Podcasts about all our wrong todays

To celebrate the first anniversary of our podcast, Marty and Holly do a little retrospective to discuss their favorite books, people and interviews from the last year.  We discuss some of the best science fiction books we read: 'Red Team Blues' by Cory Doctorow, 'Semiosis' by Sue Burke, 'Neverness' by David Zindell, 'Night Owls' by Stephen Gay and 'The Ministry for the Future' by Kim Stanley Robinson.  We also talk about some of our favorite science books from this year:  'Planta Sapiens' by Paco Calvo, 'A Zoologist's Guide to the Galaxy' by Arik Kershenbaum and 'If Nietzsche Were A Narwhal' by Justin Gregg. We reflect on some of our favorite interviews - with Cory Doctorow, Stephen Gay and Ben Feist, Peter Watts and Justin Gregg, KSR and Heidi Sevestre. Then we do a bit of looking forward into what we have planned for the near future: interviews with Benjamin Percy on space fungus in 'The Unfamiliar Garden', Elan Mastai on time travel in 'All Our Wrong Todays', Daniel H. Wilson on his upcoming book 'Heliopause' and Avi Loeb about Oumuamua and first contact with alien technology in his book 'Extraterrestrial'.  Thank you to our listeners for giving us your attention and interest, and to all our guests for their expertise and insight, and to everyone for making this show a success and a wonderful experience!Buzzsprout (podcast host):https://thescienceinthefiction.buzzsprout.comEmail: thescienceinthefiction@gmail.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/743522660965257/Twitter:https://twitter.com/MartyK5463

What's up folks, today we have a super fun conversation with Pratik Desai, Founder and Chief Architect at 1to1. Pratik's a Rocket Scientist turned Martech personalization expert He's armed with a bachelor's from Rutgers in Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering He got his start at Accenture in Technology Consulting and later J&J in consumer apps as a digital product manager He later took a deep dive into Martech when he became Lead product manager at PVH focused on Salesforce Marketing products This led him to spend 3 years at Salesforce where he worked his way up to Personalization Practice Lead (Head of Delivery Services for Personalization) Most recently, Pratik started his own agency called 1to1 to focus on personalization strategy and implementation  He also runs a weekly AI Discussion Group to help folks keep up with the fast changing landscape of Curation and Generative AI He's a well traveled, trivia loving full stack developer Pratik, pumped to chat with you today, thanks for your time!From Aerospace and Sci-fi to martech and personalization Pratik, you have a degree in Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering as well as your pilot license, is this all a backup plan for AI takeover and you naturally shift to space exploration and interplanetary marketing?

Welcome to the second episode of Ripples in Space hosted by the Yadkin County Public Library. Each month we review a new science fiction book and discuss major scientific concepts used throughout the story. For this episode, we are reviewing All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai. In this week's story, we meet our aimless protagonist Tom Barren who lives in a futuristic world, unlike ours. Technological advancements have solved all the world's problems. It's a utopia. Yet Tom is not satisfied. Through some twists and sad turn of events, Tom takes an extremely unprepared leap with a time machine to change the past. The changing of the past brings forth a present Tom was not expecting. This is a story about the complexities of family, of unexpected journeys and the messiness and wonder of love. Along with talking about the book, we will take a novice look at the plausibility of time travel and the impact it's had in fiction. Each week, other staff members will be bringing you more topics. Be sure to check back each Wednesday at 1pm for a new episode. Feel free to follow and connect with us on nwrlibrary.org/yadkin www.facebook.com/yadkincountypubliclibrary www.pinterest.com/yadkinlibrary twitter.com/YadkinL and www.instagram.com/yadkincountypubliclibrary . And contact us if you have any questions! Email:ydk@nwrl.org and Phone: 336-679-8792.

We read All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai for our Patron Lucek as our tribute to his patronage for 2022! He said, “I'm kinda requesting this one for my sanity. I read the reviews, went in hopeful, and then well. . . I'm now wondering if I read the same book. If I'm not remembering it wrong or psychotic. . . I'm sorry.” There's a lot to like about this book, but we fell out of love with it as the novel wore on. Content Warnings: In addition to our usual barnyard language, today's episode includes discussion of infidelity, sexual assault, and suicide.

Book Besties Season 2, Episode 20- Opposite of AlwaysOn today's episode, the Besties talk about Opposite of Always by Justin A. Reynolds. Join us as we talk about expectations from book cover design, unnecessary cliches, and meet-cutes gone wrong. This episode goes off the rails, as all the best Book Besties episodes do. Things talked about in this episode:Sickle Cell info: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/Medicine/sickle/patient/ All Our Wrong Todays: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27405006-all-our-wrong-todays Enterprise is the ship from Star Trek. Meet Molly and April, they bonded over books and became Book Besties. So, what do you do when you find your book bestie? Start a podcast of course. Hang out with April and Molly as they talk about everything they love and hate about books.

Big Black and The professor join us as we talk about E3, Loki, Toys, Bad Cereal, the Pinball Hall of Fame, Shlock Holmes, She, The Man Who Would Be King, Space Sweepers, Earth Defense Force 5, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, Gloomhaven, Loki Charms, Kingpin, The War of the Rohirrim, Attack The Block 2, and Red Light/Green Light featuring One Day All This Will Be Yours, Garbage Pail Kids, Firebite, and All Our Wrong Todays. So buy another copy of "SHE", it's time for a Geek Shock!

On this week’s episode of Currently Reading, Kaytee and Meredith are discussing: Bookish Moments: A joint bookish moment of gatherings of Bookish Friends Current Reads: some YA fantasy, some murder, some short stories, some family drama. We’ve got it all. Deep Dive: the tropes we love - what is a trope and which ones draw us in? Book Presses: two books that we hugged at the end As per usual, time-stamped show notes are below with references to every book and resource we mentioned in this episode. If you’d like to listen first and not spoil the surprise, don’t scroll down!  New: we are now including transcripts of the episode (this link only works on the main site). These are generated by AI, so they may not be perfectly accurate, but we want to increase accessibility for our fans! *Please note that all book titles linked below are Amazon affiliate links. Your cost is the same, but a small portion of your purchase will come back to us to help offset the costs of the show. Thanks for your support!*   . . . . 1:18 - Currently Reading Patreon Bookish Moments: 3:38 - Fabled Bookshop Current Reads: 6:52 - 10 Things to Tell You Episode 108 with Kaytee and Meredith. 6:55 - Lobizona by Romina Garber (Meredith) 8:46 - Twilight by Stephanie Meyer 9:55 - Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling 10:00 - 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez 10:47 - Legendborn by Tracy Deonn (Kaytee) 13:40 - A Sight for Sore Eyes by Ruth Rendell (Meredith) 14:01 - From Doon with Death by Ruth Rendell (#1 in the Wexford series) 17:42 - We Begin at the End by Chris Whitaker 19:50 - The Arsonist’ City by Hala Alyan (Kaytee) 19:58 - Sarah’s Instagram bookedinadvance 21:17 - Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan 21:36 - Infinite Country by Patricia Engel 23:15 - The Windsor Knot by SJ Bennett (Meredith) 23:24 - Kerry’s instagram @linesiunderline 26:01 - The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman 26:33 - The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennet 27:02 - Night at the Fiestas by Kirsten Valdez Quade (Kaytee) 27:49 - What ARE biscochitos? Deep Dive - Tropes: Love ‘Em or Leave ‘Em 34:20 - The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas 35:01 - The Black Count by Tom Reiss 36:50 - The Secret History by Donna Tartt 37:10 - Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey 37:51 - The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Hayes 37:54 - The War that Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley 37:56 - Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery 39:46 - The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker 39:59 - Scythe by Neal Shusterman 40:27 - All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai Books We Want to Press Into Your Hands: 43:09 - To Night Owl from Dogfish by Holly Goldberg Sloan and Meg Wolitzer (Meredith) 47:49 - Where the Forest Meets the Stars by Glendy Vanderah (Kaytee) Connect With Us: Meredith is @meredith.reads on Instagram Kaytee is @notesonbookmarks on Instagram Mindy is @gratefulforgrace on Instagram Mary is @maryreadsandsips on Instagram currentlyreadingpodcast.com @currentlyreadingpodcast on Instagram currentlyreadingpodcast@gmail.com Support us at patreon.com/currentlyreadingpodcast

I interviewed an essential worker and an essential member of my family, my little brother, Rob. He's been pulling 60-hour weeks at a grocery store helping to keep your refrigerator full of milk and your pantry full of dry milk, apparently. Hear how COVID-19 has affected his store and employees, and how you can make things a little easier and safer for everyone [HINT: STAY BACK 6 FEET]. We also reminisce about the last time we saw each other, across the table at a mostly empty Red Lobster to celebrate our dad's birthday just before the end of life as we know it. Today's book recommendations: Reanna's pick: All Our Wrong Todays - by Elan Mastai Rob's pick: The Gunslinger by Stephen King --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/socialdistance/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/socialdistance/support

Amanda and Vanessa discuss Italian comics, paranormal smut, and more in this week's episode of Get Booked. This episode is sponsored by Book Riot Insiders, Libro.fm and TBR. Subscribe to the podcast via RSS, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. Feedback None this week! Questions 1. I was just offered a position as a 4th grade reading/writing teacher starting in the fall. I've been teaching abroad for a while and need good kid-lit recs for my classroom as I'm out of the loop. Picture books, chapter books, and graphic novels are all welcome. I've already got some good ones like Lumberjanes, the Anne of Green Gables graphic novel, and of course Harry Potter. For context, the school is very diverse and has a very high ESL population with students from South Asia, the Middle East/ North Africa, and Central America. Books where kids can see themselves represented and that can cater to different English fluency levels would be amazing.  Thanks! -Teaching in America 2. I love historical fiction, it is one of my favorite genres. However, I am running out of books in my tbr that are historical fiction. My favorite eras are Tudor England and the American Civil War. (please no more WW2!) I tend to prefer stories surrounding larger-than-life figures or momentous events in history. But really I am up for anything, so long as I get attached to the characters. Some of my favorites include Wolf Hall, The Killer Angels, and The Help. (I also like historical fantasy and other genre-benders, but I don't need any help finding more of THAT.) -Katie 3. I hope you two can help! My boyfriend doesn’t read books at all, but that’s my main pastime and he has expressed an interest in trying to read more so we can hang out together and read. The main reason he doesn’t currently read books is because they need to grab him right away or he quickly loses interest, puts the book down, and never picks it back up again. A little about him: he’s an electrical engineer, is super smart, likes to tinker with cars and gadgets, is pretty curious about world events and all sorts of things – he will hear about something and go on an internet deep dive to learn all about it, and he has a great memory.  So far I have given him Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson and he really likes that one and I have Dark Matter by Blake Crouch and All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai teed up for him because I think he will like the science-y, brain twistiness of both. Any ideas for what else I can give him? And for the record, I am totally fine with him not reading, but he has asked and so, of course, I am glad to oblige him and provide him with reading material! :) Thanks so much! -Elizabeth 4. A friend recently invited me travel to Italy this Fall, but I'm not sure if it's in my budget -- Can you help me find a graphic novel set in Italy so I can travel there in my imagination? Some comics/graphic novels/graphic memoirs I've enjoyed recently: Relish by Lucy Knisely, Moonstruck by Grace Ellis et. al., Sweater Weather by Sara Varon, and Lumberjanes  Thank you!! -Jess 5. I've been in a serious reading slump and I just need something super fast paced to get me out of it. I really like YA fantasy and romances. Anything with a map is great. I just bought Courting Darkness but haven't started it yet... I love Marissa Meyer and Richelle Mead. Stalking Jack the Ripper... The Dresden files... I read all over the place so basically anything is fine from kid lit to Adult. Love Captain Underpants.  -Rye 6. Please help with audiobooks for a concussed reader! Hi! I am a voracious reader, and after concussing myself on a freezer 10 days ago, I haven't been allowed to read text. I'm going into withdrawal!  I am a very eclectic reader, but generally I am more drawn to plot than characters. Humor, particularly snark, is always a plus, as well as just beautiful writing. Authors I love that I am in the mood for are Lois McMaster Bujold (particularly her Vorkosigan series, Cordelia is my favorite character), John Scalzi (particularly the Old Man's War series) and also Laurie R King (particularly her Mary Russell series). For beautiful writing, see China Mieville, though his books are way too complex for my poor brain to follow right now. Speaking of which, easy to follow is important right now! I'm having trouble with that. -Becca 7. hello ladies, firstly, I love listening to you guys- even when I'm not interested in the books suggested. I am on break in August for midwinter chill (hehah) and am on the lookout for some fun reads. I have just finished the psy-changeling series (got to support my fellow kiwis!) and Polaris Rising. They are both smutty and fun while still having a good plot. Can you give me any new SSF/smutty suggestions, I feel like I have read all the good ones and they are all the same. Thanks in advance!  -Shontelle Books Discussed Everlasting Nora by Marie Miranda Cruz Juana and Lucas by Juana Medina Leading Men by Christopher Castellani Queen of the Night by Alexander Chee Lexicon by Max Barry Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann Recursion by Blake Crouch Catwoman: When in Rome by Jeph Loeb Today is the Last Day of the Rest of Your Life by Ulli Lust, translated from Austrian by Kim Thompson TW: sexual assault A Winter’s Promise by Christelle Dabos, transl by Hildegarde Serle The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi Finder by Suzanne Palmer The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley Immortals After Dark  by Kresley Cole, shout out to Sarah MacLean’s Fated Mates podcast with Jen Prokop The Magicians by Lev Grossman

Kaytee and Meredith are so excited to be sharing YOUR presses with our listeners this week! We asked for you to call us or email us with your books you want to press, and you certainly delivered! You’ll hear a “bookish moment of the week” from each host: a realization about the true status of hoarding tendencies, and a book that immediately led to dinner time yumminess. Next, we discuss our current reads for the week. We’ve got 6 (or more) books that someone will want to read ASAP, so get those library cards ready! For our deep dive, we are sampling 10 of our favorite “listener presses” for our Reading Challenge! If you sent us a press that didn’t make it into the episode, it was just because we didn’t have time. We loved hearing from all of you! You’ll hear our thoughts on each of these books as well, because, you know we have them! As always, we finish up with A Book (yep, capitalized) that we’d like to press into every reader’s hands. This week we’ve got a title that’s perfect for the extreme heat of mid-summer, and a press that comes with a caveat. As per usual, time-stamped show notes are below with references to every book and resource we mentioned in this episode. If you’d like to listen first and not spoil the surprise, don’t scroll down!  .  .  .  .  .  3:17 - A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny (Gamache #7) Life hack: Pasta, asparagus, pine nuts, and goat cheese. Fantastic dinner. 4:47 - The Sentence Is Death by Anthony Horowitz 4:56 - The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz 7:18 - Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz 7:27 - The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz 8:13 - YA Alex Rider series (starts with Stormbreaker) by Anthony Horowitz 9:04 - The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See 11:52 - All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai 15:32 - Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer 16:34 - YouTube Interview with Eoin Colfer 19:13 - Sweep by Jonathan Auxier 19:24 - Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes by Jonathan Auxier 20:11 - Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key by Jack Gantos 25:29 - Mary in Episode 36 25:34 - Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey 29:17 - The Other Boleyn Girl by Phillippa Gregory 31:48 - The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger 35:06 - Unbroken - a World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand 35:14 - Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand 37:14 - Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters 40:14 - East of Eden by John Steinbeck 40:50 - The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins 43:57 - First Person Plural by Cameron West  46:07 - The Friend by Dorothy Koomson 46:15 - Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty 47:49 - How to Be a Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals by Sy Montgomery 49:51 - The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly 51:25 - Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance by Ruth Emmie Lang 53:54 - Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O’Farrell 54:05 - I Am, I Am, I Am by Maggie O’Farrell 56:00 - The Heirs by Susan Reiger 57:41 - Dreamland Burning by Jennifer Latham 59:25 - The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom *Please note that all book titles linked above are Amazon affiliate links. Your cost is the same, but a small portion of your purchase will come back to us to help offset the costs of the show. Thanks for your support!*  

Kicking it off with some time-travel story shenanigans, Adam and Ross are busting into your headphones and smashing through your speakers* with a new episode of their critically acclaimed (probably, eventually) podcast! This month, taking on All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai and the movie Pride (2014), our dashing hosts discuss mirroring identities, psycho-heterosexual time travel, subsumed feral post-apocalyptic warriors, the inaccuracy of historical accuracy, beautiful quiet moments, and the point of Pride Month. Well, what are you waiting for? You've delayed joy long enough!*Eating the Mascot assures its listeners that no headphones or speakers will be actually damaged by Adam and/or Ross as a result of listening to their podcast.

