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info. Behind

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every BP fill-up, thousands of people

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day. People producing energy offshore, people

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turning it into products at our

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refineries, people doing R&D to make

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for the ones who get it. Hey

2:01

there, if you missed out on the

2:03

very cool special edition of one of

2:05

our Close Read books for this season,

2:07

I'm talking about the Orbit Gold edition

2:09

of the Broken Earth trilogy by N.K.

2:11

Jemisin. This is so beautiful, and we've

2:14

arranged for you to still get 20% off. Listen, the

2:18

set includes an exclusive box

2:20

illustrated by Justin Cherry-Nefalemancer, a

2:22

signed copy of the fifth

2:24

season, fabric-bound, hardcover

2:26

editions of the trilogy,

2:29

gilded silver edges, color and

2:31

paper art, which I love,

2:33

brand new foil-stamped covers, a

2:35

ribbon bookmark, and an

2:38

exclusive bonus scene from the fifth

2:40

season. You need to read this

2:42

scene. All you have to do

2:44

is visit orbitgoldeditions.com to order and

2:46

use the code EXCUSES for 20%

2:48

off, and to

2:50

let them know we sent you. Your

3:15

final thoughts on the Close Reading Series? 15

3:18

minutes long because you're in a hurry. And

3:20

we need to read more. I'm

3:23

Mary Robinette. I'm Dong Won. I'm Erin.

3:25

And I still need to read

3:27

more. I'm Howard. Yeah,

3:31

so this is, we've come to the

3:33

end of this season of Writing Excuses,

3:37

where we took you all through

3:39

very detailed readings of five different

3:41

works that we love through five

3:43

different aspects of the craft of

3:45

writing. And we

3:47

just wanted to chat a little bit about how we

3:49

felt about it, you know, things that we thought were

3:51

highlights, any lowlights that came

3:53

up. But for me, I had

3:56

the best time in the world doing this. books.

4:00

They're books that I know well by and

4:02

large. And in each case, there

4:04

was a thing that they were doing that I was

4:06

always so impressed by that I wanted to understand better.

4:08

And so this was such an opportunity to get

4:11

some of my favorite people together and force them to talk

4:13

to me about it. And

4:15

that's, I think, what all these podcasts should

4:17

be. I mean, we

4:19

could completely change the format of

4:22

the podcast forever and keep doing

4:24

this. I was also extremely excited

4:26

because I don't know if our

4:28

listeners can tell that we like each other and

4:30

enjoy talking to each other. But in fact, we

4:32

do. What was fun for

4:35

me was that some of the stories

4:37

I had previously read, and some of them

4:39

I was coming into for the first time. And

4:42

so it was interesting, like the

4:45

ones that I had already read, This

4:48

is How You Lose a Time War. I had read

4:50

some of the C.L. Clark stories, and I had read

4:52

Fifth Season, but reading them this

4:55

way, going back and seeing

4:57

things, knowing how the

4:59

story was going to end. Like I

5:01

was still emotionally tense through those stories,

5:03

but I was also, my writer brain

5:07

was able to dial in because I

5:09

was reading them very consciously for specific

5:11

things. Whereas the two that I hadn't

5:13

read going in and reading

5:15

Ring Shout and thinking, okay, I

5:17

am reading this and I'm specifically looking at

5:19

how tension is being handled. It

5:22

didn't break the story for me at all. Like the

5:24

rest of the story, I was still moved by it,

5:26

but it caused me to pay more attention to things

5:28

than I normally do. And that was exciting for

5:30

me. I have

5:32

to say I'm getting like a little like

5:35

nostalgia moment because I'm remembering when we were

5:37

sitting on the cruise, actually like having, I

5:39

think some sort of meal, maybe dinner and

5:41

talking about this as an idea. And like

5:44

now we've actually gone through and done

5:46

it. And I think what I loved about it is that

5:48

I love talking about random

5:50

abstract things, but I think sometimes it's nice

5:52

to have something concrete so that when you

5:55

talk about a concept or you're mentioning something,

5:57

it doesn't just feel like it's floating in

5:59

the air. It feels like it's attached

6:01

to a work. And so even if you

6:03

like those works, you hated the works, at

6:05

least it's something where you can say, oh,

6:07

I get that as a specific example. It

6:10

also stopped us from using Star Wars as examples all

6:12

the time, which was just a personal love of mine.

