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• 00:00:06 ISBW #148
• 00:01:14 State of the Mur: recent technical difficulties, editing the novel.
• A thought: it does not matter how many times your story or topic has been done, it only matter who your characters are and how you execute the story.
• CKHB agrees: go check out my “That was my idea!” blog post, with video.
• Recommended reading: 45 Master Characters by Victoria Schmidt
• 00:09:10 GoTo Meeting Message
• 00:09:46 FEEDBACK: getting/picking a mentor; listener TIM completed his novel (yay, Tim!); donating to ISBW; writing longhand vs. typing; scenes from the POV of the villain; narrating audiobooks; basing characters on oneself; Realms of Fantasy needs subscribers; age of protagonists in YA vs. adult lit; Writers’ Confessions on Bravo Canada; a listener blogged 100 Hacks to Help You Become A Better Writer; turning off the technology; Anomaly Podcast designed a “level up” badge for ISBW; fictional vs. real cities as setting; using placeholder to return to unfinished scenes; publicly posting about rejection and the Don’t Be An Ass rule; too old to publish?; giving away nonfiction work.
• 00:38:25 Promo: Can’t Stop the Serenity
• 00:39:25 GOOD COP/BAD COP: author Peter V. Brett asks what he should do with all his early “crappy” novels; losing energy because books similar to the one I want to write have already been published; how to handle a wanna-be writer leech; choosing between publishers.

This is live from Balticon with return guest Gail Carriger (@gailcarriger), songwriter John Anealio (@johnanealio), and Bad Cop Matt F. Wallace (@mattfnwallace). This is not safe for work or kids. We are explicit here. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Tidbits before the detailed show notes come: John’s awesome songs are “I Should Be Writing” and “George R. R. Martin Is Not Your B****.” NYT BESTSELLING author Carriger just scored two more books, making her Alexia Tarraboti series 5 books total *so far*. I still highly recommend them. And Matt Wallace is now a screenwriter and thinks he’s better than all of us.

(NOTE- at the beginning when I flub the show number, I whine that I haven’t even been drinking, but because my audience was laughing at me, all you hear is “been drinking.” I promise I was sober for this one.)

(Note, ISBW still does not advocate the harming of anyone. That’s all Matt.)

• 00:00:06 ISBW #145
• 00:00:43 State of the Mur: driving to RavenCon! Travel, getting hacked (again), fresh reinstall and re-uploading of podcasts – please go to The Murverse for all your ISBW podcast archive needs – working on novella, trying to get schedule back under control.
• 00:05:28 GoTo Meeting Message
• 00:06:07 Back to Basics: people deserve to get paid for their work.  Agents: do your homework. Resources: Writer’s Digest, Media Bistro, Agent Query
• 00:13:48 Promo: Merciless Storytellers: Performance Without Pity (podcasting competition)
• 00:19:00 Interview: Blake Charlton, med student and author of Spellwright
• 00:36:24 Promo: Scott Sigler’s The Starter. (Get a discount with the promo code “MUR”)
• 00:37:22 Feedback: Media Bistro’s AvantGuild as a recommended resource for nonfiction freelancers; the Zoom H2 and other voice recorder options, Holly Lisle as a recommended resource for revising one’s manuscript (http://howtoreviseyournovel.com/); do people change when they start to write?; comparing gaining experience in writing to gaining experience in The Sims; Discount! Use promo code MUR to save on Scott Sigler’s The Starter.
• 00:41:41 Good Cop/Bad Cop with Matt Wallace*: how to avoid the paralysis of fearing you’re going to “waste” a great idea when you’re not yet a good enough author to write it; setting boundaries with clingy writers
  * He said he didn’t want you to be able to contact him directly, but I say PHOOEY! You like the bad cop? Click away.  Hunt him down on his own turf. Thus sayeth the show notes writer. –Carrie.

(Note, ISBW does  not advocate the harming of anyone. That’s all Matt.)

It’s another feedback week!

Shownotes after the cut.

