Danny Wallace, author of 'The Luckiest Kid in the World' - Storyteller talks about where ideas go, the guilt of not working, and saying yes
Writer's Routine
Dan Simpson
4.9 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 25 March 2022
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Danny Wallace is an ideas-man and a doer. He's started his own kindness cult, tracked down all his long-lost friends, and spent a whole year saying yes to everything. Danny has published adult books, kids books, and has a new one out, 'The Luckiest Kid in the World'.
It's all about a boy who is determined to be the most average child ever, and that very fact makes him extremely unusual. We talk about the having the idea and what he needs to know before he starts writing, also where he sometimes escapes to write and how he explored the pandemic for kids. You can hear how having children has affected his writers routine, where he writes now, and why he needs the radio on to tell stories.
He runs a website called Assembly, and a podcast called Manatomy, which is a place for modern men. Also, hosts a weekly show on Radio X, and we discuss how he decides where ideas go. Are they a work of fiction, non-fiction, a podcast idea, or something to talk about on his radio show?
You can read more about Danny here - https://dannywallace.com/
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, thank you for being there. Welcome along. It's a brand new writer's routine. This week, we're chatting to Danny Wallace. Danny is a novelist, a memoirist, I guess you'd say. I think his Wikipedia has him down as a humorist. |
| 0:23.9 | He writes kids books, he's a columnist, he's on the radio, he has big ideas, and he does them and writes about them. |
| 0:30.6 | He's a doer, I guess you'd say. We talk about how much he plans things out and how much he likes to keep stuff a surprise. |
| 0:38.3 | Also, whether he feels guilt about not working on a working day. |
| 0:42.7 | And we find out how he decides what he's writing next. |
| 0:46.0 | The idea comes first. |
| 0:47.6 | You go, what if? |
| 0:49.1 | What if this or, you know, what if that? |
| 0:51.6 | And then you think about the best way to do it. |
| 0:54.3 | Is that a script? |
| 0:55.2 | Is that just a joke, I can say, on the radio? |
| 0:58.5 | Is that an idea for a podcast? |
| 1:00.3 | Is that a kid's book? |
| 1:01.8 | What is this? |
| 1:03.0 | And then you find the right kind of format for it. |
| 1:05.6 | I'm so excited to share this week's episode with you. |
| 1:07.9 | Stick around. |
| 1:08.7 | It's a brand new writer's routine. |
| 1:19.8 | Music this week's episode with you. Stick around. It's a brand new writer's routine. Yes, welcome along. My name's Dan Simpson. This is writer's routine where we take a look inside |
| 1:24.9 | the daily life, the working day of a successful writer, |
| 1:30.3 | how they get ideas, how they get them done, where they write, how they write, when they write, |
| 1:35.1 | and today it's all encompassing with all of that because our guest has some fantastic ideas, |
... |
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