6:16

I love Star Wars, but it's not that

6:18

useful as an example, actually, is what I

6:20

found over the years of teaching. Yeah,

6:22

and it is a movie. Yeah.

6:25

So getting to talk about actual

6:27

books that were complex in specific

6:29

ways, and let us really dive

6:31

into what is voice, what is worldbuilding, how do

6:34

you use it? And we kind

6:36

of touched on this, but each of these books

6:38

could probably, or each of these works, could probably

6:40

have been used to teach any of the subjects.

6:42

Yeah. We absolutely could have used Ring Chout to

6:44

teach character. We could have used the C.L. Clark

6:46

to teach structure, by God, the structure of those

6:49

stories. Right? We could have used

6:51

Time War to teach worldbuilding, right? We could have swapped

6:53

them around. And so the puzzle for

6:55

us as we were planning the series was often

6:57

like, where do we put these books? Yeah. It

6:59

was a very fun puzzle to solve, and I

7:01

feel really good about how that kind of worked

7:03

out. But I'm curious, was there one

7:06

where you found yourself restricted from talking about an

7:08

aspect of the book, because we were focused on

7:10

one aspect, and you wish you could have focused on a different

7:12

thing? I really wanted to be able to talk

7:15

about character when we were in fifth season.

7:17

Yeah, that is absolutely true. Yeah.

7:20

I don't know. I think I liked the

7:22

mix match. In fact, I was just thinking

7:24

that it would be like a fun game

7:26

to take all of these aspects, think of

7:28

them as like you have a regular D6

7:30

excited die. And then next time I read

7:32

a book or I'm rereading something, roll and

7:34

be like, I'm going to pay attention to

7:36

its use of character this time, or this

7:38

time I'm going to pay attention to worldbuilding.

7:41

Well, that's a great way to introduce the concept for next

7:43

season writing excuses, where we're going to do the same five

7:45

books. No. No. This is really different.

7:49

For, gosh, 16 years. Writing

7:54

excuses started in February of 2008. many

8:00

years, the conversations that we would have

8:03

about books were

8:05

that we had all read

8:08

were restricted to kind of a narrow

8:10

overlap of things that everybody had read.

