We come from this background in the Neo-Futurists where you were forced to write all the time and get out a short play every week with different needs – it had to have music in it, or it needed to be topical, or it needed to be a two-person dialogue. “I’m still figuring it all out myself and I don't think there will ever be 10 rules for great writing anyway. “We didn't want it to be prescriptive,” says Cranor. They focus on a different subject in each episode – getting from idea to execution, the art of collaboration, how to receive and use feedback, how to make something with almost no money. Fink also co-hosts a non-fiction podcast with novelist and singer-songwriter John Darnielle called I Only Listen To The Mountain Goats, where the two dissect one of his songs every episode.Īs well as releasing like-minded shows from other creators, such as The Orbiting Human Circus (Of The Air) and Conversations With People Who Hate Me, this year Fink and Cranor premiered Start With This, a non-fiction podcast where they share tips on creativity and assign something to consume (a podcast, a book) and something to create. Meanwhile, Fink writes Alice Isn’t Dead, which follows a trucker named Keisha who is driving across the US and searching for her missing wife. Each season of Cranor’s Within The Wires is told as a series of audiotapes – relaxation tapes, museum audio guides, letters narrated from a bureaucrat to his secretary. They work so fast, in fact, that they’ve created a slew of other podcasts through the Night Vale Presents network. Jeffrey and I are now very fast writers and we can bang out a thousand words in a very short time.” The main thing I learned from that time is the value of constantly creating new work. I never saw her again, but I met Jeffrey there, who became my writing partner, and I met Meg, who became my wife.

“I went there on a first date in late 2008. “I owe a lot to the Neo-Futurists,” says Fink. The podcast spawned two novels, a stage show and a podcast called Good Morning Night Vale that dissects each episode.

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