because I officially got hired in October 2013, which was almost going on 10 years ago now. So! Technology has really grown. Like when I started in the position, text to speech readers were very uncommon and very expensive. But of course, this was the era when the smartphone was really coming into its own as a strength, as a tool, as a technology aid for people, which has become de facto what it is now. And now everybody can get a text to speech reader on their phone if they aren't already using things like Siri. So it's definitely been a changing, changing field.
But again, not the job I wanted. I kept writing as you know, I was writing throughout that whole period, I definitely wrote fanfiction during that time. I did write some books I put up. Yeah, Parker's Sanctuary, my Cooper, West, male/male novel was put out... 2013 I think? 2014? Self published that one. And Wolves of Harmony Heights, which was my big NaNoWriMo project that got absolutely carried away, came out in 2017. And so I was writing I was working on my career. But it could not be a focus for it.
Around 2018, I also decided that I wanted to go into creativity coaching now, over time, I realized that one on one coaching isn't really my strength. I do offer it as a service, but it's a really premium service because it takes so much energy out of me that I can't do it for a lot of people. So I have to be very careful about who I do one on one coaching with because it is so energy intensive. That desire changed into wanting to provide online courses on motivation and creativity. I'm always very clear here at the Author Alchemist about my role, which is not to make you a better writer, but to make you write. There are a lot of tools and people out there who can help you with your craft, and find ways to develop your skill set. My role, I believe, my my talen, the thing that I do best is helping people actually sit down and do the writing to get over the mental mind blocks the psychological hurdles, the fear and the insecurity that leads people to not write. That's what I do.
So the whole time I've had that job, I was working on these things. And then the pandemic hit. Why do feel like a lot of books of the next 10 years are going to be opening with that line: "and then the pandemic." Because well, it makes sense. I mean, it changed everything overnight. Our lockdown started on March 18 2020. We went work-from-home expectation was probably working from home through summer, and then coming back into the office in fall...which actually we did. FSU called us back into the office, but we were only working a couple of days a week and only with a skeleton crew. So only one or two, of us were in the office at any given time during the course of the week. Some people worked one day a week I was working two days a week...Wednesdays and Thursdays? So yeah, we were actually called back into the office a lot sooner than a lot of other people.
And that kind of leads to the two pronged reason on why I decided to quit. One: I was not happy that my employer was so desperate to get warm bodies back in the office that it would be willing to risk our lives to do it. If you think back into 2020, we were dealing with a lot of unknowns. We didn't know how deadly COVID was going to be, and we didn't know how the government was going to handle it. There was...just...it was just a yawning void of uncertainty. And so being called back into the office when the campus itself was shut down, there were no students on campus. We only went back to partial repopulation in the summer of 2021 and then full repopulation in the fall of 2021. So we were there for six months for absolutely no reason, no reason at all. I didn't appreciate that. And it was kind of the writing on the wall for me to realize just how little my life matters to my employer.
I'm gonna say my boss, I had a pretty good boss, I think the leadership team for the department I was in wasn't happy about it either. But we're a public institution. So you know, our governor, I'm just going to be straight out people. I know, I don't try to get political here, but our governor is awful, totally awful. Basically, organized crime is running Florida right now, not very happy about that. I was very happy to get away from public university setting for that reason.
The other reason though, was a little bit more personal in the sense that working from home made me realize how much more energy I have when I am able to be in an environment that feels safe for me and that doesn't require a lot of energy for me. I saw something interesting on Twitter the other day, a talk, a discussion that was going on about people working from home and their preference for it. And it was specifically talking about introverts versus extroverts. And I do have friends who are extroverts and who have had issues with being isolated, and who are really looking forward, if they haven't already, to going back to the office so that it can be around people. That's something that energizes them and gives them purpose and, and helps them focus on what they're working on. And so they've been complaining a lot about not being able to do that. Then somebody else said, you know, the frustration you feel over being forced to be an introvert for the last two years is the same frustration, introverts feel being forced into environments filled with people all the time. Literally as an introvert, I have been forced into situations where I'm constantly around other people since I've got my first job. I've never liked it, it's always been soul sucking, it's always been draining.