8:13

And we didn't do deep dives on them at

8:15

all. But off

8:18

mic, we would often have

8:20

really deep conversations, one or two of us,

8:22

about a book we'd just picked up. And

8:25

then a third one of us would come into the

8:27

room and say, why aren't we miking this? Why

8:30

aren't we having this conversation? And the

8:32

answer is because it's going to take

8:34

another eight years for us to be

8:36

clever enough to figure out that if

8:39

we just give ourselves homework to

8:41

all read a book, we can do this

8:43

thing. Well, it's not so much giving us

8:45

homework, it's giving you our listeners homework. Well, yes,

8:47

we gave our listeners homework, but you

8:49

gave me homework. I

8:52

had to read, I hadn't read, I'd read

8:54

Time War. I think that may have been

8:56

the only one of these that I had

8:58

already, that I already read. And

9:03

from one standpoint, I was like, oh gosh,

9:05

they're giving me homework. Never used to

9:07

have homework, used to be I could just talk about Star

9:10

Wars. But

9:13

from another standpoint, to use the rotate

9:19

the object and see how the shadow changes,

9:22

from another angle, what this looked like for me

9:24

is, wait a minute, I

9:27

get to have those fun conversations

9:29

that we had off mic, on

9:32

mic, with friends who

9:35

love reading and love writing

9:38

and understand craft in

9:41

ways that I do and in ways that are way

9:44

better than I do. I still love

9:47

being the you're not that smart part of

9:49

the tagline because that's still

9:51

my job. And so this

9:53

close reading series, it's been

9:55

magical for me. Yeah. And

9:57

you know, I think that hits on a really important point from me. me,

10:00

which is, you know, I'm still relatively new to

10:02

the podcast as a full time host. And

10:05

I have never felt so connected to our

10:07

audience than I did through this series, because

10:09

we asked you guys to read along with

10:11

us. Right. And knowing that knowing

10:14

that we can have these really in depth

10:16

conversations, because, you know, you guys showed

10:18

up, you did the work, you read the works, and

10:20

we didn't have to worry about spoilers. It really felt

10:22

like we were having a conversation with y'all in the

10:25

room with us. It's one of the things that

10:27

I've been enjoying on our Patreon, going into

10:29

the Discord that's attached to it, because watching,

10:31

that's one of the places that we can

10:34

really see the listeners having a conversation and

10:36

we can engage in it too. And that

10:38

has been a lot of fun watching people,

10:41

especially when we did, well,

10:43

I guess as we are recording this, not all of

10:45

the episodes have released yet. So,

10:48

but I recall this whole conversation about

10:50

time where people were going, Oh

10:53

my goodness, I understand what's happening now. My mind

10:55

is blown. And I'm like, yes, this

10:57

is why we picked this episode. Exactly.

11:00

And so making this, which is largely us

11:03

talking in a room that you guys get

11:05

to hear, feel more participatory, feel more open

11:07

to the audience as well. And I know

11:09

it's been really nice. Yeah. I

11:11

was thinking about, you know, during our

11:13

last book, we talked about what's in

11:16

conversation, you know, what books are

11:18

in conversation with. And I've just occurred to me

11:20

that, you know, a podcast is us in conversation

11:22

with each other, but because we've all read the

11:24

books and you've read the books, like we are

11:26

in true conversation with you. And I think that

11:28

that is like really beautiful. And I

11:30

think one of the things I'd love to chat about

11:33

more, I'm sure we have to go to a break

11:35

soon, but is how do you

11:37

create that kind of conversation, you know, now

11:39

that you're going forward, you know, if you're

11:41

not doing this, if we're doing something different,

11:43

how do you keep that up so that

11:45

you can have that kind of conversation outside

11:47

of our podcast? Well, the best way to do

11:49

that is to go to patreon.com/writing excuses and join

11:51

our discord. Yeah, I would love to talk about

11:53

that more in depth, but let's take a quick

11:55

break first and we'll come back on that. Writing

11:58

doesn't have to be. solitary activity.

12:01

That's why we host in-person

12:03

retreats and workshops. At

12:05

the Writing Excuses retreats you'll get

12:07

access to classes, one-on-one office hours,

12:10

critique sessions, and activities to keep

12:12

you inspired and motivated. Become

12:14

a more engaging storyteller and learn how to

12:16

navigate the publishing landscape. As

12:18

you make meaningful progress on your stories,

12:20

you'll also build connections with your fellow

12:22

writers that will last for years to

12:24

come. Check out

12:27

our upcoming events at

12:29

writingexcuses.com/retreats. People

12:32

buy all sorts of things with Visa. What

12:34

people buy is their business. But

12:36

protecting every transaction, that's

12:39

Visa's business. That's why Visa

12:41

checks over 500 data points on

12:43

transactions to help stop fraud before it

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happens. Over the last five years, Visa

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has invested 11 billion dollars

12:49

into fraud prevention and network security technology.

12:52

And last year, Visa prevented more than

12:54

40 billion dollars in attempted

12:56

fraud. What you buy is your business.

