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Writers’ Rough Drafts – Episode #35 With Yi Shun Lai
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Yi Shun Lai is an author, a copy and content writer, an editor, and a writing coach and teacher based out of Southern California. Her debut novel, Not a Self-Help Book: The Misadventures of Marty Wu, was a Semi-Finalist, Thurber Prize for American Humor. Through her own site, The Good Dirt, she chronicles her day-to-day writing life, and has recently been live-blogging her thoughts and experiences reading through Jane Friedman’s book The Business of Being a Writer.
In addition to her writing work, she teaches at various colleges and learning events throughout the United States, and works as a writing coach for budding authors and entrepreneurs working on their first books. In her spare professional time, she is the co-owner and editor for the Tahoma Literary Review, which publishes vetted poetry, fiction, and non-fiction submissions three times a year. When she isn’t doing all that work to make the world more creative, she is making it a better place by volunteering with ShelterBox, an organization that provides emergency services and supplies to areas affected by natural disasters or conflict.
The Art of Giving Up: When to Walk Away From a Writing Project
What was the most recent thing you’ve wanted to achieve really, really badly in your writing career? I mean something that you would persevere with even if it meant sacrificing a good portion of your time.
For me, it was publishing a book. Actually, two books. Both of which have been in the works for at least two years now.
Other than those, I have at least a hundred documents of writing material I speculated would make for some pretty decent stories at their conception.
There are thousands of these stories in my head, and the task of narrowing down the selection to just one or two or even six is a daunting one. Some stories resonate more than others at certain times, and others may be interesting to pursue for only a few months or weeks.
How do you know when a project is good—that a project is worth pursuing?
That your project is worth putting in the extra hour a day just to ensure it advances at all?
3 Creative Networking Methods Writers Need To Try
“Networking” is a red-letter word for many writers. Often, it invokes the image of a writers’ conference or cocktail event, with strangers standing around eating hors d’oeuvres and making small talk—which is a scenario many introverted writers want to run from (after all, there are reasons we work from home, right?).
But networking comes in all shapes and sizes, which is good, because it’s an essential ingredient for the success of any professional writing career.
The idea of networking is simple: You create and sustain as many relationships as you can in the hopes you’ll get some work from these relationships down the road. And it’s really not as scary as it sounds—networking is as simple as making friends!
Writers’ Rough Drafts – Episode #34 With Sara De Lille
Or listen on: iTunes | Spotify | Stitcher | Google Play | Download
Sara De Lille is a freelance and content writer based in Mexico City. In addition to her work writing for brands and clients on the web, she is also a regular improvisation comedy performer, coming up with quick takes and brilliant commentary on the spot in sketches and stage performances. While most of her writing work in done in Spanish, she is a skilled English-language comedian as well, taking classes and doing shows in the Los Angeles area.
When she isn’t writing or speaking for pay or laughs, she runs the site LetsRiot.tv, which started as a place for her to share her insights on art and music in Mexico, but has since grown to be a site with multiple female contributors. As she says on the site, Let’s Riot is: “A group of girls willing to make noise, to write and share about personal experiences, to talk about what happens to us, interests us and makes us uncomfortable.”