CEO of Writing WA Will Yeoman on 'Writing as a Career'

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello authors. [00:00:01] Speaker B: I'm Joanne Morel, children's and young adult fiction writer and author of short nonfiction for authors. Thanks for joining me for the hybrid author podcast, sharing interviews from industry professionals to help you forge a career as a hybrid author, both independently and traditionally publishing your books. You can get the show notes for. [00:00:20] Speaker A: Each episode and sign up for your. [00:00:21] Speaker B: Free author pass over at the hybrid author website to discover your writing process, get tips on how to publish productively, and get comfortable promoting your books at www. [00:00:31] Speaker A: Dot. [00:00:34] Speaker B: Let's crack on with the episode. [00:00:42] Speaker C: Hello authors. I hope you're all keeping well in whatever parts of the world you reside and listen to the podcast in today's interview is with Will Yemen, CEO of Writing WA, and we chat about his lengthy writing career and the advice he gives himself going back to the very beginning generative AI tools and how to use them effectively and ethically for business. Will's overall advice for writers looking to have a writing career, and much more so in my other adventure this week, I am very sad to say that my campaign, my Kickstarter campaign for the writer, the hairdresser and the nurse, bookish, high end, immersive experience bundles didn't go ahead, which is very sad and touched upon this last week, but the actual date for the campaign ending Washington Tuesday the 6 August. So I'm yet to sort of put a post up on social media. I have contacted all my backers. I think there was 29 in total. Thank you so much for everyone who took the time to back the campaign. Absolutely means the world. I shared in the email that I felt that I had because I'm also doing a book launch. I felt like I effectively was confusing people with the campaign, with the book launch, and just asking two things of people. So I can tell what I feel now that it's done, what I'd do differently next time. So Kickstarter sent me an email just to say that your project didn't fund and apologizing. It was a nice email, actually. And it just said the campaign is just one chapter on the story of your creative work. We hope you don't give up. And remember that many creators who don't succeed on one campaign go on to launch others successfully. And it talks about Ellie Blue, for example, has written beautifully about how failing made her a stronger creator. And that was a really nice article to read and I think it was really nice that they sent that. You know, it's a bit sort of hopeful for people who might feel quite bad about campaigns failing and take it personally and believe it's a failure on them, because it certainly is not. And I'm not taking it personally by any means. As I said, I can see how and why I think it didn't succeed. Little things that I believe. I think it needed a pre launch campaign. It needed about two or three weeks beforehand. I needed to let probably more people know I needed to have more of a plan. And I also needed to give more of an understanding about what Kickstarter is and just not expecting people to know what it is. And a lot of people didn't understand what they didn't understand. And I don't think I communicated effectively what I was asking, how they go about it, all that sort of stuff. So it confused a lot of people. And as I said, also I'm having the book launch. A lot of people were just, oh, well, I'll wait for that. So don't know whether you should do both. Probably not. But yeah, so I'm sad it didn't fund, but I'm not taking it personally. It's not a failure on my part. It's the lessons learned as everything is with failure. And yeah, this, this article from Ellie Blue, she shares lessons that she learned from running an unsuccessful kickstarter campaign. And for her, unsuccessful was obviously meaning that it didn't fund. What I find successful about the campaign is I got to share lots of stuff about my book, which is going ahead. So it was the marketing for my book because of the campaign is, you know, is a positive and that's something that was really good. So Ellie Blue has learned a lot from running 38 Kickstarter projects and just said there's no substitute for having a clear, concise project description, a personable video, well thought out reward tiers and tons of images. But she talks about not having confidence and skills as the project creator until her first failed project. She says that she knew within 48 hours of launching her project that they weren't going to make the goal. She said that they did all the things they normally did to promote project, but the backers were only trickling in and they continued to put effort into the project even after it was clear it would fail without some kind of lucky break. And the break never came. And they had 50, 57 excited backers. But at the end of a 30 day campaign, which was the same as mine, the project had only raised 21% of its funding goal. And she says they'd learned some, some lessons learned and a shift in attitude walking away after not reaching the goal. So they learned that avoid making emotional decisions as a publisher. So their project that they were trying to get off the ground was a passion project, whereas all the other books that they had been printing were non fiction stuff, so it was kind of off topic for them. Not every project should be a book. Big names don't necessarily sell books. Setting of realistic goals, same as me. They set a 10,000 goal, which they feel was too high, and they think they should have asked for four grand, and they could have hustled