Writing Excuses – Details, episodes & analysis

Compared to This is How You Lose The Time War, which we read earlier this year, Ring Shout deals with a very real world. This discordance, where authors make their audience uncomfortable by creating things that shouldn’t go together, is part of the power of this novella, and part of the reason we chose to dive into tension! Our favorite metaphor about tension from this episode comes from Howard: potential movement (imagine a rock at the top of a hill). 

Note: this novella uses tools from the horror genre to add tension, and this can be intense for some readers! 

Thing of the Week: Blue Eye Samurai (Netflix) 

Homework: Take a movie or a book you've read that you find highly suspenseful and write an outline covering the major plot beats. Look at where tension is created and where it is released, and build a map of how it evolves over the course of the story

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Credits: Your hosts for this episode were Mary Robinette Kowal, 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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Today we have a wildcard episode for you! We are talking about all the different ways you can sustain your writing career. Our host, Erin Roberts, has done an incredible job of applying for grants, fellowships, and residencies. So, we put her on the spot and got her to dole out advice and insights to help you sustain and develop your writing. 

Thing of the Week: “Extreme Economies: What Life at the World's Margins Can Teach Us about Our Own Future” by Richard Davies 

Homework: Write a one-paragraph personal artistic statement.

Close Reading Series: Texts & Timeline

Next up is Tension! Starting September 1, we’ll be diving into Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark. Please note, this novella uses tools from the horror genre to add tension, and this can be intense for some readers! 

Liner Notes: 

Resources related to grants and fellowships:  

Creative Capital's monthly list of Artist Opportunities: https://creative-capital.org/category/artist-opportunities/

Philanthropy News Digest's lists of RFPs, which can be filtered to just those for Arts & Culture: https://philanthropynewsdigest.org/rfps 

→ Link to the filtered list here: https://philanthropynewsdigest.org/rfps/(search)/?tags_interest[]=arts+%2F+culture

The Create Daily's Opportunity Roundup Newsletter (requires a sign up at the link below):  https://www.thecreatedaily.com/community

For residency opportunities, the Open Calls list from Artist Communities Alliance: https://artistcommunities.org/directory/open-calls

Profellow list of fellowships:

https://www.profellow.com

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

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Learning is great, but how do you translate it into doing without getting overwhelmed? What is the difference between learning in the classroom and executing when you're on your own?

Marshall, our incredible recording engineer, just finished an MFA program. Congrats, Marshall!! On today’s episode, we gril Marshall in order to understand his takeaways from the program. Specifically, we are interested in how he takes everything he learned in the classroom and turns it into actionable things he’s doing on the page. We talk community, motivation, and how to consistently make time for your writing. 

Thing of the Week: The Fall of the House of Usher, TV show created by Mike Flanagan

Homework: Take a turn being the teacher– how would you teach a group of people about a concept you’re struggling with in your own work, and what homework would you give them to better understand it? 

Close Reading Series: Texts & Timeline

Next up is Character! Starting July 7, we’ll be diving into three short stories by C.L. Clark. These are all available for free through Uncanny Magazine. 

Character: “You Perfect, Broken Thing,” “The Cook,” and “Your Eyes, My Beacon: Being an Account of Several Misadventures and How I Found My Way Home” by CL Clark (starting July 7) 

And a sneak peak on the rest of the year… 

Tension: Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark (starting September 1) 

Structure: The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin (starting October 13)

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

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Your Hosts: Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, Brandon Sanderson, and Howard Tayler, with special guest Seth Fishman Seth Fishman, author of seven picture books (as well as lots of longer-form stuff), joins us to talk about writing picture books, including some of the business and publication aspects. No-Context Pull Quote: "Your art is so bad we're going to hire someone to draw badly for you." Credits: This episode was recorded live by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson

Your Hosts: Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, Brandon Sanderson, and Howard Tayler, with special guest Peng Shepherd Peng Shepherd joined us aboard Liberty of the Seas for WXR 2022, and returned with us to the topic of story structures. In this episode we answer questions from our live audience. The questions include: How do you make sure you've got the right number of plot threads? How do you spread the structure of a given plot line across multiple books? How do you avoiding having subplots distract readers from the main plot? What are some strategies you can use to better align character goals with the overall problem of the story? Are there clear dos and don'ts with regard to story structure? How do you prepare or color-code bits for running a role-playing game? More broadly: what organizational tools do you use for story structure? For the answers, you'll have to give the episode a listen... Credits: This episode was recorded live by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson

Your Hosts: Mary Robinette Kowal, Dongwon Song, Piper J. Drake, & Howard Tayler, with special guest K. M. Szpara CONTENT WARNING: this episode is about adult acts and adult bodies, and we won't be using euphemisms. K.M. Szpara joined us at WXR 2022 for this discussion of writing bodies and intimacy, with a particular focus on which kinds of words to use for things. Credits: This episode was recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr. before a live audience aboard Liberty of the Seas. It was mastered by Alex Jackson. 

Your Hosts: Howard Tayler, C.L. Polk, Marshall Carr, Jr., and Mary Robinette Kowal Oh no! You've put the project down for long enough that you've lost your place in it! Whatever will you do? For starters, you can listen to this episode. We've been there, and one of us is there right now. We talk about the different problems you're likely facing, and how to overcome them in order to find the thread and get moving again. Credits: This episode was recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson.

Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Cady Coleman The fictional side of science and the scientific side of fiction are part of the discipline of science communication, often called SciComm. In this episode Cady Coleman joins us to talk about how science fiction fits into the field of SciComm, and how the stories we tell can affect the people who read them. Credits: This episode was recorded before a live audience by Rob Kowal, and mastered by Alex Jackson.

Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Cady Coleman Chemist, USAF Colonel, and NASA Astronaut Cady Coleman joins us to talk about actual travel to actual space, and how that's a thing which is increasingly available to people who are not in the employ of government space agencies. Also, we discuss how the demographics of space travelers are changing, and how this is creating safer space travel for everyone. Credits: This episode was recorded before a live audience by Rob Kowal, and mastered by Alex Jackson.

Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Maurice Broaddus, and Howard Tayler We wrap up our eight-episode dialog master class with a discussion of nuance, which is difficult to describe in a blurb because it's... well, nuanced. That may sound a bit recursive, but our discussion dives deep into the meta. Credits: This episode was recorded by Daniel Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson.