DIY MFA Radio

Hi there Word nerds! I’m so excited for today’s interview with bestselling author JoJo Moyes on the art of the sequel. Jojo Moyes is the New York Times bestselling author of Me Before You, One Plus One, The Girl You Left Behind, The Last Letter from Your Lover, Silver Bay, The Ship of Brides and Honeymoon in Paris. She lives with her husband and three children in Essex, England.Me Before You was truly a word-of-mouth sensation, launching Moyes to worldwide acclaim. It spent more than 65 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list and worldwide sales exceed five million copies. Reviewers, booksellers, and readers all raved about Me Before You for its unforgettable romance and emotional, challenging storyline. Moyes’ books are now available in 36 foreign languages and have sold more than nine million copies in total. Her newest book, After You: A Novel, sequel to Me Before You, is out now. In this episode JoJo and I discuss: Sequels, and how they are not always planned. How to write that sequel that can stand alone. Writing grief in your characters. Switching point of view in your novel. The experience of working on the screen adaptation of her novel, Me Before You. Plus, JoJo’s #1 tip for writers. For more info and show notes: DIYMFA.com/065  

Today's episode is all about the m-words of writing: marketing and money. These topics are often hard for writers to discuss, but I wanted to address them for a couple of reasons. First, they are super-important. And second, I believe that all writers can be awesome at both at the creative and the business sides of their work. As writers, we tell ourselves a lot of lies. Sometimes these lies are just part of getting through what needs to be done, but sometimes they can hold us back. I’ve heard many authors say “I don’t care if I make money, I just want to write,” or “I don’t want to sell out. I can’t promote myself.” It’s as if we equate suffering and starvation with good art. Finally, I hear some writers say “If I make something amazing it’ll just sell itself.” What a lot of us don’t realize is that we’re living in a paradox. On the one hand we say “I don’t wanna corrupt my art” but on the other hand we say “If only I could make money doing what I love…” How do we reconcile this contradiction? That's what this episode is all about. For more info and show notes: DIYMFA.com/064

Hello word nerds! Today I'm interviewing Ken Zak about writing poetic prose and the process behind his book, The Poet's Secret. Kenneth Zak is an aquatic nomad of Bohemian-Polish ancestry. As a lad, he dove into Lake Erie in search of a silver coin. Decades later, he surfaced off the island of Crete with a tale filled with mystical sea turtles, sunken treasure and a young woman’s search for a reclusive poet, his muse and the myth of eternal love. A summa cum laude graduate of The Ohio State University with a degree in Business and concentration in Art History, Zak went on to receive his JD and follow the waves to California. He eventually shut down a successful law practice in quest of a deeper purpose, freeing his creative self in a mountaintop village in Crete where he began his debut novel, The Poet’s Secret. Since his time in Crete, he continued work on the manuscript and his poetry in Bali, Costa Rica, Thailand, Cambodia and South America. An avid surfer and free diver, Ken’s passions also include reading, music, ocean swimming, the Tibetan Rites and yoga. He currently serves as General Counsel for a large private brokerage company and resides in San Diego, California. In this episode, Ken and I discuss: Juggling real life and writing. Building a support system to help you achieve your goals. The role of poetry in writing prose. Being a guy who writes Romance. The decision to self-publish and why you should build a publishing team. Plus, Ken's #1 tip for writers. For more info and show notes: DIYMFA.com/063

Hey Word Nerds! Today’s episode is going to be so awesome because I'm talking to debut author Kim Liggett, a fabulous YA author and good friend. Her book, Blood and Salt, is out now, and in this episode she and I chat about taking this project from concept to bookshelf.   In this episode Kim and I discuss: World-building, sensory detail, and creative descriptions. Having an obsession and using it to fuel your writing. Organizing the plot to build suspense, with shifting timelines and surprise reveals. Navigating the revision and edit process to get the best result. Creative promotion for books. Plus her #1 tip for writers. For more info and show notes: DIYMFA.com/062

Hey there, Word Nerds! Thanks for joining me for today’s episode. Today I’ll be interviewing Barbara Baig about how to write spellbinding sentences, based on her new book by the same title. This episode was so much fun to record because as soon as Barbara and I started chatting, I knew I had found a likeminded word nerd and writing teacher. Her approach to writing as a practice and as a teachable skill goes hand in hand with the DIY MFA philosophy and her focus on sentence-level craft will compliment the more "big picture" techniques you learn here at DIY MFA. I hope you get as much out of this conversation as I did, and if you want to learn more about how to use language in a way that moves and resonates with your readers, check out her books below or enter to win her latest book in a Goodreads giveaway! For more info and show notes: DIYMFA.com/061

