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[ISBW] Conquering Creative Bully #1: BART (a potato) · I Should Be Writing

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>> Mur Lafferty: This is I Should be writing season 21, episode
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7.
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I should be
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Writing,
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I Should Be working on
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my craft
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I should be writing,
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I should be submitting my
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next draft But I'm sitting
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home watching the doctor who.
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But. Hi there. Welcome to I Should Be Writing. This is a podcast
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and live stream for wannabe writers, and I'm your host,
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Mur Lafferty I've got, like, eight books
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written. I've been podcasting for 21,
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20 and a half years. And,
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yeah, I've been doing the things, the making of the
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contents. I'm a little out of it today because
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I'm not in good practice of streaming right now.
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And, well, moving through this week has been kind of
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like pushing against a membrane. Like, I can almost
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reach what I'm going for,
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but not quite.
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so I've been working on my new novel, which
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was announced. If you're on the Patreon, or
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substack mailing lists, you will have heard about
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that. But I do have a cozy
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fantasy coming out in the summer, which I'd already been. No, sorry,
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not Last Midsolar Murders comes out
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in July. The book, my book is
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due in October and it may be 26 or 27 till
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it comes out. But it's a cozy fantasy and
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it's supposed to be fun. I'm having fun with it.
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I do want to talk a little bit about outlining
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a little bit later, but, I've been
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working on either the words or the outline.
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Some index cards this week. I've
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been, I don't like doing
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digital notes. I can
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only think clearly when I'm making just
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wretched and terrible notes after notes
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after notes. And sometimes I lose them because I
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have many, many notebooks. But that's
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how my brain decides to start thinking, which
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is in scribbling down in notes. My
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handwriting is terrible, but I do have some very nice pens,
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so I try to let that balance out. I
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just covered up my show notes.
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So, a little bit of news. Escape Pod is
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nominated for the Hugo again for Best Semi Pro
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Zine. And we are delighted. Valerie's in the
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chat and, yeah, I'm
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just thrilled we've got a team that works very,
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very hard. And
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I just can't believe we're. We're being
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nominated again. There was a new nominee,
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Deadlands. Dreadlands. Great
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knowing me to get it wrong when I'm actually recording. But there's
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a new semi Prozine finalist that I'm excited
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to check out because I Know, one of the people on the staff,
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the Deadlands. Thank you. So
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want to check that out? And
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yeah, some other really good nominees. And
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then, you know, Ursula got two
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nominations. Premee got two
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nominations. yeah, And, and of
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course the in depth reporting that
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Jason Sanford and Chris Barkley did on the
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Chengdu debacle. that happened for the
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Hugos. I should stop talking it that because it happened at the Chengdu
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worldcon. But it was Americans. It was Americans who screwed
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all that up. So just the Hugo
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debacle from two years ago. I knew that
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their report would be nominated for best related work and I was
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right. So good on them. Jason
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Sanford is the investigative reporter I thought I wanted
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to be when I was in college and I still
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don't want to be because I know what goes into it.
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Just not my thing. the 2023 Hugo
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debacle. Thank you, Valerie. other news
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is just me as a consumer. I realized, when I'm
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reading with my eyes, I listen to a lot of
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audiobooks, but when I'm reading with my eyes I
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get into hyper focus mode. And
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strangely this has made me want to
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read less because I know if that
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book grabs me, it's going to hold on to me for a very long
4:08
time. And even twice this week I finished
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two books. But it's like I was
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reading at breakfast and then I read for another hour
4:17
and today I was reading at lunch and then I read for another
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hour. So it's like reading supposed to be good
4:23
for you. And it helps me professionally because I grow as a person
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and as a writer. But it is a hole I have
4:29
to be prepared to fall into. But I did
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finish, the Teller of Small Fortunes, which is a cozy
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fantasy about a seer
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who doesn't want, doesn't want to be a
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mage and so she runs
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away and just does mild
4:45
fortune telling on the road. That was pretty good. It
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was rough in some parts. There were things that
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I hoped for because they would be really cool. There were things that I
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expected because of how knowing how certain story
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beats usually go. And it was
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a little rough around that. But it still kept me till the
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end. And I definitely recommend it if you like
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cozy fantasies. Found family,
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friends, that kind of thing.
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And as for tv, it's
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been a while since I've had a podcast out, but severance
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season two ended and
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it continues to be one of the most blind
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moment. wow.
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Maybe I should not have been streaming today.
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Mind blowing. It's really got to be
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one of the most blind. I can't say it. Oh my
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God. It's good.
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Okay.
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It's good. Go watch it.
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If you don't have Apple tv, get a friend.
