E is for Writing Excuses

Welcome to Day 5 of the A-Z challenge. This year I am reviewing podcasts. Day 5 is the letter E, and I had a hard time finding a podcast that I liked that began with the letter E. This particular letter involved way too much research, especially considering that I'd been hearing great things about Writing Excuses for years. Imagine me rolling my eyes at myself.

Writing Excuses is hosted by some combination of Dan Wells, Brandon Sanderson, Mary Robinette-Kowal and Howard Tayler.  I'm not a long-time listener yet, but  I will be someday! As of this writing, I've listened to four episodes, and I imagine I've got many readers who are already long time listeners, so forgive me if my description is not completely accurate.  

Each episode I've listened to has most of the hosts plus a special guest. For some reason, I picture them sitting in a classroom with their individual desks arranged in a circle. They discuss some aspect of the craft of writing, give a recommendation of a book that is an excellent example of that writing, and then they give us some writing homework. There is a heavy emphasis on fantasy and science fiction, which are my favorite genres, but there is talk about other types of writing--one host is writing a murder mystery, and one is a cartoonist, and they try to be useful to all sort of authors. 

Category: Literature

What's my time commitment here?

Their tagline is "15 minutes long, because you're in a hurry, and we're not that smart!" Episodes are released once a week, but none of the ones I listened to kept to the 15-minute rule. They were all closer to 20 minutes, which is my favorite podcast length.

My Review:

It took me 5 or 6 attempts to finally finish an episode of Writing Excuses. At the time I was in a panic because although I had most of the letters for the A-Z challenge, those few I didn't have were taking a lot longer to find than I'd expected. So I had loads of extra podcasts cluttering up my queue, and I was rejecting podcasts left and right (I finally begin to understand how an editor might feel...) I couldn't quite hit unsubscribe, but I couldn't get through an episide either. Things went more smoothly after I committed to listening to the whole episode. This is a gem of a podcast--real authors who know real things and who are committed to helping other authors take it to the next level, whatever that may be. I'm hooked! Now when I hit pause it's because I need to think a plotline through. I love anything that gets me to that place, and Writing Excuses does that for me.

You can listen to it here or where ever you listen to your podcasts.