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Episode 64: Rejection and Resurrection

Episode 64: Rejection and Resurrection

by | Apr 16, 2018 | Show

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We’re back after a long hiatus, and diving in with a topic all writers have to face, the successful most of all: rejection. Elizabeth shares the ups and downs of her publishing trails, and talks about responding to feedback versus holding to your own authentic vision. We talk about the many iterations of revision and how you know you are done with a book. Submission and re-submission get a look, and we explore analogies including dating and sales for what they can and can’t offer us as we collect rejections on the path to success. Other topics include perfectionism, deadlines, buddies, and holding on to and letting go of your work.

Oh! And send your questions to: questions@storymakersshow.com

Links Discussed

Matt Bird http://www.secretsofstory.com/

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Todd Henry: The Accidental Creative

Charles Duhigg, Smarter, Faster, Better

The Change Agent podcast:

Simplicity podcast Duhigg episode, season 3, episode one:

Lea Page episode:

The Pomodoro Technique:

 

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.

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Episode 63: Macro Despair/ Micro Success: Editing, Agents, Writing Retreats and the Shared Love of Story with Editor Molly Schulman

Episode 63: Macro Despair/ Micro Success: Editing, Agents, Writing Retreats and the Shared Love of Story with Editor Molly Schulman

by | Jun 2, 2017 | Show

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In this conversation with Molly Schulman, aa freelance editor who was the former in-house editor at a New York literary agency, we discuss what it’s like to edit authors such as Elizabeth Strout and Ruth Ozeki, as well as her own experiences as a poet and writer/ performer of a one-woman show now at work on a novel. We talk about trying to be a little bit scared, about taking risks, about what writers can learn from stand-up comics, including the inspiration of delusional confidence. Other topics include:

  • The art and craft of the one-woman show
  • The importance of forgetting
  • Seeing the rough drafts of Pulitzer-prize winning authors
  • The tendency to over complicate a novel/ story
  • The power of an Italian retreat to fuel your writing...
  • Television as a writing prompt
  • If Klimpt is the Andrew Wyeth of the television age
  • The importance of the artistic sensibility to conducting literary business
  • Systems and process
  • Applying design process to creating a creative life
  • Backstory
  • The grotesque
  • Austin v. NYC
  • A peek into the inner workings of one agency

Links Discussed:

Molly Schulman
L'Avventura Writing Retreat
"Malvern Books -- Ice Cream Social
Aziz Ansari on Terri Gross

Books

The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
The World According to Garp by John Irving
Sherlock Holmes
Bridging: A One Day Writing Retreat with Keynote Speaker Karen Joy Fowler

Molly Schulman

Molly Schulman

Molly Schulman is a writer and an editor. She was born in California; she grew up in New York; she lived in Georgia for a nice while; now she lives in Texas. After receiving her B.A. in Creative Writing from The New School, she worked in publishing as an in-house editor at The Friedrich Agency where she worked with authors such as Elizabeth Strout, Jane Smiley, Laurie Frankel, and Ruth Ozeki. In October 2013, she left the agency to pursue her own writing, performing, and professional freelance editing and author consultation services. As an independent editor, she's worked with authors such as Imbolo Mbue, Heather Barbieri, and Will Heinrich. She has taught writing and publishing workshops in Austin, TX at The Writing Barn and TOMS Roasting CO., and in NYC, during the Brooklyn Book Festival. In September 2017, she will be the guest author and instructor at L’avventura Writing Residency at Villa Cantoni, in the Friuli region of Northeast Italy.

Molly debuted her one woman show, a poetry-based storytelling performance called One of Six—a story about growing up with many siblings, in many houses—at the City of Savannah Center for Cultural Affairs in May 2014. She has been published in literary journals such as Sink Review, Burningword, Eleven-and-Half, and Release, and she guest-edited the Summer 2015 issue of Five Quarterly. Most recently, she was a Winter 2016 Ragdale writer-in-residence where she worked on her novel-in-progress—a multi-generational tale of brothers, sisters, and show business—called HOW TO CRY ON CUE.

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.

