Two Writers, No Hook

Content warning: occasional profanity.Michael starts with a first: no tea to drink since we recorded this session in the late afternoon. I mention that we're starting our second year of broadcasting. Bonus: we're now an "official" podcast, available on all the major podcasting platforms. Search for "Two Writers, No Hook" to find it.Michael reports: 12,904 words written. He's trying for consistently getting a number of writing days in per week. His editor's evaluation of his latest book came in, the editor liked the book, offered several minor fixes and suggested cutting part of it...

I start with my progress. Not a lot of new words (but many words replaced). Organizing scenes into chapters and discovering places where I can optimize. Draft 2 is now maybe 10% complete (instead of the 90% I had hoped for) so I moan a little about how everything in this process takes much longer than initially expected. Michael talks about how it took him five years to get his current work to the editing phase. I talk about blowing past my target word count (80K) and guess I'll wind up in the mid 90's.Michael started a new story...

Recorded 2026-09-21We start talking about a heart balloon that unhelpfully is out of frame. It's the first day of fall and we talk about birthdays briefly.I start reporting with Michael telling me why he skims my newsletter. Then I do a dump of my very productive two weeks, including a bunch of non-writing stuff. Michael has sent his manuscript to an editor, is putting finishing touches on his website, aiming to have it finished by the end of October. He woke up early the day before, sat down, and wound up writing 5,000...

Recorded 2026-09-08We start talking about beverages while recording, and the cliché of the alcohol-fuelled writers labouring over their manuscript.Then we move to updates. I feel like screaming this: I have finally finished the never-ending edit round! Michael goes over the chronology of his work on his novel. He's taking another pass at his last few chapters and is close to finishing his edit. His website is also almost ready.There's a little digression into reviewing the endings of our stories, and then about our beginnings and how they've changed as t...

Recorded 2026-08-24In this episode we dive right into progress (relatively speaking, less than a minute of chat). I edited 32 pages, two over my minimum goal, and just ten pages short of finishing this pass (my real goal). We had a discussion about the "start on second draft stretch goal" Michael added to my list in the last episode. I didn't get where I wanted because it took an entire week to revise one single scene, so if I break down my progress it was just one page in the first week, and thirty-one in the...

Recorded 2026-08-10We start with a very brief mention of an AI tool that purports to write for you. Surprisingly it's not called "Slopomatic."Enough of that, we go to progress reporting. I report being on page 242, 28 pages edited since our last episode and two short of my goal of 30. In "stuff other than writing", I've done work on an end-to-end publishing workflow, and set up a project manager to track it. I report that editing has been easier, and has been giving me more confidence that a lot of it is honing in...

Recorded 2026-07-27We start by trying to not talk about the weather, without success. We do manage to limit it to a mere minute and 38 seconds. If you think climate change is a myth you probably want to skip that bit.On to progress. I report a pathetic 16 pages of editing and 880 words into a new short story. Michael read the short story I've been bugging him to read for the last three episodes. He's making progress on his editing, tightening the story up. He's starting to gain some momentum in the process and...

Recorded 2026-07-17As usual we start off topic for a few minutes before getting into progress reporting. I've gone through 68 pages of my most recent edit, well over my goal of 50, the first time I've truly killed a goal in the past few months. As a follow-up to our last episode, I came very close to killing one of my darlings. Fortunately I found a fix that let me keep it. Michael edited four chapters in full, and is in a second cycle through the fifth. We decided he's 4.5 chapters toward his 5 chapter goal. After Michael...

Recorded 2026-06-29First up is progress reporting. We laugh about both being in a miserable space at the same time. I start, having gone through 50 pages of my latest edit, 30 pages more than the (low) goal we set last episode. I complain about how slow it's going, and I've made some progress on the developmental part of the edit.Michael also had other things interfering with his writing time. Still he made some progress on editing. The coming week is the same with a major wine report due to come out.We...

Recorded 2026-06-15I jump into progress reporting because I have very little progress to report. My frustration is palpable. Michael shares that he's felt the same way several times with his current work.Michael has edited nine chapters. He's cut 470 words from his novel.We talk about working on other projects in order to keep the flow going, reading other people's works for inspiration, how we hone our prose, and how a contest judge can either get or miss what we're doing.This takes us into a discussion...

