Sonitotum with Matthew Wayne Selznick

This episode of Sonitotum with Matthew Wayne Selznick is a check-in detailing a rough week. Challenges to building a consistent creative life abound. Some weeks, it's enough to recognize that what's important is simply living, reflecting, and showing up. For a variety of reasons, the days between the previous episode and this one were rough. That's going to happen. Fortunately, sometimes taking a pause allows the space to grow, and to be reminded of all that's good, and all your doing right. Listen to learn more. Links and topics mentioned in this episode include...

• Hazy Days and Cloudy Nights: "How It All Got Started"  is my free serial available via email subscription
• My next book is a work of non-fiction. Pre-order Indie Author Marketing Infrastructure today, help push the book up the charts, and be among the first to read it!
• I couldn't get enough of "Silly Love Songs" by Paul McCartney and Wings.
• In the episode, I say the dates I'm alone in the house were the 15th through the 20th; it was actually the 8th through the 20th.
• This episode includes an update on the status of the audiobook editions of Brave Men Run and Pilgrimage.
• Shadow of the Outsider is my next novel in the Shaper's World storyworld and Outsider Cycle. While I'm writing it, catch up with Light of the Outsider and "The Perfumed Air at Kwaanantag Bay."
• "Accentuate the Positive"
• In his voice recording message sent in response to Sonitotum 036, long-time-listener and pal Harold Johnson mentioned buying my books directly from me. You can do that via my Books page!
• How's your creative week going? Tell me about it in the comments.
• Want uncut, unedited episodes of Sonitotum with Matthew Wayne Selznick, e-books, audiobooks, music, and more goodies? Become a patron and help support this podcast.

This episode was made possible in part by the patronage of listeners like you, including J. C.  Hutchins . Want to support the show and be listed in the credits, plus get lots of other goodies, perks, and exclusive access? Become a patron! Love Sonitotum with Matthew Wayne Selznick and would like to make a one-time donation in support of the show? Donate via PayPal or leave a tip via Ko-Fi , with my grateful thanks.

Last week on Sonitotum with Matthew Wayne Selznick , we talked about how to fail. Let's give equal time to how to succeed this time around. Sonitotum is all about making things, finding success as we each define it, and staying healthy and sane in the process. To find success as we each define it, we have to understand what it's going to take for us to succeed. While the specific details are going to be unique to each of us, the secret of success is both simple... and diabolically difficult. In this episode, by relating my own quest to understand what success means to me and what it's going to take for me to have a chance achieving success, I offer suggestions for what might work for you, too. Some of the links and topics mentioned in this episode include...

• The Love, Rage, and Indignation episode of Sonitotum with Matthew Wayne Selznick.
• My creative services business.
• Hazy Days and Cloudy Nights: "How It All Got Started," my free serial available via email subscription, is now up to seventy-five weekly installments and over 84,000 words!
• My next book is a work of non-fiction. Pre-order Indie Author Marketing Infrastructure today, help push the book up the charts, and be among the first to read it!
• Between this episode and the next I'll be recording audiobook editions of my first two novels, Brave Men Run and Pilgrimage.
• Want uncut, unedited episodes of Sonitotum with Matthew Wayne Selznick, e-books, audiobooks, music, and more goodies? Become a patron and help support this podcast.

This episode was made possible in part by the patronage of listeners like you, including J. C.  Hutchins . Want to support the show and be listed in the credits, plus get lots of other goodies, perks, and exclusive access? Become a patron! Love Sonitotum with Matthew Wayne Selznick and would like to make a one-time donation in support of the show? Donate via PayPal or leave a tip via Ko-Fi , with my grateful thanks.

Are you good at failure? No? Maybe? Don't worry. In episode 40 of Sonitotum with Matthew Wayne Selznick , I'm here to teach you how to fail. Sonitotum is all about making things, finding success as we each define it, and staying healthy and sane in the process. Failure is inevitable along the way. It can cripple our ability and desire to make art, and if we aren't making things, well, we aren't going to find success.  And if we can't make things and we're not at least trying to find success? Well, heck, I don't need to tell you that's no way to stay healthy and sane. So it's important to know how to fail. I have some experience in this. I've been told I'm pretty good at it! So you're in good hands. Listen! Some of the links and topics mentioned in this episode include...

• My creative services business.
• Stoicism. You could do worse than starting with this book.
• Speaking of books: I think this was the awful X-Men novel I read in the nineties that, in many ways, launched my career.
• You can get some incomplete glimpses at Sovereign Serials thanks to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.
• As you know, Bob, Sovereign Serials led to the Sovereign Era storyworld of novels and stories, beginning with Brave Men Run.
• Failure and accountability made me commit to writing Indie Author Marketing Infrastructure. Pre-order now!
• Hazy Days and Cloudy Nights: "How It All Got Started," my free serial available via email subscription
• Want uncut, unedited episodes of Sonitotum with Matthew Wayne Selznick, e-books, audiobooks, music, and more goodies? Become a patron and help support this podcast.

