META WRITING VLOG // authortube q&a, advice, & almost finishing projects 

Here are the TIMESTAMPS for specific questions/topics regarding authortube. (Also y'all will probably note that while I got A LOT of progress done on Novella #3 in this vlog...I actually finished it in the *"I Tried Writing Like Brandon Sanderson"* video bahaha.) 1:55 Typing sound hack! I think it's nice to see something more than just people's faces in their vlogs (especially writing ones!) so this is what I do. 2:50 More chat on validation, authortube specifically. 4:50 ASSUMPTIONS: authortube makes me more productive vs. I'd get more done if I wasn't always vlogging. 6:50 Creating a youtube schedule with Google Sheets & bulk filming. 9:26 How to start an authortube channel (a talk on equipment, mostly). 11:20 How to start an authortube channel, part 2! (A talk on figuring out content, mostly, and looking back at my old videos!) 16:39 To script videos or NOT to script videos. 19:50 What ever happened to that "I Tried Writing Like Authortubers" video & a chat on mental health + making videos. 23:00 How I feel about livestreams & how to make writing friends! 24:50 Having a schedule (for livestreams and normal videos). And why I'm the worst at having a schedule. 27:20 How do I stay so productive or are the vlogs highlights of my day? 28:20 STATS WRAP-UP TIME! (how long do I spend on authortube each day, the editing process, etc.)

Today I typed the word “two” and it jolted me out of my writing. I looked at it. Two. T-whoa. That can’t be right. Sometimes I can’t English 😂

As someone who constantly experiences a lot of anxiety, the sound of people typing on keyboards has always relaxed me, and so your time lapses are immensely soothing for me. Your videos ease my anxiety a LOT. Anyways, awesome video, as usual! Keep up the fantastic work! :)

My first time having the courage to make a comment, and it is mostly connected to English not being my first language, so beware the errors. Is the name of the pup Duke? It is what I hear when you say it, but I can never be sure with my low capacity to understand sounds, which I’m sure has a technical term for it, but I also have low vocabulary. lol What I mostly wanted to say it is that I though that what you baked in other videos looked like Brazilian cheese bread (I’m Brazilian and love it), and I still consider a big win to having got it right, but didn’t have the courage to say it then. Well, actually, of course the main thing was how much I love your videos and how much of a inspiration you are in having helped me to become what I always wanted to be but never though I could. Your work helped so much in making me a writer and also still is a big part of keeping me being one.

I personally LOVE 30, 40, 50 min + videos honestly. I'm probably in the minority here, but I love 'em. I think it helps, though, that I like to listen to YT videos while I do other things at the same time, lol. Also!, as someone else had mentioned, as well, your personality is just delightful, so it's very easy to enjoy your vlogs no matter the length.

Taking a well needed break from writing to watch this! 1000 words down, so not much left until I've finished the chapter. Send your prayers ;D

I've been binging your videos to help inspire me to write for the past week. If I hadn't been watching your past streams yesterday I wouldn't have gotten 7k, please never stop :].

you really have just to most likable personality so I hope you never shorten your vlogs! I enjoy spending time with you in vlogs lol

your dog is a good boy

Please don’t stop doing long vlogs! I love you’re calming personality and I watch your videos right before bed so the long ones really help me calm down before sleeping.

Girl, I went through a phase once where I could never remember how to spell "schedule". Like, it completely evaded me. Thankfully THAT is over, but it was embarrassing sometimes cause other people didn't have issues with it. Smh. Lmfao. "I'm just overzealous about stuffing." We made the same ass face, like forget that was said. Hahaha. Also, DaVinci Resolve is pretty solid editing program. There's a paid version, but you can also use it for free and it still has a lot of features. Definitely recommend.

The amount of effort you put into your videos always amazes me. You're so hardworking, and thank you for that!

Just chiming in to say that I LOVE your long(ish) videos!

I'm eager to start an Authortube channel but I live with my family (who barely get that I'm an aspiring author) so I'm afraid they'll make fun of me for filming/vlogging my writing process. I love that Kate's family gets it and is even super chill about doing some vid cameos. I'm not that fortunate. If I do decide, I'll need to be clever with my film time (perhaps when everyone's asleep). Side note: I appreciate that Kate's videos have a consistent bright aqua writing so it stands out in YT recommendations. I can spot a Kate video a MILE away!

