Week: Writing

Here’s where we’ll share our writing, our early drafts. By doing so, we hope to: 

  • Point out our differences (show that ideas aren’t sacred)
  • “Put our money where our mouth is, so to speak”
  • Prove that first drafts aren’t supposed to be good
  • Give us talking points about how to improve and as we grow, to show that improvement

We are leading by example, not just saying that you should write, but telling you how and showing you one example of how it is done. 

Week: Editing

And finally, we’ll edit each other’s stories, show what it means to be a first reader, how to talk to a writer, how to get help as a writer, and how to stay true to your intentions and opinions about a story while still polishing it into something other people want to read. 

Our listeners will see first hand what it means to:

  • Be different than what’s on the page (meaning separate yourself and your feelings from a critique of your work)
  • Need clarification because what is on the page is different than what the writer thought was there
  • Give and receive criticism and how to use it to make their stories better

Week: Pre-Writing

During this week we’ll discuss all the things that help us figure out a story.

  • The things we need to know before we start, how that is different for each of us, and why it’s important to flesh out.
  • This is the point where our listeners start to understand how we approach a new story 
  • Takeaways: our methods for figuring out a story, fighting Resistance => which will help them be intentional in their own process and figure out where to start 

Week: While Writing

This is where we’ll discuss all the things that came up for us while writing. We’ll talk about whether or not our process actually worked, whether our intentions held true, and the new insights we received. 

  • How are we the same or different
  • What do different types of stories require you to concentrate on
  • Did anything surprise us
  • How do we know it’s a story that works
  • How do we keep going even when (and I say when not if) we don’t want to
  • What can other people take away from our discussion and our struggles

Talking points:

To create a podcast that demystifies the writing process, to show people that, if we can, they too can get their stories on the page and confidently share them, and to be vulnerable and authentic in teaching writers how to figure out why they are stuck and give them ways to keep going back to the work. 

– If you want to be a writer, the only thing you have to do it write, yet so many of us who want to hold that title, who want to publish, have dreams of writing full time, or of telling a story that changes lives, can’t seem to do the work. 

– Why can’t we do the work? What areas do we struggle with?

– This project started out as a way to study story structure and, more specifically, what makes a story actually work. Yes, we can intuit when something works for us, and, yes, we understand that the goal is to satisfy our intended audience, but is there a way to talk about the structure of a working story? Is there a certain structure we have to follow? How can we bend the rules? What does that look like?

– It grew from the idea that we learn better by doing. I wanted to come up with a way to show writers by example the steps we each take in order to get our stories on the page and how they are different depending on the writer. 

– The intention being that our processes will be so vastly different, that writers can learn from what we do and create their own practice.

– Also, this is proof that we shouldn’t hold our ideas too sacred [what that means and why]

– Finally, I selfishly wanted to give myself a reason to write, to build in a sense of accountability because, if I have an audience, I have to get the work done. 

From the worksheets:

Our goal is to demystify the writing process. To help writers figure out their own writing process, to get the work done, to understand what makes a story work, and to honestly evaluate what they’ve put on the page without taking it to heart and never writing again.

We’ll provide the writing prompt for our listeners before every new story (either in the pre-season or during the last episode of the previous story) so that our listeners can follow along and write their own stories. The goal isn’t to get them to see the idea though our lens, but to get them to start writing their own stuff.