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Mark interviews professor, pastor, speaker, and author Donn King about writing, his podcast, and his books THE WAY OF THE THREE-YEAR-OLD WHY and MEDIUM WELL.
Prior to the interview, Mark shares a personal update, comments from recent episodes, and a word from this episode’s sponsor.
Learn more about this self-publishing/WIDE-publishing focused cruise.
In their interview Mark and Donn talk about:
- Donn’s gradual evolution into becoming a writer with starting work at a newspaper when he was 14 years old
- An experience in sixth grade discovering science fiction novels in the library and realizing reading could be fun when you weren’t being forced to do it
- The first sci-fi novel Donn remembers reading: Robert A. Heinlein’s HAVE SPACESUIT WILL TRAVEL
- Donn’s first foray into writing short fiction in a 3-ring binder with a pencil
- Learning about his non-fiction writing from Bob Burg, co-author of THE GO-GIVER a bestselling business parable book
- How elements from writing good fiction apply when writing a parable
- Drawing upon autobiographical elements even when fictionalizing a parable
- The difference between Writer’s Block and The Well Going Dry
- Donn’s podcast, The Alignment Show
- The Great Realignment and pausing to step back and consider what really brings value to you
- Donn’s book MEDIUM WELL: The Journey From Believing to Believing In
- The beautifully inquisitive nature of 3-Year-Olds in Donn’s THE WAY OF THE THREE-YEAR-OLD WHY
- Principal Five – Without emotion, there is no motion
- The challenges of booking live speaking events when caring for family members who require that additional compassion and care
- The reality that none of us have any certainty – we merely live with the illusion of certainty
- The concept of connection before content
- And more . . .
After the interview Mark reflects on a few of the topics that came up in their conversation.
Links of Interest:
- Donn King’s Website
- Donn King’s Books
- The Confidence Cultivators Podcast
- EP 357 – 50 Years of Short Stories with Kevin J. Anderson
- EP 356 – The Midlist Indie Author Mindset with T. Thorn Coyle
- Writers of the Future – Blog Post Announcing Mark as a Judge
- Stark Publishing Support for Authors Via Margins Agency
- ScribeCount (Mark’s Affiliate Link)
- Mark’s YouTube Channel
- Buy Mark a Coffee
- Patreon for Stark Reflections
- An Author’s Guide to Working With Bookstores and Libraries
- The Relaxed Author
- Publishing Pitfalls for Authors
- An Author’s Guide to Working with Libraries & Bookstores
- Wide for the Win
- Mark’s Canadian Werewolf Books
- The Canadian Mounted: A Trivia Guide to Planes, Trains and Automobiles
- Yippee Ki-Yay Motherf*cker: A Trivia Guide to Die Hard
Donn King is “The Confidence Cultivator,” a professor, pastor, speaker, and author who lives in the mountains of East Tennessee. He also hosts “The Alignment Show,” a podcast to support listeners in living their values so they can value their life. His book, “The Way of the Three-Year-Old Why,” the first in the Sparklight Chronicles, came out in 2023, with “Medium Well,” the second in the series, came out in early 2024
The introductory, end, and bumper music for this podcast (“Laser Groove”) was composed and produced by Kevin MacLeod of www.incompetech.com and is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
For this episode I find myself captivated by the Why question.
When it comes to being asked why I write ,my answer generally comes down to one of two forms, “I have an option?” and “Writing happens, where I have a choice is in where I focus my energy”.
Yet Donn suggested we need to our ask Why towards finding a deeper answer. In contemplating this I found something I didn’t have the language to describe until recently. For all the books I’ve read over the decades, only a handful of then ever featured a character who looked like me on the inside. If we are to read a book that hasn’t been written yet, we have to write it. That is the deepest why I have been able to arrive at so far.
That is an excellent why. I think it meets all the guidelines for drilling down to the real why, and I’m certain there is a story behind the stories that you write. I’m glad you’re sharing them with the world.