12:58

Protecting how you pay is

13:00

Visa's. As

13:04

of September 23rd, 2024, you can still lock in a 6% or higher

13:06

yield with a bond account 2024, you can still

13:08

lock in a 6% at

13:14

public.com. That's a pretty

13:16

big deal, because when rates drop, so can

13:18

the interest you earn on your cash. A

13:21

bond account allows you to lock in a 6% or

13:24

higher yield with a diversified

13:26

portfolio of high-yield and investment-grade

13:28

corporate bonds. So while other people are watching their returns

13:30

shrink, So, while other people are watching their returns shrink,

13:32

you can sit back with regular interest

13:34

payments. But, you might want to

13:36

act fast, because your yield is not locked

13:38

in until you invest. The good news? It

13:41

only takes a couple of minutes to sign

13:43

up at public.com. Lock

13:45

in a 6% or higher yield with a

13:47

bond account, only at public.com. Brought

13:50

to you by Public Investing, Member Finrat

13:52

SIPC. Yield to worst

13:54

is not guaranteed, not an

13:56

investment recommendation. All investing involves

13:58

risk. Visit public.com/disclosures for more

14:00

info. Behind

14:03

every BP fill up, thousands of people

14:05

across America go to work every day.

14:08

People producing energy offshore. People

14:10

turning it into products at our refineries.

14:13

People doing R&D to make products that are

14:15

better for your engine. People trading

14:17

and shipping fuels to their destinations. And the

14:19

people who help you at one of BP's

14:21

growing family of retail stations. They're

14:24

part of the more than 300,000 jobs BP

14:26

supports across the country. Learn

14:29

more at bp.com/Investing in

14:31

America. My

14:33

thing of the week this week is an

14:35

article making you do

14:37

the work of reading essays that I really

14:39

love. I have recommended the essay

14:42

Forget Protagonists, writing NPCs with agency to

14:44

like every person I've ever met. And

14:46

so now I'm going to recommend it

14:48

to you. It

14:51

is a great look at how do

14:53

we make the characters in a game

14:55

in this case, but in

14:57

your writing as well, how do you make

14:59

them feel like they live when the focus

15:02

isn't on them from the narrator? The

15:05

focus isn't on them from the main player. How

15:07

do you make your NPCs, how do you

15:09

make your secondary characters feel like they exist?

15:12

And this writer, Magna Giants, she

15:14

talks about it from the perspective

15:16

of writing the game 80

15:19

Days, but it really works from anything

15:21

that you're doing, thinking about how do

15:24

you not center your protagonist to the

15:26

point that it feels like all the

15:28

other characters are just paper dolls waiting

15:30

to be played with by them and

15:32

instead make them feel like real living

15:34

people that your protagonist gets a chance

15:36

to hang around with. So check out

15:39

the essay Forget Protagonists, writing NPCs with

15:41

agency. It has lots of pictures in

15:43

it, so it's fun, it's cool, and

15:45

you should learn from it. So

15:49

the thing that you were talking about, Erin, is

15:51

actually homework that I assign to

15:54

my short story cohorts sometimes. I

15:57

will give them a short story to read. Sometimes

16:00

it is as simple as saying, why

16:02

don't you all subscribe to Sunday Morning Transport or

16:04

to Uncanny so that you get reminders so that

16:06

you're all reading the same story at the same

16:09

time. But you can do this with just a

16:11

group of friends. And yes, does this sound like

16:13

a book club? Yes,

16:16

secretly. Was book club the

16:18

thing we keep accidentally calling this series

16:20

internally? Yes. Yes, but the

16:22

difference is that, as

16:25

you will hear about later in the season, when

16:28

we have a conversation with Gabriela

16:31

from DIY MFA, one of the

16:33

things that you can do is

16:35

to do this kind of deep

16:37

read and read specifically for a

16:39

thing. So if you have a

16:42

group of friends and you're like, hey, let's read a

16:44

book, but let's read specifically for

16:46

how they're handling voice, or

16:49

maybe even assign, if

16:51

you wanna assign each other homework, you can be like, I'm

16:53

gonna read for voice. And someone else can be like, I'm

16:56

gonna read for tension. And just

16:58

go in and read intentionally, but still reading

17:00

for fun. Yeah, that's such a cool idea.