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Episode 64: Rejection and Resurrection

Episode 62: Story Problem: Concrete Goals for Writers, Filmmakers, and Characters

by | May 18, 2017 | Show

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Angie and Elizabeth regroup after Angie’s intensive film production and Elizabeth’s recently completed novel draft to talk about iterations of projects, what to do in between, how to juggle vision v. footage/ pages, and the importance of knowing what you are working towards when you edit. We also discuss concrete story goals--what they look like, why they matter, and what they allow in terms of resonance and larger themes. Other topics we touch on in this conversation include: releasing ownership, film v. prose, want v. need, mindset, and the level of risk we are willing to take.

Links Discussed:

 

Jill Soloway
Lex Vaughn
Lauren Groff
Barbara Sher
Austin Powers
John Truby The Anatomy of Story
Colum McCann Transatlantic
Carol Dwek Mindset
Annie Dillard The Writing Life
Matt Bird The Secrets of Story

 

Don't forget to send in your questions!

Please review us!

If you’re curious about how to leave a review on iTunes, here’s an article about how to do it!

And here’s our iTunes Page. 

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.

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Episode 61: Burying the Lead: a journalist turns to poetry

Episode 61: Burying the Lead: a journalist turns to poetry

by | Apr 27, 2017 | Show

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Our dear friend and talented writer Devi Laskar’s first poetry chapbook, Gas & Food, No Lodging, has just been published, and we celebrate with a far ranging converstaion about language v. narrative poetry, ad how story influences the organization of a collection, challenges and constraints, the “garbage disposal method of writing,” playing tennis with and without a net, revision, abandoning a work of art,  journalism, finding the story, the shadow poem, tackling long middles, daily practices, erasure poems, rogue sonnets, and the dramatic and terrible events that Devi and her family suffered, as recently described in The New York Times. We also talk about the dangers of political burnout and the necessity of taking time for art, as well as why it's more important than ever that we all represent ourselves through art so that we can't be erased.

Links Discussed:

Emily Dickinson
Mollie Fisk
“The Art of Losing” by Elizabeth Bishop
“Do Not Go Gentle” by Dylan Thomas
Mark Rothko
Robert Frost
NY Times article about Joy Laskar
Julie and Julia link
Austin Kleon erasure poems
Finishing Line Press

Books

Citizen by Claudia Rankine
The Likeness by Tana French
The Secret History by Donna Tart
Gas & Food, No Lodging (Finishing Line Press)

Devi’s web site and Joy’s Story

http://www.devislaskar.com/
http://joylaskarstory.com/

Don't forget to send in your questions!

Devi Laskar

Devi Laskar

Devi S. Laskar is a native of Chapel Hill, NC. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Atlanta Review, The Squaw Valley Review, The North American Review, Panorama: The Journal of Intelligent Travel, among others. The Raleigh Review nominated “Untitled Western Country Song in Rubescent A Minor” for Meridian’s Best New Poets 2016. The Blue Heron Review nominated “Most Days a Passage” for Sundress’ Best of the Net Anthology 2016. Poet Jessica Piazza recently selected “Dissection” and “What Namaste Really Means” as the winning entries for the poetry prize at the 27th Mendocino Coast Writers Conference, and those poems are forthcoming in the next issue of Noyo River Review.

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.

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Episode 64: Rejection and Resurrection

Episode 60: Language of a Common Dream: Books and Podcasts that Inspire Us and Our Writing

by | Mar 30, 2017 | Show

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In this episode we get into the books we loved in college. Ecstasy ensues as we revisit Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldua, Jeanette Winterson, June Jordan, Adrienne Rich, Nikki Giovani and others who changed us, stretched us, challenged us, enraptured us. We suggest several writing exercises that have inspired us, touch on Shakespeare’s writing process, investigate revision, logistical constraints, types of focus, humanity’s resistance to losing rights we’ve gained as compared to our willingness to fight for rights we’ve never had, and finding a cohort of readers in middle age. It is #TryPod month--a time to explore new and unusual podcasts, and we recommend several, as well as discussing how we use podcasts to survive domesticity and overcome the limitations of our world. Other topics include: interiority, mystery, intuition v. planning, ambiguous endings and the uses of resonance in story.

Links Discussed:

 

Jeanette Winterson's The passion

Nikki Giovanni, Poet

Adrienne Rich, Dream of a Common Language

Audrey Lorde

June Jordan

Gloria Anzaldùa

Class:A Guide Through the American Status System

Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture

Meliza Beñales on StoryMakersShow

 

Don't forget to send in your questions!

Please review us!

If you’re curious about how to leave a review on iTunes, here’s an article about how to do it!

And here’s our iTunes Page. 

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS