• Freelance Writing Direct: Conversations with authors, journalists, agents, novelists, memoirists, niche writers, publishers, writing teachers, assigning editors and media experts.

  • By: Estelle Erasmus
  • Podcast

Freelance Writing Direct: Conversations with authors, journalists, agents, novelists, memoirists, niche writers, publishers, writing teachers, assigning editors and media experts.

By: Estelle Erasmus
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  • Summary

  • Welcome to the Freelance Writing Direct podcast. Join Estelle Erasmus every week as she shares short, sound bite-filled podcasts, covering everything that the creative writer, freelance writer, and author needs to know to move forward in their creativity and career. Estelle will share how the sauce is made, with tips and tricks to give you a leg up in the marketplace. The podcast will also feature interviews with authors and writers who are generous with their own advice. Throughout the episodes, Estelle will evolve with the audience, as she listens to her guests, share pitches and essays, and offer writing and career prompts. If you want to learn how to get your work published and noticed you are in the right place. This show will provide answers to questions like: *How can I get started writing? *What are assigning editors in top publications looking for? *How can I find an agent? *What do publishers want? *What are writing craft tips I can implement right away to get published? *How can my pitches to editors make an impact? *What do bestselling authors recommend I do to improve my writing practice? *What craft tips do writing teachers recommend? *What are tips, tricks and strategies for getting my writing noticed? It’s time to build your craft with Freelance Writing Direct. Estelle can’t wait to read what you will be writing.
    2022
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Economics Leadership Personal Success
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Episodes
  • #124 Essays on Loneliness: Tethering An Isolated Writer To A Disconnected World Featuring Athena Dixon

    #124 Essays on Loneliness: Tethering An Isolated Writer To A Disconnected World Featuring Athena Dixon
    Jan 30 2025
    Athena Dixon is the author of essay collections The Incredible Shrinking Woman and The Loneliness Files and her work appears in publications such as Harper's Bazaar, Shenandoah, Grub Street, Narratively, and Lit Hub among others. She is a Consulting Editor for Fourth Genre and the Nonfiction/Hybrid Editor for Split/Lip Press. In this episode: How the Pandemic pushed Athena into writing essays [3:26] The extreme loneliness epidemic in our country [5:35] How Athena explored loneliness in throughlines of grief, the concept of a “split self”, and journals [7:57] Why she used a multi-tiered braided essay in the collection [10:15] How she used the vessel of the body to play with the fear of the heart [11:09] The influence of her fanfiction fixation on Athena’s writing and ability to daydream a new reality [14:11] Her use of intention and ritual as a roadmap for bringing romance to fruition [16:51] Athena’s editorial work with Fourth Genre and Split Lip Press [24:44] Why Athena now values her loneliness and moments of isolation as a tool in her tool kit [25:47] Advice for identifying a strong throughline in your essay collection [32:45] Keys to figuring out the right format for your stories, when deciding between memoir or a memoir in essays [35:42] Buy The Loneliness Files on Estelle’s Bookshop https://bookshop.org/p/books/loneliness-files-cl-athena-dixon/19712061?aid=98827&ean=9781959030126&listref=authors-who-have-appeared-on-freelance-writing-direct Connect with Athena Website: www.athenadixon.com Instagram https://www.instagram.com/the_muse_paper/?hl=en TikTok https://tiktok.com/@AthenaDIxon BlueSky https://bsky.app/profile/athenadixon.bsky.social Split Lip Press https://www.splitlippress.com/ Fourth Genre Magazine https://fourthgenre.org/ Episode mentioned with Jeannine Ouellette #103 Launching into New Dimensions with Embodied Writing https://estelleserasmus.com/103-launching-into-new-dimensions-with-embodied-writing/ Connect with Estelle Erasmus Her latest substack Post: My Predictions for Publishing in 2025 https://estelleserasmus.substack.com/p/my-predictions-for-publishing-for Apply to be on Freelance Writing Direct in a coaching episode: email freelancewritingdirect@gmail.com and state three of the issues you are dealing with that you would like Estelle’s help with. ​​FREE PITCHING GUIDE: Find out more about this episode at https://estelleserasmus.com/podcast. You also get a free pitching guide if you sign up for her newsletter. Sign up for Estelle’s Personal Essay Class for Writer’s Digest https://www.writersonlineworkshops.com/courses/writing-the-personal-essay-101-fundamentals Sign up for Estelle’s NYU Classes https://www.sps.nyu.edu/professional-pathways/faculty/e/1068-estelle-erasmus.html Get Her Book Writing That Gets Noticed: Find Your Voice, Become a Better Storyteller, Get Published: https://rb.gy/5ihwp0 Order Her Audiobook: https://shorturl.at/4uG2P Sign up for her Substack https://estelleserasmus.substack.com (with craft advice and writing opportunities). Paid subscribers receive opportunities for pitch reviews, plus bonus clips from Freelance Writing Direct guests Follow Estelle: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/EstelleSErasmus TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@EstelleSErasmus Twitter: https://twitter.com/EstelleSerasmus BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/estelleserasmus.bsky.social
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    41 mins
  • #123 Writing About Trauma Using Timelines, Throughlines, and Imagery Featuring Christie Tate