17:02

Like I could have seen each of us having

17:04

done that with this, a different way to structure

17:06

it is, each of us had taken an aspect

17:08

and recorded an episode per book on each aspect,

17:10

but not to rebuild the season

17:12

as we're wrapping it up. But that would have been

17:14

a fun way to do it. No. I

17:18

just realized that one

17:20

of the things that Sandra and I love

17:23

most doing together is

17:27

TV time where we're

17:29

just watching a thing together, but we're both

17:32

very writerly, very artsy

17:34

in the way we approach things. And

17:37

one or the other of us will often

17:39

grab the remote and say, no, stop, stop.

17:41

I gotta rewind this because this thing, just

17:43

look at what they did with the light

17:45

or the color or the dialogue or the

17:47

whatever. We deconstruct it on

17:49

the fly. And you can't do

17:51

that in the movie theater and you can't

17:53

do that with friends who don't get why

17:55

you're doing it. You only get to do

17:58

it with your friends who love you. taking

18:00

art apart in order to be able to

18:02

make their own art better? When

18:06

we talk about taking art apart, frequently what

18:08

we're talking about is nitpicking

18:11

and being like, they did this

18:13

and I'm so annoyed about that. Why

18:15

are all of these women in the Regency

18:18

wearing spandex gloves? But

18:20

I was talking to... Spandex doesn't

18:22

exist yet, Erin. I

18:25

looked at my hands like, what is

18:27

wrong with them? But

18:32

I took this class

18:34

by Tobias Bekel called

18:37

Finding Your Spark. And one

18:39

of the things that he said in it, which

18:41

so resonated with me and is what

18:44

we were doing with this whole series,

18:47

he said, you don't read

18:49

authors because of what they do poorly. You

18:51

read them because of what they do well.

18:54

So the example that I have of this from

18:56

something that most of you have read

18:58

maybe, or at least are aware

19:00

of, nobody reads Isaac

19:02

Asimov for his characterization or

19:05

his portrayal of women. Like, that is not

19:07

why you read him at all. But

19:10

you still read him. And you as

19:12

a writer, there's... Well,

19:14

some of you still read him. His

19:17

career seems fine. Let's put it that way. When

19:21

you do read him, it is not for

19:23

those things. It is for the ideas. It

19:25

is for other things. And with your own

19:27

writing, we tend to discount the things that

19:29

we do well because those are easy for

19:31

us and we think easy is

19:33

not valuable. And it's not that you shouldn't

19:36

push, but when you're reading something, when you're

19:38

doing one of these deep reads, when you're

19:40

watching something, a fun way

19:42

to look at it is to celebrate. And

19:45

like, what are they doing really well? I'll do that

19:47

even when I'm going to something that is really

19:50

terrible. I try to find at least

19:52

one thing. This is some

19:54

live theater that I'm thinking of very specifically, but

19:56

at least one thing that they've done well. You

20:00

know, it's, I think more

20:02

of my job than people realize is sitting authors

20:04

down and telling them what they're doing well. Right.

20:06

I think it's hard to see when you're in

20:09

it sometimes. And so I view a lot of

20:11

my job as being like, hey, you're

20:13

really good at this part of this. You were

20:15

doing this really well. Yes. Do we need to

20:17

work on X, Y and Z? Sure. But there's

20:19

all this other stuff. Right. And, you know,

20:22

there's there's a form of

20:24

critique feedback called the

20:26

compliment sandwich. I call it. Yeah, go on. What

20:29

do you call it? No, I just realized the moment I

20:31

heard sandwich, I realized we're talking about two different things.

20:34

We are talking about two slightly different things. But go ahead. No, go talk

20:36

about yours first. Do

20:39

you want to segue into that more neatly or? This

20:42

is fun. Our listeners love this stuff.

20:44

This is a compliment sandwich, Dongwon. Yes.

20:46

A compliment sandwich. And the

20:49

compliment sandwich is very, very important. And whenever I

20:51

see somebody skip the bun as a

20:53

word, which is you start talking about what works

20:55

about the book, what you like about the book,

20:57

then you go into the critical part and then

20:59

you come back out and you explain again. Yes.

