We’ve both been extremely fortunate to have formal writing instruction. Renee has M.F.A. in Poetry from San Francisco State University. Kim trained as a journalist in UC Santa Cruz Science Communications program and workshopped the beginning of a novel at the Middlebury Bread Loaf Writers Conference. We want to continue to hone our writing craft, but it’s hard to focus and complete exercises when you don’t have imposed deadlines or the support from teachers and classmates. 

We’ve all been there: the first chapter of a a craft book dazzles and inspires you enough to bring the book home with the hope it will relay its secrets. Then, once you put it down on your bedside table, it gathers dust until it meets its final resting place on the shelf with all the other unread craft books. (We use the word “you” but we’re looking in a mirror at “us”.)

This podcast is a promise to ourselves to be serious about improving our writing. And it’s a promise to our listeners to show, not tell, how to improve your writing. Getting advice is great, but incorporating it into your work takes time, repetition, discussion, analysis (Renee is an educator and she knows these things). We’re not reviewing books (although we’ll certainly tell you our opinion of them); we’re discussing what we personally learned from them. And, by example, helping our listeners to do the same a book at a time, one chapter at a time.