The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers

Joanna Penn
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Writing Craft and Creative Business

  1. 2d ago

    Writing Endings, Using Literary Devices, And Tips From The Story Book With Amy Jones

    How can you sharpen your craft when the self-critical voice gets louder the more you learn? What kinds of literary devices might enhance your prose? And how do you write an ending that pays off the promise you made to your reader? Amy Jones shares her writing tips after 15 years of teaching storytelling. In the intro, Kindle Unlimited rebranded as Kindle+, How to Market a Book Fourth Edition, and AI-Assisted Artisan Author webinars. This podcast is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo eco-system. You can also subscribe to the Kobo Writing Life podcast for interviews with successful indie authors. This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn  Amy Jones is a writer, lecturer, and researcher who has designed courses and lectured for over a decade on literature, linguistics, and the craft of storytelling. She is the author of multiple books on writing craft, and today we’re talking about The Story Book: Plot, Character, Setting, Genre, Narrative and Literary Devices. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.  Show Notes Why writing is like being an athlete, and why struggle is a good sign The differences between academic writing and writing for a commercial audience Endings, killing your darlings, and not underestimating your reader Why Dickens could waffle and modern writers can’t What Gen Z storytellers on TikTok can teach conventional fiction writers Literary devices as a toolkit, and why reading aloud matters in a world of audiobooks You can find Amy at WoodenBooks.com. Transcript of the interview with Amy Jones Jo: Amy Jones is a writer, lecturer, and researcher who has designed courses and lectured for over a decade on literature, linguistics, and the craft of storytelling. She is the author of multiple books on writing craft, and today we’re talking about The Story Book: Plot, Character, Setting, Genre, Narrative and Literary Devices. So welcome to the show, Amy. Amy: Hi. Thanks, Jo. Thank you for having me. Jo: Oh, lots to talk about. First up— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing. Amy: Okay. So, I grew up in Somerset, which is where I live again now. There’s a strong literary history here, I think. I went to primary school in Nether Stowey, and was introduced to Samuel Taylor Coleridge very young. So I think that’s had a strong effect on my interest in writing, which has really always been there. As soon as I finished my undergraduate degree, I went into teaching, which has now been about 15 years. As you said, I’ve taught across A level and then undergrad. I started a course for undergraduates with a very good friend of mine with the University of Plymouth, and covered literature, linguistics, creative writing. So I have been a bit of a jack-of-all-trades in the writing world, and loved it. My connection with writing has really been… it’s a lovely opportunity for me to download all of that teaching knowledge that I’ve had over these years. I was in touch with John Martineau, who is my publisher at Wooden Books, and he was interested in creating a series of storybooks, or story writing books. I was originally starting that with that friend, my good friend Emma Craigie, who is a writer. But she had other projects in mind, so the six small books and then the large Story Book all came to me, which has just been a delight. So it’s been one a year for the last seven, eight years, and that has culminated in The Story Book now. Jo: Yes. So we’ll come back to The Story Book in a minute. In terms of your writing history, has it all been non-fiction, or do you also write fiction? Amy: I do write fiction, but I don’t tend to put it out there. I find the more that I have expertise in the craft of storytelling, the more I’m self-critical of my own work. Jo: Oh. Amy: I’m a really big fan of Horace, and especially the Ars Poetica, and he has a wonderful line in there about how he considers himself to be a whetstone, upon which, largely, fiction writers sharpen their craft. So I use that model for myself. I spend a lot of time these days—as well as academia, which we’ll talk about—doing consultancy work for scriptwriting, media companies, but also novels and fiction at the same time. So that’s where I’ve found myself. Jo: I think that’s really interesting, because that whetstone idea, and if people don’t know, that’s W-H-E-T-stone, right? Where you can use it to sharpen a knife. So essentially you’re helping other people sharpen their skills. I actually really love that metaphor. I guess essentially you’re a teacher, but also a form of editor in that way. That is a role that editors play too, isn’t it? Amy: Exactly, yes. It is a gorgeous quote, and that text is one that I come back to time and time again if I’m ever in doubt about my feedback. Horace is my guy. Yes, I especially love that whetstone metaphor. Jo: That’s great. It’s interesting. You mention there the self-critical thing, in terms of the more you learn, the more self-critical you become. So how do you balance that for your students then? Because I know I recognise that, and I’m sure many people listening also recognise that. It’s like you see your flaws more easily. Amy: Yes, exactly, which is very valuable. I think what a lot of creative writers are looking for, in my experience, is someone to be that kind of critical friend. You never want to rip somebody to pieces, but if you can put your finger on the one particular element which is bringing their story down, or which they haven’t recognised as an integral part which they need to blow up a little bit more, it’s a wonderful symbiotic relationship between that role and the writer themselves. Jo: How do you encourage writers who want to publish more of their work? How do you encourage them past that point? Because let’s face it, the manuscript is never finished, just abandoned, right? Whoever said that. I mean, that’s true of so much of art. How do you help other people get over that critical voice? Amy: Mm, yes, the self-critical voice. I think to say, “Just get it down. Get it down.” It’s your idea, it’s your baby, and then use the critical friend. I think it’s hard to entirely do that on your own, because we know that old adage of the need to kill your darlings, and a big part of my job is building that relationship with writers or creatives, to the point where it’s very easy to be defensive of elements of your story that you feel are integral or you’re really attached to. If you have an outside voice which says, “I understand, and these are your great strengths, but this one thing just isn’t working,” that can be really valuable to the final piece. I know the critical voice is always there when you’re creating, but—I’ve just said I’m a victim of it myself—as much as possible to ignore it, I think, and push through. I think a lot of the time I find myself saying… people often think that writing should be easy, but it’s not. It’s like being an athlete. You may be, I don’t know, naturally flexible and therefore a good gymnast, but if you don’t train, and you don’t know that mistakes are a really positive thing that will eventually lead to you improving your performance, then it’s not going to get there. So I always say struggle is good. If you find you’re struggling and you’re wrestling with that critical element, that’s a good sign. Just push through it, keep doing it. Let the mistake be there, and then you can come back and revisit it, or someone will help you to address it. That’s my take. Jo: I’m glad you said that. I mean, this whole “think it should be easy” thing. I feel like some people, as you say, they think it should be easy, and if it’s not easy, then they think they’re doing it wrong. Whereas what we’re basically saying is— Writing is hard. Writing a book is really, really hard. It’s hard work, and people are like, “Oh, well, if it’s not easy, maybe I shouldn’t be doing this.” I’m like, yes, it’s good work, but it is work. I mean, there’s these moments of happy flow or whatever, but to be honest, they’re quite few and far between in my experience. Amy: Yes, exactly. There’s a lot of walking and thinking on your own, which is part of that training. Again, it’s that athlete metaphor, with the very best writers making writing look easy. I’ve written in the introduction to this book that there is that common trick that Truman Capote used to say a lot, which was that he just started. He didn’t train. Jo: Mm-hmm. Amy: Which is part of an illusion that perhaps writers like to build around themselves. Truman Capote definitely did train, partly through reading a lot, and getting things wrong. We see the best athletes at the Olympics, and they look fantastic. We see the best writers in their final products, and we don’t see the struggle, and that’s part of the skill. The struggle is there. It’s just silent. Jo: Yes, and we’re comparing our first draft to somebody’s finished, edited, complete book. So it is really hard. Then I also wanted to talk to you about the academic side. So you’re working in academia. You’re working on a PhD in English. I recently finished a master’s, and I was like, oh, my goodness, this wrestling with academic writing, it’s very, very different to commercial mainstream writing. Now, I would say that The Story Book and your books on craft are pretty, well, literary and verging