• 00:06: ISBW is brought to you by GoTo Meeting
• 00:18: ISBW #142
• 00:49: State of the Mur: busy. Artist’s Way, Artist’s Way Video Podcasts, Artist’s Way on Facebook, ISBW, short stories & a novella, waiting for feedback on novel, and, you know, life.
• 02:16: GoTo Meeting Promo
• 03:04 Promo: N.K. Jemisin’s novel The Ten Thousand Kingdoms published by Orbit Books.
• 04:05 Feedback: legality of fan fiction (it is a copyright violation, but authors may not care unless you try to get paid for it); listener Ross made a New Year’s Resolution to get in front of his computer & write every day and it seems to be working (yay Ross!); ISBW’s show notes writer CKHB on agents misplacing manuscripts (yes, it happens! keep track of your submissions!); looking for advice on finding the right balance when writing short stories (suggested reading: Beginnings, Middles & Ends by Nancy Kress); where to start an epic fantasy (consider starting at the moment the protagonist’s life changes); thoughts on not taking rejection too seriously; advice for people whose style is easily affected by what they read (it’s a new-writer thing); how many main characters is too many; keeping parents away from one’s writing or warning them about content; how to find literary magazines that like myth-based poetry (CKHB suggests trying the Duotrope’s Digest search engine); using Wordle as a method for creating titles; ISBW now on streaming Stitcher Radio for smart phones; standard manuscript format — Times New Roman or Courier New? 250 words/page or precise word count? (CKHB’s research agrees with Mur’s: no agent or editor has ever rejected something just for being in TNR or Courier, and manuscript formatting expert Anne Mini at Author! Author!  says that you estimate word count as 250 words/page for TNR, 200 words/page for Courier); iPad and software development concerns; the writing activities that count towards one’s 10,000 hours of practice to become a “master” of the craft; listener Lincoln wrote 5 novels since he started listening to ISBW (yay Lincoln!); Mur will be speaking about podcasting at Write Now! 2010, the Triangle Area Freelancers’ Annual Non-Fiction Conference on March 27th (and TAF President Don Vaughan will be interviewed on an upcoming episode of ISBW); a poet transitioning to fiction asks about beginnings & characterization (suggested writing books: the Nancy Kress book, Orson Scott Card’s Characters & Viewpoint and other books from the Writer’s Market collection), and Ursula K. Le Guin’s essay books); where to find Beta readers.

Some people have asked if they are behind in the Artist’s Way now. No no no no! Go ahead and get your book and get started. We are not going at any fast clipped pace here, mainly cause I can’t get a video up weekly, it seems.

Shop Indie Bookstores

From YouTube:

The kit:
Pens
Self-adhesive #10 envelopes for small queries and SASEs
Self-adhesive large envelopes for larger queries/partials
Tracking system for queries
Stamps (USA just raised postage to $0.44)
Adhesive address labels
And a chair.

Sponsored by Personal Effects, Dark Art.

We are also proud to be sponsored by JC Hutchins’ Personal Effects series, the podcast Sword of Blood, launching for free on May 15, 2009, and the novel Personal Effects: Dark Art, launching mid-June (pre-order now!)

• 00:07: ISBW #117
• 00:37: GoTo Meeting Message
• 01:43: Crossed the 20K word mark on War
• 03:03: Promo: JC Hutchins’ Personal Effects: Sword of Blood
• 06:00: Download archives of ISBW at Murverse
• 08:30: Mur’s Four Basic Rules of Writing
• 17:34: Promo: Nina Kimberly the Merciless
• 19:22: Interview with Scott Sigler, author of The Rookie
• 42:40: Promo: Scott Sigler’s The Rookie
• 44:47: Feedback, or lack thereof

Once again we are proud to have GoTo Meeting as a sponsor this week! Get a Free 30-Day Trial!

• 00:07: ISBW #117
• 00:37: GoTo Meeting Message
• 01:27: Allergy Attack!
• 01:52: Change in show format – adding interviews, subtracting nothing
• 03:57: Progress report on WAR
• 04:40: Hope to see you at Balticon- sign up for our ISBW Workshop!
• 05:30: Join me for breakfast at Balticon!
• 05:57: Promo: Jack Wakes Up
• 07:52: What can you get out of writing magazines? We peruse two to find out.
• 18:00: Promo: How To Succeed In Evil: The Novel
• 19:17: Interview with China Miéville, author of The City & The City
• 01:02:39: Promo: The Signal
• 01:04:20: Feedback! You can do book galleys at Lulu.com
• 01:07:34: Voicemail: How DO you write a prologue? We look to Nathan Bransford’s blog for answers.

I interviewed Dr. John Kessel, winner of the 2009 Nebula Award for best novella! We talked in a coffee shop, so please forgive the background noise.

