London Writers' Salon

Bestselling novelist Holly Ringland on writing from joy instead of fear, the toolkit she built to meet the inner critic with self-compassion, and finding the first true sentence of her debut after decades of silence.

 

We discuss

Why the pain of not writing eventually outweighs the pain of writing.

What grief and loss can crack open in a writer that nothing else can.

How the first true line of a novel can arrive once you stop listening to the reasons you can't write it.

A bullet-point approach to plotting that protects the nervous system from the blank page.

What to ask for from early readers, and what to refuse.

The distinction between self-doubt and the inner critic, and why it matters.

Meeting the inner critic with an equal and opposite internalised force.

Breaking procrastination by making the next step impossibly small.

Fiction as the lie that tells the truth truest.

 

Resources & Links

📄Interview Transcript

The House That Joy Built

The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron

Zeitgeist Agency

Dangerous Writing

Holly’s Substack

About Holly Ringland

Holly Ringland is a writer, storyteller and TV presenter. She is the author of the international bestseller The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, which has been translated into thirty languages and adapted into a seven-part TV series starring Sigourney Weaver, produced by Amazon Prime and Made Up Stories. In 2019, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart won the Australian Book Industry Award General Fiction Book of the Year. In 2021, Holly co-hosted an eight-episode ABC TV series, Back to Nature, with Aaron Pedersen. After living between Australia and the UK for ten years, Holly has been based in the Yugambeh region of southeast Queensland since 2020, where she wrote her second novel, The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding, in her 'office', a vintage caravan named Frenchie. Upon publication, The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding became an instant national bestseller, and it was named Booktopia's 2022 Book of the Year. Holly writes a bestselling Substack on the intersection of creativity and connection, The Joy Rise. Her latest book is The House That Joy Built.

For show notes, transcripts and to attend our live podcasts visit: podcast.londonwriterssalon.com.
For free writing sessions, join free Writers’ Hours: writershour.com.
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Attention researcher Dr Gloria Mark (Attention Span), bestselling author Oliver Burkeman (Meditations for Mortals) and book strategist Charlie Hoehn (Play It Away) on designing your day around peak focus, embracing imperfection in creative work and bringing play back to the page.

You'll learn

The four states of attention every writer should know.

Two daily peak focus windows, and a simple method to find your own.

The reframe that gives writers permission — most writing isn't flow.

How the success of one bestselling book can paralyse the next.

A quantity-over-quality method that satisfies the inner perfectionist.

Why free writing isn't a warm-up but the engine of the next draft.

A counterintuitive trick for handling interruptions when you're trying to write.

What play deprivation quietly does to creative output.

A small experiment with play that resets your relationship to work.

Why fighting your own nature as a writer is a losing game.

 

Resources & Links

Dr Gloria Mark

Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity by Dr Gloria Mark

Chronotype (Sleep Foundation)

Morningness Eveningness Questionnaire

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Yohaku no bi: The Beauty of Empty Space

Gloria's website

Gloria's newsletter

Oliver Burkeman

Meditations for Mortals

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

The Imperfectionist (newsletter)

Deep Freewriting by Stephen Lloyd Webber

ILYS software

Charlie Hoehn

Play It Away

The Power of Play | Charlie Hoehn | TEDxSantoDomingo

Charlie's website

Author Alliance

Original Episode Links

Dr Gloria Mark's original episode

Oliver Burkeman's original episode 

Charlie Hoehn's original episode

 

About the Guests

Gloria Mark is Chancellor's Professor of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine. She received her PhD from Columbia University in psychology and studies the impact of digital media on people's lives. She has published over 200 articles, and in 2017 was inducted into the ACM SIGCHI Academy, which recognises leaders in the field of human-computer interaction. She has presented her work at SXSW and the Aspen Ideas Festival, and her research has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NPR, CNN, The Guardian, the Dax Shepard show, the Dave Asprey show and many others. She is the author of Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity.

Oliver Burkeman worked for many years at The Guardian, where he wrote a popular weekly column on psychology, 'This Column Will Change Your Life.' His books include the New York Times bestseller Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals and The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking. His latest book is Meditations for Mortals.

Charlie Hoehn is a three-time New York Times bestselling editor, five-time author, and the founder of Author Alliance. For three years, Charlie was Tim Ferriss' Director of Special Projects and first full-time hire. Together, they launched The 4-Hour Body to #1 New York Times, #1 Barnes & Noble, and #1 Amazon overall. Previously, he was Head of Multimedia for Scribe Media, where he produced over 500 videos and 300 podcast episodes. He is a keynote speaker who has presented to groups at Microsoft, PepsiCo, the Pentagon, U.S. Military, Stanford, TEDx and HEC Paris. His ideas on work-play integration have been featured on NPR's TED Radio Hour, Fast Company, Forbes, Financial Times, Huberman Lab, Chase Jarvis Live, TEDx, and many others.

For show notes, transcripts and to attend our live podcasts visit: podcast.londonwriterssalon.com.
For free writing sessions, join free Writers’ Hours: writershour.com.
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If you’re enjoying this show, please rate and review this show!

Debut novelist Rebecca Fallon on ambition, motherhood, crafting dual timelines, and writing a novel built around the person who isn't there.

We discuss

Why quitting a stable job to write a novel can be framed as a calculated bet rather than a leap of faith.

How to prototype the writer's life before fully committing to it.

What genre fiction can teach a literary novelist about plotting and structure.

How a single late-stage scene revealed who the actual protagonist of the book had been all along.

The unsexy spreadsheet work behind a novel that moves between timelines.

A method for getting inside a child's consciousness on the page.

