Podcast Roundup: The Drunken Odyssey &Writing Craft
There are tons of blogs, podcasts, articles, YouTube tutorials, (you name it) in this high-tech age regarding the writing world and its craft. If I’ve learned anything in the past 7 years of intense academic study, it’s that writing is so multifaceted and incorporates so many different skills. Writers love to pass on their knowledge of how to write once they figure it out themselves, but for the most part it’s a lot of fumbling and trial and error, and a lot of wasted paper in that wastebasket or words deleted off your document/word processor.
With a virtual world teeming with advice and tips for young writers, it’s often hard to discover the truly useful and helpful stuff out there. I’ve discovered one podcast that seems to top them all about writing craft, called The Drunken Odyssey (fitting in that resemblance of us writers as fumbling, drunken fools slapping words onto the page and calling it art).
The Drunken Odyssey includes readings from up-and-coming authors as well as interviews, advice articles and tips from seasoned authors where they discuss the art of crafting their stories and making those drunken words sound fabulous.
One of the coolest things the Drunken Odyssey introduces for writers is what they call the “Lit Lando” conference which features a “day-long literary equivalent of an MFA for the frugal and possibly deranged.” 2017 is the second year they’ve held the conference and it’s a neat concept – offering panels by experienced writers discussing everything from getting published in literary journals (something us young & old writers strive for especially hard nowadays in the digital world), to performing your work (something all writers dread).
You may think I’d be slightly bitter to see the culmination of my hard-earned MFA and two long years of plotting out a novel (moderately drunken), be wrapped up into a single day of advice and knowledge, but after joining the masses at my first-ever AWP this year, I know how inspiring and energy-boosting it can be for writers to be surrounded by an atmosphere of all-things writing, reading, and publishing. It’s empowering.
For those of you who don’t spend thousands of dollars on fancy degrees or $15 on an MFA crash course, the Drunken Odyssey offers plenty of other useful tools and fun, exciting discussions regarding the lovely craft of writing. Who ever thought it could be so hard to play around with tiny black letters, drunken or otherwise inebriated.