and made that. And in the end, I think their backers pledged about two. I'm on the fence about this because, you know, ten grand? [00:05:33] Speaker B: Yeah, maybe. [00:05:34] Speaker C: It's kind of like I wasn't sure how much orders you would get, but if you took less than what you need for your project, what the hell's the point? You know? You need to take what you need for it to work. But maybe what I'm seeing is smaller goals seem to get double or triple what they're asking, whatever that means as well. I didn't have any stretch goals either. I wonder if that's a thing, if you're offering stuff for the backers to get after they hit certain targets as well. Failing made me a better Kickstarter creator, Ellie says. She says I used to get deeply invested in the emotional rollercoaster of each Kickstarter campaign, feeling victorious at each pledge and despondent at each doldrum. The calm I felt after realizing that this project wasn't going to fund has stayed with me. Now I can look more realistically at how a project is doing overall. If it's going well, I take three actions per day to promote it. If it's struggling on the first day and last few days of the campaign, I take seven to ten actions. I make check marks instead of freaking out, because now I know from experience that a failure won't sink me. I'll link to that in the show notes. And also to let you know, as mentioned previously, my book launch is going ahead. Please join me at the State Library of Western Australia. Links again will be in the show notes Thursday, September 5, and it's 06:00 p.m. for till 730, hosted by writing WA and launched by general fiction author Sasha Wolseley. Please come along, celebrate. There's going to be good food, good wine, and to go with my good book. So I'd love to see you there. So this week I have been formatting the ebook of the writer, the hairdresser, and the nurse through my formatting software. Yeah, it's going quite well. It's formatting is formatting. It's not exceptionally fun, but I'd rather just do this myself. I'm actually going to be entering my ebook into the, if you've heard of it, the self publishing ebook awards through Writer's Digest. And I think the deadline for that is 15 August and quite a big prize, I think 5000 for winners and I don't know if that's overall or in each category. And you also get paid to the conference that they have. And writers digress is a long time organization. I think they were based out of the UK first up, and they offer great advice and run really good competitions. And I put my I think I entered my author fears on how to overcome them book into their non fiction awards, self published awards last year and I didn't place or win, but I got. And even if you don't place or win, your entry still gets really good review feedback and it was invaluable. Really, really good. So yeah, I encourage everybody to check out writer's Digest and yeah, get your work into some of their competitions. I am tying up loose ends with work because I am actually having a holiday next week. Feels foreign. I don't know. We went away on a camping trip at the end. When did we do that? Actually, I think we went away on camping trip and Easter, but I'm actually just going without the kids and everything like that to Bali. So I've never. I've been there as a child, I haven't been as an adult. Being from Perth, Western Australia, Bali is a very popular destination, a very cheap holiday. Lots of people love it. Some people don't like it, so I hope that I like it. It's going to be very hot and humid and looking forward to just relaxing and getting inspired going across there. So look forward to sharing how that went with you next week. [00:08:49] Speaker B: Thorn Creative where beautiful websites for authors are brought to life. No matter what stage you're at with your writing, your stories deserve a dedicated space to shine. Whether you're just starting out or have a bookshelf full of bestsellers, your website is the hub of your author business. Finding everything you and your books offer together. Thorne Creative can nurture all aspects of redesigning your old site or start afresh from the initial design. They can provide ongoing hosting and maintenance to marketing your books online, saving you time, money and stress trying to wrangle your site yourself. An author website built by Thorne Creative can easily direct readers to your favourite retailers, your publisher, or simply set you up to sell to them direct. The options are endless. Thorne Creative have worked with many authors across all genres and know what goes into good functional working author websites to sell books. Books head on over to thorncreative.com, dot au websitesforauthors to read author and publisher testimonials and to see what they offer and some of the sites they've created. [00:10:16] Speaker A: Will Yemen is CEO of writing WA, Western Australia's peak body for the writing sector. Prior to taking up this position, Will was a journalist at the West Australian, where for nearly 20 years he was variously literary editor, senior arts writer and a travel writer. He still freelances for the same publication as well as for limelight and gramophone magazines. Will is also a festival director and has been artistic director of Perth Festival Writers Week, York Festival, York Regional Writers Weekend and new Norshire Writers Festival. [00:10:51] Speaker C: Wow. [00:10:52] Speaker A: Welcome to the Hybrid Author podcast, Will. [00:10:54] Speaker D: Thank you so much, Joe. It's such a great pleasure to be here and to join you. I have to say, it's nice to be on the other side of the microphone, so to speak, for a change. [00:11:00] Speaker A: Yeah, we're absolutely honoured for you to