More than three years? That’s a fair amount of podcasts / posts / interview / whatever you want to call these things. Which have been most popular? Well, let’s see what the data shows…
As for the podcasts from 2022, give them a year or two to acquire an audience, particularly one that is not subjected to staying indoors during a pandemic.
Thanks for listening; and to our guests, thanks for opening up to the rest of the writing community. PODCAST
Well, that didn’t go as planned; but it may have come out better. Don and I decided to book ourselves for the last interview of the year. Gaps in our schedules coincided, Coupeville Library was nice enough to let us use their meeting room, and the two of us sat down to talk about Don’s books and projects, and my books and projects. We did that, but the conversation drifted over to what life is like for authors in the shopping and selling season.
See Don
We also talked about the value of talking to other members of our writing community. Writing does not have to be a solo venture. Fellow writers can provide insights into how readers perceive a book. The author may have one intent, but readers may find something else that is not obvious to someone who wrote, edited, and repeatedly read the book before it was published. Bicycling books may appeal to RV owners. Travel books may appeal to people from countries that weren’t visited or even mentioned.
See Tom and Don in the library
This podcast has become an unplanned, informal, yet possibly useful resource built from the contributions and interviews of dozens of members of Whidbey Island’s writing community. Book store owners can bring some reality to expectations. Librarians can point to overlooked resources for research or even funding. Writers from your genre undoubtedly have encountered surprises, the good ones the bad ones and the weird ones. Successful and failed campaigns are useful as long as we learn from them. And, of course, writers can support writers simply by listening to frustrations or understanding otherwise obscure celebrations. (You finally found the right font!)
Thanks to everyone who participates by listening, being interviewed, and sharing.
I hope you enjoy the podcast, and I hope your sales treat you well.
The Patriotic Piper Just the military & patriotic Highland bagpipe sheet music Scot-Irish recipe and history book you were looking for — it’s also a FUNdraiser item for his veterans’ Post!
You know it is a good and engaging conversation when Google kicks you off the system because you’ve been on too long. Dianne Shiner and Janice O’Mahony were nice enough to also speak for Dallas Hunt and Faith Wilder, too, as they told us about a book they recently published, “Out of the Blue”. Each of the four have impressive resumes in and beyond the writing world. Several years ago, they began meeting because of a mutual interest: poetry. They effectively became a writers group of four, just enough for diverse feedback, not too many to be overwhelming, and close enough that they developed friendships. They also created that rare gift, a writer’s appreciation for another writer’s style and voice. In retrospect it seems natural that a book would be the result. And now it is done and available on the island and online.
Each produced 25 poems. Actually, each produced many more than that, which isn’t a surprise for anyone familiar with their varied accomplishments. Editing and sorting down to a final 25 for each was necessary.
Readers might appreciate four perspectives on, as their Overview points out, “…deep sadness, sardonic wit, prophetic wisdom, and occasional laugh-out-loud twists.”
Writers might appreciate the reality that; “One of us gets help eliminating superfluous first stanzas. Another sometimes puts her strongest stanza in the middle when it might be incandescent at the end. One has an ambivalent relationship with punctuation. A fourth could sometimes be less blunt.”
For Writing On Whidbey Island it was nice to see a mutual appreciation that they are, “…grateful for the beautiful community we share and for our growth as artists.”
(And on a personal level, I enjoyed the fact that; “The clarity of each voice is enhanced by the companionship of one another’s poems and countless cups of tea.” Tea!)
As a co-host of this podcast, it was also nice to read such a well-written Overview that was engaging and well-written, something easily overlooked in the publishing process.
Listen in to the conversation with Dianne and Janice.
Tom and I recently decided to wrap up 2021 the same way we started WOWI — meeting together and talking about what’s up in writing as we know it! This may be our longest recording session yet — jam-packed with reflection and looking forward into 2022 and beyond.
Among other things, in this session we find out that Tom is working on a sci-fi novel with potential for being a series with sequels and spin-offs. He’s also bringing his book on tea to fruition — sure to be filled with local flavour!
As for me … I have 3 new recipe books nearly complete, publishing sometime in (Fall?) 2022. Just as soon as those are done, I already have 3 half-complete projects to move up from the back burner. Depending on how those go … I might publish 4 new titles in 2022. I’m also taking steps to become a professional audiobook narrator.
