The Resilient Writers Radio Show

Send us a text! We'd love to hear your thoughts on the show. Achieving a state of flow in your writing life may sound difficult, or even like an impossible dream. But there are concrete ways that you can cultivate more flow in your life, and you don’t need anything special to get started.  Insights from the field of positive psychology can have a huge impact on us as writers, and by learning a...

Send us a text! We'd love to hear your thoughts on the show. I'm so pleased to welcome my friend Mari Ruddy to the show today. Mari is an alumna of my First Book Finish program, and her new book is just being released. Mari leaves nothing out in sharing her long and satisfying book completion journey with us, including lessons about self-publishing a quality book and how she raised the ne...

Send us a text! We'd love to hear your thoughts on the show. Welcome Resilient Writer! We're here for you with another Season of The Resilient Writers Radio Show. Inspired by your feedback and the thousands of downloads so far, here's what you can expect from Season 3.

Send us a text! We'd love to hear your thoughts on the show. Our identities, experiences, and connections all play into our writing. They’re convenient sources of inspiration, and they allow us to write confidently. But does writing our own experience let us connect with others? Author Gary Barwin says yes, as he believes that if we analyze how our own lives are interesting and why we write fr...

Send us a text! We'd love to hear your thoughts on the show. This is it, writer: we’ve reached the end of The Resilient Writers Radio Show, Season 2. Tune in to this episode for a brief recap of what’s been covered in this Season, as well as a quick look into what you can expect in Season 3.  We’ll also talk about persistence, which is key for us as resilient writers, and the upcoming Book Fin...

Send us a text! We'd love to hear your thoughts on the show. As writers, we have a lot of feelings about finishing our books. But whether we feel excited or apprehensive at the idea, we can’t finish our books unless we’re ready.  Now, being ready doesn’t mean having a completed draft. It certainly helps, but getting to the point of being ready to finish can come much, much earlier in the proce...

Send us a text! We'd love to hear your thoughts on the show. When Merilyn Simonds was asked by a friend to be the author of her biography, Merilyn agreed. The problem Merilyn then ran into was that she didn’t like or read biographies, but couldn’t abandon her promise. It wasn’t until Merilyn made an observation, one deeply connected to her friend’s life story, that the biography began to flow....

Send us a text! We'd love to hear your thoughts on the show. Part of the writing process is learning, though that may mean learning things besides new skills. This was the case for author Jane Baird Warren when she was in her MFA program and discovered the perfect genre for her was one she originally didn’t want to write in.  Along the way, Jane also learned that writing one book doesn’t neces...

Send us a text! We'd love to hear your thoughts on the show. A long writing session may sound tantalising, like the “perfect” time for writing. But there is no perfect time to write, and the very idea keeps us from making progress. In fact, it can even send us down the rabbit hole of creative anxiety.  But Short Time writing sessions are our friend—they allow us to stay consistent and connecte...

Send us a text! We'd love to hear your thoughts on the show. When we’re looking for a new writing project, it might crop up in an unexpected place. At least, that’s what Rona Maynard discovered.  She needed a new writing project after leaving behind her role as an editor with a major women's magazine, and she found her inspiration through fresh eyes after adopting her dog, Casey.  But Ron...

Send us a text! We'd love to hear your thoughts on the show. You might want an MFA, but is attending an MFA program right for you?  They aren’t for everyone, and for some, programs aren’t even accessible with barriers like location, cost, and regular life responsibilities getting in the way.  But Gabriela Pereira has the solution. She’s the founder of DIY MFA—born from her love of attending an...

Send us a text! We'd love to hear your thoughts on the show. Inspiration can come from many places, but what really matters is how we writers choose to use it.  Take Anita Lahey, poet and nonfiction writer, who let her inspiration drive her poetry to new heights. And this led her to co-create a new project, FIRE MONSTER , one unlike anything she’d previously done: a graphic novel in verse, cre...

Send us a text! We'd love to hear your thoughts on the show. Some stories come along and take us over. It feels like we're compelled to write them, almost as if we had no choice. Historical fiction can have that sense of urgency for some writers, and because the historical reality comes with such high stakes -- as in the case of the Second World War, for example -- these stories also make...

