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Podcasts, Projects

[ISBW] Timeline of a Novel

ISBW Logo“Timeline of a Novel” is brought to you in large part by by my patrons , who received this episode early, and expanded. You can join us with a pledge as low as $1  a month! 

I talk about my books from initial concept all the way through to the end, both Six Wakes and my current WiP.

Get the extended version of this podcast via Patreon!

Latest Twitch/YouTube stream times:

  • Monday, 12:30, AMA/Hangout
  • Tuesday, 3:00, I Should Be Writing Live
  • Wednesday, 4:00, Gaming TBD
  • Thursday 12:30, I Should Be Writing Live

* All times EST

Links:


You can support the show at patreon.com/mightymur.
I Should Be Writing’s theme music provided by John Anealio.
January 21, 2021 | Season 17 Ep 9 (Ep 560) | murverse.com
ISBW S17 Ep9: Timeline of a Novel by Mur Lafferty is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Podcasts, Projects, Transcript

[Transcript] ISBW S17 Ep8: The Language of Hope with Guest Alasdair Stuart

ISBW LogoI’m excited to be able to offer transcriptions of I Should Be Writing again! I’m starting with the new season’s livestreams and catching up as I can. If you want to help this endeavor, supporting the Patreon, the Ko-Fi, or the Jemi would be a great help.

The Language of Hope with Guest Alasdair Stuart
I Should Be Writing S17 Ep8

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, books, writing, podcast, language, piece, stories, called, escape pod, hope, season, alasdair, world, dog, signaling, virtue, writer, talk, biden

SPEAKERS
Mur Lafferty
Alasdair Stuart


Mur   0:35
This is I Should be Writing season 17 episode eight, and I know that because I checked it a couple of times. I called number five number six. I might have called number seven number six, or number eight. I think I called seven, eight, I was all over the place. This is my attempt to actually get standardized. Still bumpy, but I am so excited. I have with me one of my best friends Alasdair Stewart who is a fiction writer, nonfiction writer, game writer, three time Hugo nominee. Did I get that right?

 

Alasdair   1:06
Two

 

Mur   1:07
Two. Well, you’ve been nominated for the nonfiction twice and then once as one of our major hopes for escape pod.

 

Alasdair   1:15
That’s right. Three times it is. I stand corrected.

(more…)

Podcasts, Projects, Transcript

[Transcript] ISBW S17 Ep7: Characters’ Wants and Needs

ISBW LogoI’m excited to be able to offer transcriptions of I Should Be Writing again! I’m starting with the new season’s livestreams and catching up as I can. If you want to help this endeavor, supporting the Patreon, the Ko-Fi, or the Jemi would be a great help.

Characters’ Wants and Needs
I Should Be Writing S17 Ep7

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

writing, character, people, scene, eligible, hugo, book, baseball, fanfic, year, nominated, harry, podcasts, drove, streams, stay, ursula, listening, bit, game

SPEAKERS
Mur Lafferty


Mur   0:34
This is I Should Be Writing season 17 episode 7. And I’m trying to keep up with that a little bit better. Got a fancy light box to take pictures of. And I’ve just messed up everything and lost my W. Smooth. That’s what they call me. Anyway, this is the podcast for wannabe fiction writers and I’m your host Mur Lafferty. Hey, Tim. Good to see you. I’m streaming this to Twitch and I think YouTube. We’ll see how well that goes. And this will go into the feed later on, if you just listen to audio via RSS and the Patreon supporters will get it first. So that is the news there. As for what I’ve been up to, I drove to Boston. Again. Thanks to the coronavirus, we are not comfortable with our kid flying so we drove her up on Friday and drove ourselves back on Saturday because there’s nothing to do, because there’s a pandemic. So, none of the typical touristy things, even just like eating at a nice restaurant, no. So that pretty much wore me out for Sunday and yesterday I was still pretty tired. So today I’m trying to get back into it. And I don’t know why I’m wearing the headphones. Because all it did was confuse me when I tried to get Pretzel going while the stream was live. If you’re a newbie don’t do that. No, don’t do that.

(more…)

Podcasts, Projects

[ISBW] The Language of Hope with Guest Alasdair Stuart

ISBW Logo“The Language of Hope” is brought to you by patrons Todd French and Mike Stanley, and the letter G!

I’m thrilled to welcome my good friend and Very Smart British Person Alasdair Stuart to the show to talk about, if we can weaponize language, how do we use it for hope?