Recorded 2026-06-03This episode we managed to limit our usual weather update to 36 seconds.I update progress, which is "not much," and talk about attending WisCon and the impact it had on my work. In terms of actual progress, I'm still putting in my last round of minor edits in and dealing with moving from theory to practice for my developmental edit. Michael has written over 1800 words in two short stories and has gotten one chapter edited.Goals: Michael: 5 chapters edited and "write a little". Me: Get into the dev edit. Do...

Recorded 2026-05-19A shorter than usual episode this time, but unfortunately this is due to Michael not having much to report (for real this time). I've done most of the prep for a developmental edit and am applying changes from my last read-through.Michael asks a question about using AI to generate covers for some stories he plans to give away for free and that takes us on an AI tangent. I advance the position that it's an individual decision, both as author and reader, but that the key is full disclosure of any...

Recorded 2026-05-05This episode we discuss groups and websites that helped or hindered our progress as writers.Bonus feature, now with less fan noise!In this episode we cut back on the catch-up potion of our chat and move right into progress reporting. Michael starts with his "nothing" report which turns out to be a fair bit. I report record progress, including a first draft that I'm calling substantially complete (Michael calls it a holey draft) and the beginning of a developmental edit, wherein I will be filling in the holes.<...

Recorded 2026-04-22We open as usual with weather, this time in Italy, then a discussion of all the travel he'll be doing visiting wineries in Italy (he's a wine writer, so that's actually work for him.) By next episode he'll be back in Canada (we hope) so we discuss whether or not he'll be able to catch a flight or be returning by cargo ship.Progress reporting: I have a negative word count, but I have figured out how to write the ending of my novel. Hurrah! I describe how I got there after...

Recorded 2026-04-06I think when we started these conversations, we figured they would run about 30 minutes. We were wrong. 45 minutes seems like a more typical length, and this time we went way over, just about four minutes short of an hour. I don't think either of us are quite sure how this happens, although my digressions into Substack, marketing, and open source as a defence against enshittification certainly contributed.As is typical, we open with weather, specifically a comparison of spring in Italy vs. Canada. We talk about the differences in Easter holidays between...

Recorded 2026-03-23This episode starts with us laughing about saying "on the air" with our tiny number of viewers (hi there, viewers, we appreciate you). We also had a little hiccup getting started because Michael was misled about when we start thanks to an AI assistant. He claims that he's talking more with his hands thanks to being in Italy and has found a book that describes what each of the gestures means.My progress report: my read-through/edit is complete, I talk about being blocked by my neurodivergence and distracting myself with other...

Recorded 2026-03-10Much like the previous episode, this episode arrives a tad late, as Michael had a scheduling issue on Monday, our usual recording day, and I took a little longer to get the edit done as well.In this episode we run a little long again, largely because I accidentally restart the opening banter part of our conversation just after we thought we wrapped it up. Skip five minutes in for a banter bypass.Much of Michael's progress update becomes a discussion of his use of the story analysis produced by...

Recorded 2026-02-24This episode arrives a tad late, as Michael had a scheduling issue on Monday, our usual recording day, and I took a little longer to get the edit done as well. We've also reversed our trend of ever-longer conversations, with this one clocking in at a svelte 30 minutes.Other work has been a factor for both of us since our last update. Michael is currently in Northern Italy, tasting and writing about wine (which is a lot less glamorous than it sounds), so he gets to tease me about the differences in...

Recorded 2026-02-09This podcast started as a simple way to be more accountable to our writing goals, but while our goals play a central role, our chats have expanded to a dive into our writing processes. In this episode, much of the discussion centres around editing. Also Michael has some major news to relate.

Recorded 2026-01-26We always seem to open up talking about something that has little to do with writing, and this episode is no different. This time it's the big snowstorm that went through a wide swath of the continent over the weekend. Then we momentarily get on track as I report on how I'm doing with my round of editing. This leads us to what happens to the stuff we cut out of a story, and that leads to a discussion of note-taking applications, and some recent changes to GMail that are causing trouble for many.<...