Welcome to the first post of my new blog. Since this blog will be mostly about writing, with some travel and sports thrown in, I figure the first post* should be about just that – writing.
(*This isn’t entirely true. I started this blog about a week ago and had a “Hey, I’m here but I have nothing to say yet” post sitting here about a week. Please forgive me if I go ahead and delete that one and call this one my first post).
Okay, so…the first post. Something about writing. Right.
How about podcasts? Writing podcasts. There aren’t enough of them, in my humble opinion.
The ones I follow seem to be updated by Monday morning. The most regularly updated is Writing Excuses. The three guys running it (Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells and Howard Tayler) are like clockwork, and when I sit down at my desk on a Monday morning and find a fresh podcast about writing waiting for me, it’s always much appreciated. Thanks much, guys.
But…they’re short. Their motto is “Fifteen minutes long, because you’re in a hurry, and we’re not that smart.” That fifteen minutes is probably one of the things that keeps them posting those ‘casts on such a regular schedule. But, here’s the thing, guys. When it comes to writing advice, I’m not in a hurry. Oh, and you really are that smart. So feel free to make them longer any time. As long as you keep the schedule regular like you have been.
Demanding, aren’t I?
Then there’s I should be writing by Mur Lafferty. She’s fairly regular, and her content is always good. I enjoy the chuckle of her “Good Cop, Bad Cop” segments with Matt Wallace. She’s got a couple of different show formats as well, which is nice for variety.
The Writing Show is all “Slush Pile Workshops” now, which are informative. It’s also routinely the longest show, though that’s mostly because of all of the reading of submissions Paula Berinstein does. I’d love to see her involve another opinion, perhaps a rotating agent or two, in her reviews of the manuscripts she reads.
The Reading and Writing Podcast is an interview format, in which mostly thriller writers are interviewed. The interviews are great, though sometimes the questions are repetitive (seemingly intentionally) and it takes nearly a month between interviews.
Finally, I occasionally listen to Writers on Writing with Barbara DeMarco-Barrett. These interviews are well done, though for some reason I don’t keep it first in my rotation.
So, now that I’ve given you a rundown of the writing podcasts I already try to listen to regularly, what am I missing? There must be other great podcasts out there are writing that I simply haven’t discovered yet.
If I get some feedback, or if I just discover them on my own, I’ll try to periodically create updated posts with podcast links for those who are interested.
In the meantime, I’ll link the above, as well as the writing blogs I follow (another post coming on those soon) in the Blogroll on the left.
Chris Negron 