21:02

Also, remember, these are the things that work. Don't

21:04

change those things. Make sure that stays is

21:06

what people don't understand about why that structure is

21:08

really important. I think a lot of people are

21:10

like, yeah, yeah, yeah, compliments. Let me get to

21:13

the hard, the hard stuff that the work that

21:15

needs to be done. And I think both editors

21:17

can feel that way and authors can feel that

21:19

way. But from my perspective, the

21:21

compliment part is an alignment exercise. It gets

21:23

me making sure that I understand the vision

21:25

of what you're trying to accomplish. There are

21:28

many times where I've done the compliment sandwich

21:30

and the author is like, wait, wait, no,

21:32

you misunderstood. This is what I'm trying to

21:34

do. Or you haven't read this

21:36

part yet because I only say the first 10,000 words. Here's what

21:38

happens in Act 2, 3, and 4. And so that

21:42

exercise of understanding the parts of

21:45

this that works is really

21:47

important both for me as an editor, but also

21:49

for you as a writer. I encourage speaking

21:51

as opposed to critical

21:54

reading as opposed to critical

21:56

reading. But, but

21:58

in I ask usually people. to tell

22:00

me that things are awesome, boring, confused,

22:02

or disbelief. But with a

22:05

cheerleading one, I only want them to tell

22:07

the awesome. And that is

22:10

so important for writers to know frequently.

22:12

They do not know what they are

22:14

doing well. We had a ran

22:17

into one of the authors and I won't betray

22:19

which one, but one of the authors that we've

22:21

been talking about this season ran into

22:23

them at a convention. And one of the things

22:26

that they said was, thank you. I've never had

22:28

anyone talk about my work this way.

22:31

I was just like, Oh no. But

22:34

they just, it was so

22:36

meaningful to them to hear someone

22:39

get really critical, really like

22:42

in the, how is this working? Why

22:44

is this doing? They had never heard

22:46

anyone discuss their work in that way

22:48

before. And that's something that you can

22:50

set up for yourselves with

22:52

a critique group or, you

22:55

know, or the type of reading that you're doing. I

22:58

would say analytical instead of critical, even though

23:00

the word critical is the right word, because

23:04

analysis is less value laden. I

23:08

love analysis. We took

23:11

form and analysis classes for music

23:13

in college, and I came

23:15

out of some of those classes wishing

23:17

that I could hang out with this group

23:20

of people once a week and

23:22

dissect a piece of music together

23:24

again. And I

23:27

just now remembered that

23:29

wish as I'm realizing,

23:31

Oh, I'm kind of getting to

23:34

do that with a new group of friends

23:36

and a completely new medium, and it doesn't

23:38

have music in it, but I'm okay because

23:40

I love words too. I think

23:42

there's something really nice about figuring out also

23:45

like how sometimes

23:47

the things that you maybe need

23:49

to work on are

23:51

themselves a compliment to the things that you've done

23:54

well in the way that it

23:56

is not maybe until you were listening to a

23:58

particularly amazing piece of music. that you realize

24:00

that your speaker system could be better. Right. Do

24:03

you know what I mean? But until then you were like, whatever. But then you're like,

24:05

oh wow. Like, so sometimes it's like,

24:07

I love the character so much that

24:09

like I really wanted them to experience

24:11

more tension because I just wanted

24:13

to see how they would deal with that. And

24:16

really celebrating that like a lot

24:18

of times there is some gem

24:20

that is shining so brightly that

24:22

it's just that we want the rest

24:24

of it to shine as brightly as

24:27

that, as opposed to the other parts

24:29

are not holding it down. Is that

24:31

we want to just make the entire

24:33

thing shiny and bright. Have I told

24:35

you about my rewilding the landscapers experience?

24:39

A little bit, but yeah. You did, yeah. So

24:43

it is changing the way I'm approaching

24:45

revision because we've got this property.