All Our Wrong Todays discussion by JD and Rob

In the second iteration of GPPR's series of podcasts about Rethinking Governance, Interview Editor John Barfield sits down for a discussion with visiting GU Fellow Erin Conaton. Conaton shares her knowledge and perspective on a range of security topics, including how the 2018 midterms affect the discussion surrounding national security, the limits on American military intervention abroad, and how emerging cyber threats may affect the average American moving forward. BONUS FEATURES Erin suggests Foreign Affairs https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ along with Defense News online https://www.defensenews.com/ for keeping up with national security For non-foreign affairs reading Erin recommends All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai https://www.amazon.com/All-Our-Wrong-Todays-Novel/dp/1101985135 Theme music by Russell Lawrence https://soundcloud.com/cspanfam

This month on Book Cliques we talk about our thoughts on the 1954 book I Am Legend by Richard Matheson.Next month we are reading All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai.

2:46: Paula Gallagher, Baltimore County librarian and Roughly Speaking book critic, recommends a new work of science fiction, "All Our Wrong Todays," by Elan Mastai.6:28: Sarbanes is a widely recognized name in Maryland. Paul Sarbanes was a U.S. Senator for 30 years. John Sarbanes, the senator's son, is a member of the House of Representatives, serving Maryland’s 3rd Congressional District. The next Sarbanes you’ll hear about is the congressman's son, Nico Sarbanes, a 23-year-old jazz musician who’s just releasing his first recordings this month. A trumpet player and singer, and student of jazz, Nico Sarbanes joins us today, ahead of his performance at the Mid-Atlantic Jazz Festival, to talk about his ambition to capture "the Baltimore sound."Links:https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01FEY5EP2/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8----btkr=1http://www.midatlanticjazzfestival.org/artists/nico/http://www.midatlanticjazzfestival.org/

Are we all just accidents waiting to happen? Maybe. In this episode of the Book and Bourbon podcast, Chris takes a look at All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai, tastes a delicious bourbon, and wonders how humbling it might be to take a trip back in time.

Elan Mastai discusses his brilliant first novel, All Our Wrong Todays.

Screenwriter Elan Mastai joins David Baddiel in the Penguin studio to talk about his debut novel All Our Wrong Todays. Elan brings along objects including a bad avocado and his grandfather’s copy of Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle as he talks about his lifelong love of science fiction, and explains why his dog is his writing assistant. #PenguinPodcast See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Elan has worked in the film industry for years and is best known for writing the award-winning screenplay for What If? starring Daniel Radcliffe, Zoe Kazan and Adam Driver. All Our Wrong Todays is Elan’s debut novel and the film rights for the adaptation have been secured by Paramount and producer Amy Pascal (who produced the female Ghostbusters). Elan is currently writing the screenplay for film development. So the premise of the book? It’s 2016 and in Tom’s world, technology has solved all of humanity’s problems – there’s no war, no poverty, no under-ripe avocados. Unfortunately, Tom isn’t happy. He’s lost the girl of his dreams. And what do you do when you’re heartbroken and have access to a time machine? Something very stupid indeed. Want to know more - you'll have to buy the book. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

David talks with Elan Mastai, screenwriter and author of ALL OUR WRONG TODAYS. Originally aired on February 9th 2017.

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Élan Mastai, author of All Our Wrong Todays, his first novel. Elan is first a screenwriter, and in fact, All Our Wrong Todays published just last week, by Dutton/Penguins going to be a movie and Elan is in the process of writing the screenplay for it right now. Elan has been writing for about fifteen years for independent companies and for Fox Sony Warner Brothers and Paramount. He wrote What if (also known as The F word) starring Daniel Radcliffe and another great move is 2012’s The Samaritan staring Samuel Jackson. Look, I’m old enough to remember reading Popular Science and Popular Mechanics when I was a kid, and seeing jetpacks and flying cars, amphibious vehicles, highways made of tracks that would accelerate and decelerate on command, domed cities on the moon and mars. I missed the fact that the future never arrived. I could never understand how 22 billion could get us to the moon 6 times in the 60s and 70s and we’re not plumbing the depths of Europa’s seas as we speak. What the hell happened? It just doesn’t make any sense. But guess what, Elan explains it all. See we didn’t lose the future, we just lost the time. We got stuck in some backwater reality due to the mistakes of a dorky protagonist named Tom, who mistakenly uses a time machine to undo what was a pretty cool reality, with perfectly ripe avocados and greats sleep with great dreams and turn it into our waking day to day reality of traffic jams leftover remembers of semi nightmares and architecture that sucks. But all is not lost, because as Elan will surely explain, there is more than one way to skin the past, although each of those ways is fraught with peril.

