Tag Archives: Awards

15.09: Choose Your Own Adventurous Publishing Path

Your Hosts: Dan, DongWon, Piper, and Howard

“Should I go self-pub? Should I go traditional? Can I do both? How do I decide where my book fits?”

In this episode we’ll cover these, and many more questions as best we’re able.

Credits: This episode was recorded by Bert Grimm, and mastered by Alex Jackson

Liner Notes:

¹ RWA membership is required for these forums. This episode was recorded in September of 2019

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Write the “choose your own adventurous publishing path” flow chart with decision points, and write a fun little fiction about your future career possibilities.

11.28: Impostor Syndrome, with Alyssa Wong

Alyssa Wong, Campbell Award nominee and Nebula Award winner, joins us to talk about impostor syndrome. This is the frame of mind that many successful writers suffer from, in which they worry that they’re not really good enough at writing to be enjoying their success. Worse, this mindset can prevent us from continuing to create.

Many of us suffer from this, and we have some strategies to cope with it.

Credits: This episode was recorded by Jeff Cools, and mastered by Alex Jackson. 

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Grow sideways! Write something that you’ve never tried to write, genre-wise.

“You’ll Surely Drown Here If You Stay,” by Alyssa Wong, which is available to read here.

BLADE OF THE DAGGERKNIFE: The 2015 Stabby Awards

Just this morning we learned that readers, listeners, and commenters over at r/fantasy have voted Writing Excuses as Best Related Work for the 2015 Stabby Awards

Thank you, Reddit!

The trophy is an actual stabby thing.

The 2014 Best Related Work Stabby pictured above was awarded to the WORLDBUILDERS charity
The 2014 Best Related Work Stabby pictured above was awarded to the WORLDBUILDERS charity

We’re honored  by this award, and in reviewing the nominees and the winners over at /r/fantasy/, we’re doubly honored to see the company we’re in.

Writing Excuses is something we do for the community of writers, and we’re delighted to know that people like it enough to give us (including Dan Wells) something really shiny and sharp.

Delighted, if perhaps a little concerned.

2015 Hugo Award Eligibility – SHADOWS BENEATH

The Hugo Awards voters have honored us by nominating the Writing Excuses podcast in the Best Related Work category several times in the past, and two years ago Writing Excuses won! This is something we’re still giddy about.

If you’re eligible to nominate things for the Hugo ballot, and if you think Writing Excuses belongs on that ballot, we’d like for you to consider nominating our anthology, SHADOWS BENEATH, in the Best Related Work category, rather than nominating the podcast itself. Of course, it’s possible that the (free!) podcast is all you’re familiar with, so if you’re eligible to nominate for the Hugos, use the contact form at brandonsanderson.com* for a complimentary electronic copy of SHADOWS BENEATH: THE WRITING EXCUSES ANTHOLOGY.

And don’t delay! The nomination period is open for another month, but if you were not at LonCon, and have not yet registered for WorldCon 2015, you only have until January 31st to buy your voting or attending membership. Visit sasquan.org for the details.

Whether or not you want to nominate Writing Excuses, you should consider acquiring that membership so that your favorite books, stories, publications, editors, artists, and writers have a chance to appear on this year’s Hugo Awards ballot.

(*WEBMASTER’S NOTE: during the podcast, Brandon said to use an email address to acquire the complimentary copy of the book. That email address isn’t working, so we’re falling back to the contact form. Sorry for the inconvenience!)

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What five genre fiction novels would you most like to see on the Hugo Award ballot this year? What about novelettes? Short stories? Now imagine that each of these works is actually a superhero. What kinds of crime would your Hugo Super Team fight?

Writing Excuses 9.1: Chronology of a Book Deal with Eric James Stone

Happy New Year, and happy new season of Writing Excuses!

Eric James Stone joins us to talk about his latest book deal. These things are different for everyone, and the marketplace is changing so quickly that it’s worth noting the differences and the similarities between our deal experiences (three of us were sitting on brand-new deals as of the recording of this podcast.)

Eric in particular walks us through the chronology of his current book deal, from the original writing, through the agent representation and multiple rejections and revisions, all the way to the current contract. Did Eric’s Nebula win (for a different story) help this deal along a bit? Oh, it may very well have done exactly that.

Liner Notes: Here’s Jim Hine’s “First Novel Survey” results page.

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Write a story about someone who has amazing, incredible, wonderful news, but they’re not allowed to talk about it.

Ender’s World: Fresh Perspectives on the SF Classic Ender’s Game, a collection of essays by numerous writers, and narrated by lots of narrators. Both Eric and Mary wrote for this collection. (Note: it’s currently not appearing on Audible’s site, but Amazon shows it as being available through Audible. Weirdness!)

Writing Excuses 8.23: Microcasting

Microcasting! It’s what we’ve taken to calling a Q&A. Eric Patten joins us for this one. Here are the questions:

  • What’s your first step in the rewriting process?
  • How do you write Artificial Intelligences as characters?
  • Tactful promotion: how do you get nominated for a Hugo or Nebula?
  • How do you decide whether or not to take an offer from a publisher?
  • Do you use a writing notebook? How, and for what?
  • What methods do you use to test the “coolness” and/or viability of a story idea?
  • What genre or style do you read that is outside of the one(s) in which you write?
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Two words: “Flying Caldecott.”

Red Storm Rising, by Tom Clancy, narrated by Michael Prichard

Writing Excuses Nominated for 2010 Podcast Award for Education

It has just come to our attention that Writing Excuses has been nominated for the 2010 Podcast Awards: The People’s Choice under the Education category.

If you are a “people” and would like to make Writing Excuses your “choice,” visit podcastawards.com and vote! You may vote once every 24 hours from now until December 15th, which might mean this is “The Fanatically Devoted Or Maybe Automated People’s Choice,” but this is the World Wild Web, and that’s how things seem to be done.

We, of course, are honored to have been nominated, and are pleased to see so many other quality podcasts similarly honored. May the best botnet win!

Writing Prompt: Imagine a future in which political elections are now voted by botnet. Give us a story in which this is actually the best of all possible democracies.