Having that time to work from home really brought that home in a way that even working from home during my graduate program, which kind of is what I did, like first year and a half that program, I didn't even have a job and so I was working from home and it felt great. But in a way, mentally, to me, it was an exception, because I knew that it was for grad school. I knew I would have to get a job eventually and that I would not be working from home in the future. I probably could have if I thought about it that way. But you know, I was just really locked into the idea of, you know, get a master's degree, go get a real job, which I did. And then you know, go back and work in an office like an adult, isn't that would adults do? So even though I kind of clued in at the time, "gosh, wow, I'd really love to do this live this way, you know, be at home, work from home be around" — at that time, my cat had gotten a dog yet — "...you know, be home all the time. That's this is great." That's what I thought. "Unfortunately, I can't do this. Because I'm gonna have to go out and be an adult get a real job once I graduate." So I wasn't really thinking of it in the same way I was thinking of it during the pandemic lockdown when I realized, "ah, this is really what I should be doing. This is really how I should be living."
It was a wake up call for me in a lot of ways, as much as I had already planned for the fact that that my job at FSU was so-called temporary even though I had it for years, I hadn't really acted on that. I'd gotten complacent, I'd gotten comfortable. And for some people that's necessary. I don't want to say oh, if you get complacent you're not going to do anything. There are people out there who really need that sense of comfort, that sense of safety in order to be creative, in order to do the work that they need to do like that. That's a requirement for them. It turns out I'm not one of those people. When I am in a situation where I'm comfortable, I do get complacent. I do think well I can always do that tomorrow or I can do that next week or I can do that over break. I'm actually looking back on myself shocked that I got as much done as I did, that I did as much writing as I did, that I developed the Author Alchemist as much as I did. And literally the author Alchemist has taken almost four years to really get to this point of launching; not making any money, it's been a, it's been a money drain the whole time there, I have not made any money at this business. But I've developed websites for it. I've worked on this podcast, I've thought about the courses I want to develop, I've refined exactly what services I can offer that fit in with both my needs and the needs of the people I'm hoping to help. They weren't four wasted years, they were just for very part time years/ I could, literally if I hadn't had a day job, I'm sure I could have condensed all that learning, and experience and effort down into, you know, six months. But I didn't because I had the day job.
So two years into the pandemic, I found myself in a place where I do have a little bit of, of a safety net, a little bit of money in the bank. It's not a lot. I figure I've got about six months smooth sailing before things get really rough for me. And I'm just gonna lay it out there and be totally honest, this is not me saying you know, I have I have $500,000 in the bank so I can just make my business dreams come true. No, nooooo, nope nope. I do not have a lot of money in the bank, but I do have some. And when my job made it very clear that working from home was never going to be an option for me, they turned down my my disability accommodation request to be able to work from home part time, I was only asking for three days a week, they wouldn't even talk to me about it. Well, they did talk to me about it. Basically, were talking to me about it saying "no, we can't do that. How about you just deal with it." Alright, byyyyye!
I really decided to quit my job over November in 2021 going into the American US thanksgiving holiday, but I wanted my holiday hours through the fall or through the winter break, so I didn't turn in my resignation until January 4th. Because we were short staffed and everybody's quitting — hey, great resignation! It's hitting everywhere. I think my job, my department still has four position counting mine for positions open out of a nine person office. That's a lot, kind of tells you something. Anyway, they asked me to stay on until March or through the end of February. So I stayed until March 3rd, which was the end of a pay cycle for FSU. And then I left.
Now it's March 7, as I'm recording this, and I am a free woman on a countdown to making some money. But here's the deal. Instead of investing myself emotionally, in getting up early to be at the bus stop by 706. So that I could be at work before eight o'clock. So I could sit in my office and deal with all these other people and not be home. And just energy sucking me dry and phone calls and just, distractions and barely being able to work on my things simply because there's so many other things that I had to do. I'm going to be able to take that six months and really throw everything I've got at it.
What can you expect? What can you expect if you're listening to this? This is a longer episode already. Sorry about that. But here we go, we're gonna wrap up with what you can expect: more courses from me, I have Out from Fanfiction, which is one of my premier courses. Full cost is $130. But I'm going to be doing some smaller courses to my next one is actually going to be based on a module out of out from fanfiction. It's only going to be about $30, it's gonna be real short and sweet. But uh, hopefully will be just as helpful. As for that.
The next month, the next thing that I'm working on after that I'm kind of haven't decided yet, I might eventually open up a membership group. I have ideas for that, but I haven't really nailed down how much energy that would take for me. I think that's one of my biggest holdouts on doing a membership type-of group because it would take a lot of energy and oversight on my part. Not sure I'm ready for that one yet.