  2. Oct 21

    Write For Money And Power: Becoming A Creator CEO With Amy Suto

    How can you move from the starving artist mindset to becoming a creator CEO with multiple streams of income? And how can you get traction on Substack if you’re starting from zero? Amy Suto shares her tips as a former Hollywood TV writer turned author, Substack creator, and ghostwriter. In the intro, Novel November with ProWritingAid; Book Marketing in a Changing World [ALLi Podcast with me and Orna Ross]; Navigating tough times in indie publishing [Wish I’d Known Then]; watch out for fake agent emails [Write Beware]; AI-Assisted Artisan Author webinars for beginners and advanced. Today’s show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with writing software, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 15% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn  Amy Suto is a former Hollywood TV writer and the bestselling author of books around freelance writing, as well as romance, fantasy, and detective fiction. She’s also a ghostwriter and a top 25 ranked Substack creator. Her books include Write for Money and Power. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.  Show Notes How to take back power when your dreams are in the hands of gatekeepers Moving from the starving artist mindset to creator CEO The income flywheel of freelancing, a paid newsletter, and book royalties How serialising fiction on Substack can build true fans and supercharge pre-orders Getting traction on Substack, and how to manage comments and Notes Using AI tools like a scalpel, and how to move past the fear of backlash You can find Amy on her Substacks, Make Writing Your Job and Sutoscience. Transcript of the interview with Amy Suto Jo: Amy Suto is a former Hollywood TV writer and the bestselling author of books around freelance writing, as well as romance, fantasy, and detective fiction. She’s also a ghostwriter and a top 25 ranked Substack creator. So welcome to the show, Amy. Amy: Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited to be here. Jo: Yes, lots to talk about. First up— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing. Amy: So I came up in Hollywood as a TV writer, and I was climbing my way up the ladder, starting as an assistant, working in Los Angeles, and then eventually, finally got to start to write episodes of TV. When I hit what I thought was my peak, I was working with a CIA agent on a spy show. It was literally my dream, to be able to pick his brain about all the conspiracies that were actually true and be able to write TV around that. I found myself a little bit disillusioned with the way the system was running. I found that I really wanted to spend more time writing my own original work instead of being work for hire on other people’s shows. So when 2020 happened and everything shut down, I ended up being able to travel the world, ghostwrite memoirs for Olympians and CEOs, and have some crazy experiences as a digital nomad, which then inspired my first fiction book, The Nomad Detective. From there I continued writing novels and also non-fiction books about my experience as a freelance writer, to help other authors and writers figure out how to have this balance of both being able to pay the bills as a writer while also having creative freedom to put together your own work. Jo: I love that. I guess just to address the dream—so you hit this dream of Hollywood TV writing, which of course for some people, that’s their dream and they never got there, and then you left it all. I mean, the strength to walk away from that. So if people have that dream, or there’s the dream of the eight-figure movie deal for a novelist and all this. So can dreams end up not be the thing we really want, I guess? Amy: This is a great question, and I think that the thing that I was running into is that I was putting my dreams in the hands of gatekeepers. I think that when you hand over that power, then suddenly you are left without agency and you are finding yourself working for free or doing work for producers that maybe you didn’t sign up for. People are dangling your dreams in front of you to get you to do what they want you to do. That was a little bit of what I was beginning to experience, and seeing in other writers that I was talking to in the industry. So I knew that I wanted to take back that power for myself. I also love books. Writing novels is something that is very close to my heart and part of my own dream as a writer as well. So when 2020 was happening and everything was shutting down and the writers’ room that I was in went to a Zoom room, I thought, “This is a perfect opportunity for me to explore some of these other areas of writing.” So basically there is this experience that I was having of remembering all of these novelists who started off as journalists, and they started off as journalists because some of the best inspiration for fiction is actually in non-fiction. When I was starting to moonlight as a memoir ghostwriter in between projects in Hollywood, I found myself completely captivated by working with these incredible clients who’ve had lives that were beyond anything I could have ever imagined. So my work as a memoir ghostwriter ended up feeding my creative work, not only being able to pay the bills with these really cool projects, but also being able to interview people about their lives and being able to understand humanity through a completely different lens. I never would have had the experience to get flown out to Vienna and sit down with an entrepreneur who had changed the direction of the way that technology had been built in his industry, and be able to ask questions about what it was really like to be these types of people and to be in their lives and to grow up in Austria or Singapore. So I think that memoir ghostwriting ended up being the perfect primer for me to continue to develop my work as a fiction writer, because I was able to meet so many different people I never would have had the opportunity to meet or work with or ask questions of before. Jo: Yes, I love this empowered attitude to making your own career. In fact, when you pitched me—and I’ve told you this, but for people listening—I had already bought your book, Write for Money and Power, and the reason I had bought it is, obviously, I’m a 20-year writer at this point, but it was your use of the word power. I have not seen another writing book that says Write for Money and Power: The Anti-Starving Artist’s Guide to Becoming a Seven-Figure Writer. And again, the subtitle, other people have done that. Let’s talk about power because why did you use that word, and what kind of power are you talking about? Amy: So when I was coming up in Hollywood, a lot of the writers around me, we were all being funnelled into the gatekeepers’ world for us, and the vision that other people had for us. That meant that we were giving up our power. So when I went on this journey of being able to travel the world, and ghostwrite memoirs, and being able to write my own novels and connect with readers directly, I discovered my own sense of power. I think that for writers, you’re not really allowed to want to be able to have power over your career because it’s so discouraged by gatekeepers and society. You’re supposed to be a starving artist who is grateful for anything that comes your way because you get to make your art. So I think that there’s a shift happening in culture where writers are being treated not just as artists that are expected to starve, but also as creative entrepreneurs, where we’re learning how to own all parts of our creative journey. Both the creation of our books artistically, but also the marketing of them, and how we get them out into the world, and treating that like one whole entity. I think that there’s a shift happening where writers are no longer wanting to write what gatekeepers tell them to, and are wanting to be able to have unburdened creative freedom. That’s why so many authors like Brandon Sanderson end up self-publishing or independently publishing, because they want that creative power to be able to serve their fans and their readers better. That’s so cool, and it also proves the fact that even with people like Taylor Swift buying back her masters, so many people who are at the top of their game are outgrowing the gatekeepers. If they’re not finding use for these older systems, then that also brings them into question for the rest of us. Jo: I love that. Coming back to the book, so you mentioned the starving artist mindset, and in the book you also talk about the creator CEO, and I love that. I feel like I can claim those words, but I know some people listening will just find that pretty intimidating, I think. So what do you think the process is for moving from scarcity to the more empowered author mindset? Amy: When I first was starting my career as a writer, I never wanted to be a business person. I didn’t want to look at spreadsheets, I didn’t want to deal with accounting. The thing is, if you want power over things like what does your book cover look like, or how is your book marketed, or how does your book enter the world, and even just what are the contents of what you’re writing, what are the subject matters, what is actually something that gets to reach your readers? If you want that power, then i

