Welcome to the Creative Pen podcast. I'm Joanna Penn, thriller author and creative entrepreneur,

bringing you interviews, inspiration and information on writing craft and creative business.

You can find the episode show notes, your free author blueprint, and lots more at thecreativepen.com.

And that's Penn with a double N. And here's the show.

Hello, creatives. I'm Joanna Penn, and this is episode number 803 of the podcast, and it is

Saturday the 5th of April 2025 as I record this. In today's show, I talk to Gretchen McGowan, who is an independent film producer,

so coming from quite a different world to Tom from last week in Hollywood.

We talk about the differences between writing and making a film

and the similarities between being an indie filmmaker and an indie author.

The fear of underserving your audience, writing truth in memoir, book marketing and more.

So that's coming up in the interview section.

In writing and publishing things. Well, Nan nanorimo is shutting down the verge reports nanorimo will no longer offer its annual challenge after years of financial struggle

in twenty twenty three many writers abandoned nanorimo after it refused to take a stand against the use of AI tools in writing.

Around the same time, one of its moderators faced child grooming accusations,

leading to more criticism from the community.

Participation and fundraising in the program have decreased in recent years.

The nanorimo site will remain online for as long as possible, although it will

no longer formally host its writing challenges. So yeah, NanoRimo obviously have had their

problems for sure, but for many of us, including me, we wrote our first books with Nano. For me,

it was November 2009 when I wrote the first

5,000 words of what at the time was called Mandela, that was the book title, which then became

my first novel, Pentecost, which then eventually I rewrote and rebranded as Stone of Fire,

...