Hey there, Word Nerds! I’m so excited to share this interview with you today. I’ll be talking to Linda Fairstein about the world she built in her famed "Alex Cooper" series. Linda is a former Manhattan prosecutor and New York Times bestselling author. Her books are international bestsellers and have been translated into more than a dozen languages. Her latest (the 17th in the series) is Devil's Bridge, which is out now. Before turning to writing, Linda was chief of the Sex Crimes Unit of the district attorney’s office in Manhattan for more than two decades, so basically she's like an SVU prosecutor, but for real. Not only that, she is America’s foremost legal expert on sexual assault and domestic violence. Linda lives in Manhattan and on Martha’s Vineyard. For more info and show notes: DIYMFA.com/060

Hey there word nerds! Gabriela here with another exciting interview episode on DIY MFA Radio. Today I’m thrilled to share my recent conversation with Alka Dhillon, author of The OM Factor: A Woman's Spiritual Guide to Leadership. Alka Dhillon is the founder and CEO of Technalink, one of the leading companies in the Washington Metropolitan area providing Information Technology and Management Consulting services to both government and commercial clients. She has won numerous awards and honors, and she blogs at The Spiritual CEO. In this episode Alka and I discuss: Accessing your creative potential through meditation. (Everyone has two minutes) Being able to release your creative agenda to meet your creative inspiration. How to be more responsive than reactive. Writers and leadership. For more info and show notes: DIYMFA.com/059

Hello Word Nerds! Thanks for joining me today. Man, it's been a while since I've done a solo show. It feels like it's been forever since I've had a chance to chat with you. We’ve been doing so many awesome interviews, and we have a bunch more coming up, but today I felt like it was time to have more of a heart-to-heart. In this episode, I've decided to share some mindfulness tips that turned my approach to writing on its head. I call this my Mindfulness Manifesto for Writers. This was a very tough episode for me. I had been resisting the idea for a while. You see, I’m very pragmatic and my creative process is very linear. Plus (how do I put this nicely) I always felt like the whole idea of mindfulness, of meditation, all that mind/heart/soul was a little to “woo woo” for me. The thing is, being intentional about where your thoughts go is really important to writing. This skill is the essence of mindfulness and challenging myself to be open to it has changed my writing for the better. I used to really hate meditation. I thought that sitting and breathing and clearing my mind was so boring. What I didn’t really realize then was that mindfulness is more about being present, about not thinking about what is coming or what has passed (I call this time travelling). And being fully present can be exciting. Especially when you’ve got a lot going on. To learn more about my mindfulness manifesto for writers plus the show notes, head on over here: DIYMFA.com/058

Hey there, word nerds! Thanks for joining me for another episode of DIY MFA Radio. I’m so glad you’re here! Today I’m interviewing Jandra Sutton, the digital media coordinator for PR by the Book, a boutique literary PR firm based in Austin, TX and Nashville, TN. While her job title might not make sense, it's helpful to know that she is essentially a social media publicist. Her job is to connect authors with their online audiences in a meaningful way, whether that's managing a full social media campaign for the author or teaching him/her how to navigate the ins and outs of social media (DIY Social Media!) In this episode, Jandra and I will geek out over one of my favorite topics: social media. She'll share some pro tips specifically for writers and show you how to use social media to build your author brand and your career. For more info and show notes: DIYMFA.com/057

Hi there Word nerds! I’m so excited to share today’s interview with bestselling author Tana French and her process in crafting series and writing literary mysteries. Tana French has been called “one of the most talented crime writers alive” by the Washington Post. With four bestselling, critically acclaimed, and award-winning novels in print worldwide, she excels in portraying fallible, deeply human detectives, as broken as the cases they investigate. In her new book, The Secret Place, she revisits characters from a previous book, plus she gives readers an inside look at a all-girls prep school. It turns out that the private underworld of teenage girls is more mysterious and more dangerous than it appears. In this episode Tana and I discuss: Different elements of crafting a series. Using viewpoint to structure your narrative. The writing and rewriting process. Recurring characters. Sticking to genre conventions or bucking the trends. Plus, Tana shares her #1 tip for writers. For more info and show notes: DIYMFA.com/056