In Part Two of this interview, award-winning screenwriter and author of the debut novel All Our Wrong Todays, Elan Mastai, returned to talk about his fiction debut, the science of time travel, and finding inspiration in dark places. The writer and producer has written movies for both indie and Hollywood studios, including scripts for Fox, Sony, Warner Brothers, and Paramount. His most recent film – What If, a comedy starring Daniel Radcliffe, Zoe Kazan, Adam Driver, and Mackenzie Davis – premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2013. Elan won the Canadian Academy Award and the Writers Guild of Canada Award for his script, and the movie played in over 30 countries. His new novel – All Our Wrong Todays – is a sci-fi tinged, time-travel romance and much buzzed about debut that is rumored to have landed the writer a seven-figure book deal worth north of a million dollars. The book has been described as “Dark Matter meets Back to the Future,” and even prior to the book’s publication, the film rights were sold to Paramount Pictures. Andy Weir, bestselling author of The Martian, called it, “A thrilling tale of time travel and alternate timelines with a refreshingly optimistic view of humanity’s future.” If you’re a fan of The Writer Files, please click subscribe to automatically see new interviews. If you missed the first half you can find it right here. In Part Two of this file Elan Mastai and I discuss: Why you should double check your facts before sending your manuscript to a celebrity How music can influence your writing style Why you need to give yourself permission to write badly The writer as entrepreneur whose one product is the inside of their brain Why your writing is a like a time machine Listen to The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience below ... Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes The Show Notes If you’re ready to see for yourself why over 194,000 website owners trust StudioPress — the industry standard for premium WordPress themes and plugins — just go to Rainmaker.FM/StudioPress How Screenwriter and ‘All Our Wrong Todays’ Author Elan Mastai Writes: Part One All Our Wrong Todays – Elan Mastai ElanMastai.com Quit Social Media. Your Career May Depend on It. – Cal Newport How Andy Weir (Bestselling Author of ‘The Martian’) Writes: Part One How Bestselling Author Austin Kleon Writes: Part One How Wired Magazine’s Senior Maverick Kevin Kelly Writes: Part One Elan Mastai on IMDb Elan Mastai on Goodreads Elan Mastai on Twitter Kelton Reid on Twitter The Transcript How Screenwriter and All Our Wrong Todays Author Elan Mastai Writes: Part Two Voiceover: Rainmaker FM Kelton Reid: Welcome back to The Writer Files. I am still your host, Kelton Reid, here to take you on another tour of the habits, habitats, and brains of renowned writers. In part two of this file, award-winning screenwriter and author of the debut novel, All Our Wrong Todays, Elan Mastai, returns to talk about his fiction debut, the science of time travel, and finding inspiration in dark places. The writer and producer has written movies for both indie and Hollywood studios, including scripts for FOX, Sony, Warner Brothers, and Paramount. His most recent film, What If, a comedy starring Daniel Radcliffe, Zoe Kazan, Adam Driver, and Mackenzie Davis, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2013. Elan won the Canadian Academy Award and Writer’s Guild of Canada Award for his script, and the movie played in over 30 countries. His new novel, All Our Wrong Todays, is a sci-fi tinged time travel romance and much buzzed about debut that is rumored to have landed the writer a seven-figure book deal. The book has been described as Dark Matter meets Back to the Future, and even prior to the book’s publication, the film rights were sold to Paramount Pictures. Andy Weir, bestselling author of The Martian, called it, “A thrilling tale of time travel and alternate time lines with a refreshingly optimistic view of humanity’s future.” In part two of this file, Elan and I discuss why you should double check your facts before sending your manuscript to a celebrity, how music can influence your writing style, why you need to give yourself permission to write badly, the writer as entrepreneur whose one product is the inside of their brain, and why your writing is like a time machine. If you are a fan of the show, please click subscribe to automatically see new interviews as soon as we publish them, and if you missed the first half of this show, you can find it in the archives, on iTunes, on WriterFiles.FM, and in the show notes. Just a quick reminder that The Writer Files is brought to you by StudioPress, the industry standard for premium WordPress themes and plugins. Built on the Genesis Framework, StudioPress delivers state of the art SEO tools, beautiful and fully responsive designs, airtight security, instant updates, and much more. If you’re ready to take your WordPress site to the next level, see for yourself why over 194,000 website owners trust StudioPress. Go to Rainmaker.FM/StudioPress now. That’s Rainmaker.FM/StudioPress. Why You Should Double Check Your Facts Before Sending Your Manuscript to a Celebrity Elan Mastai: Now it’s funny that you say Andy Weir. I was so flattered and grateful that Andy, who I don’t know personally, read the book and wrote me this terrific blurb, but when we sent him the manuscript to read, I actually had this moment of panic, and I went back and I redid all the calculations. And I realized when we sent him the book, I had gotten the speed at which the Earth rotates around the planet wrong, because I had started in kilometers an hour, because I’m Canadian, metric system, and then I’d converted it into miles per hour for my American publisher, and then I’d done something wrong. So I was like I was texting my editor, I’m like, We sent it to Andy Weir, of all the people we could have sent it to, we sent it to Andy Weir, and I got the speed of rotation of the planet around the Sun wrong, we have to get it back, I have to fix it. She’s like, “I think it’s going to be okay.” Fortunately, I mean, I fixed it in the book, and I ran all the calculations over and over again, but that is funny that you cited him in particular, because I get that one calculation wrong, and I was like super sheepish and embarrassed about it. Kelton Reid: Oh, man. Elan Mastai: It’s an honest mistake. I blame the metric system, as I blame it for so many things in my life. Kelton Reid: That’s awesome. Elan Mastai: So I like to figure this stuff out, and it’s not just the technology, although the technology and the science is the flashiest part. I like to drill down into everything. If I don’t know about something, I like to find out about it, so there’s a lot of, yeah, I go into a lot of Google holes trying to figure stuff out, but it’s usually a function of some moment in the story that I’ve come to where I realize I need to figure something out. I’ve hit the limits of my amateur knowledge, and I need to start, I need to give myself a little seminar in this area, whatever that area might be. I mean, the scientific and technological elements are, of course, sort of more complex and finicky, and you have to do a lot of work to not lose the reader. That was a big thing for me. I wanted it to be the interesting stuff that really matters for the story, and if it was just arcane technical stuff, I’m not going to put it in there because I don’t want to bore you, and if you’re interested, here’s some, you know, you can find out more. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Elan Mastai: You can go down your own kind of Google hole, but you don’t want to lose people with all that stuff, you just want it to be interesting. So that was always my kind of North Star, which is just, Is it interesting? If it’s not interesting, that’s fine. I can talk a lot about traffic patterns for flying cars, but I boiled it all down to like two sentences in the book. Don’t worry. It’s not like there’s six chapters of how flying traffic is. I just like to figure this stuff out, and then I know, and then that’s what matters to me that I know, and then my job is then to figure out what’s the most interesting part of what I figured out for the reader. How Music Can Influence Your Writing Style Kelton Reid: Yeah, yeah. It’s pretty impressive just to see the kind of this mashup of worlds, that you know, from an outsider’s perspective, looking at your screenwriting background, I’m sure that you were influenced by some science fiction movies as well as romantic comedy stuff that you’ve written for multiple different genres. But, I think you’ve already outlined your productivity for the most part. When I think of screenwriters kind of looking at, you know, narrative fiction, I always imagine them kind of listening to different soundtracks, and it seems like you were influenced by music in your screenwriting somewhat. Did music play any part when you were writing this? I’m kind of imagining you listening to like Hans Zimmer while you’re writing. Elan Mastai: That’s not inaccurate. I mean, what I find, actually, is that certain sequences in the book I connect with certain songs or certain pieces of music. So I don’t always write to music, but then there are certain sequences when I’m trying to get myself in the headspace of that sequence, I’ll listen to the same piece, usually instrumental, over and over and over again, and there’s almost a … even if the reader doesn’t, wouldn’t ever catch it, the rhythm of the piece and the tone of the piece become the rhythm and the tone of that chapter or that piece of the story, and so while I’m writing it, I’ll listen to it over and over again. If I’m going back and rewriting or editing that section, I’ll put that same song back on, and it kind of gets me in the headspace. So yeah, I mean, I listen to sometimes movie soundtracks, but actually more, I listen to more like composers. Ludovico Einaudi, I hope I’m pronouncing that write, who’s an Italian composer. His music is used in films a lot, but he’s just a composer. I like his stuff a lot. There’s an American composer called Carly Comando whose work I listen to a lot. Max Richter, again, who’s somebody whose work is used in film a lot, but who also just composes his own pieces. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Elan Mastai: I find, like, they’re just, they create these very moody soundscapes. Giles Lamb is another one, and I like to listen to those. Although there are certain ones, like I’m going to blank on his name, but he did the soundtrack to the Danny Boyle movies Sunshine and 28 Days Later. I’m blanking on his name. I think it’s John something, but his stuff is terrific, and you know, when you’re writing, even if what you’re writing is terrible, it feels epic when you’re listening to his music. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Yeah. Well, here’s the million dollar question. How do you feel about writer’s block as a guy who writes every day? Have you ever run up against it? Or do you believe in it? Elan Mastai: I believe in it, but what I believe writer’s block is a lack of preparation. I think that if you don’t know where you’re going with the story, you haven’t figured out what you have to say, you don’t know how your story ends, you don’t know what the actual journey your character is on, that’s where writer’s block comes from because you’ve hit an obstacle. It’s like you’re on a journey and you don’t have a destination in mind, and so you’ve gone down a dead end. Do I believe in writer’s block? I mean, I don’t feel writer’s block much at this point in my life because I know what I need is preparation. I don’t really start anything until I have a pretty good sense of my ending. Which doesn’t mean I know every single step along the way. For me, it is like a road trip. I know where I’m going, I know a couple stops along the way, and then I like to leave room to discover. I like to be surprised by my own story, but the way that, for me, I know that I’m going to do the best possible work is if I know I have a terrific ending, because to me, the ending is why I’m writing in the first place. If I don’t feel like I have a great ending to my story, I don’t even start. Because to me, then I’m just going to be spinning my wheels. A lot of movies and a lot of books and a lot of everything in writing loses its way right in the middle. Because that’s the moment, you know, you’ve gotten over the initial hump of, Okay, I’ve started my story, I’ve picked everything off, I’ve gotten everything placed. Wait, where am I going? Kelton Reid: Yeah. Elan Mastai: You know, I’ve packed up my car, I’ve filled up the gas, I’ve, you know, inflated the tires, and I don’t actually know which way to drive. And so for me, writer’s block, it can be a very real thing for people, but almost always, in my experience, it’s about a lack of preparation. You haven’t actually thought about what you’re doing enough. Once you’ve had a chance to think it through, then all of a sudden, you’re like, Okay, now I know where I’m going, and the writer’s block has a way of kind of magically dissolving. Why You Need to Give Yourself Permission to Write Badly Kelton Reid: For sure. For sure. And all screenwriters probably study the canon of, you know, McKee and Freytag’s Pyramid and all that stuff, so that probably assists you as well, I would imagine. Elan Mastai: I don’t actually take much kind of comfort or guidance from that sort of stuff. I mean, I think it can be very useful for people, especially when you’re starting out. I don’t turn down my nose, look down my nose at it or anything, but for me, what I find is I just, if I’m feeling like I haven’t figured stuff out, I just pick up a book, I watch a movie, or read a screenplay, I read a novel. I just go back to reading and get, and that’s usually what inspires me, rather than sort of, because I don’t find … I think we’ve internalized a lot of the rules anyways, and so I find a lot of these storytelling rules actually can make you feel more kind of bound than less. So I find, actually, I’m more free to come up with an unexpected solution. I also, just as a writer, I like to put myself in the headspace of my characters. I’ll write myself into a corner. I’ll put the characters in a place where I don’t know how I’m going to get them out, and then I have to figure out how to get them out, just like they have to figure out how to get out, and so I do trust that stuff. Now, of course, again, just to be clear, a lot of this stuff you fix in rewriting anyways. I mean, you know, nobody is, no movie you see, no book you read is the first draft. Kelton Reid: Right. Elan Mastai: I mean, by far. So I also, the other thing about writer’s block, for me, is I just give myself permission to write badly. You know, sometimes, the work is not going to be to your highest standard, but I’m going to rewrite it anyways, so I’d just rather write something that’s okay knowing that I’m going to go back and fix it, because it’s always easier to fix something you already wrote than it is to stare at the blank page or the blank screen. Because if I have a bad line of dialog, then I’m like, Okay, this is a crappy line of dialog. What would be a better way of expressing this? It’s totally different than, I have to come up with a line of dialog from scratch. So I’d rather just write badly for a while and fix it later. Kelton Reid: Yeah, yeah. I think Andy Weir expressed that exact same sentiment, and that’s a good takeaway. All right. So I’ve got a couple quick workflow questions for you. Mac or PC? Elan Mastai: Mac. Kelton Reid: What software are you using, predominantly? I’m imagining you use a different screenwriting software, obviously, then for the prose stuff. Elan Mastai: For screenwriting, I use Final Draft, and for novel writing, I just use Microsoft Word. I have Scrivener, which I like for organizing the story. Like moving things around, getting a sense of the structure of it all, but I actually like to use software that is as invisible as possible, and part of invisibility to me is just being used to it. So I’ve been staring at Final Draft for so many years that I barely even notice anymore. I know there’s lots of screenwriters who advocate for other kinds of software which they think is much better than Final Draft. I’m not even weighing in on that. When I open up Final Draft, I don’t even notice it. