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Laurie Ann Thompson

Matthew Winner

Interview w/Matthew Winner of the Let’s Get Busy podcast!

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Every now and then I stum­ble on some­thing so won­der­ful that I want to add it my own list of “My Favorite Things” and share it with the world: the Let’s Get Busy pod­cast from Matthew Win­ner is one of those things. Whether you’re an author, illus­tra­tor, teacher, librar­i­an, agent, edi­tor, bookseller–if you have any­thing to do with chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture at all–this show is too good to miss. Think you don’t have time for pod­casts? I lis­ten while I’m in the car. Or while I walk the dog. Or while I clean the house. And, believe me, all of those tasks are way more enjoy­able when you have Matthew and his guests with you!
Matthew recent­ly record­ed his 100th episode of the pod­cast, and he put togeth­er a mas­sive blog and pod­cast tour to cel­e­brate. Here’s where he’s been so far:

And I’m thrilled that today is my turn to host! Matthew was kind enough to answer a few of my ques­tions, so we can all get to know him better.
LT: Hi Matthew, and wel­come! I’ve already gushed to you about how much I love your pod­cast, but I’m curi­ous to learn more. How and when did you first become inter­est­ed in doing a pod­cast like Let’s Get Busy? How did you get started?
MT: I lis­ten to a lot of pod­casts. I mean, a whole lot of pod­casts. All the time. When I’m dri­ving to work. When I’m wash­ing the dish­es. When I’m shelv­ing books. When I’m mow­ing the lawn. It’s the pri­ma­ry media I con­sume. The idea for doing a pod­cast of my own and, specif­i­cal­ly, a kidlit pod­cast just sort of popped into my head one day, took up camp, and then would­n’t leave. But it took a con­ver­sa­tion with Travis Jonker (of 100 Scope Notes) to nudge me into actu­al­ly start­ing it. He and I were talk­ing one evening dur­ing an ALA con­fer­ence in Chica­go about how much we love the insights but also those mem­o­rable vignettes that inevitably stick in your brain when­ev­er you’re in the com­pa­ny of authors or illus­tra­tors (or any­one who has some­thing to say, for that mat­ter). Travis asked me what my next big project would be and I told him that all I could think about was this idea of cap­tur­ing these sorts of con­ver­sa­tions through a loose­ly for­mat­ted pod­cast. Then he basi­cal­ly asked me when I was start­ing, and that was all it took.
LT: Some­times we just need the tini­est nudge, don’t we? (Thanks, Travis!) You sure have been busy since then. I can’t believe you start­ed less than a year and half ago, and you’re already up to 100 episodes! 
LT: How much time do you spend on the pod­cast over­all, and what’s the break­down of how that time is spent (lin­ing up guests, record­ing and edit­ing, pro­mot­ing, etc.)?
MW: Eeep. Let me try to make this as inter­est­ing as possible.
MW: I shoot for 30-minute record­ings so that I’m able to post twice a week (or 8 episodes per month). A lot of this is based on band­width lim­i­ta­tions and the cost of main­tain­ing a sub­scrip­tion on Lib­syn, a pod­cast host site. I usu­al­ly talk with each guest for about an hour total and we spend the unaired time lock­ing into a com­fort­able can­dor (or going on tan­gents and then say­ing, “Shoot! I should be record­ing this!”). Edit­ing and prep­ping the accom­pa­ny­ing blog post takes any­where between 30 and 60 min­utes. And coor­di­nat­ing sched­ules and review mate­ri­als and record­ing logis­tics over email can take upwards of 30 min­utes per sched­uled guest, but that might be over a series of weeks.
MW: So, let’s see. That’s 25 minus the cir­cum­fer­ence of Y, car­ry the 3 and sub­sti­tute 7 for X… about 2–3 hours per guest from first con­tact to pub­lished and pro­mot­ed episode.
LT: That’s a big com­mit­ment (but less than I thought–you’re fast!). What then is the hard­est part of doing the pod­cast, and how do you deal with that?
MW: The hard­est part for me is ask­ing new peo­ple to come on. It seems like every­one and their moth­er has a pod­cast nowa­days, but I’m often the first pod­cast my guests have ever appeared on or, in some cas­es, lis­tened to. And also, many of them have no idea who I am. That gets in my brain and makes me think all sorts of wonky things and then I start to psych myself out over send­ing that first con­tact email. I’ve coped with it by ask­ing each of my guests, fol­low­ing our own con­ver­sa­tions, to rec­om­mend a friend or col­league whom they think my be a good fit for the pod­cast or this inter­view for­mat. It’s worked pret­ty well for me and my guest list now reads like one great big fam­i­ly pho­to album with all sorts of zigzag­ging con­nec­tions between each of the faces.
LT: That is real­ly neat to envi­sion. So much of what we do is built on per­son­al rela­tion­ships, isn’t it? I don’t think you have any­thing to wor­ry about, though. First, kidlit peo­ple are the best peo­ple in the world, don’t you think? And sec­ond, I’m sure most authors and illus­tra­tors are thrilled by the oppor­tu­ni­ty to chat with you: you’re inter­est­ed in our work, and you give us a chance to talk about it. Just remem­ber: we’re nice, and you’re doing us a favor. There’s no need to psych your­self out! 🙂
LT: What has sur­prised you most about the podcast?
MW: Every­thing sur­pris­es me about the pod­cast. Some­times the thing that sur­pris­es me most is know­ing that any­one’s actu­al­ly lis­ten­ing. I learn some­thing new with each new per­son who comes on and by rule of thumb I allow myself space to won­der, to be excit­ed, to nerd out over process, and to ask what­ev­er comes to mind. That approach has served me well and has led to a good deal of sur­pris­es when our con­ver­sa­tions take unex­pect­ed turns. It’s how I learned that Lau­rie Keller (Arnie the Dough­nut) plays ban­jo, that Nick Bru­el (Bad Kit­ty) used to work at Books of Won­der, a land­mark chil­dren’s book­store in New York, and that Steve Light (Have You Seen My Drag­on?) works with PreSchool students!
LT: I love that every episode feels like a casu­al con­ver­sa­tion between friends, rather than an inter­view, per se. In fact, it’s my favorite thing about lis­ten­ing to them! What is your favorite thing about doing them?
MW: So, I have a blog called The Busy Librar­i­an. I start­ed it as a sort of advo­ca­cy blog for all of us teacher librar­i­ans who are all just so busy all the time. On Octo­ber 10th, 2010, I pub­lished my first post. Here is the text in its entirety:

