Ditch Diggers episode 8, “Data Wonking with Podmother Gail Carriger” is brought to you in large part by my patrons, who received an early version of this episode. You can join our Fabulist community with a pledge on Patreon or Substack! You can get the entire archive and bonus episodes!
Streamed live, July 10, 2023 Below are some affiliate links that support indie bookstores and may benefit me financially with no cost to you.
S9 Ep8
Horny chaotic god energy is what we’re all about in today’s Ditch Diggers, “Data Wonking with Podmother Gail Carriger” where Gail joins us to talk about sifting through data in self publishing. It is some heady stuff, and we discuss tying your self worth to “bad” data and more!
Gail Carriger: 30:30 (ish): My sense of failure will kick in when a reader says I love Gail Carriger. And I didn’t know she had a new book out, that’s when I feel like I failed at my job. I am an author, that’s the one job I had is to make sure that people who liked me can read my new books, right? That’s it.
Matt and Mur come to you live from Morgan Freeman’s 24-hour news network control room where we are discussing the latest hot button topics on the news! (Mur has a new applause machine, but it’s not working right now, so you’ll have to infer the applause.)
Sound f/x as the new vernacular, and addiction to sound f/x machines.
Mur and Matt are tackling ISSUES on this HOT BUTTON EPISODE of Ditch Diggers. AKA heatedly discussed topics recently on writer social media.
Matt explains (poorly and too meta, according to Mur) what hot button issues are and how they come into being.
Mur explains (far more eloquently) the nature of click-bait and how it drives/poisons discourse on the internet.
Hot Button #1: The infamous “if you don’t write every day you’re not a real writer” article and the larger “real writer” myth.
Hot Button #2: The “don’t you dare smack talk your copy editor on social media” debate, and the larger issue of how important discourse gets derailed by pretense and false premises. We also discuss the difference between discussing issues and discussing individuals, and authors criticizing other authors.
Hot Button #3: “Literary” magazines publishing genre fiction, and also not paying authors.
Matt and Mur go on a tangent about the detriment of labeling fiction and how the market has shrunk.
Returning to the hot button, Matt and Mur talk about the difference between the business of “literary” and SFF magazines.
Twitter Q&A! Questions include outlining book series, “bonehead” things aspiring writers do again and again, and knives.
Matt and Mur shill their books, GREEDY PIGS and RENCOR and SIX WAKES respectively, and remind Hugo voting listeners Ditch Diggers is up for best fancast, so vote for us!
Blisters come whether you hate digging ditches or love it.
Mur and Matt establish it is very early in the morning.
Moat Building 101
Being overwhelmed with multiple projects, multiple deadlines, and how to (and how not to) prioritize your time.
Mur talks about her involvement in Bookburners, and how much time non-writing tasks take up when you’re writing.
Matt makes a bunch of fancy announcements and talks about having a novel to finish while simultaneously having to write the third book in his Sin du Jour series in a month.
Composing a plan to deal with your multiple deadlines and balancing it with the rest of your life.
Writing, deadlines, and significant others.
Mur talks about her experience with renting office space to write and removing herself from social media.
Mur and Matt take email questions and questions from Twitter on story structure, the hardest parts of writing for a living, and MFA programs.
ENVY OF ANGELS giveaway: Email mightymur AT gmail and answer the question, “What are you doing besides writing to advance your writing career?” Best, most proactive answers win free copies of Matt’s new book dropping October 20th! Keep answers brief. No essays.
RSS
Apple Podcasts
Amazon Music
Pandora
Spotify
Audible
Google Podcasts
Podtail
Podcast Addict
Blubrry
fyyd.de
Podbean