Somehow this was perfectly timed with my ordering banana bread at the cafe I'm in trying to work, I needed a snack break and here we are :D

I love it when you do long vlogs! Never change 😂

Behind the scenes of Kate! Love it! It's so great to give advice to people who aspire to have a channel of their own (or who are wanting to improve in their content in some way)! I definitely took note of some things haha. Also, I'm excited to see the "write like authortuber" videos!

i do genuinely want to thank you because your vlogs as well as some others in the authortube sphere have really helped me solidify not only what i think i want to do with my life but also give me enough courage to attempt this on my own. keep up your amazing work, you're doing great

I appreciate the positivity you always bring to videos, and the doggo. Also my executive function is a squirrel with ADHD, so watching someone talk about writing helps remind me "oh yeah I should do that." Normally I just juggle half a dozen worldbuilding projects mentally, so writing it down helps put a use to my idle fancies

This vlog really shows the nitty gritty of authortube. Since I am making the transition myself I am really grateful for the inside look into the general (and your specific) process. Thanks for posting it! It had a lot of helpful tips!

I’m so excited for you! You gained another 1000 subs between starting the vlog and posting!!! I love your content, watching your videos pulled me out of a writing rut, thank you ❤️

Also - thank you for introducing me to Brandon Sanderson! I binged his lectures, they are amazing!

SHE'S ALIVE! Kate how did you manage to escape Becca's fridge? Lol

I love the long vlogs, I got to know you more and they’re good to listen too whilst writing

Congrats on 20k! Love your channel.

You're so helpful! These videos provide real value. Thank you x

I LOVE the long vlogs! I’m all for more Kate, coffee, and (pretend?) writing!

Why do I always feel so accomplished when I watch your vlogs? I always get so motivated and inspired to write whenever I watch your videos, Kate!

Your videos are so original that I think your channel will grow faster than most. Keep up the good work. :)

I promise I started workin on my worldbuilding series before I watched this video! XD Wonderful video, I love your perspective an thoughts on what kind of videos you make, and how long it takes you to make them. I also tend to be jealous when I watch your vlogs that you're so productive and write so much ... I wish I wrote so much! X)

Yay for watching your last video right before I watched this one. Double Kate content 😂

This was so interesting! I love watching 'behind the scenes" authortube videos...especially since it helps me verify I'm just as sporadic as everyone else! haha

i love long videos like this

I love your writing vlogs! I see that it's 25+ minutes, and I'm like "Yesssss". I love the sense of comradery in a "I'm not alone in the struggle" sort of way. (Also your typing sound hack is genius) I have never participated in live streams or writing sprints until your channel either! I actually finished a really tricky chapter rewrite during Brooke's livestream with you (... or partly you I should say :P )

I stumbled onto your channel through your "writing like" series, and had to subscribe. Love your personality! You're really pretty, and I love listening to you explain your thought process. :)

Your videos are just relaxing to watch.

shut, I love your videos. I know, offtop, but,,,, your channel is one of my favorites!!

I just found your channel and I just love looking at your content. I am currently writing my own book and you have helped me a lot in my writing:) I have had a lot of roadblocks in writing my book right now and since watching your video's I have picked up my writing more. :) thank you

this is actually really helpful, I've been thinking about delving into authortube myself

For editing software I recommend Davinci Resolve by Black Magic. The basic program is free to use and has professional grade color correction and intuitive editing tools.

Wow! An interesting insight into all of the hard work that goes into making videos! I had no idea! Very cool :)

I think another Authortube tip would be to follow something similar to when working on multiple writing projects. Make sure that you can handle balancing them and have some foundation. I'm getting back into the habit of writing and I don't feel like I have a routine built yet, so starting a channel seems daunting. I even filmed a video and a half and started editing, but ended up feeling so pressured from the fact that I was only able to prep 1 video for the week and had no idea what to do for the next one that I made the decision to stop and focus on establishing my writing first. I still want to make videos, but I don't think I can right now.

Thanks for this video. Been trying to do author tube since April and has been slow getting myself started. Recorded 5 videos and only posts 1. Social anxiety gets in the way a little bit. Been doing booktube as well and have posted more videos for booktube. My videos are not on this channel. I kept my youtube channel that I watch with separate to the one that I. Loved listening to your advice.

I really, really enjoyed this video, and it was cool to see/hear your stats! :D I don't know what my worst typo has ever been, but I have ridiculously bad hand writing at times (like, when I'm excited about my novel and scribble down notes for it), to the point of not being able to read my post-its later on 😂

I really love these BTS vlogs from you. I don't know if other people find them interesting, but I think they're cool.

I rarely spell ‘the,’ correctly when I write, which is super annoying but I learn to live with it. I always appreciate vlogs where people explain their process or their way of doing things as they go- must make a note to not do that so much in my own. Shorter videos!

I am beyond jealous of ALL your passholder magnets OMG. We're going for MNSSHP next year in September and I'm going to cry if Brooke posts ANYTHING about when she does Disney in a few weeks.