join us. Thank you so much. And your bio is just super impressive. But, you know, can you tell us, tell us about your writing career in the industry and how it's evolved. Overdose time. [00:11:13] Speaker D: Yeah, it's been really interesting because I really started off solely as a classical music critic and I did work in London for a while doing that, which was an amazing experience because of all the fantastic, you know, venues they've got over there, like the Royal Festival hall, the Albert Hall, Cadogan, you know, Hall, Wigmore hall. They've all got hall in the name, but just the fact that it's so close to Europe, you get all the big international stars coming through in a way you don't quite get here. But yeah, coming back to Australia after that and just basically, you know, on the off chance sending something into the west saying, do you need another reviewer? And they said, exit happens, we do. And just because I was always been interested in the other arts, including writing, of course, I gradually branched out from there to become basically senior arts writer before becoming the literary editor. So it just took off from there. And obviously writing for those magazines as well. I've been writing for those magazines for probably longer than I was writing for the west and they're just fantastic, particularly limelight, because that's Australia's only print arts magazine and so it's vitally important as a support for the art sector, and it does carry book reviews as well, but probably not as much as music. Let's be fair. [00:12:18] Speaker A: Amazing. Yeah. Well obviously having that career with magazines as well. Did you notice when, you know, the Internet came on and online magazines and obviously being in newspapers as well, the impact from online to print and things like that changed? [00:12:34] Speaker D: Absolutely, absolutely. So two examples with Limelight, they shifted to a magazine that is mostly features and all the actual reviews are online only. So that's one big change that they've gone with. They just had to scale back the size of the magazine. It's beautiful quality though. They haven't, they haven't short changed anyone in that respect. With the West Australian, they shifted quite some years ago to a digital first policy whereby everything you filed was considered to be first of all for online and then secondarily for print. So that's a massive change. [00:13:08] Speaker A: Yeah. I'm still finding though, you know, print's not going anywhere and I feel like people want more print as well these days. It seems to be, especially for me, being an author, print books are still what people want over, say, ebook and audio. It still seems to be the number. [00:13:21] Speaker C: One format I find. [00:13:23] Speaker D: You're absolutely right, isn't it? And you might remember when Amazon, Kindle and Kobo and all those ebook platforms started coming out, people were predicting the death of the printed book, but it just never happened, did it? And in fact, as you say, it's probably gotten more popular. And same with newspapers. Not sure whether it's a demographic thing. [00:13:40] Speaker A: I was just going to say. And vinyl. And vinyl, a big niche, isn't it? [00:13:45] Speaker D: Well, see, the interesting thing is a lot of younger people are getting into print and into vinyl. I was going to say it's not necessarily a demographic thing. And most of my freelance writing now for the west is still in travel, which was the last sort of section I worked in before I left the paper. And they are the most profitable section of the paper by far. You know, so that beat sports, beat business, business, everything else, people love the printhead. And what supports that section is the print advertising that brings in so much revenue for the newspaper in a way that digital online cannot even come close to. [00:14:19] Speaker A: That's fantastic. But yeah, even with newspapers, people still want to sit down with the newspaper with the ink on their hands, have their coffee at the weekend, don't they? [00:14:27] Speaker D: Oh, it's wonderful. I have to admit I did do that and I'm a confession now, I've actually gone to digital subscriptions where you can still have that, you can simulate that feeling, you know. So to read today's paper, click on the button and it's got those sort of animated pages flipping. I just felt, personally, I was just felt that it was a bit wasteful. [00:14:47] Speaker A: From this day and age when there's so much content, so much to consume, and then have it all in your house, the less, you know, everyone's sort of space poor. So. Yeah, no, absolutely. [00:14:59] Speaker D: I still subscribe to the London Reviewer books, for example, but I've switched digital only a few years ago because I just found these things piling up. And at that point, they weren't printing it in Australia. They are now. So it was being shipped from the UK every month, in fact, every two weeks. And I thought, no, this. [00:15:15] Speaker A: Can't you want it quicker immediately? [00:15:19] Speaker D: I just thought, oh, it's just waste, you know, so. [00:15:22] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, no, that's fantastic. Well, you've done so much in your career, which is absolutely immense. Congratulations to you. Peering right back to the very beginning, what advice would you give to yourself, you know, if you could go back to the beginning of your career, to now? [00:15:39] Speaker D: I would say, don't procrastinate. [00:15:43] Speaker A: Isn't that part and parcel with writing? [00:15:45] Speaker D: Oh, look, I know, but again, if we're talking about creative versus journalism, which can be creative. So I guess I'm sitting in a slightly different