    #123 Writing About Trauma Using Timelines, Throughlines, and Imagery Featuring Christie Tate
    Jan 23 2025
    Christie Tate is an essayist and author who writes creative nonfiction and memoir. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller Group, which was a Reese’s Book Club selection and has been translated into 19 languages. She is also the author of B.F.F.-- A Memoir of Friendship Lost & Found. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and elsewhere. Her essays have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, and Kiese Laymon selected her essay, Promised Lands, as the winner of the New Ohio Review’s 2019 nonfiction contest. She writes about addiction, eating disorders, friendship, alienation, recovery, and her Grandma’s farm in Forreston, Texas. She grew up in Dallas and now lives in Chicago with her family. She has finally stopped telling people that she graduated first in her law school class. Please don’t hate her because she has no pets. In This Episode: The inspiration behind Christie’s memoir, Group, and its impact on readers worldwide [3:08] The inciting incident that drove the rest of her book [4:24] How she initially started with a prologue that became her ending and why she made that choice [5:41] Why vulnerability and honesty are crucial in her storytelling [6:02] The ticking time bomb that informed her memoir and why that’s key to building dramatic tension [7:37] How group therapy transformed her life and how ‘prescriptions’ offered a structure for her writing [8:54] The key to using detail and specificity to bring readers into the story [11:33] Her advice for aspiring writers: go where the “heat” is, and how to do that [28:13] How Christie found her throughline and worked it into the memoir [29:27] The power of images in writing [32:36] What to do when you get stuck and how being a reader before a writer, helps [33:54] Connect with Christie Tate Website: https://www.christietate.com/ Books: https://www.christietate.com/writetogetherworkshops-1 Buy Group on Estelle’s Bookshop https://bookshop.org/p/books/group-how-one-therapist-and-a-circle-of-strangers-saved-my-life-christie-tate/15065918?ean=9781982154622 Connect with Estelle Erasmus Her latest substack Post: My Predictions for Publishing in 2025 https://estelleserasmus.substack.com/p/my-predictions-for-publishing-for Apply to be on Freelance Writing Direct in a coaching episode: email freelancewritingdirect@gmail.com and state three of the issues you are dealing with that you would like Estelle’s help with. ​​FREE PITCHING GUIDE: Find out more about this episode at https://estelleserasmus.com/podcast. You also get a free pitching guide if you sign up for her newsletter. Sign up for Estelle’s Personal Essay Class for Writer’s Digest https://www.writersonlineworkshops.com/courses/writing-the-personal-essay-101-fundamentals Sign up for Estelle’s NYU Classes https://www.sps.nyu.edu/professional-pathways/faculty/e/1068-estelle-erasmus.html Get Her Book Writing That Gets Noticed: Find Your Voice, Become a Better Storyteller, Get Published: https://rb.gy/5ihwp0 Order Her Audiobook: https://shorturl.at/4uG2P Sign up for her Substack https://estelleserasmus.substack.com (with craft advice and writing opportunities). Paid subscribers receive opportunities for pitch reviews, plus bonus clips from Freelance Writing Direct guests Follow Estelle: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/EstelleSErasmus TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@EstelleSErasmus Twitter: https://twitter.com/EstelleSerasmus BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/estelleserasmus.bsky.social
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    37 mins
  • #122 Crafting A Tsunami of Transformation in Memoir Featuring Hannah Sward