💙💙💙

Honestly I would love 40 minute vlogs, even from people I don't know! Productive vlogs are my favourite because I get to work along without clicking for new videos (I know I shouldn't be watching vids while working but it's fuuuunn)

Really interesting insights! I've been mulling over the idea of starting a youtube channel and focusing on research for writers as I'm a professional researcher as well as a very much not professional writer. But 2 hours per day... nuh uh, not a chance!

Love your videos. I have days where I can't English. Yesterday, it took me five times to get the word 'prompt' out. Now prompt is prufmt - my favorite disaster.

But I love the 40min vlogs! I like putting them on kinda of like a podcast I check in to watch every so often if you’re showing off something that piques my interest

I love watching your writing vlogs because they encourage me to be productive! I love the typing sounds from when you're writing because it helps me focus a lot (it's the same reason why I love the typing sounds during writing sprints because it encourages me to GO GO GO!) Also, UGHHH. Scrivener 3 for Windows was supposed to be released today but now it has been delayed (again!) until late 2019! When is it going to come out?? It's not that there's anything wrong with this current edition of Scrivener, at least not for me, it's just that I want to be able to use all of the cool features that Mac users have! Also, the Windows version of Scrivener looks slightly blurred (all the words do), and it's really annoying for me. I just want Scrivener 3 to come out already!!!

It's more of a comment for the Write like Sanderson video, but the visit Utah people have a great video about Caffenators of Salt Lake City that had a relevant perspective: the deeper understanding you have about the coffee making process, the more you realize there are a variety of ways to produce coffee. Along with the conversation V. E. Schwab made in July about how there is no cookbook recipe [algorithm] for becoming a writer. Everyone has to to experience the gift of trial & erroring what will he THEIR refined process. I think most of the insights you have in documenting your AuthorTube here are skills that have carryover to and from novel writing. I wonder just how much carryover there also is with illustrated journaling, but that's a whole other thing from Danny Gregory's Creative License. As for the egg cups: fitCity has a Starbucks sous vide egg bites copy cat recipe made with cottage cheese, shredded cheese & eggs. Apologies if I have commented about it previously. I watched a Rachel Ray, Katie Lee interview where Rachel says ricotta is a type of cottage cheese. I'm gonna try that as a duplicate because ricotta is available at Costco. Custard is probably a great example of infinite diversity in Infinite Combinations (Vulcan IDIC). About memory cards: I noticed Walmart had high capacity cards on rollback last year during my pre-Labor Day trip to DC. Last weekend they had 32GB for nine ninety-eight & sixty four GB for thirteen and change. [Apologies if I'm flagged as possible spam.]

Ahh, I'm in the vlog! Also, I misspelled "diffidently" every single time I have to use it in my work. I also couldn't figure out how to spell 'recognize' for a solid twenty minutes.

But I LIVE for your long videos! 😢

Kate! I love your videos and they really help me get motivated, but I was wondering if you have tips to saying motivated and focused when i turn on my computer and actually try to write?

I don't know if it's for everyone, but I was able to download OpenShout Video Editor. It's a free video editing software that's supported on both Macs and PCs. Just in case you want to shout that out for others in the future. Also, the idea about having someone else on the stream during write-ins is a good idea, though I don't really have any writer friends :( And for shorter videos, I notice that for a lot of people (not just you) they tend to ramble, or overexplain things. Basically, don't use a ten-dollar word and a ten-cent word works just fine. Hope that helps. I can't explain things that well. :)

oh daily vlogging for NaNo...that's going to hurt so good LOL

Ugh I agree with how filming really doesn’t take much time away from what I’m doing but editing is the worst! 😂 I’m getting better but man it takes forever. And now I’ve started adding CC for my videos and now THAT takes me forever too! 😂

I am absolutely trash at spelling and often have to ask my friends how to spell things. I can’t seem to spell different to save my life. I always spell it “diffrent”. I’ve gotten so much better at spelling over the years, looking back at my old writing I can barely understand what I’m saying.

Yet again, another awesome video. I am not the greatest at spelling, though I am very thankful for spell check. I just tried to spell confiscated...I spelled it originally convinsgated and it was so bad that spell check had no idea what I was talking about. I also can't spell definitely half the time-yes, I had to use spell check just for this comment to spell it correctly-and so many other words that others can spell on a daily basis. Can we please just give a moment of silence for all the writers in the past that had to write by hand, typewriters, est and didn't have spellcheck...and google. XD

Apologies if this was in another video, but about the video editing software question: Sarah Dietschy cut her teeth on Final Cut & transitioned to Adobe Premiere (I think she was in their fellowship, Adobe Creative Residency). She just posted a video documenting her 30 day challenge in Da Vinci resolve. IMHO She is doing an amazing job parallel to your writer series. She used resolve on Windows & MacOS so that might be one solution for people looking to edit video on Windows. There is also KDENLIVE, but that might be an ask that requires some heavy lifting. On the level of switching to the GIMP over Photoshop. The struggle is real with the absence of movie Maker apparently.