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Elan Mastai: Same thing with Microsoft Word. I am in no way advocating that it’s the best software to write a novel on. I actually wrote All Our Wrong Todays on like Microsoft Word 2001. Like not even the newest versions. Like the old version, with as few bells and whistles as possible. I hate it when the little paperclip comes up and tries to tell you that you’re doing something wrong. I’m like, Get that paperclip out of my way. I don’t want anything that, when I’m in the flow of writing, I don’t want anything interrupting me, and so I actually use the simplest software as possible, and then later, I’ll go in and I’ll, you know, I’ll actually import it into a newer version. So I actually went from the 2001 Microsoft Word to the most recent one when I was actually doing edit, like the copy editing and production editing for the novel. Likewise, I’ll write in an old version of Final Draft, and then I’ll update it to something newer when I’m editing or when I’m in production, when you need all the bells and whistles, But for me, it’s like I want it to be as clean and as uncluttered as possible. I think a lot of software, unfortunately, they try to shove as much stuff in there as possible to get you to buy the new version, whereas all I want is the oldest and simplest version. The Writer as Entrepreneur Whose One Product is the Inside of Their Brain Kelton Reid: Love it. I love it. Well, before we talk about creativity, I guess my last question is how do you unplug at the end of a long writing day when you’re kind of going back and forth and wearing all these different hats? Elan Mastai: I don’t know that I do, man. I mean, it’s a lovely aspiration. I would love to. Can you tell me, please, actually, can you answer that question? I mean, sometimes, it’s very simple. I have an office in my house. I work from home most of the time. I do go out and work in other places sometimes, but I mostly just like to work from home, and I sometimes just leave my cell phone in my office upstairs at the end of the day, and I go down and just don’t answer it. Don’t look at it. You know, the reality is, unless you’re in production on a film or your book is literally going to the printers, there are very few emergencies in the writing life, and so I do like to just leave it in another room, leave it on vibrate or even off, and do try to take the time to just be very, you know, present in my life. But it’s hard because when you’re a writer, whether it’s a screenwriter, a novel writer, any kind of writer, whether you’re a freelance writer, whatever you’re doing, you are an industry of one. You are an entrepreneur. You are completely self-directed, and you’re basically running a small business with one product, which is the insides of your brain, and so it can be hard to turn off. I think we all struggle with that, and in fact, you know, part of, one of the big reasons why, you know, I advocate for using the simplest possible version of the software is it’s minimizing distractions in a sort of an environment, a cognitive environment, where there’s so many distractions coming at us all the time. And most of, you know, whether it’s social media or cell phones, all this sort of stuff. They’re literally built to get your attention. They’re trying to get your attention and catch your attention and give you the little pleasure buzz of a note that’s come in, of somebody liking or reacting to something. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Elan Mastai: Again, I’m not even turning down my nose at that stuff. Like it’s all very fun and pleasurable, you know. It’s like Facebook and Twitter, it’s like a video game, where the final boss at the end of the level is, you know, people approving of you. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Elan Mastai: I like video games, but you know, it’s like I don’t play a video game while I’m writing, and so I try to avoid social media and stuff like that while I’m writing, but unplugging is tough, and I think it’s something that we all struggle with, and I think it’s just like you have to be adamant about carving out time to write in a focused, uncluttered environment, and nobody is going to do that for you except you. That’s been like the biggest thing that I’ve figured out with my own writing over the years, which is that you are the only one who’s going to advocate for that quiet mental space, and if you don’t do it, absolutely nobody else will do it. You’re the only one. It’s just like working out. Nobody else, no one’s going to pick you up by the scruff of the neck and haul you to the gym and throw you on a whatever, an elliptical trainer. Like, you have to do that, and so whether you have a day job, whether writing is your job, it actually doesn’t matter, because if you don’t, even if you’re a professional writer, if you don’t carve out the mental space to write without interruption, you’re not going to be able to do your job. Kelton Reid: For sure. For sure. I will link to an article by Cal Newport in the New York Times where he, well, the title of it, Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend On It, echoes much of that same sentiment, and I think it’s important to kind of think about those distractions that can keep you out of flow state, as you noted. That’s important to writing. So, let’s talk about creativity before I lose you here. Elan Mastai: Sure. The Source of Elan s Creativity and Inspiration Kelton Reid: Because the inside of your brain is a fascinating place. Obviously, the book is kind of the definition of creativity. All these different fascinating things. So do you think you could define creativity, kind of in your own words? Elan Mastai: Oh wow, that’s a big and intense question. To me, creativity is taking all the things that make you specifically you: your history, your experiences, your perception, your emotion, your psychology, your desires, your fears, your hopes and dreams, your anxieties and worries, and finding a way to take all of those things and communicate them in a way that makes sense and is appealing to other people. Now, of course, some creativity can be totally personal, but to me, creativity is connected to connection. It’s indivisible from connection. Part of what makes my creative life appealing to me is the ability to connect and communicate with other people. Whether that’s my book being a conversation with the writers, and the books that have inspired me, or whether my book is starting a conversation with readers who might get in touch with me via social media or in person, or even better, write their own books. I mean, the greatest compliment anybody could give me is that my book inspired them to write a book that I can then read. And so for me, creativity is about taking what makes you absolutely, uniquely you, your brain as the one and only iteration of it in the Universe, and finding sort of a vehicle or a means to express it to others. Kelton Reid: Yeah. I love that. Do you have a creative muse right now? Something that’s kind of piquing your interest? Elan Mastai: Probably the fear of death. You know, a classic one. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Elan Mastai: That I don’t have enough time. That I’m never going to be able to tell all the stories that I have to tell, say all the things that I want to say, connect with as many people as I want to connect with. I don’t lie around in that sort of like, you know, like the protagonist of a Woody Allen movie from the 80s, like, bemoaning my mortality or anything like that, but you know, honestly, my mom died quite suddenly when I was in my mid-20s, and you know, she was a very, very smart, very accomplished, very impressive person. She was, you know, she was my mom, but she was also a good friend and a mentor to me, and I lost her, you know, very suddenly. In addition to just that feeling of, you know, that she never really got to know what my life was going to be like, what my career was going to be like, she wasn’t going to meet my wife, she wasn’t going to meet my kids. It was also that feeling of like oh, wow, like, you know, the last gift that she gave me was the awareness that I don’t have unlimited time, and if I’m going to accomplish anything, if I’m going to tell the stories I want to tell, write the movies, write the books that I want to write, I gotta get going, because you never know when it could be over. So that’s a super depressing answer to your question, I’m so sorry, but that is the truth is that I have a real sense of a ticking clock, and I don’t know when it’s going to, when the alarm’s going to go off, and so I just want to get as much stuff out into the world, but also make it as good as possible. You know, I just I want everything to be as good as I can at this point with my talent, and just connect with people. Because to me, it’s not, I don’t see my novel as me standing on a milk cart in, you know, the town square with a megaphone screaming at everybody, Listen to me, look at me. I want to connect with people. I have all these ideas, but I also have questions, and I love the conversation you get with people who have read the book, who’ve connected with it, who it gets them thinking, it gets them excited. I want people, I mean, I think the book is fun. It’s funny. It’s not like a downer. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Yeah. Elan Mastai: But it also asks a lot of big questions, and it searches for answers, and I mean, to me, that conversation is why you do it. It’s why I get up every day and sit at my desk and hunch over the keyboard and start smacking on it, is because I want to engage. Why Your Writing is a Like a Time Machine Kelton Reid: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I hope that listeners find this interview before they read the book, because kind of all of those things come through in this fantastic book, and Austin Kleon actually said almost exactly the same thing about his methodology, I think, early on in his creative process was to read obituaries as kind of a, you know, I mean, just a reminder that, like, life is temporary. We don’t really, no one knows how long they’re going to be here, right? Elan Mastai: I do live, I’ve never done that. I do live only about maybe seven or eight blocks from a cemetery. If I wanted to get really grim, I could hop over there. Kelton Reid: And you’ve written horror before. Elan Mastai: I suppose, yeah, I could gaze longingly at the tombstones. No, I mean, you know, the other thing is, again, I mean, this is more of a personal answer, but I have two young daughters, and they’re not going to read the work I’m writing right now, but I love the idea that in the future, they could discover my work, my voice, what was, you know, the things that I was thinking about, the stories that I was telling when they’re older, and that is a kind of time machine. All the art you create, the writing you do is a kind of time machine, because it’s a portrait of who you were at the time. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Elan Mastai: That inspires me as well. You know, I mean, I want to be, it’s like that idea of like, I could be gone at any time, but that I could still communicate with my children, you know, years after I’m gone is, it’s also something that inspires me every day. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Well, before we wrap up with your advice to your fellow scribes, I’ve got one more fun one for you. If you could choose one author from any era for an all expense paid dinner to your favorite spot in the world, who would you take and where would you take them? Elan Mastai: Oh, wow. That’s a really good question. I’m going to say Neal Stephenson, the science fiction, primarily science fiction author because when I read his books, I just feel like I’m learning so much, and his storytelling is so bold and ballsy, and he has such a scope of his vision, and I’ve been reading his books since I was like, you know, a teenager, and watching him progress. So you know, I don’t know him, but I know something of him from the work that I’ve been reading since the first one I read was Snow Crash in like 91 or 92. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Elan Mastai: I went back and read his earlier books, and it’s like he’s been developing as a writer for basically, you know, for most of my conscious adult life, and so I would love to take him out for dinner, because I think it would be a fascinating conversation. Where would I take him? There’s a great restaurant in New York City called Estella, which I’ve never had a bad meal there, so I would take him to Estella in New York City. It’s in SoHo. I mean, it’s very fancy, but I mean, you know, if somebody’s paying for it, it’s not me, right, it’s all expenses paid. Kelton Reid: Nice, nice. Three degrees of separation on The Writer Files, I believe that the founder of Wired Magazine, Kevin Kelly, is buddies with Neal Stephenson, so we will link to that episode as well. Well, can you leave us with some advice for writers on how to keep the cursor moving, how to keep the ink flowing? Elan Mastai: Finish things. That would be my biggest advice. It’s very easy to start things, it’s very hard to finish them, but until you finished it, you don’t know what you have. So just kind of push through. It’s okay to write badly. That is the hardest thing, you know. You know what it’s supposed to feel like in your head, it just doesn’t seem to be coming out on the page, but you are going to rewrite everything so many times. Your favorite books, your favorite movies, your favorite songs, your favorite everything, those were not first drafts. Those are the result of months and months, years and years of rewriting and revising and rethinking, and so you can’t get discouraged by all the stuff that you love, even though it seems so much better than what you’re doing, because it wasn’t good when it started. None of it was good when it started. Nobody starts amazing, and so I would just say my advice is to finish things, and then rewrite. Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite. I mean, it’s sort of like Writing 101 advice, but in my career, that feeling of finishing something, allowing it to not be great, because I find in the confidence to rewrite and rewrite and get it there over time, that’s been everything for me. Yeah, over time, you do get better, you know. Every time you write something and you finish it and you rewrite it and you put it out into the world, whether or not people love it or hate it or are indifferent to it or never even knew it happened, every single time you do that, you go through the whole process, the next time you start a first draft, it’s better. Every single time. So it’s a long process. It’s a lifelong thing becoming the kind of writer you want to be, but like anything, it’s all about the muscles you exercise, the patience you have, and how far ahead your vision for yourself is. So that would be my advice, and the best possible result of this podcast is a couple people who listen to it turn off their … turn the podcast off right now and go and finish whatever it was that they started and couldn’t finish. Kelton Reid: Yes, yes. Click stop here, and we will talk to you later. Awesome, awesome. Well, thank you so much for doing this. All Our Wrong Todays comes out February 7th, is that correct? Elan Mastai: That’s right, February 7th. Kelton Reid: And you can pre-order it now. It is a fantastic, almost indescribable sci fi tinged love story that we can’t begin to explain here, but it is fantastic. Kudos on the novel, and where can listeners connect with you out there? Elan Mastai: Well, there’s my website, ElanMastai.com. It’s E-L-A-N-M-A-S-T-A-I.com. You can get in touch with me, there’s like a, you know, you can connect with me by email through the website. I’m also on Twitter, @ElanMastai. I’m on Facebook, Elan Mastai, I have an author page there. Goodreads, you know. I’m around. I’m not that hard to find. And fortunately, although my name is hard to spell, once you’ve figured out how to spell it, there’s no other Elan Mastais out there. I’m the only one. Kelton Reid: Right. Elan Mastai: So once you actually figured out how my name’s spelled, it’s very easy to find me. Kelton Reid: You’re good. You’re halfway there. Awesome. And you are on tour starting February 7th, it would appear. Elan Mastai: Yup. Kelton Reid: I’m going to try to catch you February 8th in Denver, Colorado, at the Tattered Cover Bookstore. Elan Mastai: I love the Tattered Cover. It’s great. Kelton Reid: Me, too. Me, too. Elan Mastai: Yeah, it’s got this awesome record store right next door. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Elan Mastai: And there’s the Denver Film Society Movie Theater. It’s a great little complex. Kelton Reid: Yes, yes. Well, best of luck with everything. Hopefully, you will come back and talk to us again on your next adventure, and we look forward to what comes next, and especially reading this amazing, amazing book. So congrats. Elan Mastai: Thanks so much, Kelton. Thanks very much for having me on your show. Kelton Reid: Thanks so much for joining me for this half of a tour through the writer’s process. If you enjoy The Writer Files podcast, please subscribe to the show and leave us a rating or a review on iTunes to help other writers find us. For more episodes or to just leave a comment or a question, you can drop by WriterFiles.FM and you can always chat with me on Twitter @KeltonReid. Cheers. Talk to you next week.