  3. Oct 14

    Bad Choices Make Good Stories: Character, Critique And Community With Erin Dionne

    How can giving your characters two bad choices raise the stakes in your stories? And how do you ask for the feedback you need from a critique group, and disregard the rest? Erin Dionne shares her writing and publishing tips after more than 20 years as an author and professor. In the intro, The Future of Listening Audible survey [Publishing Perspectives]; Spotify expand audiobooks globally; Audible announce immersive new AI features [Publishing Perspectives]; Writing Storybundle; SPS Live USA conference; AI-Assisted Artisan Author webinars in November. Today’s show is sponsored by Bookfunnel, the essential tool for your author business. Whether it’s delivering your reader magnet, sending out advanced copies of your book, handing out ebooks at a conference, or fulfilling your digital sales to readers, BookFunnel does it all. Check it out at bookfunnel.com/thecreativepenn This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn  Erin Dionne writes middle grade novels, picture books, chapter books, and nonfiction, as well as cosy mysteries under a pen name. She’s also a college professor, and her latest book for writers is Bad Choices Make Good Stories: Conversations About Writing. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.  Show Notes Why two bad choices beat an easy choice and a hard one How pre-writing in a notebook builds confidence in your characters before you draft Giving characters dimension beyond the bubble of their story How to ask for the feedback you want, and protect the core of your story Forming an indie press with your critique group How to get school visits through librarians and conferences You can find Erin at ErinDionne.com. Transcript of Interview with Erin Dionne Jo: Erin Dionne writes middle grade novels, picture books, chapter books, and nonfiction, as well as cosy mysteries under a pen name. She’s also a college professor, and her latest book for writers is Bad Choices Make Good Stories: Conversations About Writing. So welcome to the show, Erin. Erin: I’m thrilled to be here. Thank you for having me. Jo: There’s lots to talk about. First up— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing. Erin: Sure. Like some of the other people that you’ve talked to on the podcast, I’ve been a huge reader and writer ever since I was a little kid, but when I was about seven, I realised that it was people that wrote books. I thought that they came out of a machine or something. When I found that out, I thought, oh my goodness, I love reading stories, so being a writer must be the best job in the world. So I was single-mindedly focused on being an author as a career after that. I wrote off and on in school. I wrote short stories and things. When I went to college, I got a degree in English and communications, and then I went and got my MFA in creative writing. While I was in school, I also decided that I wanted to learn about the publishing industry, so I worked as an intern for a local magazine. Then after I graduated, while I was in grad school, I actually worked in publishing for Houghton Mifflin in their marketing department. I became an editor for a magazine, and then ultimately, I became a professor, and I work at an art school. It was at that point, finally, when I was surrounded by other creative people, that I thought, “Okay, I’ve learned all this stuff. I need to actually put it into practice.” So I got serious about my work in 2005, and my first book came out in 2009, a traditionally published children’s book, and I published in the children’s book field for the next 11 years. I released my first indie book in 2021, and now I consider myself a hybrid author. I do some books traditionally published, some books indie, and I really like being able to have control in different aspects of my career. Jo: Well, that’s great. Wow, you’ve just done so much across the whole industry. That’s fantastic. I do want to ask you then, before we get into the book, you did an MFA, and obviously you love studying. I also love studying. I understand that. I wonder where you stand now on whether people need to study so much. I found personally, as someone who also enjoys studying, that sometimes I make myself not do the practice. I’d rather sometimes be learning than doing. So how can people balance learning a lot with actually writing the book? Erin: Yes, I think that’s a great question. For me, my undergraduate degree in English was not creative writing focused. We didn’t have that. So I thought, “I need to learn how to write.” What I really learned in grad school was how to revise and how to teach. I think now, 20 years later, with the cost of education, you don’t have to have a master’s degree to write. You don’t have to have a degree in English to write. You have to read a lot, and you have to write a lot. I think the MFA is great for deep study on your particular genre if you feel like you need to learn more, and I think it’s great if you want to teach, but it’s not necessary to be a writer. To be a writer, you have to write. So sometimes we can hide behind learning and hide behind all kinds of things to avoid doing the work, but what it comes down to is you have to put your butt in the chair and you have to write at some point. Jo: It’s funny, isn’t it? I like the “hide behind the learning.” I still struggle with it because I love learning so much. I also just finished another master’s degree. I can’t help myself. I do a lot of research for all my books, and I almost have to just pull myself up sometimes and say, “Look, do you really need to do any more research in order to write this novel?” Erin: Exactly. Jo: Okay. Well, let’s get into the book. So you start writing with characters first, and other people, like me, often start with a theme or a question or a place or something. So talk about your process of creating characters and this bad choices idea as well. Erin: Sure. Most of my books start with a character. Like you, I’m a discovery writer, but I love to do all my discovery work in pre-writing phases, and I pre-write by hand. I’m a big proponent of using a notebook. I carry a notebook with me wherever I go, and I have specific notebooks that are for specific projects. Most of my pre-writing is character-based. I really want to learn about who this person is, what do they want, what are they going after in their life and in the story, and what do they need? Wants and needs are always a big one for me, because I feel like a character should be able to articulate their want, but they don’t always know what their need is. That’s up to us as the author to identify that. Then through the course of the story, I always think about it in terms of the character is going after what they want, but they’re going to get their need met by the end of the story. That brings satisfaction to the reader when a character gets their need met. So I take a lot of time to try to figure out what that is, because for me, that’s going to drive the story. I really have to understand the character’s world before I begin. When I feel like I have a really good handle on who these people are that the book is about, I’ll do a beat sheet, like what Jessica Brody was talking about on your show earlier in August. I’ll do a beat sheet to get some general ideas of plot points, and then I’m ready to write. Then that’s where the bad choices come in. If you think about a character and they get to a crossroads in a story, lots of times the first thing that we think about are an easy choice and a hard choice. So for example, if we have a character who’s 16 years old, and she’s grounded, and there’s a party on Friday night that she wants to go to, one choice is for her to just stay home and then hear about the party. The other choice is for her to sneak out and go to the party, and obviously sneaking out and going to the party could have higher stakes and better consequences. But that’s also an easy choice, and both you and your reader know where the character’s going to go. If you give your character two bad choices, that character is going to go to the party no matter what. So are they going to sneak out and have a friend pick them up, or are they going to sneak out and take their mother’s car and go to the party? Now we have two bad choices, higher stakes, and more potential for story drama if they take that bad choice. So I’m always looking at ways that I can have my characters get into a little bit more trouble, make things a little harder. For me, that comes with those decision points, and giving them two bad options so that the reader knows, ooh, they’re going to do something wrong. It’s just a matter of what wrong thing are they going to pick? Jo: So it’s interesting, because you said you’re a discovery writer, and then you talked about your pre-writing phase and the beat sheet, and now these bad choices. So are you coming up with these bad choices at the pre-writing, at the beat sheet phase, or do these emerge once you’re actually into the drafting process? Erin: They come out in the drafting process. I have a general idea by the time I start writing of some of the highs and lows of the book, but I don’t know how the character is going to get there. Because I know my character really well, I can write with confidence, and I know that I’m going to figure out the path that they’re going to take. Jo: The word pre-writing, maybe you could talk more about that, because I feel like some people listening are lik

