A special episode to kick of 2022! Kate speaks to writer and podcaster, Madeleine Dore about her creative career and her brand new book I Didn’t Do the Thing Today: On letting go of productivity guilt. If you’re keen for other writerly things to kick off your year, join Kate in her online workshop Basics for Beginners with Writers Victoria on Jan 29, 2022. And subscribe to the podcast to make sure you don’t miss our deep dive on Katherine’s new book The Competition in the lead up to its release on Feb 1st!
Madeleine Dore is a freelance writer, interviewer and founder of Extraordinary Routines. Since 2014, Dore has been asking creative thinkers how they navigate their days on her popular blog Extraordinary Routines and podcast Routines & Ruts. Her interviews, life-experiments, and articles have appeared in Sunday Life, Womankind, BBC, and more and her latest offering is her first book, I Didn’t Do the Thing Today: On letting go of productivity guilt, published in Australia and the in the US in January 2022.
Kate and Madeleine discuss:
- early writing projects and advice from grandmothers
- Side Project Sessions – peer pressured accountability
- How artist Spencer Harrison helped Madeleine begin her blog, telling her ‘Done is better than perfect’
- slow creative process – things take the time they take
- Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks
- Infinite Browsing Mode, the paradox of choice and FOBO (fear of better options)
- Curiosity and Awe (Kate mentions Brooke Mcalary’s Care: The Radical Act of Taking Time, Julia Baird’s Phosphorescence and Maggie Shipstead‘s Great Circle)
- Using software Milanote to store and organise notes
- On interviews and the ‘staircase approach’ to interview guests
- Letting go: of alarm clocks
- Letting in: more surprise
Madeleine’s gentle advice to begin the new year: start with adding a small good thing to our days, instead of radically overhauling them.
Madeleine recommends these debut books (which all happened to take a long time to write!):
- The Aesthetics of Joy by Ingrid Fetell Lee
- Three Women by Lisa Taddeo
- Quiet by Susan Cain
Find Madeleine via her website and by her project Extraordinary Routines and follow her on instagram.
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