Welcome back to Business of Film podcast, episode #78. Screenwriter and now novelist, Elan Mastai, is our guest. On this episode we talk about Elan’s first novel, All Our Wrong Todays, and how Paramount Pictures ended up optioned the film rights with Elan adapting the novel for the screen. ELAN MASTAI is the screenwriter behind ... The post BoF #78 – All Our Wrong Todays with Elan Mastai appeared first on Craft Truck.

Elan Mastai joins Lindsay to talk about his debut novel, ALL OUR WRONG TODAYS. They talk about the possibilities of time, his definition of love, and transitioning from screenwriting to writing fiction. Learn more about the book and read an excerpt here: http://bit.ly/2lkSazX

This is a special edition of the show where we take a glimpse behind the scenes at how we produce the program, and the people responsible for it. As Rainmaker.FM approaches it’s 2nd anniversary, I thought it apropos to examine how we got here. This is going to be fun! It may seem like I’m just a guy in a garage – like so many podcasters – who interviews writers and then frantically scrambles to produce the show in the margins of my real job as a multimedia producer for Rainmaker Digital. I do host and help produce the show of course, but I don’t record it in my garage, sorry. But you will learn how and where I do it. This week I also get the rare opportunity to shine a light on my talented production team and how this all happens. Note: The conclusion of my chat with screenwriter and author of All Our Wrong Todays, Elan Mastai will be published Feb. 7th, the day his new book comes out. If you’re a fan of The Writer Files, please click subscribe to automatically see new interviews. In this episode our production team and I talk about: How the show made the jump from a written interview to a podcast format with Robert Bruce The process we use to book our writers with Caroline Early How I research, record interviews, and write for the show’s website Why the raw audio for the shows needs a little massaging from a pro audio engineer with Toby Lyles How it all comes together to beam to your phone or desktop, and nestle neatly in your ears with Clare Garrett Listen to The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience below ... Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes The Show Notes Begin your free, 14-day trial of the Rainmaker Platform and start building your own digital marketing and sales platform today at Rainmaker.FM/Platform StudioPress.com Unusually Short Stories at RobertBruce.com Proust Questionnaire – Wikipedia Here’s How Brian Clark Writes – The inaugural issue of The Writer Files Longform Podcast #226: Terry Gross ScheduleOnce.com – Scheduling platform Caroline Early on Twitter Shure SM7B Vocal Dynamic Microphone, Cardioid Auralex soundproofing Call Recorder for Skype Zencastr.com How Oscar Nominee Emma Donoghue (Screenwriter of ‘Room’) Writes: Part One How Bestselling Author Hugh Howey Writes TwentyFourSound – The premier podcast network editing service The Learn Podcast Production Podcast – TwentyFourSound Adobe Audition CC GarageBand for Mac Audacity – Free, open source, cross-platform audio software for multi-track recording and editing Trello – Workflow collaboration tool Rafal Tomal – Lead Designer at Rainmaker Digital Rev.com – Transcription service Kibin.com – Editing service Kelton Reid on Twitter The Transcript Behind the Scenes: How ‘The Writer Files’ Is Produced Voiceover: Rainmaker.FM. Kelton Reid: Welcome back to The Writer Files. I am your host, Kelton Reid. In this special edition of the show, we’re going to take a glimpse behind the scenes at how we produce the program and the people responsible for it. As Rainmaker.FM approaches its second anniversary, I thought it apropos to examine exactly how we got here. This is going to be fun. It may seem like I’m just a guy in a garage, like so many podcasters, who interviews writers and then frantically scrambles to produce the show in the margins of my real job as a multimedia producer for Rainmaker Digital. I do host and help produce the show, of course, but I don’t record it in my garage, I’m sorry. You will learn exactly where and how I do it. This week, I also get the rare opportunity to shine a light on my talented production team and how this all happens. The conclusion of my chat with screenwriter and author of All Our Wrong Todays, Elan Mastai, will be published February 7th, the day his new book comes out. But in this episode of The Writer Files, our production team and I talk about how the show made the jump from a written interview to a podcast format, the process we use to book our writers, how I research, record interviews, and write for the show’s website, why the raw audio of the show needs a little massaging from a pro audio engineer, and how it all comes together to beam to your phone or desktop and nestle neatly into your ears. If you are a fan of the show, please click Subscribe to automatically see new interviews as soon as they are published. A quick reminder that The Writer Files is brought to you by the Rainmaker Platform, the complete solution for digital marketing and sales. Grow your audience and email list faster. Build profitable marketing automation, clear landing pages, podcasts networks, and membership programs. Sell online courses, digital products, and much more. The Rainmaker Platform helps you to focus on your business and stop worrying about the technology you need to succeed. Start building your own digital marketing sales platform today. Begin your free 14-day trial at Rainmaker.FM/Platform. Thanks for listening. How the Show Made the Jump From a Written Interview to a Podcast Format, with Robert Bruce Kelton Reid: That brings me to my very first guest on this special addition of The Writer Files, Robert Bruce, the man partly, or I should say mostly responsible for the existence and genesis of this show and a coworker and confidant. As you know, Robert, I like saying ‘confidant.’ It just kind of rolls off the tongue. Robert Bruce: It’s a great word, man. Kelton Reid: Yeah, thank you. Robert Bruce: It’s almost communistic. Oh, no, that would be commandant, right? Kelton Reid: No. Robert Bruce: What’s the communist word for … ‘comrade.’ Kelton Reid: Comrade. Robert Bruce: That’s not quite comrade. Are you a communist, Kelton? Kelton Reid: No. I have read The Communist Manifesto. Robert Bruce: Who hasn’t. Kelton Reid: Just out of sheer curiosity. Robert Bruce: Just pure intellectual curiosity, yeah, right. Kelton Reid: Sure. That’s something they make you read in … Robert Bruce: In southern California grade school. Kelton Reid: That’s right. So who are you, Robert? What do you do? Give us a little brief bio, specifically what have you done for this podcast and/or podcasting in general. Robert Bruce: I think, and you might have to refresh my memory … well, okay, who am I? Right now, man, there’s so much going on in this place. I recently switched some roles. I’m working with StudioPress. I think my title is vice president of marketing. We’re not big on titles in this company. Working a lot on StudioPress stuff, which was a switch for almost two years or a year and a half of working on Rainmaker.FM, but obviously, I’m jumping in and out of that as well, a little bit. We’re about to release a big product, so I’m back to copyrighting for the first time in a number of years, which has been an interesting thing. That’s what I’m doing right now, and that will broaden into more of content strategy and creating stuff for StudioPress and working with Brian Gardner more directly. Then by night, I write unusually short stories at RobertBruce.com. Kelton Reid: That’s right. Robert Bruce: Did you like my pitch, my plug there? Kelton Reid: I did. I do love those unusually short stories. I know that you have a penchant for going in and out of KnifeGunPen.com, also? Robert Bruce: Yeah. I’m toying around with this site idea. It’s been years, and I don’t know what I want to do with it. The first thing I ever wanted to be was a detective, when I was a kid. I’ve always a thing, like just about any American, we all love crime and noir and crime culture. We’re, as adults, addicted to crime television, so I’ve got this idea for this site and this domain. It was the first domain I bought 10 years ago actually. Kelton Reid: Wow. Robert Bruce: It’s just not gelling at the moment, but we’ll see. Kelton Reid: Okay. Let’s go back a little bit. I wanted to get you on here first to talk about how this show came into being, the idea behind The Writer Files initially, which was not a podcast, and the ethos that created this show in particular. Where did The Writer Files come from? Do you remember? Robert Bruce: Yes. This is started as a text, in the form of text. I don’t remember how early you and I talked about it, but like so many, I always loved, one of my favorite things, great magazine Vanity Fair and one of the best, if not the best to me, section or recurring section in that magazine was the very back page, little thing called the Proust Questionnaire, as in Marcel Proust, the French essayist. In Vanity Fair, it was the same questions every time, but they would rotate through this amazing cast of world-class writers, actors, philosophers, and business people, asking them this series of questions. I should have done a little research because I don’t know if there was a purpose, other than just interest in why these particular questions were compiled in the Proust Questionnaire. It was unendingly fascinating, and like I said, to me, it was my favorite part of that magazine and, in large part, still is. The idea just came. This is, a lot of people have riffed on that over the years, both in text and audio. I’m going to sneeze, I know it. Sorry, man. Kelton Reid: Don’t apologize to me. Apologize to Toby. Robert Bruce: Sorry, Toby. I guess it’s not going to happen. Okay. Kelton Reid: I think you should leave that in. Robert Bruce: I might as well. So yeah, that was kind of the genesis of the idea. Obviously, we wanted to tweak it toward our audience at Copyblogger. On Copyblogger.com do you remember the date? I don’t know. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Four years ago, almost to the day, when we published that first experimental episode with Mr. Brian Clark, our humble leader. Brian Clark, the CEO of Rainmaker Digital was my first victim and, from there, kind of had a cavalcade of pretty interesting writers on. Robert Bruce: Yeah, you got some big time … well, one thing I want to say, too, this was really perfect. At that time, you and I were with Brian and Sonia, we needed to come up with stuff, weekly, on top of everything else we were doing for the job. I don’t know how you felt when this idea came around, but to me, it was like, “Oh, this is perfect.” I don’t know why I gave it to you because it would have been the perfect thing for me to do and get out of having to write a weekly article. Kelton Reid: I know. Robert Bruce: It’d be really useful and interesting hopefully to our audience as well. But anyway, you took it. You ran with it, masterfully. Kelton Reid: Oh thank you. Robert Bruce: You developed the questions, redeveloped them, and over time, brought in a bunch of stuff. Now, you’ve got this massive Rolodex of superstars across the globe who are clamoring to talk to you. But you’re right. Over the years, you’ve got some names listed here. You’re looking at Seth Godin, Austin Kleon, Maria Popova. Kelton Reid: Sure, yeah. Those are early days. It was like Dan Pink. When Liz Gilbert popped in there to do that, that was pretty fun. Okay. You actually really did help me to develop the Q&A — which as you said, is the Proust Questionnaire kind of meets Inside the Actors Studio, as I describe it sometimes — to kind of get into the brains. Robert Bruce: Yes. Kelton Reid: I think that at least the original idea was to get a glimpse of the process, of the writer’s life, the writing life. It just grew. It became its own thing. I think originally Proust Questionnaire was like a parlor game to kind of loosen the mood and get people to talk personally about themselves, but pithy, short questions were always initially our idea. It was like one-word answers were fine. Robert Bruce: Right, short answers. Yup. Kelton Reid: Okay. Let’s talk about, moving forward, the process itself was I was coming up with these queries for authors and/or their handlers, publicists, if I could find them, and then sending the questions by email, with the caveat … Jonny Naster, host of Hack the Entrepreneur and The Showrunner had recently asked me, “How did you generate this written content? Was it an audio format first?” It wasn’t. It was all via email. I was saying to some of these publicists, they can answer as many or as few questions as they’d like. It was broken into the five pieces: the origin story, productivity, workflow, creativity, and some goofy ones. Now, it is a podcast. How did it come to be a podcast on a podcast network that you built from scratch, with this great team that I’m talking with today, that has now published and produced over 1,300 shows, coming up on the second anniversary of Rainmaker.FM? It’s a lot of content. How did this show, The Writer Files, make that jump from page to ears? Robert Bruce: Well, I think the shortest answer is the four of us built a podcast network, and we needed a podcast. Right? We needed content. I think, initially, you and I started talking about it. We had hoped that it would become, “Oh, it’s perfect.” Like you said, Inside The Actors Studio, it’s this great interview format. This would make for a great podcast, and it continues to serve our audience of writers, bloggers, journalists, and those people. You’ve expanded that in the audio format even more, talking to some pretty heavy-hitter neuroscientists, philosophers, and all these. This is probably a good lesson for anybody listening that is doing this struggle of producing content on a regular basis. In our case, we built this podcast network and were looking around for shows, for formats, for hosts, and this and that. Kelton, you’ve had experience on air. You’ve got a great voice, and you had the willingness to do it. We’re looking around, and it’s like, “Oh, wait a minute. That’s something that we could pull over this way.” In a way, it turned out to repurpose as well. I think it’s really cool as text, but you just can’t deny how cool it is, especially, as a listener, if you’re into the person that’s being interviewed, as with any podcast or any radio interview, it’s like, man, to be able to hear that person actually talk is pretty sweet. Then, I don’t know exactly where you want to go here, but Caroline Early came on. She’s been booking guests because it’s so much work, and you’ve got so much to do outside of this show, just for your day job, that you obviously needed help booking guests. Man, you guys have just been really expanding the guest list here in a way that I never, in some cases, I never thought possible and never even thought about. That’s been cool to see, too. Kelton Reid: For sure, yeah. It’s just been a pleasure and an honor to work with both of you, all of you, the whole team, obviously, have put together some pretty amazing workflows, which we’re going to talk with both Caroline, Clare, and Toby coming up. We’re going to segue into that, all of that. You have been a guest on the show. How was that for you? Robert Bruce: It was not great. Kelton Reid: You were in a Writer Porn episode. I’ve been trying to get you to do … Robert Bruce: Oh, yeah, right. That was fun. Is the novel dead? Kelton Reid: Yes, one of my faves. Robert Bruce: Yeah, that was a good conversation. I think that was good, too. It’s another maybe lesson for people is there was some contentious back and forth, and not anything hardcore, but it was great because you don’t want everybody saying, “Yeah, right. I agree. I agree. I agree.” You want to have a little difference of opinion whenever you can get it. Makes things interesting. I enjoyed that. Was that the only time, those two episodes? Kelton Reid: I think you’ve been on twice, but I am wracking my brain as we are at episode 80 plus here. I’m having a hard time remembering, but will you return? That’s the question on everybody’s mind? Robert Bruce: For the right amount of money, Kelton, I will return. I don’t know what you’re budget is these days. Kelton Reid: Okay. I’m going to have you get in get in touch with my accountant regarding the fees. Sorry, my lawyer. Okay. I don’t have either of those. Robert Bruce: I will return any time you ask me, yes. Kelton Reid: Okay, great. Well, we look forward to more Writer Porn in the future. The Process We Use to Book Our Writers, with Caroline Early Kelton Reid: That brings me to my next guest, the esteemed associate producer for Rainmaker.FM and this show, Caroline Early, who luckily has been with us from the start to really ensure booking all of our great guests. Caroline, thank you for stepping away from your … I heard you were on a horrible, horrible cruise, but that you stepped away to do this interview with us. Thank you. Caroline Early: No problem. I’m happy to be here. There’s nothing better, I guess, than being on vacation, but it feels good to be home. Kelton Reid: Yeah, I’m sure. You were in the Caribbean? Caroline Early: I was actually, but the boat was a little bit more of a fun music boat, instead of really getting off the boat at all. I was actually just on the cruise for five days, didn’t leave. We only stopped one time, and I didn’t even bother getting off. Kelton Reid: Oh, my. Caroline Early: Can’t complain. Kelton Reid: I’m so sorry. Caroline Early: I know. Kelton Reid: Let’s talk about you and what you do for Rainmaker and specifically for this show to start out. Caroline Early: Yeah, sure. As you said, I’m the associate producer for Rainmaker FM, which I think that title definitely makes sense for what I do on Rainmaker.FM, but I do also work on all of Rainmaker Digital, primarily on the outreach and PR side of things, help schedule guests for webinars, help schedule guests for these shows. Really anybody that’s coming on to any Rainmaker.FM show is booked through me. It’s pretty time consuming, but it’s a fun job to be able to feel like I’m not only just talking to all you Rainmaker people all day. I get to correspond with people all over the place, all around the world. It’s a really fun part of my job. Kelton Reid: Yeah. You also have your own project, your own blog out there also. Caroline Early: I do. It’s called Your Whole You . It’s sort of healthy lifestyle blog. As with any side project, it ebbs and flows. Lately, it’s been a little bit on the down side, but that’s not to say that it won’t be back up here pretty soon. We’ll see how that goes. Kelton Reid: Cool. Well, how did you