And of course, fiction writing I've got an erotica, male/male erotica series of shorts, they're really short stories that I'm going to be publishing that I'm really excited about called His Secret Life. And then I've got two novels that I'm working on right now. Bones and Brews, which some of you have heard a lot about over the past year and a half, which is kind of my steam-punk, diesel-punk, magical, urban, magical fantasy, fake dating romp, which I think developed the plot unexpectedly...that we're kind of stalled out, but it's still still one of the priorities. I'd like to get that done within the next couple of months.
I've also got the polyamorous fantasy novel The Queen's Aerie, about 40,000 words into that one, I think it's going to be closer to 90 or 100,000 words. Very happy to be back to writing that one. That's a fun one. It's got a lot of tropes. And it's got dragons. I mean, what could you what? What more do you, what more do you want from me? That's going to be coming out in a few months as well. So you're gonna see a lot more creative writing for me. Maybe even some fanfiction might get like on that back on that train. It's been a hot minute, since I've written any fan fiction at all. And I miss it. I miss it. Just what, you know, what, what am I gonna write? I don't know. I have the time and energy to do it.
There's a lot of stress being my own boss, and you'll probably hear me complaining about that. But I'm excited. I have finally hit the point, I think, I'm gonna have a lot to offer people, and I'm willing to ask for money for some of those things. I hope you're here with me on this journey. I think we're all going to create some wonderful stuff, books, stories, fanfiction. It's gonna be great. Thank you for joining me on this journey. I appreciate it. Now get you to writin', because that's what you really need to do.
Outro: Thanks for listening to me ramble on about writing here on the Author Alchemist Podcast. I'm KimBoo York and I hope this episode has helped clear away the cobwebs from your inspiration. For more podcasts and other tools including self paced online courses, please visit my website at www.authoralchemist.com (no dashes) or email me at KimBoo@authoralchemist.com I'd love to read your questions and feedback. Now, time to get some writing done.
My FIRST online course, Out from Fanfic! is live!!!! WHEW!!!
In this episode, I talk about the backstory of this course: the idea that inspired it, how long it took to put together, and what I hope people will get out of it. Whether you are interested in the course or not, you might enjoy this episode where I talk about my trials and tribulations and, eventually, success in brining this course to life.
Let me know what you think, whether you plan on taking the course (or not!), and what other courses you are looking forward to!
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Transcript I'm KimBoo, the host of The Author Alchemist podcast. I'm bringing my years of experience as both a fanfiction writer and a professionally published author to the problem we all love to hate: the act of writing. You can't improve on something that doesn't exist, which means the most important thing you can do is simply write. Anything, just write something. I'm here to help you do that.
Good morning, it's your girl KimBoo. And I am here on podcast number seven of the second season of the author Alchemist podcast. This is not the original Episode Seven, I'm changing up the order, I have a couple of episodes I recorded earlier that would normally be posted in order. But I'm super excited. So I wanted to share it, I have actually turned the "on" button for my very first course, "Out from Fanfiction: Use what you know to write what you love." I have talked about this course, honestly, for a couple of years. It has consumed me as an idea. I've talked about it with people. I've, you know, mapped out different ideas on how the course would work and what exactly I was trying to say and get down to what I wanted to share and what I wanted to teach. Gosh, about six months ago, I think, my friend Gina signed up with Kajabi. And I had been hosting my own website on a WordPress instance before that, so the Author Alchemist website has been around for a while. And I was going to try to host the courses that I wanted to do on the website, I may eventually go back to that. But one of the things that I really liked for my friend Gina, Gina Hogan Edwards, who's a fantastic writer and editor and who runs the Women Writing for Change Facebook group, making her own online courses on Kajabi, which will be coming out soon, you'll probably hear me talking about that. I just liked the way it was so simple to do. And I'm usually much more interested in having control and being able to make exactly the kind of changes I want to make and use exactly the kind of fonts I want to use. You see that on my Cooper West website and my K.C. York website and of course, on my own personal website, KimBooyork.net.
