Barbara DeMarco-Barrett is an author, creative-writing teacher, and host of my favorite podcast, "Writers on Writing." She is also a lecturer at Chapman University’s Dodge Film School, an adjunct professor of Advanced Creative Writing at Saddleback College Emeritus Institute, and instructor at Gotham Writers Workshop (online). She also holds two private workshops.

Barbara was recognized with a Distinguished Instructor Award at UC-Irvine and awarded Literary Magnet #1 in Orange Coast Magazine’s Best of Orange County. She is founder of the Pen on Fire Speakers Writers Salon in Corona del Mar, California and in the summer of 2013, began holding writers retreats in Palm Springs. She’s the former president of Sisters in Crime, Orange County chapter, and was the editor of The ASJA Monthly, (the official publication of the American Society of Journalists and Authors), from 2002 to 2014. ASJA awarded her with the Extraordinary Service Award in 2015.

We talk about how she became a writer (instead of going to clown school or starting a beauty salon), writing short stories, her writing habits and techniques, writing in longhand, stationary sickness, her book "Palm Springs Noir," lessons and insights gleaned from the hundreds of authors she has interviewed on her podcast, the importance of improvisation, cultivating creativity, self-publishing vs. traditional publishing, book covers, artificial intelligence, favorite books and authors, and more.

Shownotes are here https://www.paultrammell.com/dream-chasers-and-eccentrics

Support the show through Patreon here https://www.patreon.com/DreamChasersandEccentrics