Category: productivity

#63 – Toby Neal – Write Through The Roof

Interview with best-selling romance & mystery writer Toby Neal

‘People are preoccupied by crime because we want to recognise the wolves in our midst’

Episode 63 – Toby Neal – Show Notes

  • Writing is like a muscle – needs regular workouts
  • 2000 words a day target
  • Both a plotter and a pantser. More pantser for romance and plotter for mysteries
  • Recording affirmations and listening prior to writing session
  • Themes of good versus evil and the shades of grey in everyone and how love can overcome a multitude of problems
  • Dark themes but with hope – fascinated with the duality between dark and light
  • Mastering your craft – Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell – the 10,000 hour rule
  • Take off your pants – Libbie Hawker – the hero needs to find a cure for their flaw
  • Unconventional childhood – Memoir – Freckles
  • Putting off writing goals for security – started with an anonymous blog – using real life experience as a school counsellor
  • Speeding up the writing process
  • Dictation, health and accessing creative brain by writing longhand
  • Where the Crawdads Sing – Delia Owens, The Outlander series – Diana Gabaldon
  • Wired Truth: multi-cultural kick-ass female main character. Pushing the envelope for what’s acceptable with female behaviour. Experimenting with different kinds of love.

‘Nothing but writing is going to make you a better writer’

‘I tried to do literary fiction and I bored myself by page 40’

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#61 – Pauline Wiles – Write Through The Roof

Episode 61 with Pauline Wiles – women’s fiction author & writing productivity coach

‘We need to figure out our own path and plod along steadily.’

Episode 61 – Pauline Wiles – Show Notes

  • Benefit from writing both fiction and non-fiction: entertainment v exploring own worries
  • Take a day off once a week
  • Tea – English breakfast with milk
  • Bacon controversy
  • Fiction – light-hearted escapist women’s fiction but dealing with finding yourself as a person before getting in a relationship.
  • Quirky cultural differences between the UK and the US.
  • Non-fiction – productivity for writers – purposeful productivity.
  • Comparisonitis. Humans learn by comparing.
  • Listening to her own advice.
  • Mindfulness – catch own thinking before it spirals out of control. Ten-minute daily meditation – listen to own breath.
  • Dividing week into blocks of time. Writing, business, promotion and marketing.
  • Creating a parking lot for ideas
  • Jane Austen, Marian Keyes, Emily Giffin, Laura Vanderkam, Gretchen Rubin
  • Indie With Ease
  • Ten Things my Husband Hated

‘Try to compare when you’re having a positive day.’

‘I’m definitely not sitting there on a fluffy cloud of zen.’

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