Send us a text! We'd love to hear your thoughts on the show. Feedback is a great writing tool—if you get it at the right time. Writers have a bad habit of asking for feedback way too early in the first draft process, when often they’re not really looking for feedback, but something else entirely... But this is something we can avoid, as Rhonda Douglas tells us in this Episode of The Resilient...

Send us a text! We'd love to hear your thoughts on the show. Self-publishing gives us a lot of freedom, but it also means we have a lot of learning to do. Especially when it comes to marketing our own books.  In today’s internet age, we can reach countless people. But how do we reach the ones who want to buy our books? Shelby Leigh , book marketing strategist, has the answer, and all the tips...

Send us a text! We'd love to hear your thoughts on the show. If you knew your writing personality, it would make developing a writing routine a lot easier. And thanks to Brooke Adams Law of We Are Writing Brave , you can learn your writing personality through a simple quiz. Besides writing routine know-how, Brooke also has a wealth of knowledge on hybrid publishing. As a book coach, Brooke was...

Send us a text! We'd love to hear your thoughts on the show. Tempted as you may be to break the mould, sometimes sticking with the classics is the way to go. Specifically in today’s episode of The Resilient Writers Radio Show, we’re talking about a classic story structure—the essential three act structure. In this first episode of Season 2, Rhonda Douglas explains in some detail how the three...

Send us a text! We'd love to hear your thoughts on the show. Thanks for being with us for Season 1 of The Resilient Writers Radio Show! We've loved being on this journey with you and hope you have enjoyed it too. We're now preparing Season 2 for you which will air in early July 2023. So stay tuned! And if you haven't yet written a review, would you take a second and do that now?...

Send us a text! We'd love to hear your thoughts on the show. For writers, creative anxiety is almost unavoidable. It can make us doubt ourselves, our work, and whether we should continue—which makes it critical that we learn how to manage it.  There are plenty of different techniques out there, and in this week's episode, host Rhonda Douglas share techniques she finds make a big differenc...

Send us a text! We'd love to hear your thoughts on the show. Writers, do you make sure you take time to play? No? Well today’s guest, Gail Anderson-Dargatz, is here to tell us why we should.  In fact, she’ll tell us about four Ps that are very important—play (of course), passive protags, planning, and pantsing. With the right know-how, we can make our stories stronger, and shorten our writing...

Send us a text! We'd love to hear your thoughts on the show. Don’t let the title mislead you—author Michael Blouin knows a lot. Specifically, he knows a lot about persistence, and how it can impact your writing life forever. Michael’s learned firsthand how almost giving up could have cost him big, and how we can’t let rejection bog us down. After all, sometimes all it takes to change everythin...

Send us a text! We'd love to hear your thoughts on the show. In the world of publishing, small and independent presses don’t get nearly enough love.  Large publishing houses may have all the metaphorical glitz and glamour, but working with an independent press has its own advantages.  Aimée Parent Dunn, owner of Palimpsest Press, tells us what working with an independent press is like, from ma...

Send us a text! We'd love to hear your thoughts on the show. As writers, we have tons of tools at our disposal. Strategies, motivation, beloved writing utensils or software…  But many writers are missing an incredibly valuable tool—self-compassion. In this solo episode, host Rhonda Douglas shares how we as writers can use just a little bit of grace and self-compassion to create a writing life...

Send us a text! We'd love to hear your thoughts on the show. Indie publishing. Does that send shivers up your spine, or leave you buzzing with excitement?  For author Emma Dhesi, it’s definitely  excitement. Becoming a self-published (also known as Indie) author is a fascinating process, and one that requires a lot of learning.  But as Emma’s published books show, it’s one we can learn, and it...

Send us a text! We'd love to hear your thoughts on the show. Focus is both a great boon and a great curse to writers. We need it, but finding it can be difficult… and that was before we lived in a world built to distract us! Luckily, there are specific techniques we can use to improve our focus. All we have to do is commit to being focused, and learn the techniques that work for us—taught this...