Today, Fable and the Verbivore talk with authors Maile Silva and Shawn Smucker (or “Shaile” by their power duo name). They discuss what their writing life has looked like during the pandemic, their podcast The Stories Between Us, and most especially their upcoming workshop The Nine Month Novel.

Early last year, we had the pleasure of interviewing Maile in episode 11 and Shawn in episode 28 - where they shared their individual writing journeys with us. Their podcast The Stories Between Us has been recording since October 2019 and we’ve greatly enjoyed listening to their conversations. Their honest dialogues cover the challenges, truths, and insights that they’ve gained through their writing life; stories about the personal challenges they face as partners and parents; and feature guest authors who openly converse with them about their own unique hurdles, experiences, and knowledge gained as creatives.

As authors who have spent years studying and working on their craft, they each have a lot of wisdom to offer. That’s why, when we heard about their workshop The Nine Month Novel, we wanted to have them come back to share about this course they’ve created for anyone who has been wanting to begin or finally follow through with a story idea that they need to tell and haven’t known where to start or haven’t been able to finish.

We are affiliates of this program. If you decide that this workshop is right for you, signing up through our affiliate link at fableandtheverbivore.com/nine will also help financially support our podcast. More information can be found at http://shawnsmucker.com/the-nine-month-novel//. Registration is now open and set to close on February 24th.

In this episode, Maile and Shawn discuss a lot of the things that can help us as writers get from having a spark of an idea to following through to complete the first draft of a manuscript. We hope you enjoy listening to all the great advice that Maile and Shawn had to share!

Keep reading, writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

Notes:

As mentioned at the top of the episode, the Fable and the Verbivore affiliate link for Shawn Smucker and Maile Silva’s Nine Month Novel workshop is: fableandtheverbivore.com/nine . More information for whhat is included in The Nine Month Novel course can be found at: http://shawnsmucker.com/the-nine-month-novel// And here is a link to the syllabus: http://shawnsmucker.com/nine-month-novel-syllabus/

Fable (Beth Stedman) mentions that she was a guest on The Stories Between Us. That episode is: S4E10 Beth Stedman and the Art of Getting Unstuc‪k‬ - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s4e10-beth-stedman-and-the-art-of-getting-unstuck/id1483546151?i=1000507752762

Maile Silva was interviewed in Episode 11: Interview with Maile Silva - https://fableandtheverbivore.com/podcast/maile-silva-interview

Shawn Smucker was interviewed in Episode 28: Interview with Shawn Smucker - https://fableandtheverbivore.com/podcast/episode-28-interview-with-shawn-smucker

Books Mentioned:

• These Nameless Things by Shawn Smucker

• The Weight of Memory by Shawn Smucker

• Day the Angels Fell by Shawn Smucker

Music from: https://filmmusic.io
’Friendly day’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
Licence: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)