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Everybody should have a friend with Apple tv. This is
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like NK Jemisin writing
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the beginning of the Broken Earth series with
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an event that we don't know what, what
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exactly is happening until like midway through the
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third book. Because she had it all
6:03
planned out so well. That's how
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Severance is. It's like
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half the things are
6:11
explained, but they open up new
6:13
questions. And I
6:16
don't think it's too much of a spoiler to say that you will see Mr.
6:19
Milchick dance better than season
6:22
one. Imagine
6:24
that. Anyway, if
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you don't know, Severance is a sort of dystopian sci
6:30
fi, but It feels like
6:33
technology of the 90s kind
6:36
of, but major head
6:39
personality, messing with technology in
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the workforce. And it's.
6:45
It's amazing.
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But also Murderbot is
6:50
coming to the television. And I knew that. I knew it was. But
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I guess I see so many Hollywood
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announcements of film rights being
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sold. I mean, I've sold film rights
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and only allowed to talk about them when the
7:05
producer, says it's okay. And they usually come to
7:08
nothing. It's nice, it's free money. I certainly don't
7:11
put it down. But, knowing
7:14
that rights have been sold and then the thing
7:17
actually happening is,
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yeah, I just never. You don't expect to see
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it. You just learn not to. I
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mean, one of the biggest names in science fiction today
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is John Scalzi. Have you ever seen an old man's war
7:31
movie or TV show? No, but
7:34
those rights have been tied up, I'm pretty sure for
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all these years. But, anyway, but
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Murderbot is like being made and coming
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out next month. I'm speaking
7:45
currently in April of 2025. So
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it will be again, Apple TV, not
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sponsored, next, month.
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And if you are not familiar,
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Murderbot is a series of novellas that then became a
7:58
book. Then she wrote a full novel. That's the
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way it's supposed to go. Several standalone novellas. And then she wrote
8:04
a full novel about a, security
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Android that Manages
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to, Delete his. His constraining
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programs that keeps him from going rogue.
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But it's not like he wants to
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snap and kill a lot of people. He just wants to watch
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TV all the time. And I, Now
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I'm even doing it. I'm doing it because of stupid
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Skarsgard. One of the things about the SEC unit
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is its pronouns are it. We never get it
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gendered at all. And while
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they did keep the it pronoun
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in the trailer, that I saw, which I
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appreciate, it's still very male because
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it's Alexander Skarsgrd. So,
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that's a little disappointing, but
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otherwise, it looks amazing.
8:52
It looks like I pictured all
8:54
systems red when I read it. I
8:57
just. It's amazing. It looks
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phenomenal. So I'm very happy for Martha
9:03
Wells that that's actually coming out. if you want to read
9:06
the first book and you're worried about hyper focus like
9:09
me, it's a novella. You can get through it pretty
9:11
quickly, and it's just.
9:15
It's just awesome. Murderbot rescued
9:17
Martha's career. Somebody told me they read this cool new
9:20
book by this new author named Martha Wells. I'm like, martha Wells has been
9:23
around for a long time, and she thought her career was
9:26
over, and so she. Then she wrote Murderbot, and her
9:29
career's not over now. Valerie
9:32
is correcting my pronouns in the chat. I'm
9:34
sorry, non. Uh, binary. People come in all shapes and
9:37
sizes, but people have their imagined versions. Yes.
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Skarsgard's Guard's voice kind of works for me. It's not super
9:43
deep or masculine. True. It's very
9:45
clipped. It's. It's, you know, it's.
9:48
It's. Stop looking at me. And, you know, when
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they find out that he's been. It's been watching
9:53
the television, all the
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shows, they're like. They,
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It's like, that's private.
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And, my favorite part that I really hope they go into
10:05
is because Murderbot watches all these shows.
10:07
They've cast at least one of them, so we get
10:10
to see what Murderbot's watching while
10:13
Murderbot is just standing around waiting for scientists
10:16
to do their science thing. And it's a
10:18
fully cast with people
10:21
you will recognize,
10:25
science fiction, drama. And it's.
10:28
That was the best part of the trailer for me, is
10:30
seeing that little clip the show within the
10:33
show, excited that they kept the inner monologues
10:36
yes, yes. So, been talking about that for a
10:39
long time, but still, there's some frighteningly good science
10:42
fiction TV going on right now. And it's
10:45
not like super depressing.
10:48
It's nice. I mean, you could say that severance is
10:51
depressing, but for me, it's just
10:53
more of. It stimulates my head so much.
10:56
I'm just like, more. I want more stories. Bring on the more
10:59
stories Honestly, the thing that most annoyed me about the
11:02
Murderbot casting is Murderbot being white, because I did not see it
11:05
as white. That is also very true.