But for this, I really just decided that I was willing to sacrifice that level of control in order to make it easier for me to run the business and get the courses up and running. In November... was it November? Early October, somewhere in there. I went ahead and signed up with Kajabi myself because I was impressed with what Gina had managed to do. And no, this podcast isn't sponsored by Kajabi. Would that it were, but no, this is just me talking about my own personal experiences. It nonetheless has taken me until now, the middle of February as I'm recording this podcast, to get everything in place. November was spent building the website on Kajabi or rebuilding the website and moving everything over from the old website. Then, December was spent putting together the pieces of the course. And when -- I'm pausing when I say that because there's there's worksheets and there's videos and there's the script and honestly I had been writing the script for the course modules well over a year off and on. So by the time I got into December where I was really facing down doing the recording the videos for the different lessons in the course, I already had the script pretty much nailed down. Learning to use it with the teleprompter was a challenge and I think sometimes I came across a little stilted in the recordings which I am not happy about but I got it across, you know I talked about what I needed to talk about. And I have transcripts for each course lesson.
So that's a bonus too. But anyway, that was a dip very steep learning curve. December I was recording all the lessons. January ended up being taken up with designing the course itself, figuring out all the graphics I needed, which were a lot more than I expected. And thank goodness, I have a Canva account. And that helped a lot. Again, not sponsored by Canva. but I really used it extensively, because it's just so easy to use and you can get to it through any browser, right. So whether it was at work, or whether it was at a coffee shop, or whether it's here at home, where I record this podcast, I could access my Canva account and put together the graphics I need. And so then the first couple of weeks of February was putting all the pieces together, figuring out what I was missing, and finally getting it all in one place. And all the pieces in place, and the transcripts formatted and the caption files uploaded, and the little bits and bobs that go into something like this. And it's done. It's done. It's done. And it's available. It's $129 for the whole course, that's the full price. I'm going to be having some sales on that a little bit later on.
Which is a big, long introduction. And you could tell I'm pretty excited. I'm really proud of myself for coming together and doing this. But really the question is, you know, what, what is this course about? And no, this podcast isn't going to be a sales pitch for it. I really want to talk more about why I created this course. As I said, I thought of this course a long time ago, probably longer than two years ago, I've been thinking about this off and on for quite some time. I even reserved the name fanficacademy.com, the domain name, several years ago, so obviously this idea is old. It's changed, as I've explored what I can do with it. But I intend to use the Fanfiction Academy label over a series of courses, not just this particular one, which is "Out From Fanfic," but also the course "WIP into Shape: Secrets of an Alpha Reader," and I've also got a course on world building using fanfiction principles. I had some really good ideas going in with this, and I'm proud of that. But the reason that it really became important to me and became the basis of what I was going to do with the Author Alchemist, website and business... And I've talked about this before in other podcasts, but it is the fact that at one point when I realized I had written 1 million words of fanfiction, and I realized how much better my writing had become. Seems obvious in retrospect, right, you're right that much, something's gonna happen. You're either gonna get better or you're gonna go completely off the cliff. But it's obvious is that seems in retrospect, it wasn't my goal at the time. At the time, I just wanted to tell the stories that were exciting to me in the different fandoms I was cycling through over the years starting with Hot Fuzz and go into Life on Mars, detouring and due South and Stargate Atlantis, all through all of these changes and all these different fandoms I've just wanted to tell the story and I was excited to get my words on the paper. I remember when I first got back into fandom and the first fandom I started writing again for in 2007, after the 20 year break, was for Hot Fuzz and then jumped really quickly from there into Life on Mars. I remember just being in a fever haze of writing sometimes. It was just invigorating. It was exciting to be back in it.
Years later, I look back on that and I look at the stories I write... I cringe a little bit sometimes. Don't we all? But what I look at is how much I learned both during the writing process and during the post writing process of posting my stories and getting feedback and having people read them or not read them. Not every story was a success insofar as having a lot of readers or a lot of comments or whatever metric we're using today to decide whether fanfiction is a success or not. I certainly never wrote any, you know, classics of any of the fandoms I was in. I just wrote my little stories and had fun doing it and learned a lot along the way. And then I went back to writing original fiction. Y'all it was hard. I'm not gonna lie. I think there's there's a tendency to make a diametrically opposed opinions about jumping from writing fanfiction into original fiction, and there's the group to say, there's no difference. They're all original stories, you know, shouldn't be any harder and if it is, you're just making things up and making trouble for yourself versus the other side, which is saying, Oh, it's almost impossible, because fanfiction is just so easy, because everything's set up for you and everything's on the platter and you just have to pick and choose what you want to eat, type of situation or meal of a story. And the truth is, obviously, a little bit of both, and somewhere in between. So I wanted to bring that to the table as it were, in the sense that I wanted to say, Yeah, fanfiction is different from writing original fiction, and it can be more difficult when you're starting out making that leap. That was certainly my experience of it. Looking around, I've found that it's true for quite a number of authors who came out from fanfiction to publish original fiction... that's not true. I mean, there are some who made that jump easily and without any problems, and are publishing many books every year without pause and all power to them. But I was not one of those people, and I know a lot of other people aren't either.
