The Author Alchemist

The Author Alchemist

Author and productivity coach KimBoo York talks about mindset, goals, inspiration, the most annoying part of being a writer: writing! After all, you can’t become a better writer if you aren’t actually writing anything! Topics include genre fiction, fanfiction, amwriting, marketing, subscriptions for authors, and her own personal journey through all of the above!

Episodes

March 15, 2024 26 mins

Join me for updates on my own serials, the 1 Million Words Club, and advice on how to transition your idea/outline for a book series into a long-running serial! 

Links: My website Serials beats spreadsheet 1 Million Words Club information Subscriptions for Authors fb group 

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My book "By the Seat of Your Pants: Secrets of Discovery Writing" is out! I explain a bit of what it is about and why I wrote it, along with some updates of my fiction stories. 

For more about me and my work, visit my site hub, https://houseofyork.info --------------------------

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

By the Seat of Your Pants: Secrets of Discovery Writing My new book all about discovery writing/pantsing!

"Writing for the Long Haul" ...

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February 5, 2024 15 mins

A quick update on what I'm writing, what I'm working on, and what kind of money I am making. I talk about Kobo Plus, sales numbers, and the launch of Dragon's Grail on Ream!

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For more about me and my work, visit my site hub, https://houseofyork.info

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Here's my first podcast of 2024! I'm excited to announce the launch of the 1 Million Words Club, a community created by writers FOR writers to help us get the words out! It's focused on accountability and productivity as well as craft and mindset, and welcomes all writers of every genre, professional or amateur! 

I also update you on Dragon's Grail (it's been a hot minute!) and progress on my next craft book, By the Seat of Your Pa...

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November 13, 2023 23 mins

Back from a lovely writer's retreat held on the Gulf Coast of Florida, I'm thinking a lot about "what makes a writer" and the importance of creativity in our lives. There are a lot of definitions of what makes a "real writer" and most of them are about gatekeeping, so instead I propose that a real writer is someone who invests time and energy into their practice.

For those who feel overwhelmed by it all, I offer this simple goal: 1...

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November 9, 2023 21 mins

First off, apologies in advance for the tapping noise that occasionally shows up, I think it was my headphones' cord knocking against the desk. I'll be more careful in the future!

This is an update, overview, and discussion about all my current writing projects. I get sidelined talking about discovery writing, but then again, I'm writing a whole book on the topic so I'm just calling it "advanced marketing"! So there!!!!

I also intr...

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A short episode about a question I was asked last week, and how answering it has changed the course of my writing career. 

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Check out ALL THE THINGS! It's all at House of York!

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She's BAAAACK! After a full year of letting this podcast languish, I decided I needed to jump back into the saddle. I have a lot going on, including new author platforms and new stories and new goals.

If you've wondered where I went and what I'm up to, this is the episode for you!

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Better late than never! I'm back with an episode I recorded last year, and is the final episode in my mini-series about our deepest fears. Stay tuned for my next episode, which will go over "What the heck has KimBoo been doing since 2022????"

But for now, in THIS episode, I talk about why it is so important to love your characters deeply and passionately. Yes, even the characters who are unlikeable or problematic! You need to hold ...

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The third installment of my Deepest Fears series focuses on "writer's guilt" and, in a round'about way, our fear of guilt. Oftentimes we slap a label on what is holding us back from writing, calling it perfectionism or guilt, when it is in fact a deep-seated fear of those very emotions. It sets up a dangerous feedback loop of negative emotions that can be hard to break! Hopefully this episode will help you identify what your real s...

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Welcome to the second episode in a mini-series I’m doing about confronting our deepest fears as authors! Fear of being vulnerable is at the core of many of the fears that keep authors from writing, and in this episode I am taking aim specifically on the fear of being seen and of being shamed. 

I cover the ways guilt and shame are not the same thing, and techniques you can use to understand what you are feeling and how to deal with ...

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June 21, 2022 19 mins

Welcome to the first episode in a mini-series I’m doing about confronting our deepest fears as authors. This is not simply about the fear of being bad at writing, or the fear that no one will read our work, but rather about the fears that keep us from writing in the first place…which often circle back around to simply one word: vulnerability. 

Fear of vulnerability can take many forms, though, so I’ll be diving deep into the types ...

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June 7, 2022 19 mins

A recurring theme in a lot of advice about creativity is "show your work/share your work." It is often hailed as a great way to "grow your audience" but I want to go a step beyond that and talk about how it is a great way to stay motivated and find inspiration, even if what you have to show is not polished and perfect yet. 

I've grabbed three classic modern stories that were created and molded on the internet as examples of how won...

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May 27, 2022 15 mins

Giving yourself permission to sit down and write is a major hurdle most writers face...but then what? The next step is giving yourself the permission to succeed as a writer, however you want to define "success." 

That can be just as hard, though. We all say we want to be successful, but do we feel like we have earned that right? In this episode I use Elissa Altman's fantastic post from 2016 "Writing and the Permission to Succeed: T...

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May 8, 2022 19 mins

There are a lot of tools out there which are designed to help you be a better writer, but did you know there are also a lot of tools that can help you simply write the words? There are! In this episode I talk about apps, communities, and systems that you can use to help you get the words out of your head and into a document!

Resources mentioned:

  1. https://www.putwordsdown.com
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April 29, 2022 16 mins

This is all about one of my favorite motivational books for writers, The War of Art by Steven Pressfield (Note: this is an affiliate link with bookshop.org!). This is justifiably considered a modern classic in the field of motivating and inspiring authors, with great insights into productivity and our eternal nemesis, Resistance.

However, it's not perfect, and in this episode I talk about the good, the bad, and the ableism. 

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April 22, 2022 17 mins

Too often, well meaning people discourage writers from "thinking big," or getting too big for our britches. They want to protect us from disappointment, but what they are really doing is crushing our inspiration and motivation. 

I want writers to get clear on what "thinking big" means to you (bestseller? award winner? literary journal renown? mid-list lifestyler?) and embrace it! Doesn't matter if you don't "make it" or not, what m...

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April 15, 2022 21 mins

What happens when you get in a fix and a story stalls out on you? Or runs away from you? Or forgets to that that left turn at Albuquerque? 

In this episode I talk about the metamorphosis of my in-progress novel, The Bones & Brews Café, which was originally envisioned as a trope-tastic rom-com novella. Turns out it was anything BUT, and because I did not sit down and really look at what I was working with, didn't trust my instincts,...

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April 4, 2022 18 mins

A deep look at outlining from the perspective of whether it is actually helping you or not, and why it is helping you (if it is!).

NOW WITH TRANSCRIPTS! Thanks to otter.ai I am getting easy, fast, quality transcripts for these podcasts now. whew!

Links discussed in this episode:

10 Different Outlining Techniques

Brian Sanderson's BYU 2020 class lectures

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Transcript

Promo Intro: It's KimBoo! Welcome ...

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March 21, 2022 18 mins

(FYI: I recorded this back in January, and it was originally supposed to be the 7th episode, which is what I say in the opening, but nope! It's really truly the 10th episode of season 2!)

Inspired by part of a graduation ceremony speech Neil Gaiman gave wayyyyy back in 1997, this episodes starts from there and spirals out into talking about the value of your obsessions to you as a writer, not just as "things that you can talk about...

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