  4. Oct 7

    From Story Seeds To Stories, And Writing An Author’s Note, With Joanna Penn

    How do you find and notice story ideas, and how do you turn those into short stories, novels, or as anecdotes for your non-fiction or memoir? Why is an author’s note so important in an age of AI, and what might it contain? Joanna Penn shares her thoughts, and her short story, The Black Church, along with its author’s note. In the intro, Ebook Preorders on Smashwords; Two titles per week on Amazon KDP; AI-related Digital Publishing Awards at Frankfurt Book Fair [Publishing Perspectives]; AI webinars in November; JFPenn YouTube; This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn Joanna Penn is an award-winning New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of thrillers, dark fantasy, short stories and travel memoir under J.F. Penn and also writes non-fiction for authors and hosts The Creative Penn Podcast. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.  Show Notes From story seeds to stories Writing an author’s note The Black Church, a short story, available as a stand-alone or as part of The Buried and the Drowned collection. Author’s Note for The Black Church You can find How to Write, Publish, and Market Short Stories on all platforms, in all formats: www.TheCreativePenn.com/shortstorybook From story seeds to stories One of the most common questions that writers get asked is ‘Where do you get your ideas?’ This is a strange question for many of us, since we are often so deluged with ideas that the difficulty is sifting out which ones to turn into a story.  The trick is to tune into your curiosity and start noticing what grabs your interest. As Elizabeth Gilbert writes in Big Magic, “The universe buries strange jewels deep within us all, and then stands back to see if we can find them.” What do you see that others don’t? What turns your head while others pass by? What do you want to learn more about? What questions come up for you? What obsessions do you keep returning to? Each of these may be a fragment, a word, or a few lines. I call these story seeds. An idea, in its earliest form, is like a seed. It’s small, easy to miss, and nothing like the thing it might grow into. You literally can’t tell what it will look like when it’s grown, but there is potential in it.  A seed isn’t a plot, or a character, or a full setting. It might be a line in a book or a film, a headline in the news, something you see in a museum display, or a place that made you feel something. It might be a question that bubbles up, or a feeling that won’t let you go. You just have to notice these seeds and, importantly, write them down! Capturing your story seeds Thoughts and ideas and story seeds will flit through your mind all the time if you let them, but they are fleeting, so you need a way to capture them before they leave once more. It doesn’t matter how you do this, but you need some kind of simple process. I use the Things app on my iPhone, which syncs to my Mac so I can always access it. Other people use a note-taking app or a physical notebook. It doesn’t matter. You just have to get it down.  My story seeds are often one-liners, quotes, or links to articles I’ve seen that I want to investigate later. They might be passages from books I have underlined, or places I visit, or questions I have while out in the world. Here are a few examples from my Fiction Ideas file that might even spark ideas for you:  United Arab Emirates plans world’s first underwater bullet train connecting Dubai to Mumbai L’appel du vide. The call of the void. The compulsion to jump. “Vengeance of the lost garden.” Ben Okri. A Fire in My Head Noah’s Ark on the moon, like the Svalbard seed bank The Wicked Bible. Printing error. Thou shalt commit adultery. 1631. You can see that these are not fully formed ideas. They are just seeds. Most will lie dormant, but some will sprout, appearing in stories or books years later.  When I’m thinking about writing a new short story, I sometimes go to a cafe and sit with a coffee and scroll through my seed folder and notice patterns and see what strikes me as interesting. Sometimes I won’t even know an idea came from a seed I once found, but I look at my list later and discover I had thought about it once before. It’s a wonderful way to plant ideas and later find they have grown into something wild and curious.  If you haven’t already got a way to capture your story seeds, establish a simple process now. Don’t overthink it. Just start noticing and writing them down. They might not make sense at the moment, but they may flower later. Searching for story seeds Julia Cameron discusses the idea of an Artist’s Date in her book The Artist’s Way, and this practice has always been important to me. It involves taking time out on your own to go somewhere and fill your creative well, whatever that means to you. For me, it’s often travel to interesting places or visiting museum exhibitions that I know will have nuggets of fascination that may result in full blown story seeds.  On the morning of my fiftieth birthday, in March 2025, we woke up in Iceland next to the Black Church at Búðir on the Snæfellsnes Peninsula, a few hours’ drive northwest of Reykjavík. The small church and graveyard sit on a bed of ancient lava under the gaze of a glacier and there is a sense that time has stopped in this place. As we walked around the church that morning, the place itself became a story seed, and I later wrote The Black Church from that spark. On the cheaper end of the inspiration spectrum, I often go to the British Museum in London seeking story seeds and over the years, it has provided much inspiration for fiction of different lengths.  An exhibition on religious relics inspired Crypt of Bone, a Viking collection appeared in Day of the Vikings, and one of the main characters in Desecration works as a researcher there. In terms of short stories, a sunken Egypt exhibition inspired The Dark Queen and I saw the actual Bronze Age wooden spars of Seahenge at an exhibition on the ancient world. If you follow your curious impulses, you will find story seeds everywhere. From seed to story Now that you have a load of story seeds, how do they become stories?  For me, it’s usually about a juxtaposition of multiple seeds that suddenly coalesce into something coherent. With a Demon’s Eye came from my own experience of laser eye surgery, which was unsettling in so many ways, but a feeling is not enough for a story. Some months later, I read It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War by combat photographer Lynsey Addario, and I suddenly had a character, someone whose life was defined by their sight, and who might indeed choose a dangerous path to keep it. Questions: Where do you find your story seeds? How can you make time to tune into your curiosity and discover more of them? How are you saving your story seeds? Can you open up time to revisit your seeds and see what might take root as a story? The Author’s Note As a reader, I love an author’s note, and as an author, I always include one in every story, of any length. I want to share the spark that started my thought process and I love to include my research trips and links to photos, as well as a bibliography if I’ve gone deeper into any subject. In an age of AI, when whole stories can be generated with a single prompt, the author’s note is a way to double down on being human and include your fingerprints on your finished work. What is an author’s note? An author’s note is a separate chapter, long or short, at the beginning or end of a story. It’s from you as the writer addressed to the reader who might be interested in what inspired your fiction. As an example, you can find my author’s note for The Black Church below. It can be simple, even just a few lines. At the end of Blood, Sweat, and Flame, I note that the story was inspired by watching the Netflix series Blown Away, a reality show where glassblowers compete in a hot shop filled with furnaces and molten art. It can also be far more substantial. My author’s note for Between Two Breaths is a mini essay on how I left London in 2000 to go travelling after the stress of working in the city in the ’90s and found peace diving beneath the waters of the Poor Knights Islands in New Zealand. Later, that led to diving alone and a moment where I made the choice to carefully ascend when everything in me wanted to stay down in the blue. That author’s note also includes recommended books on free diving as well as a documentary, and links to a solo episode of my Books and Travel podcast where I talk more about why I loved scuba diving. While the two notes differ greatly in length and emotional depth, and they shouldn’t affect whether the reader enjoys the story or not, I feel like they provide an element of humanity that adds to the experience. So, what should you include in an author’s note? Start with the seed I love to include my story seeds, the initial impetus for how the story was born.  In my author’s note for Seahenge, I explain that Seahenge itself is real and did indeed emerge off the coast of Norfolk, but my own experience of it began in 2022 when I stood in the British Museum in front of the actual blackened Bronze Age timbers and imagined a sacrifice laid across that upturned trunk. Standing there, I knew that I’d write a story inspired by it someday, I just didn’t know what that would be at the time. Then I talk about how the seed expanded after a rainy visit to Ely Cathedral two years later, as I considered rising seas and drowned land and how t

