Unpublished

Welcome back! We took a few weeks off while we moved country but excited to be back!

Today we're talking about whether it's possible to be too precious about our creative process or if we should be more workman-like when we attempt to make art.

Also see a life update and some ramblings on our move to England (a good 5 mins of this)!

NOTE: James is very conscious that, in this episode, he said Australia didn't have much history. This is, of course, incorrect. Australia has tens of thousands of years of history, most of which was erased by European settlers. What he meant was that we have very little visible history in our cities (due to colonisation).

This week, we interviewed the NYT bestselling author of the Nevernight Chronicles and my favourite fantasy novel of last year, Empire of the Vampire, Jay Kristoff. We had so much fun interviewing Jay. It’s great to talk to a fellow Aussie and he was both extremely funny and wise. We discussed: transitioning from muggle job to writing full time (even though Jay's "muggle" job was as a creative in the ad industry, it's still a really interesting story); why writing and doing creative things is a worthwhile pursuit regardless of the end result; how Jay has had to learn to slow down after an intense first few years as a full time writer; why studying history is great for fantasy authors; and much more!

If you want to check out Jay's books (and I strongly recommend you do), you can find all the relevant links through his website. He also writes great YA novels with fellow Aussie writer Amie Kaufman.

Don't forget, we will be sending out a newsletter to accompany our podcasts starting this week. You can sign up here.

Amie and James are back for Season 4 to talk about times their egos have gotten in the way of their creativity. They discuss the good and bad of ego, and how to cope with the times where it needs to be soothed or curtailed.

Are you waiting around for you big break? Do you find it hard to celebrate the little steps on the path to your success? So do we! Let's chat about how we can reframe this conversation and celebrate the journey.

Don't forget Amie has a new paid podcast out, you can check it out here.

QandA part 2! Thank you to everyone who listened to last week's episode and who interacted with me over at the Unpublished insta! I'm doing my best to respond to all Dms so if you want a chat, please come on over!

Questions this week are about: Self-publishing, the craft of writing, finding a workflow that works for you, building self-confidence, writing about trauma (incl. worries about triggering your readers), vision boards, returning to creative work after a long break, changing creative disciplines, writing about struggles and pessimism/ pity porn.