Thank you from First Draft with Sarah Enni
Why are you getting this email?
I want to say thank you.
You are one of the people who has supported First Draft, either by donating via PayPal or signing up to hear more about the Listener Club. I wanted to check in with you, give you an update, and shower you with my earnest, heartfelt thanks for helping the show over the years.
Big news first: After promoting the Listener Club, gathering feedback, and gauging interest, I've decided that there isn't enough support to sustain something like the Listener Club, at least not yet. It was a kind of pie-in-the-sky idea that might be manageable later on, but for now I'm going to do the following things:
Make the donate button bigger on the website and in newsletters.
Eagerly pursue sponsors for the show (aka sell ads), and
Keep brainstorming other ways the podcast can grow (like writing a book).
You've all been crucial to getting this podcast project where it is today. I couldn't put the work in, day after day, to make this show the best it can be without hearing from listeners that it helped them get inspired, get back to writing, generate new ideas, or make them feel heard and understood.
So thank you. So, so much.
That being said, I'd already started prepping some cool stuff for the Listener Club, so I'm going to share those things with you now, since you've been unequivocally the best!
Your Exclusive First Draft Listeners Club Podcast Episodes!
These episodes are unfiltered and unedited, your look behind the curtain at the conversations that get trimmed and trussed before being released as episodes of First Draft. Here they are in all their authentic glory, just for you!
Jonny Sun, Canadian author and illustrator of Everyone’s a Aliebn When Ur a Aliebn Too and Gmorning, Gnight!, TV writer on BoJack Horseman, screenwriter, one of TIME Magazine's 25 Most Influential People on the Internet in 2017, and a doctoral candidate at MIT and a creative researcher at the Harvard metaLAB.
Listen to the unabridged episode here!
Linda Holmes, pop-culture critic at NPR and host of the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast, is out with her debut author of Evvie Drake Starts Over. I loved what Linda had to say about how practicing appellate law helped hone her critical writing; getting used to listening to her own voice; how she manages anxiety and depression, and the difficulty in even acknowledging that she wanted to write a novel.
Listen to the unabridged episode here!
Kirsten “Kiwi” Smith, Amy Andelson, and Emily Meyer are the team behind Trinkets, the Netflix TV series based on Kiwi’s young adult novel of the same name. Kiwi Smith is one half of the screenwriting team behind films like 10 Things I Hate About You, Legally Blonde, Ella Enchanted, and more, and the author of young adult novels The Geography of Girlhood, and Trinkets. Amy Andelson and Emily Meyer are the writing team behind films like Step Up 3D, Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List, and the young adult novel Layover, and they adapted Trinkets and are credited as co-creators of the TV show.
Listen to the unabridged episode here!
Abdi Nazemian, TV writer, producer of films like Call Me By Your Name, and author of Like a Love Story, The Authentics, and The Walk-In Closet, talks about discovering gay icons in the time before the internet, putting all your obsessions in your work, crying in coffee shops, and writing about history from an emotional standpoint, so we can repeat the best of it.
Listen to the unabridged episode here!
Kate Spencer, comedian, author of Dead Mom’s Club: A Memoir, essayist, and co-host of fabulous podcast Forever35 talks about the never-ending quest for confidence, exorcising grief and pain through writing, and how a podcast about serums became a podcast about feelings.