I’m currently trying to figure out characters and plot points and plot twists for my main novel and soon another book for nano. Is there anything that you do religiously to prep for a book? Also, how do you ‘get to know’ your characters? Sorry I’m a writer noobie and am just watching authortube and reading books like “letters to a young writer” and “the art of fiction” and other books like them to teach myself what best to do with writing and what things I want to do. Any advice on that too?

Simple words that stump: grey vs gray - I always get it wrong. ALWAYS! My excuse is that my British half is showing its dominance 😂

Worst misspelled? Definetly Definetily Definetley Definitely #GotIt!

When I realize I don't know how to spell a word I ask Alexa who spells it & provides the definition. Kindle will do the same, but also has it on the screen so it is visual which really helps. Safe trip!

Wonderful video and great advice. Just to let you know, Movie Maker is still available. I don't know why so many people think it isn't! I use it all the time on my PC. It's has been updated, and has a word after the words, Movie Maker, but it is still available for free on PCs.

It would literally be insane, but you should do Kurt Vonnegut writing routine, it would actually be INSANE. But cool.

Btw those egg cups look really good. What did you add to the eggs?

I misspell everything that has more than 2 c's or s's or a combination of those. I also misspell some words with ei rather than ie.

I love your nails.

"I'm overzealous with stuffing" - Kate, 2019. 🤣 I've really enjoyed this video. The words I get mixed up are "just", "use" and "bulb". I don't know why. Speaking of live streams, did you figure out what happened with your SteamYard going white screen/kaput during the stream with Brooke? ❤ I have Premier Pro, but not sure how to use it. I want Movie Maker imho. 😂 Life was simpler in mid-2000s. I don't an authortube channel because I'm scared I'm going to mess up whilst on camera. 😕

For editing videos on my PC, I use Shotcut which is a free software, it's working fine for now.

I do understand that it’s hard to attract new subscribers who might not want to commit to a longer video on their first visit. So could you maybe just make short videos periodically - ones that might have subject matter designed to attract new subscribers? Idk. 😂 I just love the long videos so much!

There are tons of words I struggle with and a lot of the time I have no idea how far off I am until I go to edit it and even the editing program has no idea what I meant.

2:03 I feel like the magic has been ruined😔 But that’s actually a pretty smart idea

Windows Movie Maker came back. I was able to find it and download it. That's what I use

I usually figure out scenes in my notebook

How do you keep your desk so clean? Mine is a nightmare xD

OK. So why are you traveling for two weeks? Pleasure/Vacay? Work? Visit? I'd love to travel as much as you do :-)

I know you have a lot of writer friends in RU-vid now, but for someone newer to the platform who do you suggest following so that you can join live write ins.

the downloading to computer and uploading to youtube is SO LONG!!! my upload time to youtube is usually an hour and a half...it hurts.

Do you ever have videos you have to film multiple times? I'm trying to film my first video for authortube and I think I'm on my fifth attempt to film it. I'll admit that I literally only have a cell phone to film with (not even a tripod) but I feel like every time I film it, something goes catastrophically wrong. Do you have any advice on sounding authentic? What I mean is when I try to create my opening to my video it sounds... like someone on QVC trying to sell something and that just isn't what I'm going for. Honestly, I think I watch your vlogs for your personality, so any sort is awesome. I would be interested to see what else you could do with vlogs. If you want to experiment with them, it would be fun.

Do you have links to your published work?

I kept writing past instead of passed because I literally forgot that passed is even a word 🤦🏻‍♀️ I didn’t realise until after I’d already written 40,000 words.

I’ve just started doing Authortube. I have it about ten minutes long. How do you make the image for your videos? Mine is questionable, lol.

I regularly misspell words when I have to write them on the whiteboard in front of my class. I tell them that it's proof you don't have to be a great speller to be a good writer.

For the longest time I couldn't spell "ingredients". I don't know why but the word really tripped me up.

What's air drafting?

Hey wassup Kate, have you ever read an Indian book??

My comment was featured in the authortube Queen's video!? *pauses the video to breathe*

For some reason I can NEVER remember that "in front" is two words and not one (infront) and my computer always autocorrects it to "infant." So I'm going to have to find and replace all of the "infant"s in my manuscript...

sometimes ill accidently type 'and' as 'adn'.... i type very fast adn accidently do it sometimes lmao

I regularly spell things so poorly that spell checker had no idea what I'm trying to write 😅

You should have your mom hide your computer on Sundays so you can have a break. You need a vacation and you just go back from one!

I’m always questioning how I spell ‘unfortunately’

You're an extremely charming young woman!

I didn't realize how bad my spelling skills in English were until I started learning Spanish. "translate into English: Inteligente" "...let me go google that"