The Writing Course I've Always Wanted to Hear

Hi there,

In my early years as a writer, I read author interviews obsessively.

It was a critical part of my education, and it taught me a lot.

Perhaps most centrally, it taught me the variability of the craft—how no two writers do things precisely the same way—and that this is as it should be.

While there are, of course, certain fundamentals to which all good writers adhere, ultimately it comes down to finding one’s own way and developing one’s own approach to the work.

I also used to do a lot of listening to interviews. I would listen to an author in dialogue with, say, Terry Gross, at night as I was drifting off to sleep. My love of these conversations is part of what led me to create the Otherppl podcast in 2011.

In the years since, I’ve interviewed hundreds of acclaimed writers, not one of whom has achieved success in publishing via formulaic approaches to fiction (with the possible exception of Ottessa Moshfegh, who famously wrote her novel Eileen after reading a craft book about how to write a novel in 30 days. We talked about this in Episode 532.)

But this, of course, is an outlier—very much the exception and not the rule.

It’s not that formulaic craft books can’t be helpful, or that self-styled ‘writing gurus’ can’t deliver useful advice. They can!

But the reality is that there are no quick fixes or magical shortcuts in this pursuit.

There isn’t a writer I know who writes and publishes consistently whose success is built on the foundation of a formulaic approach.

Every good writer I’ve met has done the painstaking work of reading and writing and trying and failing and then failing better before eventually finding success.

Becoming a novelist isn’t a linear path. It’s deeply personal and circuitous, and it requires lots of hard work and discipline.

With DeepDive, my aim is to create long-form audio courses that reflect the depth and complexity and variability of big, challenging pursuits.

Our debut course, How to Write a Novel, is a dialogue-driven, polyphonic course that will enable students to benefit from the expertise of dozens of acclaimed writers—people who have done the work and traveled the hard road from aspirant to published author.

How to Write a Novel offers no simplistic formulas or magical quick fixes. But it will allow students to learn at speed and to build their own individual approaches to the work by offering access to the minds and perspectives and practices of authors who have achieved and sustained real success in publishing.

It’s a course that will accompany you over the long haul, offering insight and inspiration and consolation as you work your way through a draft.

It’s precisely the kind of writing course that I’ve always wanted to hear, and I can’t wait to share it with you later this year.

Know that post-production is rolling along and I’m hoping that How to Write a Novel will be ready to launch in July. (And if not July, then the aim is September.)

I’ll continue to keep you posted in this newsletter as things develop. And as always, if you have thoughts or questions, please do email us here.

Thanks so much for reading—and remember to follow DeepDive on Instagram and BlueSky.

All the best,
Brad

Brad Listi
Founder | DeepDive
www.deepdive.audio

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