Caille Millner is an award-winning writers across genres, writing memoir, fiction, and, for the San Francisco Chronicle, cultural columns and opinion pieces. When we met, just after the election, she was already collaborating on a list for Bay Area writers of ways to volunteer your writing skills to help people made especially vulnerable by the election. We talked about the pros and cons of novels as a response to the political world, and the question of whether everything in non-fiction should be personal--and how to reach beyond that dictum and trust your instincts beyond, and against, the current market. We learned more about her job shaping the public opinions of the Chronicle, and talked about the differences between perfectionist creating and deadline writing where everything is essentially a first draft, and how to keep the job writing separate from the at-home writing. We talked about the short story form and the 18 drafts she did for her Best American short story, chosen by Junot Diaz for the 2016 collection; how to do research for fiction and how to find the details of the perspective that will bring the world alive to life; time, motivation, and productivity; he need to be writing about what you're passionate about, not what you think you should be writing or what you think someone else think you should be writing; and the importance of embarrassment as a way of taking risks. An inspiring conversation in difficult times!

LINKS

Mauro Javier Cardenas 

Junot Diaz 

Roland Barthes 

Ann Patchett 

Caille Millner 

Anthony Walton Mississippi 
2016 Best American Short Stories edited by Junot Diaz 
Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness  
Gillian Flynn Gone Girl  
Toni Morrison Beloved 
Gayle Jones Corregiora 
Caille Millner The Golden Road: Notes on my Gentrification 

Story Makers is a podcast that features in-depth conversations with accomplished writers, filmmakers and industry experts about story craft, technique, habit and survival--everything you need to know to stay inspired, connect to your creativity, find others’ wonderful stories and your own success.

The hosts:

Elizabeth Stark is a published, agented novelist and distributed filmmaker who teaches and mentors writers at BookWritingWorld.com.

Angie Powers is a distributed filmmaker and published short story writer with an MFA in creative writing and a certificate in screenwriting from UCLA who teaches story structure at BookWritingWorld.com.

In this week’s Quick Fix Q & A, Angie and Elizabeth discuss:

• 6 steps to creating a scene
• 4 tests for: is it an event?
• Plot complexity and genre expectations
• Your personal thematic
• Decision fatigue
• Automating your routine

FREE Craft Class

Friends' week is coming up in the Book Writing World, November 15 & 17! Join us in-person in Berkeley OR Online from anywhere via Zoom's video conferencing for a free 2-hour craft class on Backstory--when do you need it, how do you work it in, and what can and can't it do for your story?

You and your friends can sign up here:

http://bookwritingworld.com/friends-week/

Spread the word: it is solely through word-of-mouth that BWW finds its exceptional, talented, warm, bright students. Thank you for being part of our community!

Story Makers is a podcast that features in-depth conversations with accomplished writers, filmmakers and industry experts about story craft, technique, habit and survival--everything you need to know to stay inspired, connect to your creativity, find others’ wonderful stories and your own success.

The hosts:

Elizabeth Stark is a published, agented novelist and distributed filmmaker who teaches and mentors writers at BookWritingWorld.com.

Angie Powers is a distributed filmmaker and published short story writer with an MFA in creative writing and a certificate in screenwriting from UCLA who teaches story structure at BookWritingWorld.com.

In this episode we sit down with author Micah Perks. Our conversation went all over the place, and we hit on a number topics.

We discussed:

• Fetal narrators
• How long it can take to write a novel
• What happens when revisions don't work
• Finding the title
• How to raise the stakes in the novel
• Facing your greatest fears as a writer
• Finding the ending
• Getting feedback from your partner
• Fear of influence, idea theft, the hopelessness of such fear
• The ways that creative writing can be taught or nurtured as well as any other discipline
• When your work out as shorts and audio shorts
• Novelists misperceptions that memoir will be easier to write, and the actual huge challenges of the disciplining
• Using a fictional voice to find her way into the memoir
• Why she now finds memoir easier to write than fiction
• Traditional versus modernist/ experimental forms in fiction and nonfiction
• Permission

LINKS:

Elizabeth McKenzie
Melissa Sanders-Self
Jill Wolfson
Karen Joy Fowler
Nutshell by Ian McEwan
Carlos Fuentes Christopher Unborn
Lauren Groff
Shebooks
Alone in the Woods: Cheryl Strayed, my daughter, and me
Stockard Channing performing Beverly Cleary's Ramona books
Molly Antopol
David Sedaris
Maggie nelson
Michelle Tea Black Wave
Sarah Manguso
Svetlana Alexievich
Ben Lerner
Knausgaard
Austin Kleon stealing TS Eliot's stealing quote
The Marvelous Land of Oz

Story Makers is a podcast that features in-depth conversations with accomplished writers, filmmakers and industry experts about story craft, technique, habit and survival--everything you need to know to stay inspired, connect to your creativity, find others’ wonderful stories and your own success.

The hosts:

Elizabeth Stark is a published, agented novelist and distributed filmmaker who teaches and mentors writers at BookWritingWorld.com.

Angie Powers is a distributed filmmaker and published short story writer with an MFA in creative writing and a certificate in screenwriting from UCLA who teaches story structure at BookWritingWorld.com.