The Author Alchemist

1 Million Words! Have you written that many? Do you know, or are you guessing? Thanks to the stats page for my first fandom account at AO3, I knew pretty close to the day when I went over the 1 million word mark officially. However, I'm fairly certain I had hit that mark years ago, given how many stories I have written since I was a kid. My first "book" was a Jack London rip-off titled Timber Trai...

Prompts often get a bad rep in writing circles, considered as nothing more than teaching tools at best. In the fanfiction community, though, prompts are often tools of inspiration, motivation, and community building. In this episode, I dive into the value of prompts not just as "tools" but as little sparks of creativity! The discussion ranges from the inherent value of prompts to the different way...

This episode discusses the importance of self-awareness and vulnerability for writers. I share my experiences giving up on my dreams of publication in the 1990s due to a perceived lack of interest from agent and publishers, and how I later found joy in writing through fanfiction, which helped my embrace my unique stories. I use these experience to help show writers how to invest in self-reflection...

"If you want to be a Real Writer you need to toughen up!" ...that's what we are told, anyway. But do we? Do we really? I argue that no, that's not what we need to do, and in fact, "toughening up" makes us worse off as writers and as people. We're a sensitive bunch, and toughing it out when faced with harsh criticism won't make us better — it'll only make us bitter.  I discuss why vulnerability and...

In this episode, I discuss fighting insecurity by building self-confidence and a growth mindset. I explain that mastering skills alone don't lead to self-trust! We must take chances, fail, and keep trying new things because true confidence comes from challenging ourselves, not just from success. I share my own struggles, and the goals I set in order to keep improving. Focusing on the process of wr...

Why aren't you writing what you love to write? Is it insecurity? Fear that no one will read it? A belief that you need to "write to market"? In this episode KimBoo talks you through the hurdles you put in your own way so you can sit down and write what the stories you want to tell!

The story behind the story of my oft-used quip, "Write what you love to read!" I read a LOT of things but I don't necessarily want to write them; on the other hand, the stories I NEED to write are definitely filling the void of stories I want to read that don't exist (yet). How about you!?

What we imagine in our head as our masterpiece of art and storytelling sometimes doesn't appear on the page with all the full glory that we feel it is supposed to have. Sometimes that inspires us to start over; a lot of the time, though, it is discouraging. We doubt and fret and even give up. Which of course is the worst "solution" (and I put that in quotes because it is not, in fact, a solution a...

I don't talk about this too much in this podcast but one the most important influences in my life for learning to love Happily Ever After (HEA) endings is fanfiction. I know, not a surprise, yeah? In one sense, I've always loved HEAs, from the time I was a child through college and up through my adult life. In the podcast I discuss the value of HEA stories but honestly I enjoyed them long before I...

Sometimes our greatest hurdle, as writers, is our own mindset. HA HA NO actually ALL THE TIME our greatest hurdle is our mindset. Too bad, so sad! There are a lot of factors that play into our mindset, some out of our control such as health issues, financial instability, family troubles, mental health, etc. and so on. But there is also a very large percentage of our mindset that literally comes fr...

Do you even know what an alpha reader is? Those of you who are involved in fandom might have heard of it, or at least know about " beta readers ", but I promise, this has NOTHING to do with Omega'verse plots! 😂 Alpha readers have always been here, writers just usually referred to them as "a good friend looked over my ideas and gave me some great feedback" or "my friend loves my first draft and re...

Welcome to the seventeenth episode of the Author Alchemist! In today's Alchemical Lesson, I explore the transformative power of allowing your characters to change. I hope I get you to trust your characters and show you how important it is to allow your imagination to roam free, for their sake as well as yours! This discussion was sparked by a Tumblr post I wrote (under my Cooper West penname) that...

