Welcome to the Creative Pen podcast. I'm Joanna Penn, thriller author and creative entrepreneur,

bringing you interviews, inspiration and information on writing, publishing options and marketing ideas for your book.

You can find the episode show notes, your free author blueprint and lots more information at

TheCreativepen.com. And that's Penn with a double N. And here's the show.

Hello creatives. I'm Joanna Penn. And this is episode 608 of the podcast and it's Friday 4th of March 2022 as I record this.

On today's show, I talk to Dharma Kelleher about dealing with self-doubt, imposter syndrome and writer's block

and how we can find joy in the writing process rather than attaching our happiness to specific outcomes or measures of success,

which is certainly easier to talk about than it is to do. We also discuss writing diverse

characters in an era of cancel culture. So that's coming up in the interview section.

In publishing and book marketing news, well, one of the biggest stories right now is

Brandon Sanderson's Surprise Kickstarter with four secret novels for his audience.

And the project is currently at around $20 million and it still has the rest of the

months to run.

So goodness knows where it's going to get to.

But it really is brilliant. I definitely recommend you go and watch his video, even if you don't

want to support the Kickstarter, because it's a masterclass in how to engage your fans and sell

direct. Brandon is charming. He's clearly prolific. He brings out these manuscripts. So so the books are done and he does work with

obviously he works with a printer and fulfillment and all of that but this is essentially self-publishing

for a very big name fantasy author who is mainly traditionally published now these are four

new books and he has done a kick a Kickstarter before on a special edition.

But I absolutely imagine that there are lots of traditionally published authors and publishers and agents now going,

why don't we use Kickstarter for more projects?

...