19.52: End of Year Reflections: Navigating Speedbumps

19.52: End of Year Reflections: Navigating Speedbumps

Author: Mary Robinette Kowal, DongWon Song, Erin Roberts, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler December 29, 2024 Duration: 29:41

Today, we’re reflecting on 2024. Individually, all of us went through a lot throughout the year—we encountered myriad speed bumps that slowed us down in different ways.. How do you balance your workload with your own personal life and its needs? How can you help make navigating these speedbumps easier by knowing your own limits and needs? We give you specific questions you can ask yourself in order to locate your problem points and figure out how to rearrange your life (and your stories about your own life) in order to not over-exhaust yourself.  


Thing of the Week: Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga


Homework: Once a day for the next week, identify and write down something that is causing you pain. At the end of your week, look through your list and identify the one that is causing the most pain, and try to bulldoze it. 


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Credits: Your hosts for this episode were Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, DongWon Song, Erin Roberts, and Howard Tayler. It was produced by Emma Reynolds, recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson.

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It’s a common piece of advice: if you want to be a writer, you should write. But what happens when you’re staring at the blank page, or when the business side of publishing feels like a maze? That’s where Writing Excuses comes in. Each week, hosts Mary Robinette Kowal, DongWon Song, Erin Roberts, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler gather not just to talk about writing, but to dissect it. They move quickly, respecting your time while packing episodes with actionable discussions on technique, from character voice to plot structure. But this podcast understands that a writing life isn’t just about craft-it’s also a career. So conversations naturally pivot to the practicalities of the business, navigating careers, and sustaining creativity in a demanding field. You’ll hear five distinct professional perspectives blending into a single, focused conversation designed to get you past excuses and back to your work. It’s like a regular, invigorating workshop session delivered directly to you, meant to equip you with tools for both your manuscript and your professional path.
Author: Language: en-us Episodes: 500

Writing Excuses
Podcast Episodes
17.14: Structuring for Disordered or Order-less Reading Order [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 21:19
Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Peng Shepherd, and Howard Tayler Guest host Peng Shepherd leads our discussion of "order-less reading order" (after we get past the business of "having too much fun with the e…
17.13: Structuring Around a Thing [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 19:35
Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Peng Shepherd, and Howard Tayler Our exploration of sub- and micro-structures continues with guest host Peng Shepherd. This week we're talking about how a story can be structu…
17.12: Structuring a Story Within a Story [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 20:45
Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Peng Shepherd, and Howard Tayler One common structure—both macro and micro—is the "story within a story," or "framing story" structure, and yet somehow we've never really expl…
17.11: Structuring with Multiple Timelines [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 19:56
Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Peng Shepherd, and Howard Tayler Guest host Peng Shepherd continues to lead our exploration of sub- and micro-structures by taking us into the scaffolding of in media res, fla…
17.10: Structuring with Multiple POVs [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 18:13
Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Peng Shepherd, and Howard Tayler In our second micro-structure episode, Peng Shepherd leads us into an exploration of the ways in which the use of multiple point-of-view chara…
17.9: Let’s Talk About Structure [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 17:49
Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Peng Shepherd, and Howard Tayler We're beginning another eight-episode deep-dive series, and this time it's a fresh approach to story structure, led by our guest host Peng She…
17.8: The Alchemy of Creativity [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 20:17
Your Hosts: Howard Tayler, Kaela Rivera, Sandra Tayler, and Megan Lloyd How do you translate things from the spark of inspiration into a work that someone else can consume? Like, instead of turning a movie into a book, y…
17.7: Dissecting Influence [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 19:40
Your Hosts: Howard Tayler, Kaela Rivera, Sandra Tayler, and Megan Lloyd What are your influences? What pieces of art, music, literature, or other media have inspired you? In this episode we'll talk about making that insp…
17.6: Hitting Reset Without Getting Hit Back [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 21:03
Your Hosts: Howard Tayler, Kaela Rivera, Sandra Tayler, and Megan Lloyd Oh no! You're in the middle of a thing (a novel, a series, a career) and you suddenly realize that the expectations you set early on are not the exp…
17.5: The Promise of the Brand [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 23:56
Your Hosts: Howard Tayler, Kaela Rivera, Sandra Tayler, and Megan Lloyd Your brand—your name, the cover art for your book, and even the typeface for the title—set expectations for the book's contents. That advice about n…