The Wayward Writers Podcast: Recent Episodes
Najela
I help writers discover their passions, overcome their fears, and understand their unique strengths to create sustainable writing habits and put their stories out into the world. Join me as I document my writing journey and share strategies about creating a writing career you love. Whether you're writing full-time or in the margins of your busy life, you're here because you're a little unconventional. You ignore what society tells you about making a living through your writing. Your ideas about creating a sustainable writing career may be way too wayward for the average person.
Meg Stewart is a busy woman. She is a freelance writer and author. She works with Ninja Writers teaching writers how to utilize technology to benefit their marketing efforts. She is also Freelance Filter on Medium.
3:00: How Meg helps authors increase their freelancing income so they can focus more on their stories.
6:21: Solutions for writers struggling with technology.
8:13: How writers can avoid the shiny object syndrome and avoid getting sucked down a technology rabbit hole.
11:41: Creating SMART goals for writers.
16:02: An alternative to deadlines.
25:46: How to create a sustainable freelancing income.
and too many juicy tips to count! Find Meg on her website: https://www.solutionsbystewart.com/
Author Naomi Ault and I discuss Kindle Vella and Serialization.
Want to read her Kindle Vella Serial?
Chew
Author Sable Jak and I discuss Kindle Vella and Serialization .
Want to read more of her serial on Kindle Vella?
Bright Morn of Issareth Vol 1
Bright Morn of Issareth Vol 2
Bright Morn of Issareth Vol 3
Author Sable Jak and I discuss Kindle Vella and Serialization .
Want to read more of her serial on Kindle Vella?
Bright Morn of Issareth Vol 1
Bright Morn of Issareth Vol 2
Bright Morn of Issareth Vol 3
There's more to writing for a website than just the content. Today, I'm talking to Laura Barr of Barr Web Services. We are discussing accessibility, usability, SEO, and Analytics for authors. With the rise of online fiction and more people flocking to their phones and tablets to read their favorite stories, we need to be conscientious of making our stories accessible for everyone.
Laura is also an avid fantasy reader who reads 3-4 books a week! So writers, listen to a reader and website designers ideas of what you need on your author website and blog.
Most of the research is from Nielsen Norman Group (NNG) or Laura's own user research that we discuss in the episode.
NNG: In research on how people read websites we found that 79 percent of our test users always scanned any new page they came across; only 16 percent read word-by-word. (Update: a newer study found that users read email newsletters even more abruptly than they read websites.) (Study first done in 1997, but 2020 results still support this)
NNG: Users will decide if your content is “good” or “bad” within ten seconds. (Article)
Personal Research: Need to meet user expectations. In a usability testing group of about 10 people, I asked them to try and apply to a position at the organization. No one got there through the navigation despite it being a top navigation item. Users are trained to look for specific types of content in specific locations and it’s important to meet these expectations.
NNG: People scan websites in different ways: F scanning and zigzag are popular
NNG: Ad blindness: people completely skip ads or ad like items on a webpage without realizing it.
Are you interested in getting your website refreshed? Contact Laura @ https://barrwebservices.com/
I've been editing a lot of picture books lately and there were a lot of the same mistakes. Editing all of these stories helped me notice some huge problems with picture books that I'm not sure authors are aware of. If you're thinking of writing a children's picture book, you're going to want to list to this.
I love comics, and I love YA, but there's something magical about middle grade. The moment I made the decision to maybe revamp my stories for a younger audience, I got a job at a middle school in Washington. Divine intervention, perhaps? I was notified of an opportunity to write chapter books for Scholastic (which is looking for BIPOC authors) and started researching more about chapter books.
As I thought and researched about chapter books, I realized that they did form a large part of my journey as a reader. I remember reading Beverly Cleary, Paula Danzinger, and Judy Blume. I read some books in the Boxcar Children, Nancy Drew, and the Hardy Boys series. I read widely, so I can't point to any one singular book. I went to a quirky elementary school, so we were reading Operas and play scripts as well as higher-level books, even if it was just the teacher reading them out loud. I know chapter books fit there somewhere, but they weren't necessarily a defining moment in my journey as a reader.
There's something simple about chapter books and early middle grade that is just satisfying as an adult reader. I think it's mainly because they can convey complex ideas that young minds can understand. In some of my readings, I found that some of these stories touched on high-level concepts. Newer stories weren't as preachy preachy as I remember, but they did have a lesson to be learned, even if it was wrapped up in an entertaining package.
Last week we talked about character and functions of character behavior. Just to recap a behavior is something that is measurable and observable. Essentially it's anything that a character can actively do in the story. Behavior is the thing that character does in reaction to an antecedent or a trigger.
Looking at characters this way can help writers determine logical consequences for specific character behavior, give the character a dominant behavior, and specific traits that helps that help readers understand the characters, choices and reactions. It can guide character decisions and create coherent story arcs for all character sets up a basic outline for the plot and guide the story's plot in a natural way.
I'm a huge psych nerd. Obviously, I'm a school psychologist who does this for a living day in and day out.
But it wasn't always rainbows and unicorns.
This theory came to me with a pending strike on the horizon. It was my first year as a school psych and my job was going on strike. At the time, I thought I'd try to speed up that writing process along a bit. My logic was that I wanted to figure out how to use my psych degree for writing. I was thoroughly burnt out on my job.