    #122 Crafting A Tsunami of Transformation in Memoir Featuring Hannah Sward
    Jan 16 2025
    Hannah Sward, daughter of the late poet Robert Sward, is the IAN awarding-winning author of Strip: A Memoir. Strip, Swards first book, has received the attention of authors such as Nobel Prize winner, J.M. Coetzee, Melissa Broder, and NYT Bestselling novelist Caroline Leavitt who called Sward, “One of the most moving and honest memoir writers. So eloquent, so brave.” Sward has spoken on dozens of podcasts and panels with special appearances on NBC CA Live and C-SPAN BookTV. Published in literary journals for the past twenty years, she was a regular contributor at The Fix and Erotic Review. Her most recent work can be read in the LA Times, NY Times (TLS), Huff Post, The Rumpus and others. Sward is on the board at Right to Write Press, a nonprofit that supports emerging incarcerated writers. She lives in Los Angeles where she is working on a short story collection about love and jealousy. In this episode: Hannah Sward’s life story and the inspiration behind her memoir, Strip. [2:33] The impact of loneliness and addiction on childhood and young adulthood [3:35] Refusing to center in shame, despite fraught scenarios [6:30] How Hannah started writing her memoir, and traversed the path of sobriety [6:50] The benefits of mentorship [7:49] Structuring a book in short chapters [8:33] Her 2 page a day process for putting down her truth [8:48] Excavating childhood memories [10:36] Distilling scenes and setting from her dad’s poetry [11:50] The scene she had to rewrite till she got it right [13:39] Navigating family reactions, especially with difficult topics [16:02] Looking at older work and readying it for publication [22:18] Hannah’s next project [25:12] Get Strip on Estelle’s Bookshop https://bookshop.org/p/books/strip-a-memoir-hannah-sward/18101649?ean=9781948954679 Episodes Mentioned Episode #120 Writing Days of Wonder Featuring Caroline Leavitt https://estelleserasmus.com/120-writing-days-of-wonder-featuring-caroline-leavitt/ Episode #87 Writing Memoir that Reads Like a Novel and Captivates on Every Page with Joanna Rakoff https://estelleserasmus.com/87-writing-memoir-that-reads-like-a-novel-and-captivates-on-every-page-featuring-joanna-rakoff/ Connect with Hannah Sward Website https://www.hannahsward.com/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/hannahswardauthor Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hannahswardauthor Threads https://www.threads.net/@hannahswardauthor Connect with Estelle Erasmus Her latest substack Post: My Predictions for Publishing in 2025 https://estelleserasmus.substack.com/p/my-predictions-for-publishing-for Apply to be on Freelance Writing Direct in a coaching episode: email freelancewritingdirect@gmail.com and state three of the issues you are dealing with that you would like Estelle’s help with. ​​FREE PITCHING GUIDE: Find out more about this episode at https://estelleserasmus.com/podcast. You also get a free pitching guide if you sign up for her newsletter. Sign up for Estelle’s Personal Essay Class for Writer’s Digest https://www.writersonlineworkshops.com/courses/writing-the-personal-essay-101-fundamentals Sign up for Estelle’s NYU Classes https://www.sps.nyu.edu/professional-pathways/faculty/e/1068-estelle-erasmus.html Get Her Book Writing That Gets Noticed: Find Your Voice, Become a Better Storyteller, Get Published: https://rb.gy/5ihwp0 Order Her Audiobook: https://shorturl.at/4uG2P Sign up for her Substack https://estelleserasmus.substack.com (with craft advice and writing opportunities). Paid subscribers receive opportunities for pitch reviews, plus bonus clips from Freelance Writing Direct guests Follow Estelle: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/EstelleSErasmus TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@EstelleSErasmus Twitter: https://twitter.com/EstelleSerasmus BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/estelleserasmus.bsky.social
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    29 mins

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