London Writers' Salon

Bestselling and award-winning writers Seth Godin (The Practice), Amie McNee (We Need Your Art), Mason Currey (Daily Rituals) and Bec Evans & Chris Smith (Written) on choosing yourself before anyone else does, protecting the hour you actually have, and why the writing rules you were handed were the rules that worked for someone else.

 

You’ll learn

Why "grow a thicker skin" is the wrong advice for a writer facing rejection.

What shifts when you notice the harshest rejection you face each day is your own.

The case for lowering your standards if your ambitions are big.

How an hour that doesn’t look like writing can still be an hour of writing.

What the word discipline shares with the word disciple, and why it changes how a project turns out.

A quiet argument for half an hour a day over the perfect routine you can’t sustain.

Three questions worth asking at the end of every writing session.

Why the writing rule that failed you was probably never yours to begin with.

When a good outcome hides a bad decision, and what that means for your practice.

The difference between talent and skill, and why only one of them applies to writing.

Episode Links

#150: Seth Godin — Obscurity Is the Enemy, Here’s How to Stop Seeking Validation, Find Your Audience and Build a Creative Practice

#158: Amie McNee — Creating Without Permission, Overcoming Self-Doubt, Facing Rejection, Building a Life on Your Own Terms, Embracing Social Media as an Artform

#177: Mason Currey — Daily Routines and How Artists Work, Focus Time and Protecting Your Best Hours

#046: Bec Evans & Chris Smith — Overcome Creative Blocks, Get It Written

About the Guests

Seth Godin is the author of twenty-plus international bestsellers that have changed the way people think about work and have been translated into 39 languages – among them Unleashing the Ideavirus, Permission Marketing, Purple Cow, Tribes, The Dip, Linchpin, Poke the Box, and All Marketers Are Liars. He writes the most popular marketing blog in the world and speaks to audiences worldwide. He is the founder of the altMBA, the founder and former CEO of Squidoo.com, the former VP of Direct Marketing at Yahoo!, and the founder of the pioneering online startup Yoyodyne.

Amie McNee is a trained historian turned creativity coach, writer, and speaker best known for her popular Instagram account, @InspiredtoWrite, and The Unpublished Podcast. She’s self-published two historical fiction novels: The Rules Upheld by No One and Regrettably, I Am About to Cause Trouble. Her book We Need Your Art: Stop F*cking Around and Make Something is a manifesto on the vital, human importance of creating. Her most recent novel, To Kill a Queen, a queer historical mystery set in Elizabethan London, was published in 2025.

Mason Currey is a writer and editor living in Los Angeles and the author of the Daily Rituals books. In addition to compiling the Daily Rituals books, Currey was a design-magazine editor for ten years, working as the managing editor of Metropolis, the executive editor of Print, a senior editor at Core77, and the programming chair for the 2015 Core77 Conference. His freelance writing has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, and Slate, and he has delivered talks on the creative process to high school and college students, writers’ groups, and the partners of the design consultancy IDEO. He sends out a fortnightly newsletter on routines, rituals, and wriggling through a creative life. His latest book, Making Art and Making a Living: Adventures in Funding a Creative Life, was published by Celadon Books in 2026.

Bec Evans and Chris Smith are the co-founders of Prolifiko, a coaching business that helps people build productive writing habits. They met while working together in a bookshop more than 20 years ago and have spent a lifetime writing and working with other writers. Prior to Prolifiko, Bec worked in publishing, led teams of writers and managed a writing centre for Arvon. She’s also the award-winning author of How to Have a Happy Hustle. Chris has a background as a ghostwriter and content consultant to global business brands, charities and the public sector. He worked as an agency director before setting up his own communications consultancy and has written for national newspapers and magazines. He is also an award-winning comedy scriptwriter. The authors live in Yorkshire with their dog, Peggy. Their book Written: How to Keep Writing and Build a Habit That Lasts was published by Icon Books.

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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Irish writer Doireann Ní Ghríofa on turning archival fragments into living narrative, writing across the borders of genre, and giving voice to the forgotten lives of women committed to a Victorian asylum.

You’ll learn

Why the greatest gatekeeper between a writer and the page is often the writer themselves.

How a single word buried in clinical notes can become a bridge to a silenced voice.

What poetry can teach prose writers about immediacy and the shock of a strong opening.

The case for pointing at the gaps in the record rather than papering over them.

When a fleeting curiosity is worth following, and what happens once you treat it as real.

How third person can give a writer just enough distance to keep going.

A sense of fidelity to the reader you imagine standing at your shoulder.

How the drowsy space between sleep and waking can become an engine for ideas.

The ethics of using real names, and the difference between the dead and the long dead.

How the act of leaving things out turns even “fact” into a story.

Resources & Links

Said the Dead by Doireann Ní Ghríofa

A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa

About Doireann Ní Ghríofa

Doireann Ní Ghríofa is an Irish writer devoted to exploring how the past makes itself felt within the present. 'A Ghost in the Throat' finds an 18th century poet haunting a young mother, leading her through visions of blood, milk, lust, and murder. Written on the roof of a multi-storey car park in Ireland, it went on to be described as "powerful" (New York Times), "captivatingly original" (The Observer), and a "masterpiece" (Sunday Business Post). 'A Ghost in the Throat' won the James Tait Black Prize and was voted overall Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards, while the US edition was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. It was translated into 20 further languages worldwide.