I wanted to find a way to take the love and the excitement and the sense of flow that one gets writing fanfiction, and figure out how to create that same feeling that same sense of flow, writing original fiction. And that is what I hashed out in developing the "Out from Fanfiction" course. And as is my way, I'm gonna give all my secrets away for free. You don't have to take the course, unless you really want to get dig down deep into the issue or the things that I talked about here. But the secret is that there are parameters in fanfiction, the type of characters the type of plot the the premise of the show, or the book or the movie, that you're basing that fanfiction around. And these limitations cage you in but in a positive way. The real "aha!" moment for me when I was thinking about developing this course, was realizing. and I was working on one of my own stories at the time when I realized this, that writing original fiction can lead to decision fatigue. You have so many choices to make. And so many options for each and every choice, that by the time you get through to deciding what your characters are, who they are, where they are, and what the story is, you've pretty much used up all your energy. Usually have to take a break. Some people do that by outlining, and then they take a break before they actually jump into writing. Those of us who are Pantsers might come up with some characters, and get, as in my case, and if you've listened to my podcast, you know this already getting 30,000 words into a story and then hitting a brick wall. It's not always decision fatigue, of course, but I think a lot of times it is. So what I did was I took that premise and looked at how I wrote stories when I was in the flow of what what was the thing that made it really easy for me to write. That was the parameters that had been established in the story.
The parameters, which I talk about in my course, a lot, can be very, I don't want to say generic, but very broad guidelines to fence you in to some ideas. The basic premise being that every decision you make constrains you in the next decision that you make, which is a good thing. A lot of people tend to think "Oh, no, you know, it's just like I've got a...I'm going to cage myself in and then be trapped and with these characters or this plot." And my point is, is that if you set out with the parameters set ahead of time, it actually allows you the freedom to explore all the things within the story that really interest you. Think about when you read fanfiction that's what... or write fanfiction, you what you're really interested in are the things that you can explore about those characters, whether it's their sexuality, with, you know, sex scenes, porn without plot. If it's deep metaphysical questions about life, if it's about popular topics of interest, politics, sociology, anthropology... I mean If you look at a fandom and you look at the breadth and depth of fic, in a fandom, it's never just about the original story as it was in the canon for that fandom, it's always just broad swath of really interesting ideas. People will just hit the ground running and explore. And they can do that because the perimeter is in place to set them up in a safe, I guess might be the right word for it, environment to make the choices that are different and unique and special, then that is true if they're writing something that adheres to canon very closely, or an alternative universe, or, you know, alternate divergence, you know, it doesn't matter. The point being, they're dealing with specific characters and specific backgrounds and specific ideas that they can set down like tent poles, and then build an entire creation around it. If you do that with your original fiction, I believe you can find that same flow, that same energy, that same motivation, that same inspiration in your original fiction that you have for your fanfiction. So that's what the course is about.
It's important to me to take the lessons that I've learned from writing fanfiction, and share them with people who want to be telling their stories. I don't think I'm revealing deep mystical secrets. I think most people who've written fanfiction for a long time, like I have, probably implicitly understand a lot of the things I talk about both here on this podcast and in my course. And in future courses. I'm not revealing some great, eternal mystery. But my skill, and I believe my talent is in being able to take complex ideas, break them down, make them understandable, turn them into set of guidelines, or a process that can be easily followed and used by nearly anyone. That's my skill set. It's what I'm good at. It's why I'm really good at writing, like technical documentation for software. Now, my course isn't that boring. But the point is: similar skill set. You're taking something very complicated, and with a lot of different variables to it, and you're trying to just put it into a concrete application that somebody can use. I can do that. I like think I've done it with this first course, we'll see. I don't know. Again, like I said, I'm gonna have some sales coming up on that. If you're at all interested in no pressure, if this isn't the type of thing that's going to help you, that's fine, too. Maybe there's another course of mine down the road that maybe will help you or not. Either way, you're listening to my podcast, and I appreciate that. So!