camp from most of your guests. It's fair to say procrastination is like the death knell for a journalist. That's pretty obvious. I think you have daily deadlines. It took me years to get used to that and to learn that. The result is I'm able to turn around pretty much anything much faster than anyone else I know who hasn't been a journalist. They're sitting around numbing and ahhing and they're procrastinating. Oh, my God, how am I going to write this? And when I don't think about it, I just get on with it. And also, it teaches you to be happy with the idea that you do the best you can do in the time you have, rather than being a perfectionist. Again, I'm not talking about fiction writing or poetry. I'm just talking about features writing. And honestly, it does change your life. You're much more pragmatic and actually, you do become more creative because you accept imperfection, which is quite wonderful. So that would be the single most important piece of advice. You know, my God, imagine how much I could have done if I just got on with the job. [00:16:50] Speaker A: Do you think it helps with journalism as well, though, that they do have editors waiting to provide the feedback and things for their work? That helps make the pieces better. [00:16:59] Speaker D: You are absolutely correct. And particularly with my editors at Gramophone magazine, for example, because they're all oxbridge educated and trained editors. So, my God, I mean, I write something and then I read it afterwards. And look, they don't change much, but it just sounds a million times better, I think. Did I really write this? [00:17:17] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:17:17] Speaker D: It's invaluable in terms of the newspaper. You're right. That's daily. And that's almost instantaneous feedback. It's. It is a very collaborative process. And you're working first of all with the editors. And then. So you've got sub editors, you've got a mail editor, then you've got the designers as well. How it looks on the page, how where the space is, what you need to cut back, where the images are going to sit. That's fascinating. But you're right, it helps enormously because you're getting that instantaneous feedback in a way you don't get when you're another kind of writer, I suppose. [00:17:47] Speaker A: Yeah. And what about your literary works and things like that? Have you. You've published through Westerly and stuff, haven't you? [00:17:53] Speaker D: Look, I published for some other journals in the past. Most recently, I also had a short piece in the micro memoirs anthology published by Night Parrot Press. [00:18:02] Speaker A: Oh, wonderful. Yeah. [00:18:03] Speaker D: Yeah. And I've had the odd poem published in the past as well, through various journals. I was published in the Shame Book Review, I think it's called Australian Review of Books of the two. [00:18:12] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:18:12] Speaker D: But I say this to a lot of people. They ask me, oh, you know, you're working on a novel or you're writing in more poetry. I actually get a lot of satisfaction, particularly from the music reviewing, because there's a lot of room for creativity in that kind of writing. And that kind of satisfies that, that creative urge, so that I feel less driven to want to write anything like a short story or a novel or a poem or something. Does that make sense? [00:18:38] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. No, it does. It does. Yeah. Sort of the shorter format. It sounds more than the long format you're interested in. [00:18:46] Speaker D: Well, and I think that's practical too. If you're so busy and you're juggling so many projects, it's hard to find that time to block out that time to commit to a long term project. I know you can do it. Of course you can. But you get more of a sense of achievement if you can have those shorter term, shorter pieces that you can actually finish even in a day. I mean, quite often I won't even start something until the day it's due, and I'll get it done, and it's great. I can sleep easy that night. [00:19:12] Speaker A: I'm glad you said that, actually. I'm someone like that, too. And then I always think, is that a bad trait? And I'm just like, no, I think it gives you the push to get it done. [00:19:20] Speaker D: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Look, honestly. But, I mean, I'm allowed to ask you a question as well. [00:19:25] Speaker A: Yeah, of course. Yeah. [00:19:27] Speaker D: So for you, I mean, you've obviously just been working on this wonderful novel. I'm just wondering how you managed to juggle all your competing, you know, commitments and how you find the time on a daily basis to write. [00:19:40] Speaker A: Well, many, many years of practice, I think just from what you were saying, though, because I do do the novels in the long format works. I need to have something in between that, that gives me gratification to publish in between. So this podcast, for instance, putting something out there each week that fills me up and feeds my creative. So while this longer work's coming out, because I always strive and endeavor to work faster, just. It's just not me. It's not. You can't. I've learned not to rush from all the years, not to rush, not to push anything out. It's got to be. The work's got to be where it's got to be. [00:20:16] Speaker C: And, yeah, I am getting faster, I. [00:20:17] Speaker A: Think, as years go on, but not as fast as I want to do that again. Years of practice, and I have kids. And so from having children when they slept to morning routines, to evenings, to whatever, it just changes up all the time. It's constant. [00:20:32] Speaker D: You're not the sort of