20.01: Welcome to 2025!

Writing Excuses

Mary Robinette Kowal, DongWon Song, Erin Roberts, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler

Fiction, Business, Careers

4.7 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 5 January 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For our 20th season, we are focusing on your toolbox. We’re going to be thinking about tools in terms of the lenses that we use to approach a story. We’re going to focus on the four lenses of: who, where, when, and why (don’t worry– what and how will be looked at in a later season, since they’re more about execution and less about lenses.) Our hosts talk about the lenses they’re adopting as they look towards 2025.

At the end of this season, we’re going to take all these lenses and apply them to one work: All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders.

A note: we will now only have “thing of the week” occasionally, and not regularly!

Homework: Make a list of the tools you already have in your toolbox. Now, as an intention, think of an area that you want a tool for. Over the course of this year, we’re going to try to help you find that tool.

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Credits: Your hosts for this episode were Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, DongWon Song, Erin Roberts, and Howard Tayler. It was produced by Emma Reynolds, recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Let's talk about something that might be keeping you up at night. Cybersecurity. According to Vantar's latest state of trust report, it's the number one concern for UK businesses. That's where Vanta comes in. Whether you're a startup, growing fast or already established, Vanta can help you get ISO-2701 certified and more without the headaches.
0:22.5	And Vanta allows your company to centralise security workflows,
0:26.2	complete questionnaires up to five times faster,
0:28.5	and proactively manage vendor risk to help your team not only get compliant, but stay compliant.
0:34.3	Stop stressing over cyber security and start focusing on growing your business. For a
0:39.5	limited time, our audience gets $1,000 off Vanta at vanta.com slash go. That's va-n-ta.com
0:47.1	slash go for $1,000 off. Because when it comes to your business, it's not just about keeping the lights on.
0:53.7	It's about keeping
0:54.4	everything secure. This episode of writing excuses has been brought to you by our listeners,
1:00.0	patrons, and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit
1:04.5	www. patreon.com slash writing excuses.
1:10.9	Season 20, episode one.
1:15.3	This is writing excuses.
1:17.7	Welcome to 2025.
1:19.6	I'm Dong Wan.
1:20.3	I'm Mary Robinette.
1:21.3	I'm Dan.
1:22.0	I'm Aaron.
1:22.7	And I'm Howard.
1:24.1	And it's a whole new year.
1:26.7	So we have an exciting season prepared for you. This season is going to be
1:32.4	very focused on your toolbox. One of the things we've been saying for a couple of years is that it's
	...

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