Enjoy! ~ Don
Honorable Mentions & Handy Weblinks From This Episode of WOWI
Pluck another apple, Eve, and finish it. Or more appropriately, “Pluck Another Apple, Eve, And Finish It”; or something like that. (What is the right way to capitalize a title?) Maybe we should ask an editor. Actually, we did. Holly Thomas, editor, poet, artist was kind enough to let us interview her. We didn’t ask about this title or her artistry (this is a podcast about writing); but we did ask about life as an editor and her work as a poet. If you haven’t noticed the graphic below in some preview pane, she published a collection of her poems titled, “Pluck Another Apple, Eve, And Finish It“.
Holly’s work is a reminder that while some of us count how many words we write per hour, poets can spend hours per word – and it shows. Easy grace can require effort and introspection. As captured in the book’s description on Amazon, the term “steel lace” comes to mind. (There may also be some poems that touch on nature, emotions, and physics – a wide range that gets tied together.)
Poets have a difficult time paying bills with poems, which is why she is also an editor, earlier with Microsoft and more recently as an editor working with individual authors. Managing the creative spirit internally, in a group, in a corporation, or with fellow creatives is a special talent, possibly a collection of talents as each environment is different. Her insights into how to work with an editor are valuable. Being able to respect another’s creativity while polishing the product is a rare and hopefully appreciated skill.
(Writer’s note: Writing about an editor’s work can make a writer incredibly self-conscious. Oh well, she’s probably edited worse.)
Listen in for a range of perspectives from corporate to consulting to publishing to working on items that are so personal they may never be shared – oh yeah, and laughter. We can all use a good laugh.
This past Monday I rigged-up my gear and met Tom in a video chat — our intention being to record a 1-off WOWI episode — both to see how using this medium might work and to discuss how how being in quarantine affects writers. Frankly, going into this … I didn’t expect much — and yet, what came out of it was an intriguing show running over an hour long!
“How do the adjustments we are making and disruptions we are dealing with make for opportunities, affect work and art later on, what is yet to come for the world of the day-job worker?”
The “Yellow Jack” or “Lima” signal flag is flown on ships in harbor to indicate that a vessel is under quarantine.
On Wednesday I e-met with Tom again with two purposes in mind. One was to test an improved set-up with my gear — which produced technological success. The other was to further discuss continuing the show from QuarantineVille. Our aim at this point is to try and host 1 to 2 guests each month over video chat — and we each have a few authors in mind to ask.
If you are Whidbey Island writer/author, editor, bookstore owner, graphic artist or illustrator, marketing guru — or whatever as long as your work is part of the publishing industry — and you think you’d be a fit for a WOWI episode … PLEASE CONTACT US!
Clack two rocks together. We didn’t have one of those boards they use for movies, but so it begins, and began. Welcome and hello to the first podcast episode of WritingOnWhidbeyIsland (WOWI), a show put together by Don Scoby and Tom Trimbath (me). Origin stories are in style, and this first episode recorded Don and I as we talked about who, how, why, where, and what inspired us to begin this series.
Don on pipes. Tom listening and waiting to begin the presentation.
The who is easy: the rest of the writing community of Whidbey Island, and group that includes hundreds of writers, editors, producers, publishers, librarians, and bookstore owners. The how is keeping it simple. Thanks to Don’s equipment and skills we intend to record from a variety of locations up and down the island including the background ambiance (which in this case includes seagulls and F-18s.) Each episode will focus on one writer or aspect of writing, and don’t be surprised if the creative process leads somewhere else. The first two episodes are the two of us, so you know who’s doing the talking. Why is easy; we like the community and the island and think it all deserves yet another avenue and venue for continuing and advancing the conversation. Where is wherever we can, which for this episode was sitting on the low-tide rocky beach of Penn Cove and Coupeville. What inspired us was much of the above, but also some talks, classes, and presentations we’re conducted about modern self-publishing: print-on-demand and ebooks. (Click on the link to the captured livestream of one of the events – Self-Publishing from Inspiration to Publication.) PODCAST
If you want to learn more about us, check out this blog’s About page.
Listen in if you want to hear more about writing, the process, the failures that aren’t failures, the balancing of extrovert and introvert, and some of our background stories. Besides, listening in leads to hearing about robot unicorns, I-beams on kayaks, and an ambiance punctuated by a low-flying F-18. PODCAST