person that thinks, I need three months in solitude to be able to finish this novel. I mean, not that you wouldn't want that if you could, because you wouldn't. [00:20:41] Speaker A: No, I think I got an evening alone the other night, and I was like, this is amazing. No, you've just got to take it as you can get it done. But I find I'm not a very routine person. But if I've got a project, it's go for your life with that project, get it done, rather than. It seems to be project by project, rather than sort of any sort of routine that I've got. It's all different. Every single thing's different. So it makes it fun. [00:21:04] Speaker D: Well, yeah, exactly. That variety. I really love that, too, actually. You just don't get bored. [00:21:09] Speaker A: No, that's it. That's amazing. Well, we were chatting just before about sort of briefly touched on generative AI tools and love to know what your thoughts are of the new technology that's available out there to writers and authors and things like that, specifically generative AI. Do you have any thoughts? Are you using it? How are you going about using it in your daily or daily life or weekly life? [00:21:31] Speaker D: Yeah, look, honestly, it's been a game changer. And I know particularly in the early days, there was a lot of consternation amongst creatives, whether they be visual artists or writers especially, and that, you know, AI was coming for their jobs and so forth, you know, and also the copyright issues around the idea. You know, they use the word scraping, don't they, where these tools scrape the Internet, because they are large language models. They need to learn from people exiting texts and the idea that they're just taking people's work that's living on the Internet somewhere and basically using it as food to fuel this behemoth. And writers aren't seeing any recompense for that, so they're all still valid concerns. That being said. Okay, here's the saying that's going around doing the rounds at the moment, that it's not AI that's coming for your job, it's people who know how to use AI that are coming for your job. Yeah, very true. And I think anyone who does not just try and look at it objectively and think, okay, yes, there are ethical concerns, but in what way can I leverage this technology to make me a better writer? Or in my case too, as running a small not for profit as well. In what way can this improve our efficiencies, our productivity, our administration? You will just get left behind. There's guaranteed that you just can't do it, you cannot ignore it. I had to learn that at some point along the way. And I have to say I'm pretty much a convert, so I use it on a daily basis, mostly for research. It's amazing. I use primarily two tools, chat, GPT and also Claude. If any listeners out there using chord as well, I find Claude more beautiful to use and it just writes better. It's really lovely tool. Very happy to use that. And also for outlines too, if it's a topic I don't know much about. And so look, give me an outline for this essay or this research paper or whatever, just to get me started. So it's good rate for getting you started, particularly if you're feeling like you've got a bit of the old writer's block happening. It's fantastic for research. It just makes it so much faster and from the administration point of view, if there are lots of tasks that you need automating, just do it. And also producing reports as well. It's just magic. So I'm a total convert. [00:23:39] Speaker A: Yeah, no, that's good. When you say, like, automated tasks, like, I can't get my head around that. Like, how can you. You do, you have to. How do you train it to do that? [00:23:47] Speaker D: Like, oh, okay, so I guess you have to. It's, you have to go in a bit deeper. You have to learn. It's almost like you're coding. It's, you've got to write some of those functions yourself in some ways. There are other platforms that will do it all for you. I use some note taking apps, like Tana, for example, with fully AI integrated. It's a note taking app, but it's, it uses AI to speak to all your content and to produce reports and suggestions and all sorts of things. So if we've got it, for example, if we've got a team meeting every Monday, I might record it on Tana, and then it'll produce a beautiful summary. It'll produce tasks that need to be actioned, that go out of that conversation. It identifies all the speakers. It's just amazing. So. And that's completely automated. In the past, we'd have a note taker. [00:24:35] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:24:37] Speaker D: And then you'd have to go through and do all that manual that's summarizing and you have to pluck out all those actionable tasks as well. So that's just a simple example. But yeah, there are lots of platforms that do those automations for you. But for chat, GPT and Claude, from what I know, you do have to just go a little bit deeper and be prepared to get your hands dirty and write some of those functions yourself. [00:24:58] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, no, it's worth knowing for sure. I attended a webinar. It was like an all day thing. I forget what it's called now. And that was to do with AI. And it was so interesting. But basically the way that they had put it was, you know, they saw the age of the Internet and then the age of like, the mobile phone. And this is the new kind of technology age. So the generative AI would be like, eventually in the future, we're going to be using that as the search engines to find the information to do whatever, instead of just typing it into the Internet and obviously using it that way. And I think that, you know, I've played around with it. The way that I kind of use it is