100 episodes! Doing anything for 100 consecutive weeks is not easy. We’re excited to take a look back at some highlights.
Zach’s List
The Career Author Podcast: Episode 44 – Money Tips For the Aspiring Career Author – https://thecareerauthor.com/the-career-author-podcast-episode-44-money-tips-for-the-aspiring-career-author/
The Career Author Podcast: Episode 57 – Dealing With Project Burnout – https://thecareerauthor.com/the-career-author-podcast-episode-57-dealing-with-project-burnout/
The Career Author Podcast: Episode 66 – Digital Minimalism for the Career Author – https://thecareerauthor.com/ep066/
J.’s List
The Career Author Podcast: Episode 9 – The Importance of Unplugging, Distractions, and Living in the Moment – https://thecareerauthor.com/the-career-author-podcast-episode-9-unplugging-distractions-and-living-in-the-moment/
The Career Author Podcast: Episode 39 – How to Protect Your Creative Energy – https://thecareerauthor.com/the-career-author-podcast-episode-39-setting-up-boundaries/
The Career Author Podcast: Episode 86 – The Myth of Work/Life Balance – https://thecareerauthor.com/the-career-author-podcast-episode-86-the-myth-of-work-life-balance/
The Career Author Podcast is a podcast where co-authors J. Thorn and Zach Bohannon share their struggles and successes as full-time authors, advice for improving your writing craft, and honest discussions of what it takes to build a successful career as an author.
In this episode, you’ll discover:
- Money tips for the career author
- How to deal with project burnout
- Why digital minimalism can make your life better
- The importance of unplugging and being in the moment
- How to protect your creative energy
- Why work-life balance might be a myth
Also, discover a cool text editor. Thanks to Mikey Campling.
Send us your ways and hacks – https://thecareerauthor.com/waysandhacks/
Leave us a comment: What would you like us to talk about in the next 100 episodes? (And how do you feel about reading box sets on an ereader?)
Thanks to all of our Patrons.
Podcast sponsored by Kobo Writing Life – https://writinglife.kobobooks.com
Get exclusive bonus content by supporting The Career Author Podcast on Patreon at www.patreon.com/thecareerauthor
Want to work with us? Get the details at https://thecareerauthor.com/services/
Links:
Camille Champa – hello@camillechampa.com
Typora – https://typora.io/
James Clear “The Downside of Work-Life Balance” – https://jamesclear.com/four-burners-theory
J.’s mastermind group – https://theauthorlife.com/mastermind
The November Giveaway is up now! – http://www.thecareerauthor.com
The Career Author YouTube Channel – https://www.youtube.com/thecareerauthor
Three Story Method – http://threestorymethod.com
Molten Universe Media – http://www.moltenuniversemedia.com
Events – https://thecareerauthor.com/events/
Comments
15 responses to “The Career Author Podcast: Episode 100 – 100 Episodes!”
For the second question first, I do not have an issue with reading something that would have that big of a length in kindle. I am also a reader of door stopper fantasy novels. Currently reading a book two of Stormlight Archive, and I am barely fifty percent. It is over a thousand pages. I am also listening to the audiobook, which is 48 hours long. I have twenty-five hours left to listen to.
As for your first question…what would I like you guys to cover in the next one hundred episodes?
Have you noticed a change in your process from the start of your career to now? What parts of your process have changed and why? Was it a good change or not?
And first post again! HAHA!
Great questions. And congrats on first post, LOL!
Morning guys. Morning Lon. Interesting way today J, I’ll check that out.
Great choices of episodes. I love the idea of media use, changing us humans. I have a vague memory Mad books or magazines did an issue on the idea that humans would lose the use of legs and they would grow shorter because of driving everywhere. Possibly from the early 1970s.
Suggestion. Create a novel from scratch, reporting each week or month on the progress for ten minutes, going through every step to publication and beyond, showing idea generation to outlining, writing, editing, blurb writing, cover choice discussion etc through to upload, marketing, and sales.