  5. Sep 30

    Writing And Creativity In Midlife With Jordan Rosenfeld

    How can you keep writing when midlife brings grief, exhaustion, rage, and a creativity that seems to have dried up? How can you accelerate if midlife brings you more energy? And how can you market your books authentically when your energy and your interests have changed? Jordan Rosenfeld shares what she learned from writing through her own pause. In the intro, how to write short stories [Novel Marketing Podcast]; Bestsellers: Excavating the Tools and Techniques of Successful Novels – Kristen Tate. Plus, Hugh Howey: The AI Bubble Explained; NEO writing software; Will the AI Bubble Destroy our Retirement? By Mr Money Mustache; Future Vision X Prize winner, The Gifted; and my Cathedral Zero trailer; How to Market a Book Fourth Edition survey. Today’s show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with writing software, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 15% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn  Jordan Rosenfeld is the author of psychological suspense novels and books on writing craft, as well as an editor and writing coach. Her latest book is Writing Through the Pause: Mining Midlife for Powerful Writing. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.  Show Notes What midlife is, and why so many changes seem to arrive at once Disenfranchised grief, empty nest, perimenopause and the losses nobody talks about A fallow period is a germinating period, not a dead one Don’t isolate, try something new, and learn to write as play How to market your books in a way that reflects who you are at your core Vulnerability, curation and how much of yourself to share online You can find Jordan at JordanRosenfeld.net. Transcript of the interview with Jordan Rosenfeld Jo: Jordan Rosenfeld is the author of psychological suspense novels and books on writing craft, as well as an editor and writing coach. Her latest book is Writing Through the Pause: Mining Midlife for Powerful Writing. So welcome to the show, Jordan. Jordan: Thank you so much. I’m so excited to be here. Jo: Yes, this is an excellent topic. First up— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing. Jordan: Absolutely. I’m really one of those annoying writers who’s been writing all my life since I was a little girl, and it was all I really wanted to be or do. I’m a Gen X-er, so of course we grew up before the internet, and I read for pleasure and escape. So I was really dogged in figuring out how does one go about becoming a writer, because it was the only thing I wanted to do. I remember going to the library and checking out—eventually, later in my 20s—this massive tome, I forget what it was called. Like the Writer’s Guide to Publishing, one of those big old things that has all of the editors, agents and stuff. It was really just figuring out how to do it and sending snail mail queries and going to writing conferences. So I think I was just dog on a bone with it, really, since I was young. Like anything, once you get your toe in, it’s a little easier to keep publishing. I laugh because the first traditionally published book of mine was actually a book on writing craft before I had published any of my novels. So that felt strange, but I wasn’t complaining at the same time. Jo: So when was that, and what has your career looked like so far? Jordan: So I published Make a Scene: How to Craft—oh my gosh, I’m forgetting my own subtitle—Crafting Powerful Scenes in 2005, which means I pitched it in 2003. That was the beginning of my era as a writing craft teacher as well. I was right out of graduate school at that point. Then eventually I published my first novel. When I say my first novel, I just mean the first one that hit the world. It wasn’t my first one written, but Forged in Grace. Then I eventually started putting out a writing craft guide every couple of years, just thanks to the wonderful people at Writer’s Digest. I just found a niche early on. Sometimes that just happens. I also like to point out that I was pitching books at a time before this whole concept of platform was a big deal. So you could be just any old body without a big following, because we didn’t really have social media. I did write for the magazine, the Writer’s Digest magazine, which I think gave me a leg up in the book part. So writing craft became my niche, and then I always have really found success with small press for my novels. So my current publisher is called Sibylline Press, and they are a publisher of women 50 and over, actually. That’s their whole thing. Jo: Oh, okay. That’s interesting. Well, we’re going to come back to the book in a minute, but just in terms of that journey, it’s quite interesting. You mentioned platform there, that changed, and Writer’s Digest publishing themselves got into trouble, didn’t they? They got bought by a different publisher. Jordan: Yep. Jo: So you’ve been through some changes. Well, we’re going to be talking about change in general, but changes in the industry have also happened. So how have you navigated all that change over time? Obviously a lot of listeners to this show are independent authors as well, so thoughts on how things have changed in the industry. Jordan: Well, what’s interesting is Writer’s Digest actually went bankrupt. They got bought by another company who just mismanaged it, called F+W Media, and they went bankrupt. So a lot of us authors were terrified that all of our books were going to just revert. I mean, it was fine to have the rights back, but we didn’t want to republish ourselves at that time. So they did end up getting bought by Penguin Random House, which means our books are still alive in that traditional way. So Forged in Grace, my first novel, I was in the process of querying agents, and then a friend of mine and I decided to start this thing. This was 2012, ’13, this independent publishing collective. So we were going to act like a publisher but publish books. Basically it was people doing work trade. We had someone who did cover design and someone who could do layout and marketing and all these things, and we came together. So I did publish my novel that way, and actually it was the time when Amazon was still quite favourable to indie authors. You could really make a decent amount of money. Then my partner and I just… It didn’t last. There were a lot of different reasons why we didn’t, and it has nothing to do with the idea, which was totally working. I have really seen how the capitalist machine seems to continually come in and eat away at whatever profits there are for independent authors. I’ve seen authors have to become marketers. We went from being people who could write, and then someone else would handle that, to having all of us have to do it ourselves, and now content creators. So I think a lot of us feel really exhausted, which actually is not unrelated to the book of mine that’s coming out. So I worry. Of course, we haven’t even talked about AI, if we even want to, but I do worry a little bit about the future of publishing, but I’m not a pessimist in the sense that I don’t think it’s going away. Jo: Oh, no, absolutely, I agree. Changes, I think, are what this is all about. Well, let’s get into the book then. Let’s start with a definition. So what are you defining as midlife, and why is this such a change for many people? Jordan: It’s a very buzzword, midlife. So I will say it’s a mental state as much as an age, because a lot of people start calling themselves or saying they’re in midlife in their 30s, right? So it’s not a hard age, even though you might say it’s in your 40s or 50s. For me, it’s really the point at which I find people start to realise that they have less time ahead of them than behind. You might find yourself maybe a little past what I’m calling the striving stage of life, where you’re focused on building career and identity and family, and all of that. It also seems to coincide for people with multiple challenges at once. So maybe you’re dealing with health issues or perimenopause or aging, and maybe you’re helping your parents or your fledging teenage children, if you have children. So there’s a lot going on for people, it seems, at this stage of life, and I’ve interviewed 28 people for my book who range in age from 37 to 81. So there is definitely a wide range of age. Jo: Yes, I think that’s interesting. I almost wonder whether it is a realisation of changes. I mean, again, we’ll just say menopause because I feel like for me, that’s when it really kicked in, was there was a health hormonal shift, and I started feeling very different. I started questioning a lot of things, and so much came up for me that I almost felt was out of my control. I think that was the biggest thing that happened for me, was realising, “This is out of my control,” and I don’t particularly like that. It felt like there was a lot of grief at midlife, and you mentioned there parents. Obviously some people’s parents are dying, children are leaving. Is grief a big part of this, do you think? Jordan: Absolutely, and I like what you said about it often is a stage where people feel out of control of things, their bodies, their life circumstances. There’s also a little bit of a, did I do everything I wanted? Wha