• Did I mention you can get the early info of the new Heaven book at the site, if you join the Inside Story?
• Promo: Get a $3 discount off Scott Sigler’s The Rookie with the discount code MUR
• Interview with Dr. John Kessel, author of Pride and Prometheus, winner of the Nebula award! Audio files at his website, the story here, and his free, CC licensed short story collection from Small Beer Press here. We talk education, longer short fiction, and translating a story to television.
• Promo: Amaz!ng Meeting 7
• Lastly, what direction would YOU like to see ISBW go in? More interviews? Mix of interviews and advice? I need your input!

I Should Be Writing by Mur Lafferty is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

I come up from illness to say hi and talk about stuff!

• My Story “Mother Sponge” came out in Hub magazine!
• Friend me at GoodReads!
• Promo: GreatHites
• Beginnings, prologues, and yes, you are allowed to suck!
• Promo: Nina Kimberly the Merciless
• 6 yr old Nicholas Skidmore, author
• New software: Jer’s Novel Writer, DarkCopy, JDarkRoom

Show Notes:

• I’m doing a new thing with War – subscribe to the premium feed at the Heaven site!
• Promo: Dice Jockies
• You must check out the new interactive storytelling site, Storytron!
• David Moldawer and I are running a beginning writer workshop at Balticon this year!
• Create your own ebooks at Smashwords.com, you can also place your work at Scribd.com and Fictionpress.
• For scriptwriting, Celtx 2.0 was just released.
• I say I dont know where to get feedback on queries, but since this recording, Nathan Bransford has started the Be An Agent For A Day contest that you can submit to and have other authors look at your queries.
• Promo: French Quarter Hustle
• I’m going to start asking for feedback opinions from other podcast novelists, and the first is about character deaths from JC Hutchins, author of 7th Son and the upcoming novel, Personal Effects: Dark Art (pre-order now! You know you want to…)
• Let’s cheer on Carrie with her novel in the comments!
• The Book, a project portal
• We hear from a listener who got to see Mary Jo Pehl in Cinematic Titanic live! *jealous*
• Dead Robots Society on Create Space.
• I endorse, again, the Online Writer’s Workshop.
• I mention Viable Paradise and Clarion as good workshops for SF writers.
• More writing software: Write Room.

Also, David Wellington was ISBW #111, not 112. My bad. I need a fact checker…

Visit JC Hutchins’s site for more innovative marketing. And remember, learn from people who are original, but don’t directly copy them. Make your own awesome.

• My Fingertips project
• Promo: Two Minute Danger Theater
• Interview with Paul Malmont of Jack London in Paradise
• Promo: Buffy Between the Lines
• Interview with Brett Savory of Chizine

Regular shows resume next week!

Ah well.

Notes of the show:

• I outlined War, am now about 2500 words into writing it. Who wants to help me come up with a contest?
• Promo: Movie Mantras
• Interview with author David Wellington, author of Vampire Zero: A Gruesome Vampire Tale
• Promo: Acts of Desperation
• Feedback! Don’t forget our feedback line at 919-794-8498. We talk about Creative Commons and the Creative Commons Network, open source script writing software called Celtx, and Personal Essays.org.

Promo: Grizzly’s Growls Podcast

Promo: Adventures in Sci Fi Publishing

I’m also done with The Takeover, and project code name: UNDERGROUND! W00000t!

Oh yeah. And take risks.

Sponsored by Author Boot Camp – sign up with the code MUR1 for a discount!

• Promo: Author Boot Camp, February 21, 22 in San Francisco.
• Interview with Courtney Summers.
• Promo: Sun Run Homes
• I’m being deluged with backup solutions! Jungledisk, Mozy, Apple’s Time Capsule, Zoho, Google Notebook, Evernote, and apparently you can use iPods for backups on the PC.
• More map software here: Rachel Udin’s site.
• The Nanomonkeys website has expired and an unsavory site has picked it up. Don’t go there.
• There’s a Valentines Day Poetry Contest with a fascinating prize at Shapeways.

So here is the new ISBW promo! Thanks to whoever uses it!

• Promo: The Prophet of Panamindorah
• New York Times Bestselling Author Scott Sigler talks about his work, his book tour, and his new book, Contagious.
• New Feedback Song! “ISBW Her” by Famous Patrick
• Free map-making- Autorealm
• Six Sentences

Show notes:

• Read the Google Docs TOS
• I use a Flip Camera to record.
• Another backup method: Dropbox
• Also, I’m remiss in talking about the blog comments in the podcast. I need to rectify that. Till then, there are good comments in the original post.

And that’s not all! Soon we’ll have an interview with Scott Sigler in a matter of days! And many more interviews this month! January is the month of the interview!