I'm thinking of the character for fiction writing, thinking of the characters and things like that and words that are in relation to their sort of personality traits and kind of. So you're not kind of doubling up. And I'll write my own first, and then I'll use that to see if it comes up with anything else. So that's about it. As far as I've gone using it. I did try and look into the imagery one. I can't remember what it was called. I actually found it really difficult. Could have been. I don't think it was that one. No, there was a different one. [00:26:02] Speaker D: Yeah, there were a few other ones, I think. [00:26:04] Speaker A: I was looking at it to try and make like a text to video to see how that worked. But I found it really user friendly and it was. It felt like you've got to take some time to. To use it. It's not. I don't know. [00:26:18] Speaker D: The visual art stuff is still awful. It's absolutely awful. I've not seen anything that comes close to being what I would call art. And I think the other thing I should have mentioned, though, that the whole. The thing everyone, anyone using all these tools has to learn is crafting prompts and what they call prompt engineering. And that if you are able to refine the way you use prompts, you'll get exactly what you need. [00:26:39] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:26:40] Speaker D: As well. And as a kind of writing. You've got to learn to write. [00:26:44] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, that's it. Well, in this webinar as well, from the video, it was showing you what it was doing six months ago, and it was the prompt they'd given. It was Will Smith eating spaghetti. It was like spaghetti was there, then there was Will Smith and. Yeah, and then they did this prompt for asian women in walking the streets of Hong Kong or something in the rain. And this was six months later. And it was amazing, like how far it come on and things like that. So do you, would your advice be to embrace the technology? What, like, for, what about for like, novelists and fiction people? Because obviously people are seeing businesses as well, are seeing the use of it in their businesses. It's going to make it faster. You need to kind of. This was one of the things the guy had said at this meeting as well, was that businesses will eventually have their own AI's in each of their businesses where customers will come through their websites, and that's what they'll deal with. So everybody kind of has to jump on board. But in terms of writing, how can writers use it effectively? I suppose. [00:27:38] Speaker D: I mean, I would suggest that first and foremost, you literally do look upon it as an assistant. It's just. It's an assistant. Whether it's a research assistant or whether it's an admin assistant, that's exactly what it is. And you treat it in exactly the same way, and then you'll get what you need from it. In terms of writers, what you. I love what you were talking about before about characters and so forth, a lot of people will just type in prompts to see what it comes up with for them. In terms of a list of traits and so forth or scenarios. There are all sorts of things you can do. I don't think that takes away from the writer's autonomy and their writers creativity at all. I think it really does. It opens up new avenues for them. They might not have thought of themselves in the same way as talking to someone else about your work. And another interesting thing, if you wanted to go down this path, I would say you remember back in the old. None of us remember. It's hundreds of years ago, the Italias, the old artists, the old masters had their, their workshops. If they were working on a big painting, they would generally, some of them would only paint the face and the hands of the subject, and they would get their apprentices paint the background and all those stuff. [00:28:39] Speaker A: Yeah. Interesting. [00:28:40] Speaker D: So just have a think about that for a second in terms of your writing and what you would farm out to Claude. It's called I like fancy. [00:28:49] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:28:49] Speaker D: And what, and what is essential for you to do as the author? [00:28:54] Speaker A: That's. [00:28:54] Speaker D: I'm just. I'm not condoning that. [00:28:55] Speaker B: I'm not. [00:28:57] Speaker D: I'm just saying that's an interesting way to look at it. [00:29:00] Speaker A: It's just a. It's a different way of doing stuff, isn't it? Opening the mind a little bit. Yeah. [00:29:05] Speaker D: And you mentioned Sasha Wesley before we started recording today, and I know she wrote an interesting piece on substack about all this, too, and how she approaches her use of AI. So it might be worth a chat with her on the subject. [00:29:16] Speaker A: What advice would you give to writers looking to have a writing career in today's world? [00:29:21] Speaker C: Do it, don't do it. [00:29:23] Speaker D: That's a great question. There have been a lot of articles and, in fact, a couple of books recently just on this subject, and also the idea that a lot of mid to late career writers are basically calling it quits, that are saying, look, this is just not worth it, it's too hard. Whilst I'm not a published author, in that sense, I work every single day with one who's Laurie Stead. And we talk a lot about this. So I've been thinking a lot about it as well. I think. Absolutely. I think just the nature of the idea of the career has changed. Not so much should you or shouldn't you? I think absolutely you should if you've got that desire. I think you just need to be prepared to accept that. It is incredibly difficult, as it has always been, except for a blessed few, to