find yourself working on The Writer Files, in particular? Caroline Early: Well, obviously, when I came on board, I started helping out with the PR outreach side of all the shows. I think in talking with you, it was clear that it’s a pretty time-consuming job to find and track down guests for these shows. You have to not only be digging around and finding interesting people, but then you have to figure out how to talk to them and how to get in touch with them. In talking with you and then working on it, I think it made sense with my background in PR and what else I was doing for Rainmaker to start helping you with that. I’m not just saying this because I’m on your show, but I would say that The Writer Files is probably my favorite thing to pitch and to work on. These authors are just the nicest people. They’re always so flattered and honored to be selected or to be invited on the show, so it’s just really, really nice to be able to talk with people who are just really excited to be a part of it. Kelton Reid: That’s cool to hear. I think some writers and listeners might wonder how we choose guests to come on the show. Let’s talk a little bit about that before we get into specifically how we track them down. How do we decide where we find our guests? Caroline Early: Well, I think, luckily, you and I, and Robert as well, are all sort of book nerds, so we’re already in the world of novels. I think one benefit is that we all seem to have different interests. I think that we all like different things, which helps us be aware of plenty of different authors that are out there. There’s a lot of research that goes on, just on the back end, trying to figure out what we like and who’s, not necessarily popular, but maybe who’s coming out with something new in the next couple of months. You have been grateful enough to provide me with a wish list, which is always helpful to see what people you’re really interested in talking to. We do use Trello for that, which is nice to be able to keep track of everything. Obviously, we send a lot of emails between the three or four of us, just to figure out who’s reading what and who maybe heard of somebody on some other show or a news story that we heard about someone. That’s definitely a piece of it. Then, the other side of it, too, is some publicist recommendations. Now that we’ve been doing this for a couple of years, we’ll correspond with a publicist about one author, and they’ll say, “Hey, this was really great. How about this other person?” That’s been helpful, too, because they have people that they want to put out there. Sometimes it’s a good fit. Sometimes it’s not. But there’s a lot of different avenues to be able to find different people. Kelton Reid: For sure. We’re really looking for, as we crowdsource these ideas, writers with inspiring stories that are of particular interest to writing right now. It’s a survey. We’re not just going for fictionists or scientists, etc. We’re trying to get a little bit of everything in there for listeners. Anyway, it’s a pretty fascinating process. So how do you track down a celebrity author? I think people might be curious. Robert might liken it to witchcraft, but how do we find these people when they so often do not want to be found? They just want to be writing really. Caroline Early: Right. And sometimes it feels that way. I will say it starts with a lot of Googling because, like you said, some of these people, I think they want to just exist in this other universe, where they’re not ever spoken to. It can be interesting to even find a website. There are several authors who the only websites they actually have are their publicists page. They don’t even have their own site. So there’s a lot of Googling involved to maybe find some sort of fan page, Facebook Page, whatever it is. If they are nice enough to have a website, sometimes they’re even nice enough to put their personal email. That’s really a good starting point. If I can find their personal email, that’s usually what I reach out to. I try to be somewhat clear. If someone says on their page specifically, “Please don’t reach out to me for publicity requests and find my publicist.” I really do try to honor that. I don’t want to bother them with these kind of requests. There’s that. There’s also a contact page. We’ve had really good luck with contact pages honestly. I think authors do appreciate getting notes from people. Every time I’ve had to use one of those it’s worked out. Then I think the worst-case scenario that I’ve had to do so far is just try to guess emails because so many people’s is just their name @whateversite.com. It’s fairly easy to find. That one always makes me feel a little bit weird because you can tell they’re really trying to hide, and then here I am Googling and trying to guess whatever potential email they’ll have. Fortunately, we’ve had no one be offended or no one be mad that we tried to email them. Every single person we’ve had has just been really, really excited about being on the show. That’s, I think, helped me to feel more empowered to be able to email more people. You can tell that they’re just really, really excited. Kelton Reid: That’s cool. With your track record, it’s like now you have this, as Robert puts it, this Rolodex of impressive authors. Okay. Let’s talk a little bit about a couple of the tools that we use to just get everything synced up with our schedules because obviously everyone’s busy. It’s not always easy to we can’t just be 30 emails back and forth about, “Hey, is this day good for you?” How do we do that, in particular? Caroline Early: Well, we do use ScheduleOnce and these online calendars, at least as a starting point. Since I’m scheduling for you, it’s really nice to be able to not have to go to you every single week and say, “Are you free at this time? Are you free on this day?” That’s a great starting point to see your schedule. I have noticed that people don’t necessarily want to look at that calendar, so there’s a lot of me being like, “Hey, how about this day? How about this time?” Fortunately, usually if I give them three options, one of those times will work. We make it so that it doesn’t take more than 30 to 45 minutes to record the show. We’re doing it over Skype, so it’s not too bad for them. It’s not like it’s this three-hour long in-person interview or something like that. I think that definitely helps. We just really haven’t had a lot of problems with it. Especially with all of these online tools now, to be able to sync calendars and all of that, it just makes everything so much easier. I can tell just, especially when I’m working with a publicist, because then it becomes us two trying to plan for two other people. There’s a lot of back and forth, but it’s pretty easy. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Well, it’s pretty amazing. Another part of what you do is then you’re sending our sample questions of the interview, so let’s talk a little bit about that. Again, I keep referring to Terry Gross and her process. She comes up with these one-of-a-kind, thoughtful questions, obviously tailored to each guest. We do that to some extent, but why do we send the sample questions beforehand? Caroline Early: There’s a couple reasons for it. Terry Gross is on another planet of interview skills, right? That woman, I feel like she must know everything about everyone because of the way she interviews. But I think in our context, we’re not necessarily trying to catch these people off guard. We want the conversation to be fluid, but we really want to learn about them. Like you said, we really want to kind of dig in to the brain and learn more about them. So I think giving them the questions ahead of time allows them to feel like they can prep if they want to. They don’t have to. It gives us a chance to learn as much as possible about them and really, really learn about their process, instead of just, “Hey, tell me a little bit about your book.” That’s great, but we want to learn more about the nitty gritty of their style. I think maybe it helps them to have the questions ahead of time. Kelton Reid: Yeah. In the spirit of the Proust Questionnaire, obviously, those questions are not hard to find. It’s amazing the work that you do. Thank you, again. I will say one of the perks is getting these galleys of books that are to come out soon. The free books don’t hurt, so thank you. Caroline Early: Can’t complain. Kelton Reid: Thanks for all the great work that you do. Caroline Early: No problem. I really love this part of my job. It’s definitely up there with … my favorite day-to-day task is being able to talk to these people and get to know them on a little bit more of a personal level. Thank you for hosting this great show. Kelton Reid: It is truly a pleasure. How Kelton Researches, Records Interviews, and Writes for the Show’s Website Robert Bruce: So, Kelton, I want to turn the tables on you here for just a minute and ask you a few questions because you have been instrumental in the conception and growth of this podcast network, as a whole, but specifically, obviously, this show. Will you allow me to do that for just a few moments? Kelton Reid: Yeah, of course. I’m blushing. Robert Bruce: Okay. Kelton Reid: Even though this is written into the script here. Robert Bruce: You’re so humble. Okay. Tell us about you. Who are you? What do you do in regards to all of this? Kelton Reid: I am a professional golfer. Robert Bruce: Toby, cut all this out. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Hopefully you know me by now, if you listen to the show, but if you don’t, I am a multimedia producer who helps to run the day-to-day, in-house production needs of Rainmaker Digital. I have the pleasure of working with all of the great, great talent that has entered the fray in this fantastic podcasting universe. Overseeing the day-to-day production that we’ll talk about later with Clare, the ins and outs and the tools that we use at Rainmaker.FM, built on the Rainmaker Platform, which we’re so lucky to have this amazing, talented team supporting us every day. Robert Bruce: What about, let’s get into some specific kind of production-y questions about The Writer Files. How do you put the show together? Kelton Reid: Okay. We’ve just spoken with Caroline about booking guests and all the great works that she does. Once that interview is on the books — it’s scheduled, I’ve got a time, we agree to record that — it’s just a matter of heading into the garage, turning on the computer, logging into Skype, right? Wrong, as you know. Robert Bruce: It’s not that easy. Kelton Reid: You’ve produced a lot of podcasts in the past. I, going back, want to thank you and Toby — once again, I may be skipping ahead a little bit — but for all of the guidance in helping me to get set up with this great system here. The real work really does start once our guest is booked. I usually start, now, I have the pleasure of shooting the name of the guest and hopefully just a starter link to their author website to a production assistant, Bill Geisheker, very talented, old friend of mine, that basically puts together a one-page research doc. It’s really short. It’s simple, succinct. Robert Bruce: Oh, wow. I didn’t know you were doing that. That’s cool. Kelton Reid: Yeah. It’s got all the relevant information on the author — websites, interviews, other podcasts, interesting facts that he thinks will be useful to me as he knows my process now very well, ins and outs. He does some transcription work for the show as well. He knows what’s going on there, but it’s very helpful. It gives me a jumping off place, where I can then start to get my thoughts together. As you know, Robert, having done a lot of these interviews, you were the original Rainmaker Digital/Copyblogger podcaster guy. You interviewed a lot of big names as well for … what was that show? The Lede, or was it something else before that? Robert Bruce: It was The Lede and I think it was Internet Marketing for Smart People early on, yeah. It was November 2010 we launched that show. Kelton Reid: Yeah. You guys were way, way ahead of the curve. It’s paid dividends, I think, for those audiences. Anyway, I take my talking points out of that doc. Then I just try to read as much of the author’s writing as I can get my hands on. Again, thank you, Caroline. She often gets an advanced copy of a book, if I’m lucky, and the galley or the publicist actually sends a copy of the book. Luckily, I am a speed reader. Robert Bruce: What, like the Evelyn Wood’s speed reading course kind of thing? Kelton Reid: Exactly. I’m processing a lot of information. As we can refer back to the format of the show, we designed the show around the Proust Questionnaire, so the guests actually know ahead of time what to expect, but I add some bonus questions in there that are pertinent to the author and what I think to be maybe their interests or other things about them that listeners might not know. Robert Bruce: Let me ask you this, and this is true of anyone who’s wanting to do a podcast, especially interview. People think that interview podcasts, “Oh, that’s easy. All you’ve got to do is talk and let the other person … ” But just the number of elements that you’ve named here — from scheduling, to booking, to back and forth. I think I talked to Caroline once, we were on a meeting, and she said it was on average 10 or 12 emails back and forth, before someone is booked, if they are booked. But in terms of the research, the reading, and the preparing for a single interview — of which you do, on average, one a week — how much time do you estimate you put into a single show, on average? Kelton Reid: I can’t say. Every show is different, but I do find myself reading books a lot of weekends. I’m going to link to this great, Longform Podcast episode with Terry Gross where she talks about how at the beginning of her career when she was doing five interviews a week that she really didn’t have a life. She was basically just watching movies and reading books all weekend long. That’s not really the case, but I do find myself wanting to absorb quite a bit of the writing itself because that’s what the show’s about. Also, I am a great admirer of writers, kind of a mediaphile, if you will. I invented that term. Robert Bruce: I like that term a lot. Kelton Reid: Thank you very much. Robert Bruce: Cinephile? Kelton Reid: Yeah, bibliophile, mediaphile. Robert Bruce: Mediaphile kind of covers it all. Kelton Reid: There you go. Well, I have to be in my line of work. Anyway, yeah, it’s definitely a minimum of three or four hours. Really getting into just the research, not including the other writing stuff, probably like an hour to an hour and a half prior to the show, which doesn’t seem like a lot, but when you have a day job, it can add up for sure. Then there’s the piece of getting set up with the technical part of recording the guests. I do not work in a garage. But I start up, I kind of do some vocal warmups. I’m not joking. I have borrowed some straight from a broadcast voice. Robert Bruce: Give us one. Give us one vocal warmup. Kelton Reid: Oh, it’s the easiest one. Aw, aw, ee, aw, aw, ee. You just do that over and over and over again, aw, just trying to stretch out the back of your throat. Yeah, listeners, you can practice this at home. But then I get set up here with a wonderful Shure SM7B microphone that you sent to me gift-wrapped, with a preamp connected here to the MacBook Pro, which is very silent. It doesn’t have a fan that comes on during the interviews, which is really nice. Then I’m in a walk-in closet actually in my basement. It’s been converted into a sound-proof hermetically sealed coffin. I think you’re familiar with these things. I am surrounded by clothes, don’t get me wrong. I can see shoes and all the fun stuff. There are some additional Auralex panels that can be moved around. I have a bass catcher in here. I want to thank both you, Robert, and Toby for all of your consulting and guidance early on because I was just working in an office with little to no sound proofing on a … what was our favorite microphone early on? Robert Bruce: Yeah. Not the Snowball. Everybody knows the Snowball, but the Yeti. Kelton Reid: Yeti, yeah. Hey, we made it work. I didn’t have really a clue, but you just kind of, as you develop your podcast and your voice, you learn things, and you iterate. Robert Bruce: What is a base catcher? Kelton Reid: A base catcher is just one of those foam thingies. It’s also made by Auralex. It just goes in the corner, so that it’s not reverberating, especially with a base, heavy voice like my own. It can just bounce sound around. I don’t know what it is really. Robert Bruce: I’m getting a base catcher. Kelton Reid: Then I hook up Skype Call Recorder. Logging into Skype, it’s already connected, so Skype Call Recorder, I’ll link to, is the primary recording method. You’ve got to make sure that’s all configured. Then I do a backup, usually, with ScreenFlow so that it’s just pulling a recording straight from the computer in case Skype crashes for any reason or Skype Call Recorder isn’t updated or something. I’ll get a backup there. Then Zencastr is my other backup recording method. If Skype, for some reason, doesn’t work for the author, I can just send a link, and they can just jump on Zencastr. You’ve used that before. How did you find Zencastr? Robert Bruce: That was cool. You shot it my way, and I think I just connected into a page that you had produced and were working on. But, man, that was very, very cool. Very easy. Kelton Reid: Very seamless. I’ll link to all those things. Yeah, so once I’m hooked up in here. I’ve got the headphones plugged in. I do a test call, make sure that it’s all configured correctly, got a hot beverage, headphones. I’m ready to do the call, and it doesn’t always go smoothly. Authors have called me from construction sites. Emma Donoghue, I actually asked her very kindly … she was on a press junket for her Oscar nomination. She was in Los Angeles in a hotel next to a construction site. I could barely understand what she was saying because there was as jackhammer. I actually asked her to move to the bathroom of her hotel. I think she sat in the bathroom on the tub. Oh my gosh. Robert Bruce: That’s great. Kelton Reid: So we got it. Robert Bruce: Man, yeah, that’s tough because that was a tough get, first of all, because she’s busy, and she’s got a lot going on. She was gracious enough to be on the show, but then you get on there and it’s just like, “[Beep] there’s a jackhammer in the background, and this is not going to work.” I remember you bringing that up. That’s the life, right? You’ve got to think on your feet and help them, make it as easy as possible for them. