Category Archives: Career and Lifestyle

These episodes talk, at least in part, about how to manage your career as a writer, and how to keep writing.

Archive Seasons 11-13, Career and Lifestyle, Guest, Live Audience, Season 13, Theory and Technique

13.50: What Writers Get Wrong, with Zoraida Córdova

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Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard, with special guest Zoraida Córdova

Zoraida Córdova, an award-winning author of urban fantasy, was born in Ecuador and grew up in Queens. She joins us to talk about what writers get wrong (and what they can get right and do well) when portraying latinas in the United States.

Credits: This episode was recorded live at FanX Salt Lake (formerly “Salt Lake Comic-Con”) by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson

Liner Notes: 

  • The comic book Howard referenced is Guardians of Infinity #3, (2016), which features a back-up story entitled “Yo Soy Groot.”
  • Peggy Whitson is the astronaut Mary referenced. As of this writing, she holds the record for longest single spaceflight by an American. 

 

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:23 — 14.0MB)

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A challenge! Find (and read) books written by Ecuadoran authors. Then make one of your own secondary characters be from Ecuador.

Labyrinth Lost, by Zoraida Córdova

Career and Lifestyle, Theory and Technique

NaNoWriMo 2018 Bonus Episode, with Mercedes Lackey

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Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard, with special guest Mercedes Lackey

NaNoWriMo 2018 is half-way over today. Are you stuck? Do you need to get unstuck? Mercedes Lackey joined us at GenCon Indy back in 2017 to talk about writer’s block, and how it’s very likely a symptom of something else. In this episode we discuss the interpretation of those symptoms, and how we go about solving the root problems.

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 16:43 — 11.5MB)

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Write a lovers’ quarrel where the fight they’re having is happening because they think they need to have a fight.

Avalanche: Secret World Chronicle Book 5, by Mercedes Lackey

Archive Seasons 11-13, Career and Lifestyle, Season 13

NaNoWriMo 2018 Mini-Episode 2

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Your Mini-Episode Hosts: Amal El-Mohtar and Maurice Broaddus, with Special Asides from Mary Robinette Kowal

We’re a week in to NaNoWriMo. If you’re scared of it, Amal is here to tell you that it’s okay to feel that way, Maurice is here with the encouraging words “consequence-free.”

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:35 — 1.8MB)

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Relax! The “rules” of NaNoWriMo are not YOUR rules. If there’s a way you like to write, write that way!

Career and Lifestyle

NaNoWriMo 2018 Mini-Episode 1

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Your Mini-Episode Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard

Back in 2017 we recorded a bonus episode for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and then forgot to air it. Here, then, in the spirit of never throwing anything away, is a spot of motivation which is both timely AND one year late.

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Your homework: Try NaNoWriMo!

Archive Seasons 11-13, Career and Lifestyle, Guest, Season 13, Theory and Technique

13.42: Writing Excuses Talks to an Astronaut, with Special Guest Kjell Lindgren

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Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard, with special space-guest Kjell Lindgren

Kjell Lindgren, flight surgeon, Expedition 44/45, joined us for an episode that perhaps should have been called “we ask the space-man all of the things.” We asked him stuff that we wanted to know more about, and came away richer for the experience.

If there’s just one technical term worth bringing home from this episode, it’s “expeditionary behavior.” It’s the sort of thing that can make us all richer for the experience.

Credits: This episode was recorded by Benjamin Hewett at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, and mastered by Alex Jackson at Writing Excuses Mission Control in Chicago.

BONUS: NASA invited us back to be on THEIR show, Houston We Have a Podcast, and that episode went live about three days before this did. More Kjell Lindgren!

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 18:25 — 12.7MB)

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“I’m doing the Zero Gravity Giraffe” — Howard Tayler (Howard would like to point out that this is not the technical term you should bring home from this episode.)

R is for Rocket, by Ray Bradbury

Archive Seasons 11-13, Career and Lifestyle, Season 13, Theory and Technique

13.41: Fixing Character Problems, Part II

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Your Hosts: Brandon, Amal, Mary, and Maurice

This is the second of our pair of episodes in which we talk about how we, your hosts, fix the problems we’ve identified with the characters in our work.

Credits: This episode was recorded by Andrew Twiss, and mastered by Alex Jackson.

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 22:36 — 15.6MB)

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Take a character in one of your stories and split them into two characters. Take two characters from another of your stories, and combine them into one.

The Only Harmless Great Thing, by Brooke Bolander

Archive Seasons 11-13, Career and Lifestyle, Season 13, Theory and Technique

13.40: Fixing Character Problems, Part I

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Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard

This is the first of two episodes in which we’ll talk about how we, your hosts, fix the problems we’ve identified with the characters in our work.

Credits: this episode was recorded by Dan Thompson and mastered by Alex Jackson

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 16:06 — 11.1MB)

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Take your very favorite character that you’ve created, and write a couple of scenes in which you break them by writing them wrong.

Heroine Complex, by Sarah Kuhn

Archive Seasons 11-13, Career and Lifestyle, Guest, Season 13, Theory and Technique

13.39: What Writers Get Wrong, With Wendy Tolliver

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Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard, with special guest Wendy Tolliver

Wendy skis, and snowboards, and  writes YA novels. She is also the parent of three, one of whom suffers from mental illness. She joined us to talk about how writers can do a better job of depicting it, and how to avoid the pitfalls and the harmful cliches.

Credits: This episode was recorded live at Salt Lake Fan X by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 17:47 — 12.3MB)

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Pick a mental disorder that you think pop culture has informed you about. Study up on it. Then write a scene in which that disorder informs the character’s behavior without actually naming the disorder.

 

Life Inside My Mind, by Maureen Johnson, Robison Wells, Wendy Tolliver, and 28 others.