This is a blog for busy librarians.
For those of us who feel, well, overwhelmed.
It’s a place of com­fort and, hope­ful­ly, a source of inspiration.
Here you will find the oppor­tu­ni­ty to inter­act glob­al­ly and to impact locally.
We’ll syn­er­gize moments, ideas, and activ­i­ties that will enable us to become more effec­tive librar­i­ans, more effi­cient in our libraries, and more ener­getic with our stu­dents, with­out feel­ing like things are careen­ing out of control.
So, let’s get busy!

It made per­fect sense to me to name the pod­cast as an exten­sion of the blog itself. Hence, Let’s Get Busy. My very good pal Sher­ry Gick, teacher librar­i­an at Rossville Con­sol­i­dat­ed Schools in Rossville, IN, and author of the Library Fanat­ic blog, and Nik­ki Ohs Barnes, fel­low Nerdy Book Club mem­ber and co-founder of the Vir­tu­al Book Club, met me at ALA where, just one night pre­vi­ous, Travis and I had talked about pod­cast­ing. Super excit­ed to share, I told Sher­ry and Nik­ki that I was going to start a pod­cast and that I decid­ed to call it Let’s Get Busy after my blog. They both imme­di­ate­ly broke into what they decid­ed would have to be the pod­cast sound effect… a sort of BOW-CHIKKA-WOAH-WOW that I have not to this day been able to get out of my head when­ev­er I’m about to start an inter­view. Car­ry­ing those sorts of mem­o­ries around every­where I go is def­i­nite­ly my favorite thing. And with 100 episode behind me, I’m def­i­nite­ly car­ry­ing around a lot of stories!
LT: I’m sure you are! 
LT: How do you feel your oth­er activ­i­ties (teach­ing, pre­sent­ing, writ­ing, blog­ging, Twit­ter, par­ent­ing, etc.) make the pod­cast bet­ter? And, vice ver­sa, how does the pod­cast con­tribute to those oth­er facets of your life?
MW: Oh my word! Every­thing and I mean EVERYTHING goes into the pot when it comes to mak­ing these record­ings. Books from my pic­ture book guests are typ­i­cal­ly already bed­time sta­ples with our 4‑year-old son. Teach­ing and being a teacher librar­i­an is the best and comes up over and over again on our chats because I like to share the way that the guests’ book is reach­ing kids and sup­port­ing read­ers in ways that I get to expe­ri­ence first­hand. Twit­ter is my pro­fes­sion­al learn­ing com­mu­ni­ty, but it’s also where I get to nerd out with friends over great kidlit and meet very cool peo­ple cre­at­ing very cool books in the process, many of whom I’ll invite on the pod­cast because their work sticks with me.
MW: Doing the pod­cast brings me pure joy and is or has become a part of my iden­ti­ty. And I’ve got­ten to meet a ton of real­ly cool peo­ple in the process. I’m thank­ful that our son is grow­ing up in a house sur­round­ed with beau­ti­ful pic­ture books, both on our book­shelves, and in frames hang­ing up through­out our house.
LT: Oh, I love that. Why have I nev­er thought of fram­ing pic­ture books?  (Hmmm… just in time for Christ­mas, too!)
LT: I’ve always said that I will know I’ve made it when I receive one let­ter from one child say­ing that some­thing I wrote made a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence in his or her life. How do you define suc­cess? Do you feel like you’ve achieved it? If not, what’s left on your to-do list?
MW: I lis­ten to my guests and I lis­ten to my lis­ten­ers. The pod­cast suc­ceeds when the guests feel like they’ve found a home in our con­ver­sa­tion and when the lis­ten­ers feel like they’re in the room with us. I also try to take in the kind things peo­ple are say­ing about Let’s Get Busy or about me per­son­al­ly. Sey­mour Simon once told me that he thinks of me “like a son” and that he’s proud of me. I achieved all I ever want­ed when I pub­lished the very first episode of Let’s Get Busy. And I’m thank­ful that so many peo­ple feel moved to tell me how the pod­cast is con­nect­ing with them. Suc­cess to me is know­ing that one per­son cares about the thing you’re mak­ing, or say­ing, or cre­at­ing. And I’m one per­son that cares a great deal about what I myself am mak­ing, say­ing, and cre­at­ing. So with every episode I get to share, I’ve already achieved suc­cess before a sin­gle down­load occurs.
LT: What a won­der­ful atti­tude, Matthew! I care a great deal about what you’re mak­ing, say­ing, a cre­at­ing, too. Thanks so much for shar­ing it with us ! 

As you can see from above, Matthew calls him­self “the busy librar­i­an” for good rea­son. Here are some of the places you can find more from him:

And be sure to fol­low the rest of the Let’s Get Busy podcast/blog tour, here:

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