This episode was made possible in part by the patronage of listeners like you, including J. C.  Hutchins . Want to support the show and be listed in the credits, plus get lots of other goodies, perks, and exclusive access? Become a patron!

In addition to an update on my creative endeavors in the previous week, this episode of Sonitotum with Matthew Wayne Selznick includes some very personal thoughts on recent political news in the United States... and the potential repercussions in store for creative women and men. Some of the links and topics mentioned in this episode include...

• Hazy Days and Cloudy Nights: "How It All Got Started," my free serial available via email subscription
• Brave Men Run and Pilgrimage, the novels to which Hazy Days is a prequel of sorts
• An update on our exclusive patron membership community
• My plans for my next non-fiction work, Indie Author Marketing Infrastructure
• The United States Supreme Court's overruling of Roe v Wade, and what it means for creators

This episode was made possible in part by the patronage of listeners like you, including J. C.  Hutchins and Kimberly Puri. Want to support the show and be listed in the credits, plus get lots of other goodies, perks, and exclusive access? Become a patron!

Episode 038 of Sonitotum with Matthew Wayne Selznick is a big one, dear listener! Presenting the all-new, all-different Matthew Wayne Selznick Patron Community ! Listen to learn...

• Why I'm returning to the Patreon neo-patronage platform to build a community for folks who don't just like my books, stories, music, podcasts and other creative endeavors... they're creators in their own right... or would like to be.
• How I intend to build this community around the mission of the Sonitotum with Matthew Wayne Selznick podcast: "Make stuff, find success, and stay health and sane in the process."
• How creating a patron-supported community serves my larger mission: "Add to the culture, to the wellspring of human experience, both by telling stories and making things, and by helping other people bring their creative endeavors to fruition and to the world."
• Why those old steadfast drivers, thoughts of legacy and mortality, pushed me to create a community space for patron peers now, not later.
• Why what patrons get out of the community is as important as what I get out of their patronage.
• All about the perks of patronage, including acknowledgment and recognition, digital products like e-books and audiobooks, exclusive community, "back stage" access to my works in progress, merchandise, tangible copies of my work, group and one-on-one coaching, and more.

If you're a fan of my work as an author, podcaster, poet, musician, or advocate for the DIY creator ethic, I really hope you'll give this one a listen. If you want to be part of a young, intimate community of writers, authors, and other creators driven to build a healthy, successful creative life, I hope you'll visit https://www.patreon.com/mattselznick and pledge. Technical Note I continue experimenting with different tools and methods to make recording Sonitotum frictionless while still creating audio that's kind to your ears. This episode was recorded using my lavalier mic plugged into my phone, recorded with the Parrot Voice Recorder app. I put a tiny foam windscreen on the mic to, y'know, screen out the wind.  This is the same method as last episode, but this time around, there were some static artifacts. Why? I dunno. Editorial Note This episode of Sonitotum with Matthew Wayne Selznick is cross-posted with Scribtotum , my ongoing blog on making stuff, finding success as I define it, and building a healthy and sane creative writing life.

In this episode of Sonitotum with Matthew Wayne Selznick, it's all about joining, creating, and doing things for communities in the name of supporting and enhancing one's (okay, mine, at least) creative endeavors. It's also an episode created amongst community, of a sort: I recorded it walking through, and sitting in, a neighborhood park. The big news of the week has to do with my becoming a full member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America . I talk a bit about that, and encourage folks to peruse my Scribtotum article, which goes deep on my motivations for joining, and my first impressions of the SFWA . I also talk a little more about why fiction writing has been so elusive and difficult lately, and the community-driven, community-supported steps I'm taking to try and get over that particularly thorny, mountainous molehill... including musing on re-instating a community-building tool I discontinued about two years ago... Some of the links and topics mentioned in the episode include...

• Hazy Days and Cloudy Nights: "How It All Got Started," my ongoing episodic serial fiction project available free exclusively to my mailing list community members
• The Sovereign Era storyworld, including Brave Men Run
• Light of the Outsider and "The Perfumed Air at Kwaanantag Bay"
• How to escape the trench and climb out of a creative rut... my own advice! Perhaps I should re-read this one...

Technical Note I continue experimenting with different tools and methods to make recording Sonitotum frictionless while still creating audio that's kind to your ears. This episode was recorded using my lavalier mic plugged into my phone, recorded with the Parrot Voice Recorder app. I put a tiny foam windscreen on the mic to, y'know, screen out the wind.  It seemed okay! After listening, what do you think ?