24:47

It's got a lot of invasive species on

24:49

it. And so we are rewilding it. We're

24:51

pulling out the invasive species, replanting

24:53

it with native species or species that are at

24:56

least, you know, are not poisonous. And

25:00

so one of the

25:02

things that I expected was that they would start in

25:04

the section that was filled with Privet hedge in English

25:06

Ivy. And the landscaper said, no,

25:08

you want to start in the healthiest part of

25:10

the landscape because that tells you what the rest

25:12

of the landscape is supposed to look like. And

25:16

I've found that when I am now, when

25:18

I am looking at my manuscripts, that I look

25:20

at, okay, what is the healthiest part of it?

25:22

What am I trying to support? What am I

25:24

trying to nurture? When

25:26

I'm reading other people's, I'm like, what is the healthiest

25:29

part of this? What is this doing really, really well?

25:31

Then let's lean into that. Let's play to those strengths.

25:33

How can we lift everything else up so that it's

25:35

doing this too? How can we get that better sound

25:37

system? How can we pull out the English Ivy? What

25:40

I love about this is, you know, you

25:42

need to learn what the

25:45

good version of this thing is. The thing that you're trying

25:47

to accomplish, you need to have a sense of what the

25:49

healthy version is, what the accomplished version is. And

25:51

the only way to do that is

25:53

by encountering it in other people's works.

25:55

That's where you start. You start by

25:58

reading. If you want to write, you have to. to

26:00

read and you have to love reading and you

26:02

have to be excited about the category that you're

26:04

in. Because again, it's a conversation.

26:06

If you want to participate in the conversation, you need

26:08

to know where it came from. Now, I'm not saying

26:11

you need to have read the entire candidate. You don't

26:13

need to read XYZ work.

26:15

But what you need to do is understand

26:17

why you're excited to write this thing. Why

26:20

do you want to write it? What's the

26:22

conversation you're trying to start to participate in

26:24

to evolve? You're using the

26:26

word conversation. If you want to participate

26:28

in a conversation, you have

26:30

to spend a lot of time listening. If all

26:32

you do is talk, it's not a

26:34

conversation. You're lecturing a group of people

26:36

who already know more about what you're

26:39

trying to say than you do. And

26:41

on that note, I have a little bit of homework for

26:44

you that's going to help you start

26:46

this conversation, participate in it, and

26:48

be an active participant

26:50

in the work that you're trying to create. So

26:52

what I want you to do, this

26:55

may not be surprising given the conversations you had,

26:57

but what I want you to do is get

26:59

a group of friends together and pick a book

27:01

you love to discuss and unpack what makes the

27:03

book tick. And then I

27:05

want you to find us on Instagram

27:07

and tell us what book you picked

27:10

and how that conversation went. This

27:13

has been Writing Excuses. You're out of

27:15

excuses. Now go read. Have

27:19

you ever wanted to ask one

27:21

of the Writing Excuses hosts for

27:23

very specific, very you-focused help? There's

27:26

an offering on the Writing Excuses Patreon that

27:28

will let you do exactly that. The

27:31

Private Instruction tier includes everything from

27:33

the lower tiers, plus a quarterly

27:35

one-on-one Zoom meeting with a host

27:37

of your choice. You

27:39

might choose, for example, to work with

27:41

me on your humorous prose, engage Dong

27:43

Won's expertise on your worldbuilding, or study

27:46

with Aaron to level up your game

27:48

writing. Visit patreon.com/Writing

27:50

Excuses for more details.

28:00

For this episode, your hosts were Mary

28:02

Robinette Kowal, Dong Won Song, Aaron

28:04

Roberts, and Howard Taylor. This

28:06

episode was engineered by Marshall Carr

28:08

Jr., mastered by Alex Jackson, and

28:10

produced by Emma Reynolds. For

28:13

more information, visit writingexuses.com. Hey

28:16

there! If you missed out on the

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very cool special edition of one of

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our Close Read books for this season,

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I'm talking about the Orbit Gold edition of

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the Broken Earth trilogy by N.K. Jimison.

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hardcover editions of the

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trilogy, gilded silver edges,

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color and paper art, which

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covers, a ribbon bookmark, and

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an exclusive bonus scene from the fifth season.

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