  6. Sep 23

    Time Freedom: Rethink Your Work And Money With Brian Herriot

    How can you design your year around seasons of work and rest instead of waiting for financial freedom? And how do you build the money confidence to take extended time off when you come from a scarcity mindset? Brian Herriot shares his ideas on time freedom after a career as a financial advisor and consultant. In the intro, The end of the spectrum [Seth Godin, Akimbo]; List of money books; Lessons learned from 15 years as a full-time author entrepreneur; My author timeline since 2005; Producing AI-narrated audiobooks with Simon Patrick. Plus, please do my short How to Market a Book survey (by 7 Oct); and here’s my Cathedral Zero Trailer. This podcast is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo eco-system. You can also subscribe to the Kobo Writing Life podcast for interviews with successful indie authors. This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn  Brian Herriot is a financial advisor, professional speaker, and the author of Time Freedom: Rethink Your Work and Money to Create a Life You Love Now. He’s also the host of The Time Freedom Podcast. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.  Show Notes Why writing, speaking and podcasting can build authority without social media What time freedom is, and how it differs from work-life balance and financial freedom How to design your year around seasons of work and rest The three money personalities: minimiser, manager and maker How to build flexibility into your work whether employed or self-employed How a book that leaves nothing out can be the foundation of a business You can find Brian at timefreedom.life. Transcript of the interview with Brian Herriot Jo: Brian Herriot is a financial advisor, professional speaker, and the author of Time Freedom: Rethink Your Work and Money to Create a Life You Love Now. He’s also the host of The Time Freedom Podcast. So welcome to the show, Brian. Brian: Thank you so much for having me. Jo: Yes, this is a great topic. First up— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing. Brian: I am a financial advisor, and now I am an author officially. I found writing just short of three years ago. I was actually doing some research on behalf of my wife, because she’s always been an incredible writer, in the fiction side of the world. So I was researching different writing programmes and things like that, and came across one that I thought, “Hmm, this is for nonfiction, and boy, it sounds very interesting. I think it’s something maybe I need to do.” The reason why I was looking at all, even for myself, is I was transitioning into a new line of work, and it was work where you needed to develop some authority and visibility. Everything everybody was telling me was that I needed to do a lot of social media, which I did not want to do. I forget where I heard it, but they’re like, “Or you could do the author speaking thing.” And I thought, “Ooh, that sounds a lot better.” So that’s the path that I ended up on. Jo: Interesting. Can you tell us what that different path you were looking at was? Brian: Well, a lot of what you see, at least online, if you’re to develop a personal brand and try to attract business—in this case into my financial advisory firm—everyone says, “Well, you need to develop an online presence.” In the business world from a long time ago, I had used LinkedIn, but not for anything like developing a personal brand. So then all the advice started turning to, “Oh, well then you need to get onto Instagram and TikTok.” I don’t know, I’ve always viewed all that scrolling as a waste of time, and I’d rather put my mind towards something more productive. So I was just so apprehensive to try and get into that space, that I just kept putting it off and putting it off and putting it off until I heard a podcast. I’ve always listened to lots of podcasts, and I heard a podcast that said, “Well, instead of developing authority that way, the other path that you could take would be through writing.” Because it’s obviously longer form, you can put your thinking into it. Then that can lead to help getting into speaking as well. Between those two you can develop some of the same authority that you could if you went the social media route. There was also the podcasting part, which I do love, and that’s been one of the most fun things I’ve been doing lately. So I do podcasting, writing and speaking instead of social media. Jo: I love that, and I know a lot of people listening love that too. I don’t think this is an age thing, I think this is an aptitude for short-form video thing. I’m the same as you. I’m not really into the short-form video. For people listening, this is an audio-only podcast partly because I don’t want to do video. Brian: And that’s beautiful. That’s the beauty of working on your terms, right? Which we’ll talk a lot about. Jo: Yes, exactly. So I love that from the beginning you were like, “No, I’m going to go the long-form route and reach people that way,” because you absolutely are. I personally would always rather read a book than watch a whole load of snippets or video online to learn about this kind of topic. So let’s get into the book. Let’s start with that concept of time freedom. What is time freedom, and how can we change our mindset to believe that it’s even possible? Because it feels like we’re working harder than ever. Brian: The way that I like to explain this is first by discussing what time freedom is not, because of how it fits. And I have this right up front in the book. There’s this whole concept of work-life balance, right? And work-life balance to me, at least, coming from the professional and the employed worlds, is that you’re just stealing an hour during the day here to then make it up later in the night. Sftentimes, at least when I was living with work-life balance, I was probably more busy than I even was if I would’ve just worked straight from 8:00 to 5:00. It’s very week by week focused, day by day focused, and that is not time freedom. On the other side is this idea of financial freedom, which time freedom also is not in my mind. Financial freedom is where, I mean, the simplest thing is you’re either retired or you’re independently wealthy or in some other way you do not have to work anymore. So you’ve got this absolute freedom, which for me is boring, because I get a lot of joy from the work that I do. So in the middle is the idea, I think, of time freedom, where you do still have to work, but you’re able to design work in a way that works for you. So you can do it on your terms. There’s a lot of choice. There’s flexibility if you want it, and all of those things. I think that somebody that optimises for time freedom looks at their year and says, “This is how I want my year to go.” There’s a seasonality to it. In my personal experience, I do most of my work work, the work that I need to do to get paid and live, in what would be the equivalent of the school year, because my wife and I have a son. He’s a sophomore in high school, and that’s just the way that our life is lining up right now. Then during the summer, we’re fortunate enough to have this not so great cabin on a beautiful lake back where we both grew up. And in the last five years, we’ve designed our life so that we can go back there and live a different season during the summer. I’ve always loved summer, and during that time, that’s when we rest and relax, and we water-ski, and we fish, and we do all the fun things that you could do at a cabin. Then also, there’s this time when you’re starting to think bigger or differently or make creative connections about things in the work that you do. I find it really rejuvenating, so that when I come back in the quote-unquote school year, then I can get back to work and do some really interesting things. So the person who pursues time freedom is really optimising their life around this freedom and flexibility. Maybe they’re working longer and later into life, but they’re doing it in a way that works for them. They’re not necessarily optimising to steal that extra hour that day, or optimising for wealth, which would be the financial freedom path. Jo: Yes, I find this very interesting. I like that it’s not financial freedom because I’m an investor, as I mentioned to you, and many of us are. But that tends to take more time. So if you’re aiming for financial freedom, especially if you start investing later in life, you’re not going to get that at 45 or 50 or maybe even 60. So defining this as separate is really good, because you’re saying, “Well, you can start changing things now, and yes, you might have to work a bit longer, but if you love your work, it’s not a problem.” I want to come back to this idea of seasonality and planning your year around this seasonality idea. How does that work with the potential of other people’s timelines or other people’s possibilities, and serendipity? I have some plans, but then, like this year, this thing came up. It was just a very intuitive thing and has changed the next few months in a completely different direction and blown all my plans out the water. So how do you balance the planned seasonality with serendipity? Brian: Well, first what I want to mention is, if you can figure out a way to organise your year so that you have these extended periods of time off, that’s a wonderful thing, and it’s not something