That is me rambling on excitedly about my very first online course, "Out from fanfiction," under the fanfic Academy umbrella where I will have other courses available soon enough, now that I've got the process down and figured out all the nuts and bolts and how to do this thing. I think I can put it together a little bit more often. And hopefully even with a better quality than I did at the very first time. Let me tell you the very first lesson that I recorded, it's not going to be any of the lessons that you see in the course, because that one got ditched a long time ago, it was terrible. Absolutely terrible for so many reasons. But moving forward, I've gotten a lot better, and I hope that if you do decide to invest in the course, you find it helpful. And if you decide the course isn't for you, that's fine, too. I appreciate your support, in whatever form, you can provide it. And hopefully I can give you some support back either through this podcast, or through my books or through future courses and coaching whatever I'm going to put they're up on the site. So thank you for listening and joining me on this journey. So now it's time for y'all to get to writin', folks. Can't put it off forever. Have a great day.
Thanks for listening to me ramble on about writing here on the Author Alchemist Podcast. I'm KimBoo York and I hope this episode has helped clear away the cobwebs from your inspiration. For more podcasts and other tools including self paced online courses, please visit my website at www,authoralchemist.com (no dashes) or email me at KimBoo@other alchemist.com. I'd love to read your questions and feedback. Now time to get some writing done!
Prompts often get a bad rep in writing circles, considered as nothing more than teaching tools at best. In the fanfiction community, though, prompts are often tools of inspiration, motivation, and community building.
In this episode, I dive into the value of prompts not just as "tools" but as little sparks of creativity! The discussion ranges from the inherent value of prompts to the different ways to use them.
Places to find prompts:
- https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/
- https://thinkwritten.com/365-creative-writing-prompts/
- https://www.writtenwordmedia.com/500-writing-prompts-to-help-beat-writers-doubt/
- https://self-publishingschool.com/writing-prompts/
- https://writing-prompt-s.tumblr.com
- Today’s Alchemical Lesson: Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom. - Aristotle
- What does this have to do with being a writer, anyway?
- EVERYTHING
- It’s trite to say ‘know thyself’ with the expectation that it will automatically happen; it takes work. It takes VULNERABILITY.
- But so does the best writing. Your best work, even in the most trope-y genres, will reflect the vulnerability you put into it as a writer.
- I spent many years ignoring myself, trying to change myself, denying who I was. Not just as a person but as a writer.
- Trying to write things that did not interest me
- Giving up on dreams of becoming a published author
- Hiding the things that gave me joy (writing fanfiction)
- How I learned about myself, as a writer:
- Start writing things that interest me (thank you, fanfiction!)
- Figure out what kind of writing career I really want
- Wallow in the things that give me joy
- Write what YOU want to write, what you want to read, what you want to share.
- TAKEAWAY: Know what you love to read and write, and write what you want to read!
"If you want to be a Real Writer you need to toughen up!" ...that's what we are told, anyway. But do we? Do we really? I argue that no, that's not what we need to do, and in fact, "toughening up" makes us worse off as writers and as people.
This episode covers a lot of ground: insecurity, confidence vs. self-confidence (not the same thing!), self-trust, the growth mindset, and more! Trust me, it's all connected. Listen in to hear more about how to develop self-confidence as a writer.
Why aren't you writing what you love to write? Is it insecurity? Fear that no one will read it? A belief that you need to "write to market"? In this episode KimBoo talks you through the hurdles you put in your own way so you can sit down and write what the stories you want to tell!
The story behind the story of my oft-used quip, "Write what you love to read!" I read a LOT of things but I don't necessarily want to write them; on the other hand, the stories I NEED to write are definitely filling the void of stories I want to read that don't exist (yet). How about you!?
What we imagine in our head as our masterpiece of art and storytelling sometimes doesn't appear on the page with all the full glory that we feel it is supposed to have.
Sometimes that inspires us to start over; a lot of the time, though, it is discouraging. We doubt and fret and even give up. Which of course is the worst "solution" (and I put that in quotes because it is not, in fact, a solution at all!)
This is what is known as the "Creative Gap", that space between what lives in our minds and what we actually create. It is so frustrating, but in this episode I talk about where this comes from, what audiences feel about it ("Holy shit! Two cakes!") and what we need to do to combat the emotions that come from realizing the gap exists. (I remember the days of my childhood when I didn't realizing it, when I just created whatever I wanted and though it was great. So great! ...but like opening Pandora's box, we can't shut the lid and go back to that magical time, alas).
