Sunday, November 6, 2016

Podcast Review: The Loft Literary Center Podcast

podcast, podcast review, The Loft Podcast


My sister-in-law, Galen is a great podcast reviewer. I've tried it a few times, and I don't think I'm as good. But, it doesn't matter because I'm supremely confident.

This week, I listened to a podcast called "The Loft Podcast." It's a new podcast from The Loft Literary Center, which is right here in Minneapolis. In fact, the Loft is where I take my writing classes. Except I take them online, through The Loft's portal.

So anyway, I was pumped to see via Twitter that The Loft launched a new podcast. I listened to the whole first episode, which happened to be about NaNoWriMo, in which I'm currently participating on my own terms.

The podcast was pretty good. A few roundtable participants from The Loft talked about two ways to write a novel. One way is the NaNoWriMo method. What you do is you put in an intense flurry of effort and write 50,000 words in a month.

The participants agreed that there were some pros for writing fast and furious. First, the concentration of the work and the support of the community can motivate you to just get the words on the paper. That's the best possible thing to do if you want to write a novel. Just get the words down, no matter how bad they are.

Speaking of bad, everyone also agreed that if you did NaNoWriMo, the writing would not be polished at the end of the month.

I mean, duh. This was kind of obvious. You can't write 50,000 words in a month and also revise them and have them be super good.

Another duh moment was when they started talking about how not every writer is to writing as Michael Phelps is to swimming. So, if you try NaNoWriMo, you should just realize that your writing might actually suck and never find an audience.  I feel like most people listening to a writing podcast already know that. But, okay.

The next way to write a novel is taking a year-long class in a workshop. There are pros to that, as well. I don't think I need to list them here because they're pretty obvious.

In the end, the discussants agreed that the best course of action would be both courses of action. Write a lot of words really fast AND work on those words in a workshop with a teacher for a year.

That's validating, as that's what I'm doing. Thanks, Loft! Of course, I pay The Loft to work in a workshop for a year, so they have a vested interest in recommending that plan.

Overall, I give the podcast 3 stars. I'll listen to it again, for sure. I wish the sound quality was less echoey, and I wish the discussants had been a little less patronizing about the difficulties of writing a book that anyone wants to read. I'm already aware of those difficulties and facing them every day.

Onward! I wrote 3687 words this week. Let's celebrate and do it again next week. Go!

2 comments:

LH said...

I may start listening to that podcast.
I wish I lived in Minneapolis and took classes at the Loft.

I just found the Up and Vanished podcast. Nothing about writing, but pretty good.

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