I’m Going to Start a Podcast, Mostly Because I Can

Let’s talk about what I’m doing and what I’m about to add to the heap.

I have a new new job. Don’t know yet whether it’s part-time or full-time, but it’s mine and it pays. You’d think that maybe I would reduce my project load to accommodate said job.

Because that sounds like something I’d recommend, but in practice? Not this time around!

What I’m already doing on any given day:

Better Storytelling

  1. live-streaming my morning writing,
  2. blogging daily,
  3. keeping project pages up to date,
  4. prioritizing and fulfilling submission deadlines,
  5. prioritizing and working on multiple planned book series.

The Golden Goose Eggs

  1. writing and scheduling a new journaling prompt every four days for a Facebook group,
  2. writing (or updating) and (re-)scheduling a Fairy Tale Living-related article every 20 days,
  3. creating and scheduling a new boon related to one of my Fairy Tale Living articles every 20 days (ten days after the latest article publishes),
  4. refining the MASTER CAT method before sharing/publishing.

The Penrose Trekkie

  1. writing and sending monthly Mission Reports,
  2. updating old off-shoot projects for monthly goodies to send “between seasons,”
  3. prioritizing and scheduling new goodies to release “between seasons,”
  4. getting things squared away to start writing TAS posts and sonnets.

What I am adding to the mix besides a job that has not yet been determined to be part- or full-time:

A podcast.

I’ve got the written word out the wazoo. I’ve got a plethora of video thanks to my automatic archiving of every live-stream I do.

It seems about time to beef up my audio offerings which currently amounts to the ASMR Gently Spoken readings of my published work (on my YouTube channel) and some musical renderings of some of my fairy tale work (on my Soundcloud profile).

But why add it at all when my time for creative work is about to be reduced by my new job?

Well, every day at the end of my Morning Writing live-stream (viewable on Youtube and Twitch), I respond to every comment and every question regarding creative projects and creative process, and I’ve made a log of everything to discuss. A log which I will continue to update for as long as I keep this particular stream series going.

My original plan was to make those topics into a series of Authortube/Writertube videos, but it never happened because streaming as much as I do I feel I’m at saturation point for creating videos.

With the new job, I know I probably won’t be streaming every single day like I do now. Which will certainly give me a reprieve from constantly creating video content, but — rather than apply that video reprieve to creating another seemingly never-ending video series — I’d like to keep myself below absolute video saturation in case a project comes along that absolutely must be made as a video.

This then raises the question of what type of content to create with all the discussion topics brought up during the wrap-up chats from the live-streams. This blog is where I keep the writing gears well-greased and work through various thoughts on creativity and philosophy and homemaking.

Do I talk about writing here? Sure. But my “surface level” writing process isn’t the focus, the focus is all the thoughts in my head that ultimately lead to the ideas that must be fed through my writing process in order to create the work.

So, given that my audio offerings need beefing up, I’ll be starting a podcast. I know I can work on writing some of the content during my Morning Writing, and work on recordings on days I don’t need to jump on Afternoon Writing (not a live-stream, just the time allocated off-stream to watch Star Trek and write without accidentally infringing on CBS’s copyright).

For now, the fact that I’m making podcast and the decision-process that lead to it are all you get to know. Once I’ve got the first few episodes recorded and the first one posted, I’ll let you know all the things.

If you’re interested in finding out when the podcast goes live via email, please subscribe to Better Storytelling’s daily blog The Brementon Muse and enjoy an epic pantoum in the interim.

Also published on Medium.