Why each character has to serve a distinct function—and what happens to the ones that don't.

How music, photographs, and even PowerPoint can become tools for holding a character's voice.

The difference between flow-state writing and the surgical work that comes after.

What changes when you stop drafting airy scenes and start asking what each scene needs to earn its place.

About Rebecca Fallon

Rebecca Fallon is a New England-born Londoner and a graduate of Williams College and the University of Oxford. Family Drama is her debut novel.

For show notes, transcripts and to attend our live podcasts visit: podcast.londonwriterssalon.com.
For free writing sessions, join free Writers’ Hours: writershour.com.
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FOLLOW LONDON WRITERS’ SALON
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Instagram: instagram.com/londonwriterssalon
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If you’re enjoying this show, please rate and review this show!

Bestselling author Steven Pressfield on what it means to have a creative calling, battling resistance, the role of faith in writing, and his memoir Govt Cheese. A remastered version of episode #058.

You'll learn:

Why a typewriter sat untouched in the back of a van for seven years before becoming a career.

How self-sabotage shows up at the finish line, not just at the start.

A rule of thumb for telling resistance apart from legitimate doubt.

Why the more important a project is, the more terrifying it should feel.

When you can finally write about pain, and why distance matters more than rawness.

How an idea for a book might arrive as a single sentence and refuse to leave.

A one-page method for outlining a novel, and why one page is enough.

What John Keats's concept of negative capability can teach a writer in the dark middle of a draft.

The metaphor that reframes writers as delivery drivers rather than creators.

Why faith in the muse matters most when the writing feels too good to be your own.

Resources & Links

📄 Transcript (unedited)

Govt Cheese

The War of Art

Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants to Be

Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t

"This Might Not Work" – Seth Godin

The Writer's Journey by Christopher Vogler

Steve's 'passage through the wilderness' series on Instagram

The Creative Act by Rick Rubin

The Foolscap Method Instagram videos

John Keats's concept of 'Negative Capability'

Joanna Penn

About Steven Pressfield

Steven Pressfield (@SPressfield) is the author of The War of Art, which has sold over a million copies globally and been translated into multiple languages. He is a master of historical fiction, with Gates of Fire being on the required reading list at West Point and the recommended reading list of the Joint Chiefs. His other books include A Man at Arms, Turning Pro, Do the Work, The Artist's Journey, Tides of War, The Legend of Bagger Vance, Last of the Amazons, Virtues of War, The Afghan Campaign, Killing Rommel, The Profession, The Lion's Gate, The Warrior Ethos, The Authentic Swing, An American Jew, Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t, The Knowledge, and his memoir Govt Cheese.

Sponsor:

This episode is brought to you by our friends at Lulu. If you're interested in self-publishing, Lulu has the technology you need to turn your idea into a professionally published book. Our community anthologies are published using Lulu and we’ve used their direct ecommerce integration and on demand publishing to send the anthology all over the world. The editorial team has found it really intuitive to use. For more information head to lulu.com.

For show notes, transcripts and to attend our live podcasts visit: podcast.londonwriterssalon.com.
For free writing sessions, join free Writers’ Hours: writershour.com.
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FOLLOW LONDON WRITERS’ SALON
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If you’re enjoying this show, please rate and review this show!

Debut novelist Debra Curtis on teaching herself to write by copying poems by hand as a dyslexic child, using contemporary novels as craft manuals to learn structure, meeting the Dalai Lama, the importance of radical forgiveness & publishing her first novel in her sixties after years of rejection. 

You'll learn:

Why copying poems by hand into a composition notebook secretly teaches a dyslexic child to write.

The hospital-bed moment with her dying father that became a three-decade family motto.

A vision at a marina, a prescription bottle, and the woman who became her protagonist.

What hundreds of rejections actually teach you about persistence.

Using contemporary novels as instructional guides while drafting your own.

How a psychic’s prophecy and a chance encounter in Paris both pointed toward the same agent.

Finding your future agent’s name in the acknowledgments of a book you’ve never read.

The big editorial note that hurts to hear, and why listening anyway is still the right call.

Radical forgiveness as the emotional heart of a novel.

The writing ritual built around a sleep mask, noise-cancelling headphones, and a sound machine.

Resources & Links:

📄 Interview Transcript

The Freeing of The Dust by Denise Levertov

Laws of Love and Logic by Debra Curtis

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

Publisher’s Marketplace

Debra’s Instagram

Debra’s TikTok

About Debra Curtis:

Debra Curtis is a retired professor of cultural anthropology at Salve Regina University, where she specialised in gender and sexuality. This is her first novel. She is the mother of grown-up twin girls and lives in Rhode Island with her husband and her English bulldog, Harry, who is the star of much of her TikTok content. TikTok: @EnglishHarry; FB: @DebCurtis; Instagram: @Deb.curtis.906.

Sponsor:

This episode is brought to you by our friends at Lulu. If you're interested in self-publishing, Lulu has the technology you need to turn your idea into a professionally published book. Our community anthologies are published using Lulu and we’ve used their direct ecommerce integration and on demand publishing to send the anthology all over the world. The editorial team has found it really intuitive to use. For more information head to lulu.com.

For show notes, transcripts and to attend our live podcasts visit: podcast.londonwriterssalon.com.
For free writing sessions, join free Writers’ Hours: writershour.com.
*
FOLLOW LONDON WRITERS’ SALON
Twitter: twitter.com/​​WritersSalon
Instagram: instagram.com/londonwriterssalon
Facebook: facebook.com/LondonWritersSalon
If you’re enjoying this show, please rate and review this show!