Granted in 2019, things were definitely a lot less intense in 2020, but my job going on strike felt like the end of the world. (It's so silly to look back at that when the following school year, there was a massive earthquake at the beginning of the school year and a global pandemic at the end. I can never catch a break with this job.)
In the psych world, there's something called the function of behavior and it refers to using data to understand what the motivation is behind someone's behavior, good or bad.
I wanted to see how can I combine that into story, into creating my character roadmap. Once I unlocked it, it kind of changed my world. Now I want to change yours too!
This podcast is about plot. Traditionally plot has been constructed in three acts, beginning, middle and end. Story structures such as "Save the Cat" and "Story Grid" and all the countless others are useful for different types of people. Different strokes and all. But for me, they were overwhelming. There was so much that I needed to know about my story that by the time I finished filling out all the info, I didn't enjoy actually writing the story itself.
The idea behind the Plot Roadmap is that each story has its own unique structure and shape. This method borrows and builds on Kurt Vonnegut's "Shape of Story" theory. His theory is brilliant because it give stories their own unique shape. It doesn't reject the three-act structure, but rather reframes it in a way so that each story can be different yet familiar.
The Plot Roadmap accounts for the twist and turns that allow you your outline to be solid yet flexible. The plot roadmap is made up of several different components, highs, lows, quiet moments, info reveals, crisis points cool-down or cliffhanger, which sounds like a fun ride to me.
I found myself getting stuck in another loop. Something just feels off about my story and I couldn't figure it out. Everything in the loose outline seemed solid enough. What it boiled down to was that while the scene was necessary to move the story forward, it was boring to write. If it was boring to write, then I know it would be boring to read.
The characters weren't making things happen in an interesting way. There were things I enjoyed in the story, but they weren't making it to the page in a way that was compelling to read about. So what did I do? I decided to make a motivation and story elements list. In this podcast episode, I'm going to tell you what a motivation list is and how to use it to elevate your writing and smash writers block once and for all.
As a school psychologist, I know one of the ways to fast track success in anything is reinforcement. Writing is no different. You may have heard of reinforcement before such as positive and negative reinforcement. For writing, it can be a magnificent way to gain traction on your projects.
If you know, there's something wonderful is going to come out of writing,it can be intrinsic or something that is internally rewarding about writing. It can be external or extrinsic for all you psychology nerds out there.
Conventional writing and psychology will tell you the entrance rewards are the best. I would say that whatever gets you motivated to write is the best. Motivation can always change. Take one form of reinforcement and branch out from there. There's nothing wrong with having a tangible reward like seeing your book on shelves or making a good living from writing.
This podcast is about setting goals. Many people try to change too much, too fast. Establishing a baseline will help you understand what you need to change. It'll give you a chance to take things slow and ramp up later, instead of going hard at first, then being forced to slow down because you're burnt out. This podcast will show you a new way of thinking when it comes to setting goals.
Generating ideas can be hard. Especially when people tell you that not all ideas can become great stories. I call B.S. on this. You may be thinking that if you come up with an idea, it might not be a viable story. Ideas are everywhere, trust me. You need to look for and cultivate them.
Mark Twain said: “There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely, but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.”In this episode, we'll go into the ways you can spark your own creativity and come up with endless ideas.
There's so much conflicting "advice" for writing out there, and trying to follow it all leaves you feeling confused and frustrated. More importantly, you don't get any writing done. You're right where you started. There are so many myths touted as truths, that it's difficult to overcome them once you get them in your head. There are so many rules about writing only for everyone to ultimately say there are no rules and that you should write your own.
In this podcast, writing myths are being busted, and I'll give you info on how to create your own rules.
It is very easy to get discouraged as a writer. There are so many discouraging things that run through your mind that it can paralyze you from moving forward in your comics career. I want to interrupt your way of thinking. Sometimes you need a good shakeup. In this podcast are the 4 thoughts that lies that will absolutely derail your writing career and some personal advice on how to overcome them.
My name is Najela and I wanted to talk about why I started this podcast. I grew up in a little town halfway between Los Angeles and Las Vegas in the middle of the Mojave desert called Victorville.
I went to UC Riverside and majored in Creative Writing and Psychology. I got my Master's in I in Special Education with an emphasis in Applied Behavior Analysis. I have my credential in School Psychology.
I first started off writing like this gritty young adult novels but last year in 2020 it just wasn't doing it for me anymore. I did some soul searching last year and realized middle grade is where my sweet spot is right now. Eventually, I will get back into young adult, but I think I'm going to kind of do more graphic novels in that age group. I can be a little grittier without having to kind of get sucked into that mindset.
This podcast is called "Way Too Wayward" for a very good reason. Wayward means to follow one's own capricious wanton or depraved inclinations, ungovernable, AKA a wayward child, following no clear principle or law unpredictable the opposite to what is desired or expected. I've kind of always been a rule breaker and a bit of a "wayward" child. That's what my mom would always say. I wasn't bad at all. I just had issues with authority.
I was the kid that was constantly doing their own thing and writing whatever made me happy. One of the reasons why I named my blog "Way Too Wayward" because the world has all these rules about writing and people always tell you what to do and how to do it. Those rules never really worked for me. In fact, the only time they did is when I didn't follow the rules. I wanted to start this podcast because I have a unique story to tell about my writing experience and my writing journey. I wanted to share it all with you. Maybe you'll learn some valuable tidbits and tips and strategies, or you just laugh at my many, many, many mistakes.