(Get the extended episode here on Patreon!)

  • Monday, 12:30, AMA/Hangout
  • Tuesday, 3:00, I Should Be Writing Live
  • Wednesday, 4:00, Gaming
  • Thursday 12:30, I Should Be Writing Live

* All times EST

Links:


You can support the show at patreon.com/mightymur.
I Should Be Writing’s theme music provided by John Anealio.
January 28, 2021 | Season 17 Ep 8 (Ep 559) | murverse.com
ISBW S17 Ep8: The Language of Hope with Guest Alasdair Stuart by Mur Lafferty is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Podcasts, Projects, Transcript

[Transcript] ISBW S17 Ep6: Productivity (Or Mommy and Daddy are Fighting!)

ISBW LogoI’m excited to be able to offer transcriptions of I Should Be Writing again! I’m starting with the new season’s livestreams and catching up as I can. If you want to help this endeavor, supporting the Patreon, the Ko-Fi, or the Jemi would be a great help.

Productivity
(Or Mommy and Daddy are Fighting!)

I Should Be Writing S17 Ep6

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

writing, edits, podcast, book, people, story, stream, outline, goal, words, thinking, rewrites, novella, patreon, fanfic, talk, habits, run, episodes, shel silverstein

SPEAKER
Mur Lafferty


Mur   0:30
Hope y’all are doing well on this Thursday. Just finished your meeting and made it in. Oh, I’m so glad you like the season episode thing. It’s something I discovered Apple wanted. And I don’t have to wonder what number in 500 I’m at. I can just think, well it’s always gonna be season 17 this year and it’s easier to find the number when it’s in the teens and lower. Hello Underpope. Good to see you. I’m still marking somewhere on the file what the episode number is just in case I ever need it. But for now. Yeah, it’s the season counting thing. I just have to figure out how I can go back and edit the existing files, but without flooding everybody’s RSS feed with old episodes. I don’t think there’s a way unless things have changed. Hey HellJack, I’m glad you’re here regardless, good to see you. Anyway this is I Should be Writing. My name is Mur Lafferty if you don’t otherwise know. Right now I’m a chatting and podcast streamer, I want to get back into gaming but it’s not fitting with my schedule right now. So this is a podcast for wannabe fiction writers. I used to say by a wannabe fiction writer but then I published my first book and people told me I couldn’t say that anymore. And while they’re not the boss of me, I guess they had a point. KayKimmy, my cats are disasters and I dreamed and had the worst bus ride ever but otherwise I’m pretty. That’s good. Over the weekend I had two anxiety dreams about the same friends, which was weird. So don’t really want to look too deeply into that. That’ll just be awkward.

(more…)

Podcasts, Projects

[ISBW] Characters’ Wants and Needs

ISBW logo and title“Characters’ Wants and Needs!” is brought to you by patron John Kovalic (check out his Patreon too!), and the letter F!

“Your character must want something, even if it’s a glass of water!”

Characters must always have wants, but it takes a bit more work to think about what they need, and more importantly, when in the story for them to address those needs.

NEW- Transcript available!

(Get the extended episode here on Patreon!)

  • Monday, 12:30, AMA/Hangout
  • Tuesday, 3:00, I Should Be Writing Live
  • Wednesday, 4:00, Gaming
  • Thursday 12:30, I Should Be Writing Live

* All times EST

Links:

January 26, 2021 | Season 17 Ep 7 (Ep 558) | murverse.com
Copyright 2005-2021, Mur Lafferty | BY-NC-SA 3.5 License

Podcasts, Projects

[ISBW] Productivity (Or Mommy and Daddy are Fighting!)

ISBW Logo“Mommy and Daddy are Fighting!” is brought to you by patrons Steven V and Micah Joel, and the letter E!

I am behind again, alas. I look at two productivity methods and am entirely flummoxed by the two that seem at odds with each other: the 10X Rule that suggests if you shoot for 10X your goal you won’t necessarily make 10X, but you’ll very likely get much more than you would have had you, say, gone the compound method talked about in Atomic Habits and The Compound Effect where if you get just a little bit better every day then you will see real results. Which is best?*

* Punchline- just saw that the Atomic Habits author has reviewed both of these books on his site (see links above). So I guess I should go read those.