• I’m trying out the snowflake method.
• Promo: Antithesis, Book 1
• Interview with Grammar Girl (GG on Twitter).

#107 was recorded when I was getting over the ick and it’s a little disjointed. Sorry about that.

• Promo: The Naked Bootleg
• We talk goals, starting over, and 2009. I had a story published at Escape Pod! We also talk about the ISBW Forums.
• Promo: The Unbelievable Origin of Super Spiff and the Toothpick Kid
• In feedback we talk about the Online Writing Workshop, Media Bistro, The News from Poughkeepsie, Google Earth, Matt Wallace, and we get voice mail from Shaun Farrell from Adventures in SciFi Publishing — he tells us the Lou Anders interview might be of interest….!

What I’m reading now:

Also, I found this out after this was recorded, but ISBW won the 2008 Hub Magazine Award for Best Podcast! W00t!

• My Christmas story, “Like Wild Leaves That Before The Wild Hurricane Fly” will be submitted to Escape Pod today!
• Yes, the economy sucks. Don’t panic!
• For map information, check David Macaulay or Library Servers.
• Mind42 – organizational tool
• Blog for the publishing side of things – Publishing U
• Jane Lindskold’s “Look What They Wrapped Around My Baby” post at Tor.com

Promo: Airspeed Podcast

Thanks to everyone who has helped keep this show going. It – and my writing career – has gone places I never could have foreseen. Thank you so much.

Photo by Natalie Metzger – CC license BY NC ND

And here’s my DragonCon schedule:

Title: I Should Be Writing Episode 100 Celebration LIVE!
Description: Award winning author and podcaster Mur Lafferty brings her I Should be Writing show to Dragon*Con to celebrate it’s 100th episode.
Time: Sat 10:00 am
Length: 1 Hour
Moderator / MC for panel

Title: The Third Annual Parsec Awards
Description: Join us for the Third Annual Parsec Awards hosted by some your favorite podcasters. The Parsec Award is available for Sci-fi & Fantasy Original Content, Speculative Fiction and a variety of other categories dealing with the new frontiers of Portable Media.
Time: Sat 07:00 pm
Length: 2.5 Hours
Moderator / MC for panel

Title: Dragon*AutoGraph
Description:
Time: Sun 04:00 pm
Length: 1 Hour

Title: Writing for Small Presses and Magazines
Description: So the big New York publishers don’t think your novel or story fits. What do you do with it now? Is there a niche for your work?
Time: Sun 05:30 pm
Length: 1 Hour

Title: Talk Back to the Podcasters!
Description: Are you a rabid fan of podcasting or even a certain podcaster? Come go all “fan boy” on the podcasters.  No question is off limits.
Time: Mon 01:00 pm
Length: 1 Hour

[I likely will miss the last one- 6 hour drive home, kid in school the next day, and all that...]

Hope to see you there!

• Promo: Keys to Publishing #3
• Interview with Mur
• Promo: Babylon 5 Heat Em Up
• Feedback: Self-hypnosis MP3, Dexter novels, Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine, Escape Pod, Podcastle, Strange Horizons, Hub, Warren Ellis’s view of print SF
• Remember, please don’t buy the book until August 25 unless you have to. (And if you have to, then I certainly don’t begrudge your support at all… )

Promo: Requiem of the Outcast

Adventures in Scifi Publishing is teaming up with I Should be Writing to bring you the “Keys to Publishing” contest. Running all summer long, the contest will feature authors Tobias S. Buckell, Kay Kenyon, Jay Lake, David Louise Edelman, Brenda Cooper, Sean Williams, and perhaps a surprise author or two.

These professional writers will bring you some the essential keys necessary in succeeding as a professional author. Tor and Pyr SF are cosponsoring the contest with book giveaways featuring some of the summer’s hottest new titles.

To enter the contest, simply listen for the six keys on Adventures in Scifi Publishing and I Should be Writing. Write down the title of each key, and when the last key is given, email all six keys to adventuresinscifipublishing@gmail.com with “Keys” in the subject line. That’s all you have to do. There will be at least two winners!

We hope you have fun with the contest and that it helps some of you fulfill your dreams of becoming professionally published authors.

**Sorry, but US residents only.

Promo: Adventures in SF Publishing and ISBW Keys To Publishing contest! More later on the ISBW blog!

• Promos: Eyewitness, Max Quick 2.
• I get an agent rejection during the podcast!
• New Pages – good place to find literary contests
• Novel in 100 Days