11:08
They did get a very diverse cast of
11:11
scientists, but Murderbot is a, is
11:14
played by a white male,
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But anyway, what I've been wanting to talk about,
11:21
and it, and it dovetails with the fact that I said I
11:24
worked on an outline for my book, is
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I'm going to be doing several episodes about the bullies
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I've been thinking a lot about. Some people call it the inner
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editor, but it doesn't feel like an editor. It feels like a bully. Because
11:35
I've only had one editor be actually rude to
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me. And then I heard he smoked weed while
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he edited. So that's not an
11:43
excuse, but it's a, reason.
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Okay, but
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the jerk inside my head, all
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of them, they don't, they, they,
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they don't hold back. And I've. I've identified
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six and so I'm going to be talking about them because
12:00
I know that they, affect you
12:03
guys too. At least some of them do. Maybe not
12:06
all six. the first one is,
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the only one with a real name because it
12:13
was my first inner Editor critic
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bully concept, which is Bart.
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And Bart is a potato. just imagine a
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poorly drawn potato. Not poorly drawn potato. My kid
12:24
did when I did first imagined Bart. Bart was a poorly
12:27
drawn potato, but with like angry eyes
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and downturned mouth and like little stick arms
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waving and basically just
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Bart is the one who tells me
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that, what I do doesn't matter.
12:41
What I write is not going to resonate with
12:44
anyone. And if I did
12:46
have a success, in the past, I'll
12:49
never get it again. That's a fluke
12:52
Bart, does a lot of lies, does a lot of
12:55
insults. Usually when
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I forget something or
13:01
I drop something or I
13:04
do something that is not careful, I do something due to the
13:06
ADHD mindset really in my
13:09
head, I start feeling, you know, that, God, you're an idiot. You're
13:12
so stupid. Why'd you let yourself do that? That's not
13:15
me. That's Bart. That's Bart
13:18
telling me that it's all pointless and I am stupid
13:21
for wanting to achieve these things.
13:25
Bart's good at pivoting because if you try
13:28
to actually argue with Bart,
13:30
Bart will just insult you on something else. Which is where you
13:33
learn that these insults are not based in
13:36
reality. Because if they were, you could argue against
13:39
them, but they're not. So when
13:42
Bart realizes that maybe one day I've got a
13:45
good esteem, I've got a good self confidence that way,
13:48
and I'm like, my brain is wired in a weird way,
13:51
and sometimes I forget things. I'm not stupid. Bart will be
13:54
like, well, let's talk about your book then, because that certainly is
13:57
stupid. Bart pivots fast. And
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Bart is loud. It's just so
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loud. Very much in my head. Very loud.
14:05
Little ugly potato on my shoulder. Just meh,
14:08
meh, meh, Just chattering away, Hate
14:11
it. but what you can do with
14:14
Bart, for me,
14:16
are two things. And granted,
14:19
both of them involve a little bit of actual physical
14:22
activity to deal with something that is a concept and may
14:25
make people feel silly. And if you don't like to do
14:28
it, then you do you. But,
14:31
I've had more than one. I've talked to two
14:34
different, creativity content creator
14:36
coaches, who've talked about the inner editor
14:39
and what to do about it. And a lot of it is draw a picture
14:42
of it, wad it up, and throw it away. I
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like to put Bart in a box.
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So I get the picture and I put it in a box. And
14:51
so Bart's not dead. He'll never
14:54
be dead. And he
14:56
will. You can sometimes hearing hear him in
14:59
the box. But then it's just like.
15:02
And it's funny. and one
15:05
really weird thing that I've done
15:08
that sometimes works is just
15:11
say, look, whether it's good or
15:14
not, or whether I've messed
15:17
up or not, I need to write the
15:19
book, I need to do the chore or
15:22
whatever. Can you back off for
15:25
like an hour and you can come back and tell
15:28
me whatever you need to tell me in an hour?
15:31
Go get a coffee. And sometimes,
15:34
allowing myself to put off insulting
15:37
myself kind of works.
15:39
But one way I was thinking about it was
15:42
yesterday when, I worked very hard to
15:45
do some character sketches and
15:48
give my characters some personality
15:51
traits that, will counter each
15:54
other. You know, like if. On a very simple
15:57
level, if you've got someone who's very neat,
16:00
there should be someone who's very. Who's very not
16:03
neat, sloppy. if you've got
16:06
somebody who always thinks before they speak and
16:08
is very measured, you want somebody who
16:11
is flying off the cuff.
16:14
Ridiculous. actually, I can't remember which
16:17
streaming service it was, but we just a couple of
16:20
months ago, we watched the series Deadlock, which
16:23
is an Australian murder mystery, which. Where it's
16:26
got these two women,
16:29
and one is, like,
16:31
possibly one of the crudest people I've ever seen on
16:34
television. And I'm saying of any gender.
