 Hello, my name is Jackie. Welcome back to my channel. And in this video, I wanted to share my top five podcasts for writers, along with a couple of bonus ones that I just like to listen to. So I listen to podcasts quite a bit at the moment. It takes me between 20 minutes and half an hour to get to work, depending on whether I'm walking or whether I'm getting the bus. So prime listening time. I often listen when I'm at the gym, if I'm not reading something, or I will listen when I'm cleaning. And one of the things I've gotten into over the past few months is writing specific podcasts just because if I'm feeling unmotivated or hopeless or like, there's no way I'll ever succeed with my current work in progress. They just helped me feel a little bit more motivated, but not as alone. So what are the podcasts? Number one is 88 Cups of Tea with Yin Cheng. So Yin is a former actor, producer, director who now runs this podcast 88 Cups of Tea. It's been going for a couple of years now. And in each episode, she interviews an author to find out about their journey, their creative process, as well as their process to getting published. Now, there are a few things I really, really like about this podcast. One of them is Yin and the fact that she's just so interested and engaged with the people she's interviewing, it doesn't feel like she's just going through the motions or like she has a list of questions she needs to get through. She is genuinely engaged and wants to know about what's happening in their lives and their careers. The other thing I really like is that she has a very entrepreneurial mindset. So she quite often gets into the logistics and the business of being an author. So when she is learning about someone's early journey and how they did different pitching competitions or how they approached literary agents, one of the questions she often asks is, well, how did you know to do that and what's the process you went through and how long did it take to go from step one to step two? And as someone who hopefully would like to be traditionally published one day, it's really interesting hearing the nuts and bolts that go into that process. If you're looking for a good episode to get started, I highly recommend her interview with V.E. Schwab, which is the first one I listened to when I discovered this podcast. Having said that, though, all of the episodes are amazing. I could probably count on one hand the ones that I didn't enjoy so much. So wherever you start, it's going to be great. Podcast number two is first draft with Sarah Annie. And this is a similar format to 88 cups of tea. It's another interview series where pretty much every episode is Sarah interviewing another author. Now, unlike Ian though, Sarah is an author herself. She has been doing this podcast for years. And I think in 2018, she published her own YA debut. So what's interesting about this podcast is, one, again, they're really in-depth interviews. You get to learn about the author's journeys, their trials, as well as what works for them. But it's also two writers discussing craft and process. So it's really interesting to have the questions coming from another writer who can bring a little bit more depth to the discussion. Very much like 88 cups of tea, Sarah is an excellent interviewer. So all of these episodes are excellent. But if you're looking for a couple of good ones to get started, I really enjoyed her interview with Andy Weir, who wrote The Martian, as well as Becky Albertalli, I hope I'm saying that right, who wrote Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda. The next podcast I'm finding really interesting is when I only discovered a few weeks ago called Story Grid. Now, Story Grid is a plotting methodology, which sounds so fascinating to me. If you saw my preptober plotting videos, you'll know that I really like to test different methods. I'm really looking for an ultimate formula that'll help me write better books. So this is probably going to be the next one I try. The Story Grid podcast is run by Sean Coyne, who's an editor with 25 years of experience, which means he brings a lot of insight to the table when it comes to what makes stories work and how publishing works. And he runs it with Tim Grull, who's the author of your first thousand copies, book launch blueprint, and I think a few other books now. I was actually following Tim Grull when I was back in my grammar factory days. So as one nonfiction author and editor, following another nonfiction author who was working with a similar audience to who I was. So I was pleasantly surprised to see him pop up in this podcast. Having said that, I have only recently discovered this podcast, so I can't comment on the content in general. What I can comment on is a mini series they have within the podcast called the Master Work Experiment. And this is where Sean brings on an author, Ann Hawley, to see if they can pull apart a piece of work that they consider to be a master work. So something that's been perfectly executed, pull it apart using the story grid methodology, figure out what all of the story beats are, and then create a new original work using that as a template. So that was a 10 episode series that I've just finished. And unsurprisingly, I found it so fascinating and it's something I'd really like to try. I'd like to find a master work of my own and pull it apart and see if I can use that to create my own master work or my own piece of unique original writing. When it comes to the other episodes, there are a variety of topics. This is more a discussion format show rather than an interview format show. Most of the time it seems to be Sean and Tim talking about the ins and outs of publishing, both fiction and nonfiction. Something I found a little bit frustrating was that in the Master Work episodes I was listening to, Sean mentioned a couple of times that he'd taken Tim through the same process. And when I went back through the historical episodes of the podcast, I could find episodes every now and then talking about Tim and his work in progress. However, I couldn't find a series anywhere. It sort of seemed like there was one episode where Tim was struggling with something, they'd discuss it, and then it went back to business as usual, which was talking about story grid or publishing in general. So I'm not sure if he