Doireann is also the author of seven critically-acclaimed books of poetry, each a deepening exploration of birth, death, desire, and domesticity. Awards for her writing include a Lannan Literary Fellowship (USA), the Ostana Prize (Italy), a Seamus Heaney Fellowship, and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, among others.

Her new book, Said the Dead, distils hundreds of hours of archival research into a polyphonic portrayal of a single institution — a derelict Victorian asylum in Cork, and the women once committed within its walls.

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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Debut novelist Tara Menon on writing friendship as a life-shaping bond, the emotional architecture of grief, and researching the natural world for her novel Under Water.

You’ll learn

Why a platonic friendship can shape a life as profoundly as any romance

How to build tension in a story when the reader already knows what’s coming.

What an unexpected sea creature reveals about writing the bonds between women.

The difference between endless research and knowing just enough to write the scene.

Why fiction demands a kind of surrender that criticism never asks for.

How grief for a lost friend and grief for a vanishing natural world can become one story.

When self-doubt is evidence you’re taking the work seriously.

Why cutting a novel down to its essentials can matter more than what you leave in.

A writing rhythm that looks nothing like “500 words every morning” (and works anyway).

What finally makes the writing worth it, long before publication does.

Resources & Links

📄 Interview Transcript

Under Water

Jane Austen collection

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Middlemarch by George Eliot

In Memoriam by Lord Tennyson

I Can’t Let Kobe Go by Tara Menon

The Fall (2013)

Tara’s Website

About Tara Menon

Tara Menon is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Harvard University. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Nation, Paris Review and Public Books, where she co-edits the Literary Fiction section. Tara was born in India, grew up in Singapore, spent a decade in New York, and currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her debut, Under Water, is out now.

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
Facebook: facebook.com/LondonWritersSalon
If you’re enjoying this show, please rate and review this show!

Bestselling fantasy authors Holly Black and Samantha Shannon on building believable magic systems, researching and constructing immersive worlds, and why the right book often only emerges once you’ve written the wrong one.

 

You’ll learn

Why the most convincing magic on the page often starts with something you once half-believed was real.

How writing the wrong version of a book can be the only route to the right one.

What the texture of a world quietly promises a reader before the plot even begins.

Why putting a character through the worst is often the best thing you can do for a story.

When the certainty that your draft is a disaster is just a normal part of the process.

What early hype can do to a writer, and why other writers are the antidote.

Where to draw the line between research that serves the book and a rabbit hole that doesn’t.

A method for plotting a long series when you know the destination but not the route.

What happens when a character starts refusing what you try to make it do.

Episode Links

Holly Black — original LWS episode: https://londonwriterssalon.simplecast.com/episodes/127-holly-black-crafting-bestselling-fantasy-world-building-character-development-and-the-prisoners-throne

Samantha Shannon — original LWS episode: https://londonwriterssalon.simplecast.com/episodes/068-samantha-shannon-the-art-of-writing-fantasy-fiction-plotting-mental-health

About the Guests

Holly Black is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of fantasy books, including the Novels of Elfhame, The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, the Spiderwick Chronicles, her adult debut, Book of Night, as well as an Arthurian picture book called Sir Morien. She has been a finalist for an Eisner Award and the Lodestar Award, and the recipient of the Mythopoeic Award, a Nebula, and a Newbery Honor. Her books have been translated into 32 languages worldwide and adapted for film. She currently lives in New England with her husband and son in a house with a secret library. She invites you to visit her online at blackholly.com or follow her @Hollyblack @blackholly.

Samantha Shannon is a New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling author of The Bone Season and The Priory of the Orange Tree. Born in West London, she studied English Language and Literature at St Anne’s College, Oxford, from 2010 to 2013, specialising in the poetry of Emily Dickinson and Principles of Film Criticism.

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
Facebook: facebook.com/LondonWritersSalon
If you’re enjoying this show, please rate and review this show!

Award-winning novelist and founder of The Novelry Louise Dean on what separates storytelling from beautiful prose, planning a novel without killing the joy, and how to edit your own first draft.

You'll learn

Why learning to craft perfect sentences can quietly delay your path to publication.

How a single shift from style to storytelling turns a promising writer into a published one.

What treating each chapter like a short story does to the terror of a blank novel.

The reason every novel is a moral journey (and why you have to throw rocks at your hero).

A one-page planning method that steers a draft without smothering the joy of writing it.

The one question every writer should be able to answer about their reader.

Why your main character should never be a thinly veiled version of yourself.

When you can’t afford an editor, how to run a developmental edit on your own work.

What to do in the month after finishing a first draft

A five-part structure built for the long moral journey of a novel, and why three acts fall short.

Resources & Links

📄 Interview Transcript

The Great Gatsby

The Novelry

The Novelry Blog

Louise’s books

The Novelry Contact — hello@thenovelry.com

About Louise Dean

Louise Dean is a British author, born in Hastings, who read History at Cambridge University. An award-winning novelist, she is the winner of the Betty Trask Prize and Le Prince Maurice Prize, and was longlisted for the Booker Prize. Her novels have been published internationally. The Wall Street Journal described Louise Dean as one of the world’s top five most under-rated authors. Louise is the founder of the creative writing school The Novelry.

About The Novelry

Founded by award-winning author Louise Dean, The Novelry is the only writing school where bestselling authors and Big Five editors guide you every step of the way.

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
Twitter: twitter.com/​​WritersSalon
Instagram: instagram.com/londonwriterssalon
Facebook: facebook.com/LondonWritersSalon
If you’re enjoying this show, please rate and review this show!