21.01: Welcome to the New Year!

Writing Excuses

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

Fiction, Business, Careers

4.6 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 4 January 2026

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Season 21 kicks off with a new theme, a fresh tagline, and a renewed focus on what Writing Excuses has always been about: tools, not rules. The hosts unpack why prescriptive writing advice so often falls short, and how understanding why tools gives you the freedom to adapt—or discard—them. And so for Season 21, we’re going to focus on deconstructing structure in order to better understand the tools that make up various story structures, and what we can learn from each. We’ll be analyzing everything from exposition to Try/Fail cycles to Save the Cat, as we dig into how structure can function more like jazz and less like a rigid formula. We hope this year of episodes (every Sunday morning, folks!) helps you choose what actually serves you as a writer. Homework Write down one thing you are letting go of from last year, starting with the sentence “I am letting go of…”. Then write one intention for the new year, starting with “This year I am embracing…”. ANNOUNCEMENTS: Last Annual Cruise The final WXR cruise* sets sail for Alaska in September 2026—don’t miss your chance to be part of it. Learn more and sign up here. Call for Writing Breakthroughs Have you had a breakthrough in your writing because of Writing Excuses? If so, we want to hear about it. Fill out this Writing Breakthroughs Google Form for a chance to be featured in a WX Newsletter! Credits: Your hosts for this episode were Howard Tayler, Erin Roberts, DongWon Song, and Mary Robinette Kowal. It was produced by Emma Reynolds, recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson. Join Our Writing Community! Writing Retreats Newsletter Patreon Instagram Threads Bluesky TikTok YouTube Facebook Our Sponsors: * Check out HomeServe and use my code homeserve.com/excuses for a great deal: https://www.homeserve.com * Check out Talkiatry and use my code Talkiatry.com/WX for a great deal: https://www.talkiatry.com Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/writing-excuses2130/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode of writing excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends.
0:05.6	If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.com.
0:12.0	Slash writing excuses.
0:15.3	Season 21, episode 1.
0:19.5	This is writing excuses.
0:22.1	Welcome to the new year.
0:24.2	Tools, not rules.
0:25.7	Four writers by writers.
0:28.2	I'm Mary Robinette.
0:30.0	I'm Dong Juan.
0:31.2	I'm Aaron.
0:32.5	And I'm Howard.
0:34.1	Welcome everybody to 2026 and our season 21 the podcast is officially old enough to drink
0:41.6	depending on where you live as a result we decided to make some changes small ones like we have a new
0:50.9	tagline you have noticed we're going to talk about why we made that change.
0:54.7	And then we're going to tell you about the curriculum that we've got planned for you for this season.
1:00.7	And we'll talk about some intentions as well.
1:05.3	So why did we change the tagline?
1:09.2	We changed the tagline because Dan said we should, and he gave us this thing, you know,
1:15.6	four writers by writers, tools, not rules, which kind of sums up
1:19.6	who and why we are and have been since 2008.
1:25.6	Writers talking about writing,
	...

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