14 Years of Videos About the Creative Process
This post was original published on Writer Unboxed.
Exactly 14 years ago, I posted my first video online*. I did it out of cowardice. I was getting my Masters at Antioch University and I needed to lead a 50-minute lecture. I was so terrified of public speaking that I recorded a 20-minute PowerPoint presentation to kill some time during the lecture. The video was about my obsessive short story submission process, navigating the slush piles (which were mostly physical piles of papers back then). While recording it, I was so worried it would be boring that I told a few jokes about my insecurities, through my recorded words and through visual gimmicks on the screen. The presentation went well, people liked the insights, laughed at the jokes, and I even had fun with the Q&A afterward. I graduated, but more importantly, I learned that I loved making these silly videos.
I've been making videos ever since. Always experimenting with different low-budget low-skill ways of adding humor to these videos. I've taken some detours to talk about health issues, chronic pain, gaming, and other weird things, but mostly I've circled around the creative process.
Anyway, to celebrate these 14 years, I thought I'd share with you 14 15 of my favorite videos about writing. Feel free to join me on this awkward ride and pick a few videos to watch. (Please don’t watch them ALL unless you have A LOT of time on your hands!) I've broken them into a few categories:
The Creative Mindset (5 videos)
The Writing Process (4 videos)
Writing Tools (2 videos)
Book Releases (2 videos)
The Hero’s Journey (1 video)
The End / The Beginning (1 video)
The Creative Mindset
Lately I've focused on the creative mindset a little bit more than the specifics of the process. Though after scanning my videos, I see that I've been fascinated by the mindset for many years. Here are four examples across the years.
1. Most People Don't Give a Shit About Your Thing • June 29, 2022 • 5 minutes
2. Taking Risks • January 21, 2014 • 6 minutes
3. Bathing in the I-Don't-Know-ness • December 13, 2020 • 6 minutes
4. To Hell With Your Productivity Tips • October 20, 2022 • 5 minutes
5. I’m a Failure… And I Love It! • Apr 11, 2023 • 4.5 minutes
The Writing Process
From the start, I was always trying to nail down a realistic process to help me get my writing done. Here are four approaches I took to discussing the process.
6. Writing a Novel When You're Too Busy to Write a Novel • February 1, 2020 • 5 minutes
7. Non-Crappy Writing Groups • January 23, 2012 • 5 minutes
8. Writing Through Pain • June 26, 2018 • 4 minutes
9. Fresh Ways to Look at Your Crappy Writing • November 24, 2011 • 5 minutes
Writing Tools
Although I've spent a lot less time focusing on writing tools recently, I'm still a little bit obsessed with the best way to use my digital tools effectively. Also, I ❤️️ Scrivener.
10. Why Scrivener? • September 18, 2015 • 7 minutes
11. How I Use Tech to Write • February 13, 2019 • 3.5 minutes
Book Releases
I published two novels in my time of making YouTube videos. Here are two ways that I used videos alongside these releases. The first video reveals what my book events looked like. The second video actually started as a FAKE book trailer for a novel that I had given up on. But the next month, I heard from a publisher that was interested in the book, and I basically reused the same trailer for the real book! 😜
12. Book Launch Video for I Only Cry with Emoticons • September 25, 2022 • 17 minutes
13. Book Trailer for A Brilliant Novel in the Works • September 10, 2012 • 1 minute
The Hero's Journey
I've always been fascinated with the hero's journey, and how this structure can help (or not help) understand the effectiveness of a story. In this LOONNNG video, I use that lens to analyse a popular video game. (Don't worry, you don't need to know anything about gaming to appreciate this video…)
14. Arthur Morgan and the Hero's Journey (RDR2) • March 1, 2022 • 40 minutes!
The End (and the Beginning)
I hope you enjoyed/tolerated this journey. I'll be making more videos, but my schedule is... inconsistent, mostly because I try to only publish when it feels fun to do so. The videos have almost always been a joy to work on, and I'm determined to keep it that way. Anyway, if you want to dig through the full archive, check out my YouTube channel.
And here's one last video, the one that got me started making videos, way back in 2010... It's a little clunky and awkward and dated (some of the magazines referenced no longer exist!), but it seems wrong not to share it at this point in the story. Happy writing!
15. From Poop to Glimmer: navigating the literary magazines without such a well-connected guide • originally published on June 6, 2010 • 20 minutes