make a living from it. A lot of the authors I talk to are really struggling. A lot of them, you know, they have got full time jobs, a lot of them are teachers. A lot of them might be supported by their partners and so forth, but they're all struggling. And I think part of it is the creative process. Part of it is simply the fact that they don't feel that writing is valued. And that's. This is the key point. We talk a lot to funding bodies, for example, and other people from other sectors about what is it about writing that that makes it seem like it's much less valued than, say, I don't know, obviously sports. But if we stay with the creative for a minute, we look at how well funded the opera or ballet is, or the state of theatre, what's going on there? And is it simply because those art forms are so much more visceral and so much more visual and so much more exciting on the surface, where there's not much that happens in writing unless you're actually reading the book? But then again, you get great authors who managed to become a kind of a personality, I guess. And I'm just locally, I'm thinking someone like Holden Shepard, for example, has a great Persona who knows how to project himself, but by the same time he's struggling as well. So that maybe that's not the answer. Craig Silvey, Tim Winton, obvious examples. Their books get made into films and tv series. Maybe that's the answer. Yeah, I would say yes, but just be prepared for the long haul. [00:31:22] Speaker A: Yeah, I think. Yeah. No, I absolutely hear what you're saying, and I hear it all as well. It's hard because, you know, there's some elements where, as you said, some people are doing good and then some aren't. But again, what you were saying, I suppose it is. You're appealing writing, I suppose you're appealing to readers and whether people feel to pick up a book is a lot of hard work. And in this day and age where we. It scares me, actually, especially with young children, the ability to be able to push a button and get what you want to want right now, immediately. It's like instant gratification, I think, to sit down and actually read a novel, you know, it's time consuming for some, I'm actually quite a slow reader to sit down and watch a movie. I don't feel like I have to do very much, and I've only, you know, that's taken 1 hour of my time, whereas a book probably takes a lot more. So I feel like that's maybe the difference there, but I feel like there's lots of way that not just will story can be adapted today rather than just in book. For writers, I suppose that they could make a living than before. [00:32:21] Speaker D: Absolutely. But what do you think about? I mean, I'm always thinking about other benefits. We talked about AI before. A lot of these tools can basically do your thinking for you. You know, you type in the prompt, it makes all the connections. It's fantastic. How does. Does that benefit you as a human being? How does that improve your own intelligence, your own creativity? Probably not much in the same way as driving everywhere doesn't improve your fitness that much. [00:32:44] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:32:45] Speaker D: So for those kids, you know, I'm just wondering if there's a way we can sell this, and it might without making it sound like you're going back to school, that things will, you know, if you do this, you're gonna become just like this amazing, creative, intellectual, you know, that can do anything with your life. Is there a way we can send that message out? Because if there is, then reading will be valued more, I suppose. [00:33:05] Speaker A: I think with. With audio, especially, you know, audiobooks, my kids go to bed listening to audiobooks and things like that, and they can still do other things while taking that information. And certainly as a. A busy mom as well, you know, audio is great for me to be able to still consume. Yeah. And do it. So that was. That was another way to kind of have the stories heard and listened to. [00:33:27] Speaker D: I think you're right about, if you pick really mundane tasks, I don't think it distracts you from listening, because my favorite time is when I'm washing the dishes at night. [00:33:35] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. [00:33:36] Speaker D: You certainly don't need to think about that. So you can be focused pretty much 99% on the audiobook, which is. Right. [00:33:43] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Again, it doesn't. You're not sort of reading the words or seeing the language in terms of learning to write, though, which is completely different, I suppose, for kids, but that is very true. [00:33:53] Speaker D: But by the same token, it's actually tapping into a much older part of our brains and, you know, it's traditional storytelling. [00:34:01] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:34:01] Speaker D: So, in fact, it's probably more authentic and not less authentic than the written word is. [00:34:06] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, I've got to say, the rise of. And I had a young writer on, I think it was at the start of the year, and she was great with book talk and social media and stuff. She said, it's made reading trendy again. And I actually have literally just joined book talk. I've watched this video, which was. I couldn't stop watching it. It was hilarious. It was two girls and they were australian, and they decided to do a 24 hours reading challenge. And this was print books, so they stayed awake for 24 hours reading. I don't know how they did it because I will start reading at night and I'm like, books put me to sleep. But that's just. I used to read at night and I just watched this video. I think