I hope this episode gives you some inspiration to write and challenge the brain weasels!
Links:
Brainpickings Ira Glass quotes: https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/29/ira-glass-success-daniel-sax/
Chris Fox: https://youtu.be/uiNSxrVnaUg
I don't talk about this too much in this podcast but one the most important influences in my life for learning to love Happily Ever After (HEA) endings is fanfiction.
I know, not a surprise, yeah?
In one sense, I've always loved HEAs, from the time I was a child through college and up through my adult life. In the podcast I discuss the value of HEA stories but honestly I enjoyed them long before I understood WHY.
But fanfiction helped me accept that love. Fanfiction and the fanfic community gave me the confidence I needed to know that HEA stories also give readers something important emotionally and psychologically: hope, optimism, escapism, joy.
Too often, bad writing gets equated with a genre, but the truth is that terrible writing exists in all genres (even, if not especially, literary fiction), and so does fantastic writing. That was such an eye opening realization for me, and I hope this podcast resonates with you!
Show Notes 1. This week it’s about a pet peeve of mine: the way HEA endings are used as ammunition against genre writers: “Not realistic” “Not believable” “Setting up false expectations” 2. Escapism is valid and time-honored story telling tradition Mad-cap comedies during the great depression Arthurian legends Religious texts 3. Genre and/or subject is not what makes a bad story; bad storytelling makes a bad story. There is no one great story that can never be told wrong. 4. Your voice is important and if you love HEA, then put your energy into making your readers love them too!
Sometimes our greatest hurdle, as writers, is our own mindset.
HA HA NO actually ALL THE TIME our greatest hurdle is our mindset. Too bad, so sad!
There are a lot of factors that play into our mindset, some out of our control such as health issues, financial instability, family troubles, mental health, etc. and so on. But there is also a very large percentage of our mindset that literally comes from within, the part of our brain that is sending messages to us that we believe to be true.
Often, for writers, that comes in the form of believing we are not good enough or are unable to improve our craft. That "fixed" mindset tells us we are as good as we will ever be, that we've written as much as we can, or other lies.
Call it "resistance" or call it a "fixed mindset" or call it the devil on your shoulder, it can be a severe impediment to storytelling. In this episode I talk about psychologist Dr. Carol Dweck's work on developing and maintaining a growth mindset and apply those principles to writing!
Links Brainpickings overview: https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/29/carol-dweck-mindset/
Dr. Carol Dweck's book at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0345472322/braipick-20
Show Notes 1. Today’s Alchemical Lesson: Growth vs. Fixed mindset (as it relates to writers) 2. Reading book by Carol Dweck, opened my eyes to a lot of things about this issue 3. Writers MUST have a growth mindset! a. The price of a fixed mindset (never finishing, never starting) b. Overcoming fear 4. How to develop a growth mindset: Step 1: Learn to hear your fixed mindset “voice.” Step 2: Recognize that you have a choice. Step 3: Talk back to it with a growth mindset voice. Step 4: Take the growth mindset action. 5. Most important: you have a choice in how you approach these issues!
Do you even know what an alpha reader is? Those of you who are involved in fandom might have heard of it, or at least know about "beta readers", but I promise, this has NOTHING to do with Omega'verse plots! 😂
Alpha readers have always been here, writers just usually referred to them as "a good friend looked over my ideas and gave me some great feedback" or "my friend loves my first draft and really encouraged me to keep writing!" An alpha reader is all of these things and more! They are, above all other things, an unshakeable supporter of your work. Criticism is valuable, of course, and necessary, but only at the right stage. Alpha readers help you get to there.
In this episode I break down what an alpha reader is, why they are so valuable, and what to look for (and ask for!) when vetting friends for the position.