[Wow hindsight's a bitch. From the edge of 2022, this podcast just sounds so innocent and naïve ~ KCY, 11/6/2021] Ayyyyye, this is an ad-hoc podcast I recorded on the fly to welcome everyone to 2020! It's short and sweet and missing all the bells and whistles, but please listen in to hear about the good news of my dog's recovery, my plans for my writing, and my goals for creating the future I want...

Everyone loves the "Hero's Journey" as a writing tool to map out epic stories. It is also used as a self-help guide for analyzing the story of our personal lives, allowing us to place our experiences into a map that lets us analyze what has happened to us, how it has all affected us, where we are now, and where we are going. In this episode, I bridge the gap between storytelling and your personal...

Shit happens. It happens to the best of us. This episode is about what happened when my own personal shit hit the fan. I spent a year not writing. That's right: not eking out even a word of fiction. Not original fiction, not fanfiction, not blogs, NADA. I did nothing. Why? I talk about that in depth but in short, it was a combination of anxiety, personal demons, and working through those personal...

This episode is a little bit of history, specifically my history as a writer, alpha reader, and creativity coach. If you have been wondering why I started this podcast, then this is the episode you’ve been waiting for! Or not, but here we are. I jump back and forth a little in my own timeline, and hopefully don’t bore you too much talking about 14 year old me writing fanfiction with my friends bac...

Are you beholden to other people’s ideas about how fast/often you should write? Do you keep aiming for marks set by everyone but you and then miss them? Then this episode is for you. I look at the way writing ebbs and flows, how the advice “write every day” isn’t the last work in progressing your skills and output, and why looking at your overall health (mental AND physical) is just as important y...

Pantser? Plotter? How DO you write, anyway? In this episode I meander around the different approaches to how a writer can write, and talk some about why it’s important AND why it’s not important. After a long introduction talking about how I was sick with a cold and full up with chicken soup, I get to the meat of it: explaining the difference between pantsing and plotting/outlining and how knowing...

You need to love what you write, or you will never get through the hard work of finishing and then editing your stories. But how do you love something when all the experts are telling you to “kill it!”?  In this episode, I look at the history of one of the popular lessons new/young writers are told: “kill your darlings.” It’s well intended, but what does that mean in the context of “write what you...

Back in the old days, walking into a bookstore and looking at the “writing” section with shelves filled to the brim with self-help books about how to write, and what to write, and where to market, and...it was overwhelming.  At least these days you can just jump online and go to your fave distributor like Amazon and find exactly what you need with no distractions or clutter confusing you! AHAHAHAH...

If you’ve stopped writing because you think you’ll never be good at it, or you think you are unable to change your (non)writing habits, this episode is for you! If you’ve stopped writing because you think you’ll never be good at it, or you think you are unable to change your (non)writing habits, this episode is for you! We often lock ourselves into patterns and habits that do not serve us. This ep...

This was a hard episode to record. I think every creative person who has tried to follow their dreams knows what it feels like to be let down by the people we expected to be our strongest supporters.  Sometimes it is very direct: they disapprove of our “hobby” and make it known that they think you are wasting your time, or worse.  Other times, their concern and love for us manifests as cautionary...

In this episode I start getting a little personal about my own story as a writer. I don't think my experiences are particularly unique because I know a lot of writers, both amateurs and professionals, who suffer from The Dread Malaise of Regret. Unfortunately, a lot of us look to regret as an inspiration. But it’s the worst place to go, emotionally, for inspiration, and I explain why. I beat mysel...

“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.” ~ W. Somerset Maugham If you know me, then you know my life-story involves a lot of baby Kimboo reading many writing guides as I attempted to figure out what kind of writer I am. One of the things I learned early on was that there were (are!) rules for everything.  It did not take me long, though, to figure out...

I finally got this podcast edited and uploaded for you! I don't know why each episode seems so monumental to me but they do, and I always have a minor celebration everytime I get one done. *chair dancing* The working title for this episode was “you don't need to be it to write it” which sums it up generally, but misses a lot of nuance (as generalizations often do). In it, I take on the old saw “wr...