  7. Sep 16

    Reclaiming Your Mind: How To Teach Yourself Anything With J. Daniel Sawyer

    How can you teach yourself anything, even when it challenges the way you see the world? And how can you organise what you learn so it turns into books your readers will find? J. Daniel Sawyer shares his self-education toolkit after decades as a largely self-taught author. In the intro, Spotify for Authors has expanded AI-assisted creation of audiobooks [Spotify]; Who is Narrating the Future? [Publishing Perspectives; 9 ways AI will disrupt authors and publishing from 2019]; Author Voice, Creativity, and Building a Career as an Intuitive Author-Entrepreneur [How Women Write]; A fallow season [Systems and Soul]; How to Write, Publish, and Market Short Stories – Joanna Penn. Today’s show is sponsored by Bookfunnel, the essential tool for your author business. Whether it’s delivering your reader magnet, sending out advanced copies of your book, handing out ebooks at a conference, or fulfilling your digital sales to readers, BookFunnel does it all. Check it out at bookfunnel.com/thecreativepenn This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn  J. Daniel Sawyer is the author of over 30 books across science fiction, fantasy, crime, short stories, and nonfiction, as well as being a podcaster and filmmaker. His latest book is Reclaiming Your Mind: An Autodidact’s Bible. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.  Show Notes What is an autodidact, and why school doesn’t teach you how to learn How to triage information in a world of way too much How to recognise fear in your body and turn it into excitement for learning Sandboxing dangerous ideas so you can learn without threatening your worldview How to organise research and check quotes when writing nonfiction Why you should never publish a book dead You can find Dan at JDSawyer.net, and The Autodidact’s Bible is out now on Kickstarter. Transcript of the interview with J. Daniel Sawyer Jo: J. Daniel Sawyer is the author of over 30 books across science fiction, fantasy, crime, short stories, and nonfiction, as well as being a podcaster and filmmaker. His latest book is Reclaiming Your Mind: An Autodidact’s Bible. So welcome back to the show, Dan. Dan: Hello, Joanna. It’s great to be back. Jo: Yes, indeed. You were only on the show a few months ago, which is rare I have somebody twice in the same year, so that is quite exciting. We talked about voice mastery last time, very different to the topic of today. But because we did talk a bit more about your background last time, we’re going to jump straight into the book. So what is an autodidact, and why write a book on it? Dan: Well, an autodidact is someone who teaches themselves things rather than taking a course. It’s not incompatible with being taught by others, of course, but there’s a set of skills for being able to pick up new information, new disciplines, new hobbies, whatnot, that’s really useful to have. I wrote the book because I was mentoring a friend’s kid through high school. They weren’t teaching her anything, and she was having a hell of a time figuring out how to get an education in a school that was just not interested in providing one. The process of the conversations over the course of a year forced me to surface all of the tools that I had developed, starting as a child, that allow me to pick up all of those disciplines you were talking about before, plus blacksmithing and academics and other stuff like that. While I have had access to a lot of amazing teachers in my life, I’m largely self-taught, and have become the world expert on a couple of topics as a result. I realised that the tools that you need to teach yourself and the tools that you get in school no longer overlap very much, at least in the US. The old style of classical education, and then the middling style of early school education, both gave you those tools so that when you left school, you were able to continue through the world growing. Nobody does that anymore, so I realised I needed to write a book about all this stuff while it was fresh in my mind, so I did. Jo: I love that. I don’t know if it always was like that for some people, too. We all know now more about neurodivergence. Back in the day, when you and I went to school, that wasn’t really talked about. It was like if you couldn’t learn stuff in the way that it was thrust at you, then you were just dumb, maybe. Dan: Well, what you and I got in school was the very late end of the German model. The German model of education is what arose in the industrial era, and its job is to create good, obedient workers, not necessarily to create independent citizens who can think for themselves and who can move through a world that’s changing and learn things. That kind of education came from an older tradition, but it wasn’t well suited to pulling people out of the hinterlands and putting them in the factories in a way that they could understand what they were supposed to be doing. So the Germans developed a regimented system that was built around memorisation exclusively, rather than processing. Memorisation and repetition. Whereas a more classical approach would have you do memorisation as part of repetition, processing, evaluation, and creativity. So when you go to school, you get some of the toolkit you need, but not all of it. Jo: Yes, and then I think some people were just so bashed over the head with stuff that they didn’t enjoy the process of learning, and maybe just moved away from it now. I want to come back on something you said there, that it didn’t enable the independence, the thinking for yourself. We’re living in this really weird time now where we’re almost in a splintered world where you can find information on anything you want, but a lot of people are finding information, say, on TikTok or in AI-generated books with no rigorous fact-checking. So how can you think for yourself in a world where there’s almost way too much now? Dan: Well, one of the most foundational skills of thinking is information triage. The world has always been full of unreliable information, if for no other reason than the state of the art in any given field at any given time is guaranteed to be about 80% wrong. So even if you’re being very careful about only hewing to the most accepted body of facts, facts change over time, partly as we learn more and partly as the world changes underneath us. Thinking is different than knowing. Thinking is the ability to evaluate the information you’re coming into contact with and figure out what’s likely to be useful, and then to check yourself based on what you are more inclined to believe because of the way that you’re made up emotionally. It’s being able to curb your impulses with an error-checking layer so that you don’t get sucked down into a very nasty rabbit hole, which everybody’s prone to on one front or another. So that explains the how and why, but the what is things like knowing your basic logic, knowing the informal logical fallacies that everybody’s prone to, things like the bandwagon fallacy. We’re partly herd animals. We tend to want to join a group for protection and identity. So if we’re in a group that believes a certain thing, we’re likely to believe it out of fashion, which is great for group solidarity. It’s not so great for actually knowing if what you think you know is correct. I’ve got a whole section of the book devoted to the top 30 or 40 most common informal reasoning fallacies. Knowing how to do basic critical reasoning is one of the things you have to do if you’re going to be learning in a way that’s useful to you. Then of course, there’s another reasoning kit, which is the non-rational reasoning kit, which I also talk about. That’s something that you and I as fiction authors use all the time. Jo: Explain more about that [non-rational reasoning kit] then, because people might not know what that is. Dan: All right. So rational reasoning involves logic. If X is true and Y is true, then Z must also be true. That’s basic deduction. It basically lets you figure out what’s implicit in the body of knowledge you already know. Then subsidiary to that is induction, which is, if X is true and Y is true, what might also be true that could explain X and Y? That’s the scientific method. It’s less reliable than deduction, but it actually grows your knowledge rather than just revealing it. Non-rational reasoning is things like reasoning through analogy, reasoning through metaphor, reasoning through intuition. These are all reasoning modes that allow you to bring something foreign into your understanding, or to deepen your understanding of something you’re already familiar with, in a way that incorporates not just logical propositions, but also emotional truth and relational truth and things like that. Frequently it can generate things you can then subject to logical evaluation and pull new information about the world out of. A really good example of where this happens in science is in visionary experiences. The periodic table, for example, came out of someone’s dream. Now, the fact he dreamed it doesn’t mean it’s true, but what happened while he was dreaming is he had a non-rational reasoning chain that brought him this vision, which he then brought out into the real world and started doing experiments on to see if it would work, and it did. Jo: In that case, yes, I can picture the periodic table, and I often see images of things that help me organise information. So that to me makes sense in terms of somebody who had certain amounts of knowledge, who had some kind of picture in the

