Episode 012 – Aaron Farrell | MAKE // BREAK

Welsh-born writer Aaron Farrell returns to MAKE // BREAK for a candid, high-signal conversation about discipline, identity, and creative survival. Author of The Lost and Found and the poetry collection Artbeat, The Ekphrastic Spastic, Aaron traces the path from lockdown essays and his “Violent Expression” column to an unflinching Barcelona manuscript, while reopening his work with V13. We get into stay-at-home parent realities, pandemic PPE and burnout, martial arts as a writing method, and why killing perfectionism is the only way forward. With Jung in one hand and Eastern philosophy in the other, Aaron makes a case for truthful prose, pragmatic publishing, and showing up when it’s hardest.

👀 What you’ll hear

• Trace the leap from lockdown columns to longform books without waiting for permission
• Compare discipline in martial arts to muscle memory in writing and creative practice
• Unpack honest fatherhood, neurodivergence, and why progress is jagged not linear
• Reframe perfectionism with pragmatic publishing habits you can start today
• Map the “violent expression” era to a new V13 chapter and concrete next steps

🕰️ Chapters
00:00 Cold open and return-guest banter

00:22 Who is Aaron Farrell now and why he’s back on MAKE // BREAK

03:05 Stay-at-home dad energy, sick kids, showing up anyway

05:22 PPE reality check and pandemic life in hospitals

08:31 Barcelona move, curfews, and starting over

12:18 Transmetropolitan, Spider Jerusalem, media cynicism

16:45 Violent Expression origin, truth-telling, culture shock

22:06 Self-publishing in lockdown, first books and columns

26:24 Beat of Barcelona draft, decadence and discipline

32:48 Style over fitting in, permission to write as yourself

40:03 Breaking down, autism context, rebuilding identity

55:43 Jung, sense vs nonsense, closing notes and next time

🔗 Guest Links

https://v13.net/tag/violent-expression

🔗 MAKE // BREAK & Host Links

https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/makebreak
https://instagram.com/lowkeyhellish
https://tiktok.com/@lowkeyhellish

🔗 V13 Media

https://v13.net

Subscribe for more and drop a comment: do film or game scores help your writing focus?

(explicit language)

#MakeBreak #AaronFarrell #Writing