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Well, you know. You get dropped connections. I’ve had authors miss appointment times, or I’ve had to email their publicists because I don’t have their direct email. It’s that multiple, again, back and forth that Caroline has to deal with a lot. A lot of times, it’s a help message to Caroline saying, “What happened? Where are they?” Or an author will be on Skype on their mobile phone, walking along a busy highway. Thank you, Hugh Howey, just to go back to that one, but the list goes on. Robert Bruce: That’s great. Kelton Reid: Okay. Anyway, then I hit record. Before that, again, I’ll link back to that Terry Gross interview, but I try to assure guests that they’re in good hands, that we’ll edit them kindly, and we can give Toby cues if they need to stop or start over, whatever happens. Sometimes their phone just rings, and it’s unavoidable. You know this, but luckily it’s not live. Some authors really want to talk more than others about their writing life. I’ve heard Terry Gross conjecture about this kind of confessional nature of the remote interview because you’re not face to face. It’s like you can kind of say things that you wouldn’t say to somebody that you’re looking in the eye, in the same room. I do love being able to chat with writers like that. Sometimes it’s like a phone call with an old friend. Sometimes it’s just business. Sometimes it’s not as warm, but that’s just the nature of the beast. I like it when writers go off script and just talk about whatever’s on their mind that day. Robert Bruce: How much time do you spend pre, when you say, “Okay. You’re on the line,” but before you start recording and just kind of warming them up. You’re talking about assuring them that everything’s going to be cool. I guess it varies. Kelton Reid: Yeah. It’s usually about five minutes. I’m like, “Hey. I’m a fan of your work” because I am. And, “Thanks for coming on. You’re in good hands. Don’t worry about we’ll edit out anything you don’t want in there.” I’m not Terry Gross. Ours is a non-fiction format that we send the sample questions off to writers to check out. We skip around. I skip around. I don’t always get all the questions. In fact, nine times out of 10, I don’t even get three quarters of the questions in there that I’d like to get in, but I always ask writers, “Do you have a time constraint?” and get them out on time. Luckily, we have Toby. We’re going to talk to him about that moment before the interview starts. Robert Bruce: Everybody needs their Toby. Every podcaster needs their Toby. Why the Raw Audio for the Shows Needs a Little Massaging From a Pro Audio Engineer, with Toby Lyles Guest: Man, just let me know if there’s any weird noises on my end or if you need me to re-say something or something like that. Kelton Reid: Oh, yeah. No problem at all. We got a professional. Toby, thank you very much, will be editing this. So we are rolling. Guest: Hello. Thanks, Toby. Toby, I’m counting on you to just cut out all the things that I say that make no sense, okay? Toby, Toby, seriously. Kelton Reid: All right. Toby, thanks for joining me on The Writer Files today. How do you feel about that outtake from that show? Toby Lyles: That outtake is hilarious. When it first came through, I just laughed. Kelton Reid: Yeah. It doesn’t always happen where a guest specifically asks you to make them sound better, but you always do. Toby Lyles: Well, often you’re not the known person. You’re the unknown equation. If somebody mentions there’s going to be somebody working on this afterwards — like you, you always imply trust. So when that happens, I think you just teed that one up for him. He’s like, “Well, yeah. If there’s somebody working this, you’ve got to make me sound great.” Right? Kelton Reid: Yeah. Luckily, some of these authors do have a sense of humor. From the get go, he was a pretty fun guy to talk to. It doesn’t always go that way, as you know. Maybe for listeners who aren’t familiar with you, Toby Lyles, who are you, and what do you do? Toby Lyles: Well, I’m the voiceless, non-writer behind The Writer Files. Kelton Reid: You’re the audio genius who makes us sound so good. Toby Lyles: I run a company called TwentyFourSound and have the incredible honor, privilege of working with your show and then the rest of the folks at the Rainmaker team. That’s fun. I’ve been doing audio for years. I don’t know if it’s decades, if I’m old enough to be that way. I’ve been doing audio for a very long time and get to work with you and your show. It’s fun. Kelton Reid: Well, it is an honor to work with you. Your work is fantastic. You do always make us sound great. Let’s talk about a funny thing that happened to us trying to get on this and record this quick snippet with you. We went on Skype, as we are apt to do as interviewers. You called me on Skype, and we couldn’t get a good connection. We had to jump over to Zencastr to record this little bit, which we were both laughing about because, between the two of us, we have the know-how and the equipment here, but we couldn’t make it work. Toby Lyles: Yeah. It was kind of embarrassing. I’ve got Skype. It’s not letting me log in. I’m going to try this other thing. I was opening the iPad to do Skype on that. If we do that, then how are you going to hear me well, but you had the tools, Kelton. You pulled it off. Kelton Reid: It’s a good point to having a contingency plan, especially when you’re interviewing a celebrity or something like that to give them another option to connect with you or record this. Anyway, that was kind of funny. So when an episode of The Writer Files hits your desk, are you just like, “Oh, crap. Here we go.” What’s your initial reaction when a show lands on your desk? Toby Lyles: I enjoy it. Of course, like any writer would never say, “Oh, man, I got this new contract or new book I need to write.” At least I would assume, if you’re a writer, there’s got to be some amount of joy in the process, right? I think it’s fun. Honestly, I think the show is fun. I listen to lots of shows. I have recommended this show, probably because I know a lot of writers, but just the way you’ve set it up is really fun. Back to the … what do I say? It’s a great show. I get to listen to the whole thing. I don’t think I dread much about your show. I’ll work on that one. I’ll find something. Kelton Reid: Okay. Well, what’s the first thing you do when you get that link to the raw audio there for Dropbox? Toby Lyles: This is for anybody, any audio nerds out there, anybody producing their own stuff. The first thing I do is I don’t copy the original audio I should say this. I copy, I don’t work on the original audio. Same thing if you’re an editor, right? You’re not going to edit, mark up, mess up the original document, so it can’t be undone. We make a copy of it, and instead it’s somewhere else in the place where it can be worked on because stuff blows up every once in a while. You’ve got to watch out for that. Kelton Reid: Yeah. All right. What are the primary tools that you are utilizing there to make us sound so darn good? Toby Lyles: It’s pretty simple. I’ve got the studio. We have a studio computer. We use Adobe Audition. Specifically, I chose that one because a majority of podcasters out there right now, or authors who are trying to promote themselves via audio or help people that way, are using either GarageBand, Audacity, or Adobe Audition. Of the three, Adobe Audition is the only professional something or other, so that’s why. Then we can talk to other people well with it. It’s great. It’s a great program. We’ve got lots of fun toys involved with it. We just drop it into Adobe Audition. Kelton Reid: Well, you do amazing work to make us sound smart. Of course, I send you copious notes on where I need help, especially or if there’s swearing as well, but I’m very lucky to have you as part of this team. Rainmaker, as I mentioned to Robert earlier, has produced, since the beginning of the network, which you’ve been around since the beginning, over 1,300 episodes. It’s a pleasure to work with you. With that said, as a contractor, can other podcasters hire you to work on their shows? Can they hire you as a consultant, as we have used you for many of our shows? If so, where can they find you? Toby Lyles: Yeah. I think one of my favorite things is helping. I like authors a lot. I like helping people who have messages to say. People who are actually helping people with what they’re doing and of course in audio. Yeah. I’m always welcome to that. The website’s TwentyFourSound.com. It’s all one word and all spelled out, or the email is Toby@TwentyFourSound.com. Kelton Reid: Oh, wow. Awesome. Thanks so much. You have a great podcast also titled? Toby Lyles: Yeah. It’s called the Learn Podcast Production podcast. I appreciate you saying it. It’s a great podcast. It’s kind of nerdy, so good luck. Kelton Reid: Yes, but I have learned quite a bit from it. I really appreciate you stopping by, and I’ll be sending you some raw audio shortly. Toby Lyles: Perfect. I look forward to it. Kelton Reid: I’ll send it very soon. Toby Lyles: Okay. How It All Comes Together to Beam to Your Phone or Desktop, and Nestle Neatly in Your Ears, with Clare Garrett Kelton Reid: That brings us to the final pieces that we put together before this show is beamed into your head. I actually have to write the copy for the webpage or, in the case of the Rainmaker Platform, which is what we have used exclusively for all Rainmaker.FM shows, good fit here, we have to create a draft podcast post, which I actually don’t do. The great thing about Rainmaker itself, for publishing podcasts and getting them out to your favorite audio platforms is that it’s all very intuitive and so simple to get these shows beamed out to the world, beamed out to you, the listener. That’s why I want to welcome Clare Garrett, my very talented multimedia producer and editor that handles a lot of the day-to-day details of that process of getting these podcasts published. Clare, thank you so much for coming on the show. I understand you’re a little nervous about being on the podcast for the first time. How are you today? Clare Garrett: Definitely. I don’t know if to thank you or not, but we shall see. It’s my first ever one, so it’s a bit different to be on this side rather than behind the scenes. Kelton Reid: Yeah. You’re up in Canada, presently. Clare Garrett: I am. Kelton Reid: We are a distributed team. You work remotely, and I understand things are good in Canada. Clare Garrett: Yeah. Luckily you and I are in the same time zone, so that works out. Kelton Reid: That really is helpful. You hail originally from Britain. Clare Garrett: Yes, the north of Britain. If anybody has trouble understanding my accent, I do apologize. Kelton Reid: Just to preface that accent. Yeah. Let’s talk about you. Who are you, and what do you do specifically? What do you do for the podcast and the podcast network? Clare Garrett: I am multimedia producer and editor for anything Rainmaker Digital, but a lot of my job is based around Rainmaker.FM and the shows. Although it was daunting when we started the podcast network, it was easy to fall in and get it all up and running, once we got a process in place, which took quite a while to start out. It works pretty well right now. Kelton Reid: I did want to, well, I reminded both Robert and Toby that since February of 2015, when we actually started the podcast network, we’ve produced, all of us, over 1,300 shows. That’s pretty impressive. You might not have known that specific fact, but kudos on that. Clare Garrett: Yeah. That’s a terrific number. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Let’s talk about a few of the tools that we use to actually make all this happen. It’s not just as simple as pinging you in an email, although that does happen. The team gets an email from a podcast host. In this case, it would be me. What happens from there? I guess you can kind of walk us through that first tool that we use, that we like so much. Clare Garrett: Yeah. Once the host has submitted the email with the raw blog post and raw audio file in, we use a tool that’s called Trello. It’s like an organizational board, really. Each email that comes through produces its own little Trello card. With that, we’ve got the branding on there of the show art of each show. We’ve got the episode title that the host has chosen. Sometimes that’s not necessarily the one that gets published. We have the artist’s name on there and then there’s the raw audio and the raw blog post. Trello’s fantastic. We’ve got different columns in there. We’ve got the raw blog post, the raw episode, should I say. Once that’s all been put in place inside the Rainmaker Platform, it’s ready for the final look, by yourself. Sometimes you can tweak the final headline, and that all gets put into the episode as well and confirmed that that’s in there. From there, once it’s all ready for scheduling and publishing, once the audio comes back, it gets sent off for transcription. For the transcription, we use an amazing service. Kelton Reid: Yeah. We can talk about the transcription piece. That’s the third piece of this. So there’s three checklists that you are manually adding to each of these cards that are automatically created, automagically created over there on Trello, when they email the production team. Then we just start working our way down those. Everyone has their different duties. I think there’s a 21-piece checklist. That’s how these things actually get built. Then once you get that first checklist set up, then you are jumping over to Rainmaker. What happens there in the platform? Clare Garrett: As soon as we receive the raw episode, I go in and we’ve got already draft posts created inside Rainmaker Platform. Each show’s got their own draft post in there, for that specific day and that specific set time. Kelton Reid: That’s right. Where do those live? Where do those draft posts actually live? Clare Garrett: They actually live inside the editorial calendar inside the platform, which is rather cool. They’re already in there. Normally, we have a month in advance in there. So it’s really easy when the host sends it in, and they say they want it published on this day. I can just go in there, scroll down, find that particular episode, drop in the tentative headline, drop in the raw blog post, add the featured image, which is the show art, the author’s name, and also the keyword. Once I’ve hit save, I go in and preview and just make sure every link works, that it all reads well, that the title looks good. Then once all that’s in place, I can let you know that it is good to have another check by yourself. Once you finalize the headline, then Caroline goes ahead and creates the social image and then that can be added inside of there as well, which is a pretty cool tool to have. Kelton Reid: Yeah. I should mention that our designer, Rafal Tomal, has created all of our show art and also the social images template. So it’s all really kind of paint by numbers. The amazing work that he’s done, both on the site and for the shows themselves, is pretty impressive. When you’re looking at the front page of Rainmaker.FM, you’re seeing all that beautiful work that he’s done. The functionality, obviously, is some of the other great work that he’s done for us. That said, not to get too technical on that stuff, then we hold our breath, right? We just wait for the finished audio to come back. Clare Garrett: The audio to come back, yeah. Kelton Reid: Once it does, we listen to it. We check the ID3 tags. We make sure everything’s ready to go before we pop it in there, and it uploads to the site. Clare Garrett: Yeah. It’s so super easy to do as well. Kelton Reid: Yeah. It’s pretty amazing, the Rainmaker team has done and done for us and how all of this Clare Garrett: I never dare complain about anything. Kelton Reid: All these pieces fit together so nicely. We’re very, very lucky, knocking on wood. That it is so easy. Clare Garrett: Yeah. It’s never let us down really. Kelton Reid: Well, let’s talk about transcription now. That is the final piece. So once that finished audio comes back, then you can talk about these fantastic tools and people that help us actually get every single transcript for every single show published back onto Rainmaker Platform. Clare Garrett: Yeah. For the audio, we actually use Dropbox, so we can all share it between ourselves. Once the edited audio file is in there, it can be sent off to Rev. That’s Rev.com. Normally, they send it back within half a day, a day max. Normally, it’s like 95 percent accurate. They’re pretty good at doing awesome transcripts. Once that comes back, it has to be downloaded. Then we save it to Google Drive, which is another fantastic way of sharing documents with other people outside of our company. They get sent off to Kibin, which is an amazing editing company. Kelton Reid: We love Kibin. Clare Garrett: We do. They’ve done an amazing job. They’ve done the majority of our transcripts for Rainmaker.FM. Kelton Reid: Let’s talk a little bit about Kibin and our friend Naomi Tepper that helped us to get everything set up over there. We basically have a team of editors that we trained and worked with very closely to dial in exactly how we wanted all of our transcripts formatted specifically for Rainmaker. Clare Garrett: Yes. That took some getting there as well because it was all new to us, the network. We had to figure out a way of how we wanted the transcripts done and other things that’s in there. Yeah. They’ve worked out really well. We’ve got three editors there that actually just work on our stuff, so that’s really nice to know and reassuring. Kelton Reid: Yeah. They’re a fantastic team at Kibin. We’re very lucky to have them and you, overseeing all of this and managing that piece and all the other pieces that you do. The final question, what’s the most challenging part of working with Kelton Reid, host of The Writer Files? Clare Garrett: You’re so tough. Maybe trying to keep up on the coffee consumption. I don’t think I could ever drink as much as what you do. Kelton Reid: Hey. I brew half-caf coffee all day long, and it just keeps me sane and level. I’m sure it’s the only thing actually keeping me alive. If I stop drinking coffee, my heart will stop. Clare Garrett: I’ve not had a coffee yet this year, so you’re way ahead of me. Kelton Reid: I admire your stick-to-it-iveness there. Clare, thank you so much. I really appreciate you hopping on. Cheers. Clare Garrett: Thank you. Bye. Kelton Reid: Thanks so much for joining me on another tour of the writer’s process. If you enjoy The Writer Files podcast, please subscribe to the show and leave us a raving review to help other writers find us. For more episodes or to leave a comment or question, you can drop by WriterFiles.FM. And you can always chat with me on Twitter @KeltonReid. Cheers. Talk to you soon.

