Season One in Retrospective

Last September I decided to take a leap of faith with my idea of podcasting short pieces of fiction based in and around my fictional city of Lepari. Three months and more than 80 podcasts later I decided that Christmas would be a good time to call an end to the first season of postcards. With Eastercon now behind me I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to reflect on what I learned from the last quarter of 2011.

First off, I now know I can podcast fiction, and given that I wrote most of the pieces over breakfast and podcasted them before leaving for my day-job, I can theoretically produce podcasts to tight deadlines. I say theoretically, since producing one a day as I was doing for much of the above period took up most of my writing time, and in the long term sapped my desire to write. Lesson learned: I can do daily podcasts for a short period, for promotion or for a specific limited-term project. Over a more extended period I'll need to shift to a reduced frequency, perhaps one a week, for a better balance with my day job, novel & comic writing.

Second, I actively enjoy the process of turning my stories into little audio vignettes, and from the feedback I've received people seem to connect with short spoken word stories like these better than they would a few paragraphs of text. A little production seems to go a long way, making even these little postcards satisfying. I may try to add some more direct throughlines of plot into forthcoming stories, so that while each postcard can remain stand-alone, there are more hooks linking one to another.

My intent is to work on outlining the basic premises of Season Two over the next few weeks, then perhaps start with one story a week and see how that suits both my writing schedule and my listeners. If you've got any feedback on what you liked or disliked about the podcasts thus far, I'd be interested to hear, so please leave me a comment.

Thanks for all your support so far, and I'm looking forward to working on Postcards from Lepari again!