Pep Talk alert! Whether you’re writing a ton or writing a-none, this week’s episode is geared toward writers who are feeling the strain of the Muddy Middle. Grant and Brooke talk about strategies for staying on track and offer up encouragement for ways to keep with it—including how to break the wall. Brooke’s references to Esther Perel’s podcast episode, “Breaking News Is Breaking Us,” can be found at: https://audio.nrc.nl/episode/18575532

This week Brooke shares an interview she recorded with Allison Gilbert about her new book, Listen World!, a biography of the most famous woman writer you’ve never heard of. If you’re any writer, but particularly a woman writer, knowing about Elsie Robinson (1883-1956) will bring you needed inspiration during this NaNoWriMo season. She models how to believe in yourself, how to face rejection and keep going, and how perseverance is the most necessary skillset when it comes to getting our work out into the world. You’ll marvel at what she was able to do—way pre-Internet. For reference, find Allison’s CNN article about the reparative efforts underway to retag history so that gender is included/searchable.

Happy Halloween Week and Happy Start of NaNoWriMo. This week’s episode is a twofer because we’re bringing you a little dose of horror through our exploration of gothic stories with this week’s guest Isabel Cañas, who also happens to be a ten-year veteran of NaNoWriMo. Watch magic happen as Write-minded intertwines these two cultural events—one spooky-scary and the other downright inspiring. We’re kicking you off with some great advice and a big high-five—and if you’re still on the fence about whether you’re doing NaNoWriMo, get off and join the November writing craze.

With her new memoir, You Could Make This Place Beautiful, guest Maggie Smith provides an example of how to break conventional form to gorgeous results. This interview covers narration, structure, and Maggie’s process of constructing this memoir, as well as how her background as a poet informed her approach to the writing. Join us for a wide-ranging conversation mostly about narration, but we also touch upon writing about others and Maggie confesses she’s surprised by the gigantic success of this book. You’ll want to tune in to hear why.

Whether you already love fanfiction or don’t really get it, you’ll want to tune into this episode for the sheer appreciation of its presence in the literary world. More than 100 million people worldwide are reading or writing fanfiction. We know that fanfiction writers have been wild over the years for Star Wars and Harry Potter and Twilight, but now fanfiction is increasingly likely to be a source of content for movies and TV shows—and community and friends!

This week’s co-authoring duo, Helen Macdonald and Sin Blaché, take us inside their relationship and share authentically and honestly about some of the considerations unique to writing your book with someone else. With tools available to authors that allow writing together over distance and time zones, many writers are keen to coauthor and explore new terrains with a creative collaborator. This week offers insight and permission, and a few tips from lessons learned on the journey.

One month out from National Novel Writing Month, this episode hopes to inspire listeners around the truism that the very best way to write a novel is simply to try it. NaNoWriMo encourages that effort, outcome irrelevant. Take heed from guest Kayvion Lewis who suggests in this episode to write the thing that sets your heart on fire. Also, as promised in today’s Book Trend, we encourage you to check out Dave Chesson’s video on Amazon’s recent category changes which can be searched on YouTube: “INSANE Amazon Category Change.”

This week’s episode considers the intersection between dreaming and writing and how to harness not dreaming per se, but the midnight mind. The midnight mind speaks to a kind of liminal state where we can be more open, more creative, less blocked—and Gover’s interview and new book are encouraging to writers and authors around writing for writing’s sake, and not only for publication and outcome. There’s much to unpack this week as we settle into the joy of writing, accessing more subconscious creative states, and thinking about how our dreams are sources of creativity for us whether we remember them or not.

This week’s episode is an exploration of form, and why some stories are better contained in short story form rather than a novel. Guest Ghassan Zeineddine shares the evolution of his short story collection, Dearborn, as well as some of his process, including research and spending serious time with subjects who sometimes play roles in stories years down the road. Dearborn is part-celebration, part-astute observation of the Arab-American community in Dearborn, Michigan. This episode also contains a bit of history about how Dearborn became the US city with the highest concentration of Arabs and Arab Americans, and also lends insights into process, craft, and why the short story form is sometimes just right.