16:38
She is super
16:40
rude. I am pretty much numb
16:43
to the C word now because
16:46
she uses it a lot. And I understand it's not as
16:48
bad in, Australia as it
16:51
is here, but still,
16:54
it's. It's like, that's very
16:57
regular. And the other
16:59
detective is prim, by the book, married,
17:02
lesbian who just wants to do her job. It's not
17:05
even a buddy cop romance or
17:08
bromance or galmance or whatever.
17:11
They do not work together
17:13
well for several episodes. Many, many
17:16
episodes. But that is, if you want to see an
17:19
extreme example of, you know, sloppy and neat
17:22
or loud and boisterous and
17:24
buttoned up and polite, that's. Go
17:27
check out Deadloche It's, Yeah,
17:30
it's a pretty amazing show. It takes place in
17:33
Tasmania, actually. And the visiting
17:36
detective, the really crude one, is, from, uh,
17:38
Darwin. So she does not understand that the climate's
17:41
different from northern Australia to
17:44
Tasmania. So I was making those things
17:47
on my index cards and, and trying to look at What
17:50
characters will counter other characters and
17:53
what they need to do to make good
17:55
interpersonal conflict. but
17:58
after I did That I did the Save the cat beat sheet, and
18:01
I tried to write out what's going to happen at every important
18:04
beat of the story. And when I was
18:07
done, I looked and it
18:09
felt so sterile and
18:12
boring. If you want to know One thing that Bart
18:15
yells at me about is I feel like
18:18
my characters are not as fleshed out as they
18:21
could be. That is, I know my description
18:23
is not my strong suit, but I also feel
18:26
weak in the character department. And so
18:30
I feel like I need these tools. I need help to
18:33
try to sketch out who they are
18:35
before I write. But then
18:38
it's really hard for me to take
18:41
that and make it into a character. I don't know
18:43
why. And it's that I
18:46
really am a, seat of the pants writer.
18:49
Because half the awesome stuff that happens in my books,
18:52
or more than half probably, happen because I'm
18:55
writing, and I get the idea as I'm writing, which
18:58
is bad for, like, communicating with an
19:01
editor. Really. It's not good.
19:03
But yeah, I. I was thinking about
19:06
my terrible sterile outline
19:09
yesterday, and I'm like, oh, wait a minute. That's the bully
19:12
talking. Of course the outline is going to
19:15
be bare bones because it's an
19:17
outline. I think knowing that
19:20
I'm going to deviate from the outline is one thing that helps
19:24
allowing myself that freedom. Because
19:26
while I am pretty sure what happens at different
19:29
spots, the connective tissue is
19:32
just not there. And a lot of the, inciting
19:34
incidents to something are not
19:37
there.
19:38
And here's your fun author topic of the day
19:41
or fun fact of the day. If someone asks
19:43
a question in a book and your character
19:47
says, I don't know, it usually
19:49
means you don't know, and you should probably look
19:52
at something else. Write on another chapter. Take a
19:55
walk, take a break. I had to realize
19:58
that, whenever something happened and my character's like,
20:01
oh, I don't know, I wonder what that is either. And I'm just like, oh, wait
20:04
a minute. I don't know. It doesn't get exciting for me
20:07
when I say, oh, this is the scene where we talk
20:10
about X, so. But I'll get over it.
20:13
Because you have to, because that's the job
20:15
We've been talking about the bully. That, that says
20:18
very, very many insults in your head when you're trying to
20:21
write. And I think the bully loves
20:24
Pantsers because it can
20:27
insult your outline. Any outline you.
20:30
You struggle to write will be insulted
20:32
horrifically by the bully. But,
20:35
yeah, you can just tell it to maybe go away for a couple
20:38
of minutes, put it in a box,
20:41
draw it and tear it up. You need to find a tool that
20:43
works for you. the Snowflake method
20:46
made me want to throw my Kindle across the room
20:50
because it's repetitive and some people need
20:52
that. It's a very
20:55
bare bones concept of the Snowflake Method is you've
20:58
got. Okay, you've got this person,
21:01
and this person is friendly, and the person
21:04
who's friendly has a green shirt, and the person who's
21:07
friendly with the green shirt lives in Cincinnati.
21:09
And you just take all of the
21:12
details you've made already and you
21:15
write them out and then you add something new. So your,
21:17
your concept becomes a sentence and your sentence becomes a
21:20
paragraph, and your paragraph becomes two paragraphs. But
21:23
you're always writing the same thing, just
21:26
in more words. And I
21:29
got so frustrated, I just did.
21:31
not for me. thank you for listening to I Should
21:34
Be Writing the longest running writing podcast in
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existence. This episode was made possible by the
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mightymurr or
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provided by Numbers Ninja, and podcast hosting provided
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4.0 license. You can find all of my books
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and podcasts at murverse.com
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sitting home watching Doctor.