Show Notes 1. Today’s Alchemical Lesson: what, why, and how of being an Alpha Reader 2. I’m enjoying being back in fandom-land again w/ Guardian and Nirvana in Fire — Remember that fanfiction is a practice! [what I’ve been writing] 3. The term “beta reader” is becoming more widely known, esp. If you are coming from the fanfic community, which is where I first heard of it. Focus of beta readers is on plot dev, concrit 4. Alpha reader: 1. Very first reader 2. Part cheerleader, part path finder (plot holes, character problems, etc.) 3. Stress the UTMOST IMPORTANCE of encouragement, above and beyond concrit 5. A good alpha reader: 1. Knows you well 2. Knows your writing and your goals 3. Isn’t hung up on details (not the time!) - ie might not even be a good beta reader/editor 4. Unrelentingly supportive
This week, I hope I get you to trust your characters and show you how important it is to allow your imagination to roam free, for their sake as well as yours!
Show Notes 1. Today’s Alchemical Lesson: Let your characters change! 2. Interesting post about a TW character (link in notes) on (where else) tumblr is about the choices we authors have to make about characters. 1. summary about Peter Hale, Teen Wolf 3. The easy way out: 1. Pro: it’s easy and if you are writing very strictly to genre expectations, might be your only choice. Bad guys be bad guys, yo’. 2. Con: very simple stories lacking complexity — characters can become flat and two-dimensional. 4. Letting characters change: 1. Pro: much more interesting, even if you keep the characters in a “zone” (good, bad, indifferent) for the sake of holding to genre expectations or simplicity. Can turn a 2nd rate character into a fan favorite. 2. Con: characters and even plotlines getting away from you, losing control. And usually, a higher word count! 5. Another example: Loki. 6. As a pantser it should be easier for me to sway characters back and forth in the gray areas as I go, but no. Here’s the real issue brought up in the post: it is challenging and sometimes changes EVERYTHING. 1. How giving Peter a redemption arc would have dramatically changed the course of the show 2. What are you scared of? 3. Write into that. You can always back out!
[Wow hindsight's a bitch. From the edge of 2022, this podcast just sounds so innocent and naïve ~ KCY, 11/6/2021]
Ayyyyye, this is an ad-hoc podcast I recorded on the fly to welcome everyone to 2020! It's short and sweet and missing all the bells and whistles, but please listen in to hear about the good news of my dog's recovery, my plans for my writing, and my goals for creating the future I want for myself AND FOR YOU! Thanks for listening!
Everyone loves the "Hero's Journey" as a writing tool to map out epic stories. It is also used as a self-help guide for analyzing the story of our personal lives, allowing us to place our experiences into a map that lets us analyze what has happened to us, how it has all affected us, where we are now, and where we are going.
In this episode, I bridge the gap between storytelling and your personal life story. Here, I take the classic outline of the Heroic Journey and apply it to your journey as a writer. It is the kind of metaphor that works at both the macro and micro levels, so you can use it to map out your experiences in your writing career AND to look at your experiences writing a specific story.
I teach you how to embrace that journey at every level as a writer, and the strength it can bring to your voice as a storyteller. It's a long episode but I hope you find it enlightening!
Shit happens. It happens to the best of us. This episode is about what happened when my own personal shit hit the fan.
I spent a year not writing. That's right: not eking out even a word of fiction. Not original fiction, not fanfiction, not blogs, NADA. I did nothing. Why? I talk about that in depth but in short, it was a combination of anxiety, personal demons, and working through those personal demons. Don't discount how much headspace things like therapy and meds take up! It might seem scary when you are going through something like this, which is why I recorded this episode, to let you know that you aren't alone and that your creativity is always with you too! Even when it's not active at the moment! I promise!
This episode is a little bit of history, specifically my history as a writer, alpha reader, and creativity coach. If you have been wondering why I started this podcast, then this is the episode you’ve been waiting for! Or not, but here we are.
I jump back and forth a little in my own timeline, and hopefully don’t bore you too much talking about 14 year old me writing fanfiction with my friends back in 1983 (yes, really!). The heart of this whole thing is that one of my joys as a writer is encouraging other writers. It’s really baked into my soul as something that is intrinsic to my identity as an author. I might be an introvert and a bit of a recluse (maybe more than “a bit”!) but even so, it’s my connections to other writers and the joy I get from seeing them create stories that helps keep me motivated!
Also, being an “alpha reader” has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do the A/B/O trope okay? Just...just listen to the podcast, ‘kay?
Are you beholden to other people’s ideas about how fast/often you should write? Do you keep aiming for marks set by everyone but you and then miss them? Then this episode is for you. I look at the way writing ebbs and flows, how the advice “write every day” isn’t the last work in progressing your skills and output, and why looking at your overall health (mental AND physical) is just as important your writing goals.
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!
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