The award-winning screenwriter and author of the debut novel All Our Wrong Todays, Elan Mastai, dropped by the show this week to talk about his fiction debut, the science of time travel, and finding inspiration in dark places. The writer and producer has written movies for both indie and Hollywood studios, including scripts for Fox, Sony, Warner Brothers, and Paramount. His most recent film – What If, a comedy starring Daniel Radcliffe, Zoe Kazan, Adam Driver, and Mackenzie Davis – premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2013. Elan won the Canadian Academy Award and the Writers Guild of Canada Award for his script, and the movie played in over 30 countries. His new novel – All Our Wrong Todays – is a sci-fi tinged, time-travel romance and much buzzed about debut that is rumored to have landed the writer a seven-figure book deal worth north of a million dollars. The book has been described as “Dark Matter meets Back to the Future,” and even prior to the book’s publication, the film rights were sold to Paramount Pictures. Andy Weir, bestselling author of The Martian, called it, “A thrilling tale of time travel and alternate timelines with a refreshingly optimistic view of humanity’s future.” If you’re a fan of The Writer Files, please click subscribe to automatically see new interviews. In Part One of this file Elan Mastai and I discuss: His grandfather’s vintage sci-fi collection and how it inspired him How he launched his screenwriting career by translating Pulp Fiction into a kid’s movie Why writers need to know their weaknesses How the busy screenwriter and producer found time to write a novel The hard science of time travel and storytelling Listen to The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience below ... Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes The Show Notes If you’re ready to see for yourself why over 194,000 website owners trust StudioPress — the industry standard for premium WordPress themes and plugins — just go to Rainmaker.FM/StudioPress How Screenwriter and ‘All Our Wrong Todays’ Author Elan Mastai Writes: Part Two All Our Wrong Todays – Elan Mastai ElanMastai.com How Andy Weir (Bestselling Author of ‘The Martian’) Writes: Part One Elan Mastai on IMDb Elan Mastai on Goodreads Elan Mastai on Twitter Kelton Reid on Twitter The Transcript How Screenwriter and All Our Wrong Todays Author Elan Mastai Writes: Part One Voiceover: Rainmaker FM. Kelton Reid: Welcome back to The Writer Files. I’m your host, Kelton Reid, here to take you on another tour of the habits, habitats, and brains of renowned writers. The award-winning screenwriter and author of the debut novel, All Our Wrong Todays, Elan Mastai, dropped by the show this week to talk about his fiction debut, the science of time travel, and finding inspiration in dark places. The writer and producer has written movies for both indie and Hollywood studios including scripts for Fox, Sony, Warner Bros., and Paramount. His most recent film, What If, a comedy starring Daniel Radcliffe, Zoe Kazan, Adam Driver, and Mackenzie Davis, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2013. Elan won the Canadian Academy Award and a Writers Guild of Canada Award for his script, and the movie played in over 30 countries. His new novel, All Our Wrong Todays, is a sci-fi tinged time travel romance and much buzzed about debut. It is rumored to have landed the writer a seven-figure book deal worth north of a million dollars. The book has been described as Dark Matter meets Back to the Future, and even prior to the book’s publication, the film rights were sold to Paramount Pictures. Andy Weir, best selling author of The Martian, called it, “A thrilling tale of time travel and alternate timelines with a refreshingly optimistic view of humanity’s future.” In part one of this file, Elan and I discuss his grandfather’s vintage sci-fi collection and how it inspired him, how he launched his screenwriting career by translating Pulp Fiction into a kid s movie, why writers need to know their weaknesses, how the busy screenwriter and producer found time to write a novel, and the hard science of time travel and storytelling. If you’re a fan of The Writer Files, please click subscribe to automatically see new interviews as soon as they’re published. Just a quick reminder that The Writer Files is brought to you by StudioPress, the industry standard for premium WordPress themes and plugins. Built on the Genesis Framework, StudioPress delivers state of the art SEO tools, beautiful and fully responsive designs, airtight security, instant updates, and much more. If you’re ready to take your WordPress site to the next level, see for yourself why over 194,000 website owners trust StudioPress. Go to Rainmaker.FM/StudioPress now. That’s Rainmaker.FM/StudioPress. We are rolling on The Writer Files today with Elan Mastai, I hope I’m pronouncing that correctly, author extraordinaire, screenwriter, and author of this fantastic new book that we’re going to talk about here shortly. Thanks for joining us. Elan Mastai: Thanks for having me. Kelton Reid: Yeah, so All Our Wrong Todays is this amazing book. I don’t really know how to describe it, so I might let you do that one, but you are an award-winning screenwriter who has a debut novel coming out. It’s getting a ton, a ton of press, a ton of buzz. It’s really exciting to see, because the book itself is kind of jaw-dropping, but yeah, do you want to give us the … Elan Mastai: Sure, yeah. By its very nature, it’s a book … there’s a lot of things going on in the book, and I wanted to write something where the place you and the character are when it starts and where it ends is unexpected, you wouldn’t be believe where we go with it. So that is what I was going for when I was writing it, as a very unexpected, twisted journey. But of course, it does make summing it up a little challenging. But basically, the book opens in the present day in 2016. But it’s the 2016 that people in the 1950s and 60s thought we were going to have, this sort of techno-utopian future of flying cars and robot maids and teleportation, where all of humanity’s problems have basically been solved by technology. Doesn’t mean that everything’s perfect, people still have their own individual problems, romantic problems, family challenges, personal obstacles. But the big picture has been solved. And there’s all this incredible technology, which of course I get into, and my protagonist, Tom, ends up working for his father, who is developing, basically, time travel vacations. And of course, whenever you introduce time travel into the mix, things get complicated. Through basically a time travel accident, Tom finds himself stranded in what appears to him to be a terrible, dystopian alternate reality, but which we recognize immediately as just the real world, our version of 2016, which to him seems like everything has gone horrible awry. And so here … He’s not from the future, he’s from the present, but it’s a very, very different present where the last 50 years of history went off on a totally different trajectory and then trying to find his way back to the world we’re supposed to have, or at least what he always thought we were supposed to have. But of course, as he finds himself increasingly enmeshed in our messy version of 2016, it starts to get complicated, and he starts to question exactly what kind of future he really wants to have. Kelton Reid: Yeah, I mean, it makes one’s head spin a little bit, but once you start reading it, it just sucks you right in, so kudos on the- Elan Mastai: Thank you. Kelton Reid: The buzz … At the time of publishing this, it will be coming out very shortly. Man, if you like … Well, I guess it’s been described as reminiscent of Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker s Guide to the Galaxy. I don’t think that really pays it justice, but it’s also been kind of described as a … Well, you described it as a cross between Vonnegut and Tropper, who I understand is a friend of yours. Elan Mastai: Yeah, actually my agent described it as that. As a first time novelist, I’m a little reluctant to compare myself to Kurt Vonnegut, let alone Jon Tropper. But somebody else described it as … I know you had Blake Crouch on your show- Kelton Reid: Yeah. Elan Mastai: And so we described it as Dark Matter meets Back to the Future, and I thought that was a pretty good description. His Grandfather s Vintage Sci-Fi Collection and How it Inspired Him Kelton Reid: Yes. Oh, that’s perfect. I love it. Okay, cool. So, listeners, writers, readers can find it out there for pre-order. Oh man, it is a lot of fun, it’s just wild. Let’s go back a little bit in time ourselves. Talk a bit about your origins as a writer. I know that you have done screenwriting, and you’ve produced movies yourself, a pretty impressive slate there. Let’s go back a little bit and talk about your origins as a writer. How did you get here? Elan Mastai: Well, I stole a time machine. No. My origins as a writer … I grew up in a house surrounded by books. The very earliest sort of foundation of this book itself … My grandfather, who was a chemist, he had this extensive collection of old science fiction, from the 50s and 60s, and I loved these old books. When I was a kid in the 80s, they were already brittle and the covers were starting to fall apart, so I had to be very careful with them. But I loved staring at these garishly painted covers of these sort of impossible futures, and imagined futures and robot maids and flying cars and adventurers and bosomy space aliens and … But even in the 80s, I knew there was a disconnect, that the future that these writers and artists in the 40s and 50s and 60s had imagined, it didn’t actually come true. I did not get a jetpack for my 12th birthday, and it seemed a terrible injustice. I just found myself really interested in that disconnect. What happened to the future we were supposed to have? It was something that I had thinking about well before I ever decided to turn those questions into a novel. My mom, when I was young, was an actress in the theatre, and so we were around people who were making narrative art, playwrights and directors and actors. I didn’t really know anybody in the movie business, per se, but the theatre community was something that was around me. So that idea that, Oh, the art, entertainment that I enjoy, like, somebody’s making that. That’s like a job you can have. And I just was really compelled by that. But even so, to be honest, when I was growing up, and even when I went away to college, the idea of being a writer, that being your profession, like you could actually make a living doing it, It seemed very far off. It seemed kind of impossible. How do you actually do that? Who’s going to take a chance on you when there’s so many terrific writers out there? Who’s going to give you a shot? How He Launched His Screenwriting Career by Translating Pulp Fiction Into a Kid s Movie Elan Mastai: So I kind of stumbled my way into my first writing job. I was still a student and this woman that I had gone to school with, she had gotten a job as an assistant to a producer. We ran into each other. She knew I was interested in writing and I had made some short films in college, and she had liked them. So she offered to get me an interview with her boss. They had made a kid s movie that had done well, and they were looking to do a sequel really quickly. And she said, “You’re not going to get hired. There’s no way you’re going to get hired. But I can get you a meeting. He’s meeting other writers.” And I was like, “Meeting?” A meeting was so far beyond my actual plans. I didn’t even know how you get a meeting with a producer. So I was like, “Great, I’ll go to the meeting.” When I look back on it, I don’t think she actually explained to her boss that I had never written a movie before. I think he just thought, well, if I’m sitting there, I must know what I’m doing. And so, he basically sat there with his feet up on his desk and told me what he thought the sequel should be about, and because I was told in advance there was no way I was getting hired, I was like, “I don’t know about that idea. I don’t think that’s a good one. I think that there’s some interesting things there, but here’s what I think you should do for your sequel.” And so I basically just pitched him, off the top of my head, what I thought he should do with his sequel. Because I was like, “What do I have to lose?” Kelton Reid: Right. Elan Mastai: He’s inevitably … The best case scenario was he would steal my idea and hire a real writer. But he liked the idea and he thought about it and the next day they’d called me and said, “Would you take what you said in the meeting and write it down, and we’ll pay you to write an outline.” So I had to find out what an outline was. And they liked my outline, so they hired me to write the movie. And at every step of the way, I kept thinking I was going to get fired. At some point, someone’s going to realize I don’t know what I’m doing. I knew so little about screenwriting, I went out … One of my favorite movies of the time was Pulp Fiction. So I went out and bought the published screenplay. Nowadays you can get any screenplay online. But at the time it was actually hard to find a screenplay. But they had published Pulp Fiction. So I figured Tarantino does basically everything in that movie, anything you could do in a movie, he does in that movie. So I figured if I had to figure out what something looked like, I’d would just look it up in Pulp Fiction. So this is a kid s movie, but I followed Tarantino’s model to the point where … You know, Pulp Fiction is 134 pages, so I made my screenplay 134 pages, which, if you know anything about screenplays, is really, really long. Kelton Reid: It is. Elan Mastai: Yeah, a kid s movie should be about 80, 85 pages long. And the producer described it as “War and Peace, with chimps.” But, fortunately, he thought there’s enough of a movie in there that once we sort of cut about half of my ideas out of it, there was something to hone. And so it all happened very quickly. I wrote like three drafts of the script in five weeks, constantly assuming I was going to get fired. And then the movie got green-lit. And I found myself in this position of being on set … I only went to set like once or twi- …. I think I was on set maybe twice. It wasn’t a situation where I was on set doing re-writes. It was very much the classic, I wrote the script, they said, “Thank you very much,” and went off and made the movie. Kelton Reid: Right. Elan Mastai: I did come to set but I found myself in this weird position of … I’m on set. I had named all the characters after my friends, my roommates from college. I’d named locations, the shops after just people in my life. Because, I just assumed someone was going to rewrite all of this. But here I am, on set, with characters named after my friends, delivering dialogue that I wrote, in locations that I had imagined. It was like walking around inside your own dream. And even though writing kid s movies was not my ambition, that feeling of dozens and dozens of people scurrying around building this story that had only existed in my head, but in the real world, it was this magical moment. And I feel like my entire career as a screenwriter was to keep trying to recapture that dazzling feeling of wonder that I’d actually, while awake, walked into my own dream. Kelton Reid: Wow. Elan Mastai: And even though that movie, it’s a silly kid s movie, it did well enough that inspired some sequels. I didn’t write any of them, because writing kid … I mean, I really appreciated the opportunity, but once I’d been through the process, I’d realized writing kid s movies wasn’t my personal … It wasn’t really what I wanted to do. But I’d had a movie made, and Warner Bros. picked it up for international distribution, and that really kickstarted my screenwriting career. So I had this thing where I felt a bit like Chauncey Gardiner, from Being There, or Forrest Gump, except that was like I kind of stumbled into this career, and did this opportunity anyways, and then once I’d had the opportunity, which, I have to admit, looking back, I was still a college student. I didn’t take it that seriously at the time. And then suddenly I was like, “Oh. I could actually do this.” I had no idea how you could even start a writing career, but I somehow stumbled into it. Why Writers Need to Know Their Weaknesses Elan Mastai: Now I have to actually really start taking this seriously. It’s not just a lark. It’s not an exam that you tell everybody you only started studying for the night before to protect yourself if you do badly. Now I could actually do something. The door is open a crack. And the only way to get through it is to just get to be a much better writer. That’s the other thing about … There’s nothing like seeing actors on set and people spending all this money and delivering your dialogue to make you aware in the most cringe-worthy fashion, that your writing sounded a lot better in your head. Kelton Reid: Right. Elan Mastai: Because people are speaking it out loud. And so that experience, in addition to the sort of magical sense of being in this waking dream, it was also the sort of kick in the pants that, yeah, I need to work a lot harder and get to be a much better writer if I’m ever going to write the kinds of movies or the kinds of anything that could compare to the things that made me want to do it in the first place. So then I went through a very intensive period. I was lucky I had a great early opportunity. But I went through a real intensive period of just trying to get better as a writer, trying to close that gap between what I wanted it to feel like in my head and what was actually coming out on the page. I got a couple other movies made and I got better and I just worked really hard. It s just that thing The movie business, I mean really in anything, in the movie business, but in any kind of writing field, you have so little control over how your work is received. But what you can control is the actual writing itself. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Elan Mastai: Each word, one at a time. That’s what you can control, and that became my mantra. Just focus on the writing, figure out what your strengths are, figure out what your weaknesses are, try to make your strengths better, try to make your weaknesses stronger, and just keep plugging away, basically, and not even worry so much about how it’s going to be received, what the reviews are going be like. Just worry about every single day, doing the best writing you can. Kelton Reid: Yeah, wow. That’s a good takeaway. You’ve had so much success, it seems. You’ve written for Fox, Sony, Warner Bros., Paramount. And then you had a film premiere at Toronto International Film Festival, is that right? Elan Mastai: Yeah, that’s right. Kelton Reid: Called What If, Starring Daniel Radcliffe, of Harry Potter fame, Zoe Kazan, Adam Driver, who I love. Mackenzie Davis, also. Fantastic actor. So you wrote and produced this movie … Elan Mastai: Yeah. Kelton Reid: And got to tour around with it, and it was very well received. It’s a lot of fun, it would seem. So you were on the set for that movie. Elan Mastai: Yeah. What I learned through a couple movies … I had a few movies made early on in my career where I really just handed off the script. I didn’t have a lot to do with it. What I realized was that wasn’t fully satisfying to me. I started taking more and more of a role on my projects, and that turned into a producing role. I started being on set for the entire shoot, being involved from the very beginning in budgeting and casting and hiring crew, and on the other side of production in editing and even just the marketing and promotion. I made the decision to team up with people who were looking for a partner. Also, on What If, I was working with a director … I didn’t know Mike Dowse before we started working on it, but we became very close, and we became real creative partners. So I was able to be on set every day, and be at the monitors, and be an integral part of the production process, not just somebody who hands the script off. Producing a movie is not super fun. It makes you want to tear your hair out. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Elan Mastai: But if you can figure out the skill set to produce your own work, it’s the best way to protect your writing. In the case of What If, I didn’t need to protect my writing, insofar as I had a great director, I had an incredible cast who were already very protective of my script. But, making sure … If you’re going to have a place at the table, you actually have to make that decision well before the movie ever starts marching towards production. You have to make it at the earliest stage. You have to say, “I’m going to be a producer on this movie. I’m going to hope I find a terrific director, terrific actors, who really want to partner, who love the script. But, I don’t know that that’s going to happen. So I’m going to install myself as a producer at the earliest stage-” Kelton Reid: Yeah. Elan Mastai: So that I always have the opportunity to protect it, even if I don’t need to. You don’t get an alarm system installed in your house while the break-in is happening. Kelton Reid: Because that’s a great point. Elan Mastai: I’m going to call the police. “Someone is breaking into my house, I need you to send the police here, and if you could send a security, like an alarm installer, that would be terrific.” Kelton Reid: Well, you’ve clearly been influenced by some great romantic comedy directors and producers yourself, that being a romantic comedy, What If, that actually won a Canadian Academy Award. You won a Writer’s Guild Award as well. Elan Mastai: Yeah. How the Busy Screenwriter and Producer Found Time to Write a Novel Kelton Reid: So you found success there, but then how did you make the jump? Were you working on the novel that whole time, or did you decide to take a break to work on the novel? Elan Mastai: No, actually. I started the novel actually during the press tour for What If. I was on a press tour. I had never been on a press tour before. None of the movies I’d ever written had invited me along to be a part of this multi-city promotional process that happened when the movie comes out. But on What If, I was invited along. Being on a press tour is weird, especially if you’re not used to it. Someone like Daniel Radcliffe has been doing it since he was a kid, and he knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s got it all on lockdown. When you watch him handle interviews, it’s like you re watching a competitive swimmer. Kelton Reid: Right. Elan Mastai: But, I wasn’t like that. It was a weird process. I also found that I didn’t have any time to write. You’re scheduled in almost 15 or 30 minute blocks, someone’s always telling you where to go, who to talk to, where to sit. And I like to write every single day. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Elan Mastai: One might even say I need to write every single day, if one was perhaps a psychologist. So I found that I had very little time to write, but at the same time I also had intentionally not taken on any screenwriting projects, because I knew the promotion was going to take up a lot of time, and I didn’t want to get behind on deadlines, or have promised something to somebody that I couldn’t deliver, so I took a little break. I think it was just my mind … I was travelling a lot, I was in new cities, I was meeting all kinds of people. And I just started thinking about this story. And the more I started thinking about it, the more I got excited about it. But I also realized that there was a way I wanted to tell this story, and it wasn’t a movie. It could be a movie down the line, and I think it will be a great movie. I sold the rights for the movie to Paramount and I m working on that right now. But, I realized that I wanted to tell the story as a novel, particularly as a first person kind of faux-memoir that I wanted to not just be a story that I was telling, but a story that the protagonist was telling about this thing that happened to him. So while I was on the press tour, it was this sort of weird fugue state where it wasn’t like my real life. My real life does not involve dinners and screenings and interviews and staying in hotels. That’s not my regular life. This is the sort of alternate reality that I’d been thrust in. So whenever I’d have a little break, I started the process of thinking about … And started writing this novel, in little spurts. In fact, if you read the novel, the chapters are very short, and I really embraced that, those short chapters. But the actual original reason the chapters are so short is that I only usually had 15 or 20 minutes of time to write. So each chapter was just how much time I had to write that day. So I started just trying to do it every single day. If I could just take 15, 20 minutes, if I could just write 250 or 500 words a day, then I would feel that I got something done and that I was just challenging myself, pushing myself, trying something new, while I was in this weird state that was outside my regular daily writing routine. And I started to like the idea of the short chapters, aesthetically, I started to really enjoy it. And I started to like what I was writing. So the press tour ended and I didn’t want to stop. Like a lot of people, I had a day job. I’m like a lot of people; my day job is writing movies. I’m a working screenwriter. I have contracts, I have deadlines, I have things I have to deliver to people. So I just started writing the novel basically evenings and weekends. Every day I would carve out half an hour, 45 minutes. I set myself a word count of 250 to 500 words, not a lot, very small, manageable, but I did it every single day. So just on the side, I started writing this book. You do it every single day. After five months, you start to actually have … I had a rough draft of this novel. It needed a lot of work, it needed a lot of massaging and polishing. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Elan Mastai: I cut tons, I added new stuff, I moved stuff around. But, by doing it a tiny little bit every single day, while I was doing my day job, which is writing movies, I actually was able to complete a very rough but finished first draft. Kelton Reid: Wow, wow. Well, it’s an incredibly impressive debut. I love how people talk about the overnight success, and obviously you’ve been working in film and narrative storytelling itself for quite a while, so it wasn’t a surprise that you put together this fantastic story. Elan Mastai: That’s nice of you to say. I didn’t think that when I was starting it. I was like, “I’m a screenwriter, why am I spending all this time writing a novel.” I didn’t have a publishing deal, I didn’t have a literary agent. I didn’t know if anyone was going to want to publish it. So I appreciate you saying that. The finished book that people are saying such nice things about is the result, of course, of a lot of rewriting, of a lot of polishing, a lot of hard work to get it to the place where it was ready to be unleashed on the world. In the beginning, there was very much of like, “I don’t know why I’m doing this other than that I have a story to tell and I feel compelled to tell it.” The Hard Science of Time Travel and Storytelling Kelton Reid: Yeah, yeah. Well, it is really fun. I will point back to your website, I think, Elanmastai.com, where you can pre-order the book and/or order it if you’re listening to this after it’s been published on all these fantastic platforms. It seems like a lot of research went into some of these things. Now, I haven’t asked Andy Weir what he thinks about the science behind it, but I would be curious. But he did plug it. He loved it. He said it was a “thrilling tale of time travel, alternate timelines, with a refreshingly optimistic view of humanity’s future.” He was also a guest on this show, which I will point to in the show notes for listeners also. But, tell me about the science. Were you just having lot of fun? It seems like you were just having so much fun writing this. But were you also consulting, like, Wikipedia from time to time on the time travel stuff? Elan Mastai: Not necessarily Wikipedia- Kelton Reid: Yeah. Elan Mastai: But, yeah. My grandfather, who was the one who really introduced me to science fiction when I was a kid was a chemist; he was a scientist by trade, and he loved science fiction. But he often would complain that these sci-fi books are terrific, but they get the science all wrong. They don’t even try. And in fact, the science is very interesting and if they would just … He was always going on about it. If they would just take a little bit of time to figure out the science, they would actually find their story would be more interesting. Because it would be grounded in reality. I guess that’s always been in the back of my mind. So when I started writing I would definitely just write where my imagination took me, and I would just run with it. But then I made the decision, I’m going to figure out how as much of this stuff as possible would actually work. So whether that’s what traffic patterns might be like in a world with flying cars, or how exactly radiation works. Most specifically, creating a model of time travel that takes into consideration that the planet moves. And not just that the earth is constantly moving, but that it’s moving very, very quickly. At its equator, the earth rotates on its axis at a 1000 miles an hour. Every second of the day, the earth is rotating around the sun at about 67,000 miles per hour. So that’s very, very fast, and that’s not even taking into consideration how fast the sun is moving through the galaxy. I’d never really seen a time-tr- … I love time travel stories; I read lot of them. I had never personally found one that actually acknowledged that the earth is constantly moving. And if you’re going to throw somebody back in time, you’re actually also throwing them back in space, and not just a short distance; thousands, tens of thousands, millions, even billions of miles, literally, back in space to land very precisely on the spinning outer crust on our planet, and not embedded inside the planet, not so far high up in the atmosphere that you fall to your death, not in an ocean, not in an object, not out in the empty vacuum of space, but actually right on the planet in the exact spot. And I thought, “Well, this is very complicated. It involves math. I’m not a mathematician or a physicist, but if I’m going to ask my reader to read this, I’m going to figure it out. I want to see if I can come up with a model of time travel that actually takes into consideration orbital mechanics and astrodynamics.” And by doing that, I opened up all these other really cool areas of storytelling that I wouldn’t have actually found in the writing process had I not started that process of actually trying to work out the orbital mechanics. Kelton Reid: Thanks so much for joining me for this half of a tour through the writer’s process. If you enjoy The Writer Files podcast, please subscribe to the show and leave us a rating or a review on iTunes to help other writers find us. For more episodes or to just leave a comment or a question, you can drop by WriterFiles.FM and you can always chat with me on Twitter @KeltonReid. Cheers. Talk to you next week.