one got through about five. Five big books. You know, it was just. It was great. I thought it was fantastic. So that could be a sort of stepping stone for somehow the actual activity recorded in a quick video. [00:35:00] Speaker D: Absolutely. Do you think. Do you think that combines the best of social media, then, and traditional stories? [00:35:07] Speaker A: Yeah, no, it was really good. But I believe that they did it. I don't believe that they cheated. You know, there was one, and by the end, she just sort of, you know, and then they sort of ordered in food and one went off for a nap and. But then they kind of held up the books at the end. And I think one of them was reading a Colleen Hoover book, and I hadn't actually seen it, but she. She. Her face when she was reading, it was like, you know, and they said that they love this and it was clever. It was really. It's just a different way. Yeah. Yeah. [00:35:35] Speaker D: Well, that's like reinventing the whole, you know, environment for reading and writing isn't, as we were saying before, it's what you need to do. [00:35:43] Speaker A: Yeah, that's it. Absolutely. Well, what can we expect from you in the future? Well, you are everywhere I find and writing to you and all the festivals, and you're just extremely busy man. So do you, have you got any untapped goals you haven't achieved yet in your career? [00:36:00] Speaker D: I. Look, I think I would like. I'm getting more and more into essays now. I've just started a new blog on our sub stack, so I've committed to an essay a week. [00:36:11] Speaker A: Wow. [00:36:11] Speaker D: And again, I'm in the space at the moment where they're not. They're not works of art, they're not particularly genius, but. But they're good enough and they're interesting enough, enough, I think, to provoke questions. And that's the attitude you've got to take if you're going to do it. Otherwise I'll just sit there and go, this is not good enough. It's never going good enough. I'm hoping as a long term goal, I'll develop my skills and I'll develop that into a body of work eventually. So that's a really long term goal. I think I've got more and more interested in the essay form as being something that could embrace and talk about all the other forms, whether it be fictional, poetry, whatever. So that's definitely a long term goal. The other big one, obviously, I guess, for some listeners, is to really make writing WA, which is the organisation I head up, sustainable into the future and to better serve the west australian writing sector, just because it just needs so much support. So, yeah, two main goals, one personal, one. Oh, still personal, but for everybody. For everybody. [00:37:05] Speaker A: Yeah. No, that's amazing. And you're doing such a fabulous job as the head of our writing body, you know, noticed lots of positive changes. So thank you very much. And, yeah, can you tell our listeners, you know, where can they support writing WA and find your works and everything you do on the offline? [00:37:22] Speaker D: Yeah, okay. Well, yeah, just go to the limelight website, limelight.com dot au if you want to read some of my music criticism. Grammar phone. I think it's behind a paywall most of the time. Don't worry about that. Ridingwa.org. you'll find all sorts of good stuff there. And I should tell, I can tell listeners quite confidently now that's going to get a huge makeover. We've already paid our designers the money, so expecting some great things. So that'll be an even more exciting place to visit when you. When you do do. And I'm really excited to say that our substack is really taking off now. That's kind of becoming a one stop shop for our podcasts, our videos, our reviews and the essays I was just talking about. We've just introduced a subscription model that is, it's still free for everyone, but if people want to support writing WA, they can pay a mere $50 a year, but they'll get extras for that, including watch this space workshops, book club. I think Laurie and I are going to do just like a short story analysis every week on video, that sort of stuff, you know, which is, I hope, really useful to writers yeah. So you can find us there. And of course, social media, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. [00:38:29] Speaker A: Well, that's fantastic. And yeah, no, from both of your calibers, that's, that's amazing value. So everybody, I'm sure, will go out and check all that out. And thank you. Thank you so much for giving us your time, your expertise. It's been amazing. [00:38:44] Speaker D: It's been an absolute pleasure, Jo, always to talk to you and looking forward to working with you in the future as well. [00:38:49] Speaker A: Yeah, fantastic. Thanks, Will. [00:38:51] Speaker D: Thank you. [00:38:59] Speaker C: So there you have it, folks. The very knowledgeable and established Will Yemen on writing as a career. If you aren't already and you reside in Western Australia and you're a writer, obviously. Check out writing Waddenne. Fantastic. They look after writers, become a member, get involved. It's a great community. Next time on the Happy Daughter podcast, we have contemporary women's fiction writer Lisa Darcy, also known as Lisa Heidke, on becoming an internationally accomplished author of eight books. I wish you well in your author adventure this next week. That's it from me. Bye for now. [00:39:30] Speaker B: That's the end for now, authors, I hope you are further forward in your author adventure after listening, and I hope. [00:39:35] Speaker A: You'Ll listen next time. Remember to head on over to the. [00:39:38] Speaker B: Hybrid author website at www.hybridauthor.com dot au to get your free author pass. [00:39:45] Speaker A: It's bye for now.