Category Archives for Writers’ Rough Drafts
Writers’ Rough Drafts – Episode #43 With Stephanie Lee
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Stephanie Lee is a writer, nutritionist, video gamer, and digital nomad who has built her voice and platform around the fact that she will tell you exactly how it is—directly to your face. With a portfolio of clips from publications and websites like The New York Times, Lifehacker, GQ, Thrillist, Vice, New York Magazine, and Women’s Health, she definitely has the cred to back up her writing prowess. Before embarking on the more location-independent life of a digital nomad and freelance writer, she has played video games and written about it for IGN, studied nutrition and fitness—and written about it—for Bodybuilder.com, and currently works with Ramit Sethi’s Growth Lab, doing media strategy and … you guessed it … writing.
Stephanie’s website, FY!S (Fuck Yes! Saturday, or thefyslife.com) is a manifesto on the good, the awesome, and the fugly about the unconventional life of an aspiring or current digital nomad. Here, she strives to give the real stories and information, while still sharing the unicorns and gumdrops (cause hey, when you can work all over the world from your laptop, there are bound to be unicorns and gumdrops—just sometimes they poop, and or get hard and crack your teeth, hopefully not simultaneously!).
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Writers’ Rough Drafts – Episode #42 With Mason Currey
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Mason Currey is a writer, editor, and author living in Los Angeles. His work has appeared in publications like The New York Times and Slate, and before he took to writing full-time, he worked in journalism and magazines, working his way up from Assistant to the Publisher to Managing Editor at Metropolis magazine, then working as the Executive Editor at Print magazine and Senior Editor at Core77.
A writer at heart, he found himself wanting to sit down and work on the book he wanted to write, only to hit major writer’s block—if he was even able to make time with that busy schedule. This led him to start seeking out the habits and rituals of other prominent creatives, seeing if he could find inspiration for his own project. As he read more, he realized that others might be interested in such material, and began compiling and curating some of the most fascinating (and frankly mundane) routines that led to some of the greatest pieces of art and literature in his first book, Daily Rituals: How Artists Work.
With famous fans ranging from Lena Dunham to Tim Ferriss, my favorite review of the book comes from The Literary Review, stating that it is “a delightful book, full of quirks and oddities.” Realizing after publication that the book featured a predominantly male subject demographic, he set about researching famous women’s daily rituals soon after, and his newest book Daily Rituals: Women at Work comes out today—in March 2019 for those not listening on March 5!
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Writers’ Rough Drafts – Episode #41 With Sol Orwell
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Sol Orwell is an entrepreneur, author, writer, public speaker, and cookie aficionado. He’s been building websites since 1997, and he sold a number of them fresh out of university to set himself up for a “semi-retirement,” during which time he traveled throughout the United States and Argentina for five years. Eventually he returned to Toronto, Canada, where he bought the domain Examine.com, and began building out what has become one of the most respected health and nutrition information sites on the internet — all from spending time on Reddit chatting with others about his own quest to get healthier and lose weight.
Though he’s now quite fit, he’s not obsessive about it, as evidenced by his retired #cookie-life fun and current Cookie-Off Fundraisers, the most recent of which raised over $100K for charity. When he isn’t building empires or stuffing friends’ faces with delicious chocolate chip cookies, he writes short blasts regularly on his Facebook profile and 2 – 4 times a month on his own website, making observations on the worlds of entrepreneurship and digital technology and the many biases that infiltrate these spaces.
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Writers’ Rough Drafts – Episode #40 With Susan Shain
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Susan Shain is a freelance writer specializing in travel, food, and personal finance. Her work has appeared in publications like The New York Times, CNN Travel, The Washington Post, Cosmopolitan, Playboy, and on NPR’s website, among others. After realizing that working in a corporate environment in public relations or consulting was not the life she wanted, she sought out a number of seasonal jobs (for about six years) that took her on a journey around the planet again and again. And she documented the whole experience on her old travel blogging site, Travel Junkette.
Susan worked for a couple years as a Senior Writer at The Penny Hoarder, considered to be one of the fastest growing media companies in the U.S. But the pull of the road and freelancing was too much, and she set back out on her own, eventually starting the website WheretoPitch.com, which helps other writers and freelancers identify different publications and outlets that might be a good fit for their pitches and submissions. Additionally, she publishes a monthly newsletter with the hottest submission opportunities on the web and released her first book, The Ultimate Guide to Seasonal Jobs, last year.
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