The Author Alchemist

In this episode, I discuss balancing world-building details with reader imagination in fiction writing, sharing insights from social media posts I've seen on different approaches to world-building and the importance of leaving holes in the narrative. Using my own experiences to illustrate how details can enhance or hinder creativity, I explore techniques for creating immersion, such as using cultural references and varying language...

My book "By the Seat of Your Pants: Secrets of Discovery Writing" is out! I explain a bit of what it is about and why I wrote it, along with some updates of my fiction stories. 

For more about me and my work, visit my studio, https://houseofyork.info --------------------------

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

By the Seat of Your Pants: Secrets of Discovery Writing My new book all about discovery writing/pantsing!

"Writing for the Long Haul" at...

Back from a lovely writer's retreat held on the Gulf Coast of Florida, I'm thinking a lot about "what makes a writer" and the importance of creativity in our lives. There are a lot of definitions of what makes a "real writer" and most of them are about gatekeeping, so instead I propose that a real writer is someone who invests time and energy into their practice.

For those who feel overwhelmed by it all, I offer this simple goal: 1...

First off, apologies in advance for the tapping noise that occasionally shows up, I think it was my headphones' cord knocking against the desk. I'll be more careful in the future!

This is an update, overview, and discussion about all my current writing projects. I get sidelined talking about discovery writing, but then again, I'm writing a whole book on the topic so I'm just calling it "advanced marketing"! So there!!!!

I also intr...

Better late than never! I'm back with an episode I recorded last year, and is the final episode in my mini-series about our deepest fears. Stay tuned for my next episode, which will go over "What the heck has KimBoo been doing since 2022????"

But for now, in THIS episode, I talk about why it is so important to love your characters deeply and passionately. Yes, even the characters who are unlikeable or problematic! You need to hold ...

The third installment of my Deepest Fears series focuses on "writer's guilt" and, in a round'about way, our fear of guilt. Oftentimes we slap a label on what is holding us back from writing, calling it perfectionism or guilt, when it is in fact a deep-seated fear of those very emotions. It sets up a dangerous feedback loop of negative emotions that can be hard to break! Hopefully this episode will help you identify what your real s...

Welcome to the second episode in a mini-series I’m doing about confronting our deepest fears as authors! Fear of being vulnerable is at the core of many of the fears that keep authors from writing, and in this episode I am taking aim specifically on the fear of being seen and of being shamed. 

I cover the ways guilt and shame are not the same thing, and techniques you can use to understand what you are feeling and how to deal with ...

Welcome to the first episode in a mini-series I’m doing about confronting our deepest fears as authors. This is not simply about the fear of being bad at writing, or the fear that no one will read our work, but rather about the fears that keep us from writing in the first place…which often circle back around to simply one word: vulnerability. 

Fear of vulnerability can take many forms, though, so I’ll be diving deep into the types ...

A recurring theme in a lot of advice about creativity is "show your work/share your work." It is often hailed as a great way to "grow your audience" but I want to go a step beyond that and talk about how it is a great way to stay motivated and find inspiration, even if what you have to show is not polished and perfect yet. 

I've grabbed three classic modern stories that were created and molded on the internet as examples of how won...

Giving yourself permission to sit down and write is a major hurdle most writers face...but then what? The next step is giving yourself the permission to succeed as a writer, however you want to define "success." 

That can be just as hard, though. We all say we want to be successful, but do we feel like we have earned that right? In this episode I use Elissa Altman's fantastic post from 2016 "Writing and the Permission to Succeed: T...

There are a lot of tools out there which are designed to help you be a better writer, but did you know there are also a lot of tools that can help you simply write the words? There are! In this episode I talk about apps, communities, and systems that you can use to help you get the words out of your head and into a document!

Resources mentioned:

1. https://www.putwordsdown.com