Shen Tao, author of 'The Poet Empress' - Debut author discusses magical mystery, changing routines, and 9 failed manuscripts
Writer's Routine
Dan Simpson
4.9 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 20 February 2026
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Shen Tao has always wanted to be a writer. For as long as she can remember, she's had ideas, developed characters, and written stories. It took her 9 attempts, 9 manuscripts, to finally get it done.
Her debut is 'The Poet Empress'. It's a Chinese historical fantasy, blended with a love story and a murder mystery. It tells the story of a young woman, who enters the Imperial Court as a concubine, and learns poetry-magic to try and kill the heir to the tale. We talk about how she pushed on, through the failed manuscripts, and had an idea she knew would be a winner. A winner it was, eventually being bought in a 6-way auction.
You can hear why she's prepared to chuck words away, why she writes a '0th draft', and how her routine has changed since going full-time.
We chat about the pressure of getting it right, her unique inspiration blending both Chinese and Western myths and stories, and Shen shares her strong font opinions.
Get a copy of the book - uk.bookshop.org/shop/writersroutine
Read the newsletter - writersroutine.substack.com
Support the show -
patreon.com/writersroutine
ko-fi.com/writersroutine
@writerspod
writersroutine.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome along to a brand new episode of writer's routine. This week we're with Shen Tao. |
| 0:15.1 | Shen's new novel is the Poet Empress. It's her ninth attempt to get something published. And in the end, it was sold |
| 0:23.6 | in a six-way auction. So that's from lows to highs in just one sentence. We talk about |
| 0:28.6 | the pressure that she felt of getting it right, also why she's more than prepared to throw things |
| 0:34.6 | away. |
| 0:35.6 | One of the things I did after the outline was I wrote a full first draft of the story |
| 0:39.1 | that I discarded almost all of. |
| 0:43.2 | I think no words from the first draft made it to the second draft. |
| 0:46.9 | So that was a full-length novel that I wrote just trying to find her voice. |
| 0:51.2 | What did she care about? |
| 0:53.3 | Because I think from a bird's eye view, |
| 0:56.0 | I can ask these questions, but it's hard for me to find answers to them that feel true to her |
| 1:02.5 | without letting her speak for herself. And we get geeky, which is always good, with strong font |
| 1:08.5 | thoughts. I tend to write each of my stories in a different font and I find |
| 1:13.4 | that it gets me into the tone of the story a little bit better and makes each story feel |
| 1:19.2 | distinct and unique in my head. The current work in progress I have is in an aerial story. That's |
| 1:25.1 | the font I'm currently writing in and I find that oftentimes oftentimes, I mean, even drafting my debut, I had a stint where I was experiencing |
| 1:34.1 | writer's block and then I was changing the font out of Times New Roman, which is what I was |
| 1:38.9 | writing that book into something else. |
| 1:41.4 | I think it was Georgia and it just solved the writer's block. |
| 1:45.5 | It's all on the way with Shentau in a brand new episode of Writers' Routine. |
| 1:56.2 | Yes, welcome along to the show. This is Writers' Routine. It's where we take a look inside an author's working day. We see what they do, where they do it, how much time they spend doing it, how do they give themselves the best chance of getting words down on the page and then hopefully the book printed, published and on the shelf. And you can go behind the scenes of this show, really, and get a more |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Dan Simpson, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Dan Simpson and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.