  8. Sep 9

    What Machines Can’t Replace: Why AI Makes Us More Human With Anna McPhee

    How can you use AI to research, edit and handle admin and marketing tasks while still writing every single word yourself? How can you double down on being human and reach readers on a personal level? Anna McPhee shares her perspective as a software engineer, author and creative technologist. In the intro, How to Write, Publish, and Market Short Stories out now. This show is supported by my Patrons. Join my Community and get articles, discounts, and extra audio and video tutorials on writing craft, author business, and AI tools, at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn  Anna McPhee is an author, software engineer, professional speaker, and creative technologist. Her latest book is What Machines Can’t Replace: Why AI Makes Us More Human. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.  Show Notes Why writing code is creative work, and what it shares with writing books How AI changed Anna’s job as a software engineer without taking her employment The difference between AI assistance and generation How to use custom skills for editing reports, research and repeatable tasks Why the rise of AI makes us crave slow, imperfect, physical things Responding to a negative review by showing up as a human You can find Anna at Anna.kiwi and her new book at WhatMachinesCantReplace.com. Transcript of the interview with Anna McPhee Jo: Anna McPhee is an author, software engineer, professional speaker, and creative technologist. Her latest book is What Machines Can’t Replace: Why AI Makes Us More Human. So welcome to the show, Anna. Anna: Hi, Joanna. Thank you so much for having me. Jo: Oh, this is going to be a fun conversation. First up— Tell us a bit more about you and your background in technology, as well as how you got into writing. Anna: I have been in all of these things my whole life, as long as I can remember. When I was just a little girl, writing was my favourite thing, writing stories. It was the whole reason I went to school, to be honest. I always pictured myself as a writer before anything else. My dad was a lecturer in software development, so when I was little, he would teach me how to code. So I’ve always done both, for as long as I can remember, and my mum is an artist. That’s been my upbringing, at the intersection of technology and art, and then writing is my own personal passion. It’s naturally flowed throughout my life. I’ve been in and out of some other careers and chased all the things that have made me feel interested and passionate, but writing has always been there in the background. It’s something I do, whether it’s been for a hobby or for a profession, so it’s always been there. Jo: But you work in software, right? Anna: I do. I work in software, which came to me by chance. I set out as a digital nomad about 15 years ago now. I sold everything I owned and started travelling. The way I thought I was going to fund this was through freelance writing, which I was very optimistic about. We all know now that’s a very challenging way to make an income, especially when you don’t have a background in it or a portfolio. I did have this childhood background in software engineering and coding. So I set out to be a writer and travel the world as a writer, and actually what I ended up doing was building websites and writing software, because that’s what people would pay me to do. So I fell into both at the same time through this chance I took. Jo: I think sometimes people think that programming and software development and these more technical fields are not creative. My husband was a programmer for a long time, and essentially programming is a language. Well, there are lots of languages, but you are creating in a language with computers, right? So is there that much difference? How do you fix these two things in your mind separately, or are they the same thing? Anna: They’re so related. Many people might put writing into more of an art, and computer development and programming more into a maths or a science, but I just think there’s so much creativity in writing code, in how you choose to structure things, in the language you select for something, the way you approach it. It’s very similar to writing a book, I think. I’ve found a lot of things that are very similar about it, to do with architecture even. When you look at the basics, some people might write a book with no idea where it’s going and see where it ends. It’s the same with software. People might go into it and not have a plan. Most people will architect their software, or they’ll architect their story in the same way. I think there’s a lot of crossover between the two. Jo: And there’s editing, and doing the “does this do what I want it to do?” I think with software perhaps it’s more obvious when something doesn’t do what you want it to do than with a book. Anna: Perhaps. Although with AI now, it’s becoming a little more vague, because you can think your software’s doing what you want it to, but it might not be. It might just look like it is. I think those lines are getting a bit blurrier as technology changes. There’s a lot of things in software development that are very similar to writing. We don’t have an editor, but we will have unit tests or code reviews, and maybe the CI tests, and we’ve got all these structures in place that are very similar to writing. Jo: I also think what’s interesting, and this has been in the last maybe decade really, is that it used to be you would get a job in the old way, but— Now it seems like your GitHub page, which is almost like your author platform, your programmer platform, can make a real difference in how people find you and your work. So maybe talk a bit about that, because you have a GitHub page, don’t you? Anna: I do have a GitHub page, and I’ve spent a lot of time on it, because you can set up your README file and make it a bit like a website, and introduce all of your projects and what you’re working on. Just to combine it a little bit, actually, I use GitHub for my writing. I use it for version control so that I can go back and see the changes that I’ve made to the things that I’m writing. Even with my book, I had a copy of it backed up in a private repository on GitHub where I could track changes and never lose a backup. I have so much faith in GitHub that it extends beyond the software I write and into everything I do. I keep a copy backed up in GitHub. Jo: That’s actually quite funny because, coming into AI in the author community, one of the things that’s now talked about is how do you prove that your book is not a one-click generated book? And what you’ve actually got there is evidence of your process. Anna: Exactly. Jo: Which is kind of hilarious in many ways. Well, let’s get into this, because there’s so much fear and witch hunting right now and negativity in the author community. As somebody who’s grown up with both art and the software side, where do you think those attitudes come from, and how have they changed in different ways? Anna: Oh, people are really afraid. I’ve got a very moderate perspective, and I think I sit in a very similar position to you. A large number of people that I hear from are either incredibly pro-AI, let it do everything for them, everything, everything, do it for absolutely everything you can think of. Or they’re completely terrified and very, very negative about it, and won’t use it for anything at all. I can only assume this is going to stabilise with time. There’s been a huge amount of outrage against other technologies in the past, even calculators. All technology has come with scepticism and people scared that it’s going to take their jobs. I think there’s a lot of misinformation out there as well, people who think that AI is trained on books, which it is, and that’s a totally valid concern with the copyright and things. I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding around what training an AI model actually means in that regard. It’s not taking someone’s prose and reusing it. It’s looking at the underlying mathematical probability of, if you have this word, what is the probability of the next word being this? It’s broken down into numbers. I’m not 100 percent sure, but from my perspective of seeing it, the witch hunt comes from a place of fear. I saw an author in a group I’m in recently who said, “Oh, I’ve written so many novels, and I’ve run out of ideas for names for my characters. I’ve used every person I’ve ever met, I’ve used their name. That’s how many books I’ve written. How do I get more names?” Someone suggested, “Well, why don’t you ask AI for some other names?” “Oh, no, no, no. I could never let AI take over my work like that.” And it was just over the idea of using it to ask a question. So I think there’s a feeling that if you let it do one thing, next thing it’s going to be doing everything, and it’s going to erase you, and your ideas, and your way of doing things. Jo: Just on that, it is interesting, though, isn’t it? Because I am trying to use it, like I use Claude Code, and I’m trying to use it for more, and more, and more. I started off using ChatGPT the day it came out in 2022, and have increasingly tried to give the AI tools all the things that will free me up to do the things I love to do. Making lists of names is not on my list of things I love to do. Anna: Yes, exactly. I feel the same way. Jo: So that’s the thing, isn’t it? The fear is really interesting because we all have fear. One very visceral time I remember feeling very scared was in the pandemic, in thos

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