You could have a bit of fun filming one of you sitting down to write the first draft starting with a blank page then show a faux speeded up film stopping a few times for pretend sleeps on the couch or visits to the bathroom or kitchen and after five minutes show you at the desk with a beaming smile showing a laptop screen with 80,000 words. Might not work so well in sound only. This could be a regular slot in your podcasts, maybe once a month. Occasionally as you go you could devote an entire episode to a decision like cover choice or marketing etc. If you had it all on film you could top and tail each film and sell it as a course. The point of it is it would be a meta-story that listeners would want to follow to fruition and see the results. You could choose one of your flagship series as the target book – if there’s still time you could show book 1 in the series being created and use the material for marketing purposes. If no time – make it up 🙂.
Another suggestion. Take the writing process break it down to specific things like outlining, setting, character arc, dialogue etc. and do an episode on each discussing ways to develop each and integrate them into your writing. Again, course material.
Great show guys. Looking forward to the next 100 issues.
Great suggestions! I have a new project launching soon that might scratch some of these itches. Stay tuned…
As Zach always says, #100 is a milestone, a land AND benchmark episode. And I agree with the kindle app and the % formula. I mean, who measures a book read-thru progress by percentage? Page numbers, Kindle, page numbers. This is one big reason why I dislike the kindle app. And I don’t even know why it bugs me so much, but it does. As for your next 100 episodes, I wouldn’t mind if y’all added 10-15 minutes (for an hour total on average) and discuss one or two news items in addition to ways & hacks, and main topic. I would also enjoy a guest once a month on a deep-dive topic. One topic in particular comes to mind after I read a recent new-author twitter rant. This author was whining about low sales (after two books and like barely three months out of the gate) and then it devolved into blaming stereotypes as justification. I had already downloaded book one, read about 7%. After the twitter rant was posted, I skimmed to about 25% and had to stop. What I noticed was that in that 25%, there was maybe 2 full pages of actual character dialogue, the rest being a crap ton of telling. There were other major issues as well that I think contributed to low sales, but I was wondering should there be a balance between dialogue and telling/or internal thoughts. I quickly got bored because of so little dialogue even tho there were several characters in the story.
Anyway, good episode, Thanks.
Thanks, Sully! Good suggestions on the next 100. Things we’ll consider, for sure.
Yeah, not sure what to say about whining on social media. Seems like that writer would be better off typing those words into a manuscript instead of Twitter.
I sometimes bitch on social media…but I wouldn’t complain about low sales. That is just dumb.
Right? Because who is really going to listen?
Exactly. My first thought was, Seriously? If I was a fan, I would have been completely turned off by such a display. My second thought was, “sheesh, you just barely published two books as a debut author, give it some time.” I thought about offering some feedback, but the second twitter rant was blaming stereotypes and ignoring the obvious, like cover, blurb, and the actual writing. The writing was not bad, but none of the elements jived and did not deliver on the promised intent. As you said, this author should just get back to writing more, oh, and hire out the cover and blurb, which this author did themselves. The whole episode was just weird and I hope it was not the final shot in the foot.
I hate reading box sets on a Kindle for the same reasons you all talked about. It feels unwieldy to navigate through many thousands of pages, even on that device. Also, I like to know where I am in a book, and I feel unmoored when the percentage doesn’t match up with my place. There’s no context for this in a physical book, even in a large anthology, I can skip ahead and see how much more I have left in that particular story. There must be some sort of psychological factor at play for why this makes us uncomfortable.
I think you’re right.
Congrats on 100 episodes! I really enjoyed all of your picks. When you mentioned the work-life balance, it made me think of when I was in gymnastics and worked the balance beam. I was constantly adjusting my body to maintain that balance. Balance isn’t something you attain once and then never have to work at again. Every time you do something even a little bit different, you have to adjust your balance. I think balance in life and work is the same thing.
I digress! I’d be interested in hearing about how you manage the many aspects of your writing careers. Writing fiction, non-fiction, classes, events, podcasting, publishing, coaching, editing…whew! What does it look like to do all of that?
Good point! Constant adjustments are what life is all about.
“Manage” is one way of putting it. LOL!
I have a couple more topic suggestions for the next 100 episodes:
1) content marketing
2) the trend in indie publishing, which seems to be at a fever pitch (at least in some genres, like romance), to write and release as quickly as possible. What are your thoughts on this trend? You’re career authors who know the importance of a big catalog, but you also have a book of craft coming out and J, I know you are a Story Grid Certified Editor, so developing craft must be important to you both. How would you advise a new indie author on how to balance writing really good books that work and doing it as quickly as possible?
Great suggestions!