took him through the exact same process or if it was just Tim was already working on something and they discussed it in random episodes of the podcast. So that was a little bit frustrating. Having said that, listening to the Master Work experiment was really interesting and I would like to explore this podcast in more depth. Podcast number four is another one I just discovered recently titled I Should Be Writing. While the previous three podcasts have weekly episodes, I Should Be Writing is hosted by Myrlaffity who's a science fiction and fantasy author and these podcasts are actually daily when she's actively doing them. And they are little, usually five to ten minute episodes where she shares some inspirational learning that she's learned from her journey. Now she was actually doing this through NaNoWriMo so I wish I'd found it a month earlier so I could have made listening to this my morning ritual during NaNoWriMo. However, even listening to it over the past week or so has been really helpful. The most recent episode I listened to was about forgiving yourself and giving yourself a break, which if you saw my NaNoWriMo week five vlog is something that I probably could have used that week. So I think this is something that could be really helpful to integrate into a daily writing routine and when I am actively working on something like I am now, I plan to make it sort of my first thing in the morning, listen to my five to ten minutes and get my head on straight for the day and yeah, now I'm in the best possible place for writing my best possible work. And the final podcast on my official list is actually one that's not targeted of writers specifically, but I think writers can get a lot of good information from it. It is The Unmistakable Creative hosted by Shrini Rao. Now this is a podcast I've actually been listening to on and off for years now. In fact, back since the early days of my business, so 2013-2014, this is another interview podcast in each episode. Shrini interviews someone who is at the peak of their field. So they might be an artist, they might be a writer, they might be an athlete, they might be an entrepreneur and so on. And what he's trying to distill is their lessons for success feels like the wrong word. I'd say for genius and perseverance and so on. So a lot of the themes it covers are things like mental toughness or excelling in your field or building up those 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. And while the subject matter isn't solely writing even though some writers are featured, I feel like a lot of the skills that are discussed like mental toughness are really helpful for writers. So if you're looking for good episodes to get started at the end of each year, he does a highlights of the previous year. So at the moment you can see the best of 2019, there are also a handful of best of 2018 episodes to get started. That's the end of my official list of the best podcasts for writers. However, I do have a couple that I've put in here just for fun. The first one is my dad wrote a porno. If you have somehow not heard of this, it is hilarious and highly recommended and it will give you so much more faith in your writing. So this podcast started, I think in, what are we now? It's season five in 2019, so it must have started in 2014. The main guy, Jamie, his father saw the success of 50 Shades of Grey and decided to try his hand at writing an erotic e-book called Belinda Blinked. So the podcast is, there are two episodes a week. In the main episode, Jamie and two of his friends, James and Alice, get together and they read through the latest chapter of the book and they tear it apart as they're going through it. It is hilarious. There have been, at least in Australia when I was getting the train into the city, there have been many moments when I was just cacking myself on the train and getting very strange looks that there was no way I could stop myself because what I was listening to was so ridiculous. The second episode a week is called Footnotes and that's usually when they bring in a guest star. So these are like really notable people. Like they had Lin Manuel Miranda, they had Emma Thompson and so on. They might also do listener questions during that week so there are sort of two injections of silliness a week. As a writer, like I said, it can make you feel a little bit better about what you're doing because the work they are reading is very, very, very flawed but very entertaining. I think it's also just fun to listen to something a little bit lighter, especially when you are listening to a lot of the interviews with authors and things like the unmistakable creative. Sometimes it can feel a little bit like, God, I've got to, I've got to be getting up at 4am, I've got to be doing, I've got to be meditating every day, I've got to do all of these things to reach my peak potential and be the best writer I can be and sometimes it's nice to listen to something that's just a bit of fun. The second one that I've got there for fun is Sweet Valley Diaries. So I grew up reading Sweet Valley Twins, Sweet Valley High, Sweet Valley University and sort of stopped in my early teens but those books have always had a special place in my heart. So earlier this year I came across this podcast which, again, is a weekly one and so every week the host, Marissa Flaksbad, I think it is, brings on a friend and they read the next book in the series and they analyze the plot, how the characters have been developed, things that are problematic now because it was written in the 80s, they get to talk about boys and all the juicy gossip there and again it's just a lot of fun and every time I listen to it I feel like, I feel like I'm catching up with an old friend which is nice. If you were not a Sweet Valley fan, I know there is a babysitters club podcast that does sort of the same thing, I don't know the name of it off the top of my head but I will find it with a quick google and I will add the name somewhere on the screen and they'll also link to it below. So that's all from me today, if you also listen to writing or any podcasts, let me know what are your favorite podcasts, what are they about and why do you like them. Other than that please remember to like and subscribe because it really helps me out and I will see you soon with a new video, bye.