  • Monday, 12:30, AMA/Hangout
  • Tuesday, 3:00, I Should Be Writing Live
  • Thursday 12:30, I Should Be Writing Live

* All times EST

Links:


You can support the show at patreon.com/mightymur.
I Should Be Writing’s theme music provided by John Anealio.
January 21, 2021 | Season 17 Ep 6 (Ep 557) | murverse.com
ISBW S17 Ep6: Productivity by Mur Lafferty is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Podcasts, Projects

[DD] LIVE on Twitch, Ditchdiggers Talk BUMP!

Ditchdiggers Talk BumpWe are live on Twitch to show our beautiful mugs and talk about Matt’s new book, BUMP.

We will be going live more often!

January 11, 2021 – Season 7 Ep 2 – Copyright 2021, Mur Lafferty and Matt Wallace – BY-NC-SA 3.5 License – murverse.com

Podcasts, Projects, Transcript

[Transcript] ISBW S17 Ep5: Dropping Truth Bombs

ISBW LogoI’m excited to be able to offer transcriptions of I Should Be Writing again! I’m starting with the new season’s livestreams and catching up as I can. If you want to help this endeavor, supporting the Patreon, the Ko-Fi, or the Jemi would be a great help.

Dropping Truth Bombs
I Should Be Writing S17 Ep5

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
playing, writing, people, book, animal crossing, project, feel, post, finished, read, mantra, year, writer, happy, song, words, couple, point, watership down, podcast

SPEAKER
Mur Lafferty


Mur 0:33
And here we are. Happy Tuesday. It’s Tuesday, January 19, 2021 and I’m still here. Can’t believe it. I really can’t. It’s a rough day for me. I wrote 80… 8300 words yesterday. I can’t even count. 8300 words and then I had insomnia at five. So, got up, and finished the novella and turned it in, which is good. But I haven’t had a chance to sleep today. So I’m a little out of it. My hair looks snazzy. Thank you Fyrerider. I have a new overlay for those of you who can see it. And I think it’s a little less distracting. I put my word count up here in the top left. It says two days to go, but I’ve already turned it in, because I know I’ll reach my goal when I do edits, because that’s kind of how I write. Hey Sario. Good to see you. But Santa. Santa is not there anymore. At least he shouldn’t be. I tested new alert things. He’ll be back before you know it. Yeah. Anyway, this is a podcast called I Should Be Writing. I mentioned last week that I was going through a bit of a cold shock, realizing that I’ve not been very good with turning my stuff in lately. It’s partly there’s a lot of stuff going on there. I mean, we’re in a pandemic. There was an insurrection against the capital. I’ve had a lot of problems with migraines in the past 12 months. A lot of excuses but other people managed to get stuff turned in. So, I realized I needed to bust my butt and so I counted this morning and I’ve written 31,000 words this month. And it’s not the end of the month yet and I didn’t start on the first. So I guess I should be proud of that. I’m glad you like the new overlay people. I’m pretty happy with it. Thank you. I’m glad you think that’s a good accomplishment Frigsdaughter. I’ve been still feeling kind of bad about myself because I had to write so much in a binge because I’ve been putting it off, procrastinating. I shifted and the camera went weird, okay. But it’s done. The stuff’s done. The stuff’s into the editors, so that’s a good feeling. But I wanted to talk about, you know this show tries to tell you about a lot of the insecurities and terrible things you feel are normal as a writer, as a creative person in general.

(more…)

Podcasts, Projects

[DD] Mid-career Agent Loss

Ditch Diggers Logo and fireworksMatt and Mur are back!

  • It is a new year, the new Ditch Diggers mansion HQ that is definitely not imaginary has been finished, and it is a house warming party in quarantine!
  • Mur tells an amusing anecdote about missing many of the US Capitol insurrection news (the day after which this episode was recorded) because she was with her dog at the vet.
  • Matt and Mur talk about their hiatus from Ditch Diggers over the holidays, during which Matt had heavy book deadlines, the unique circumstances of which he explains, and Mur’s NaNoWriMo goals went off the rails.
  • Mur talks about suddenly finding herself agentless before the holidays through no fault of her own or her former agent’s, and announces on the podcast for the first time that she has signed with a new agent, the great Seth Fishman!
  • Matt and Mur discuss how to approach the situation Mur found herself in, seeking a new agent while not currently having a new manuscript to pitch, and being as deep into a career as Mur is.
  • How Mur compiled her list of agents to which to reach out, and what about an author and their career incentivizes or should incentivize a prospective agent.
  • What questions did Mur ask prospective new agents, what did they ask her, how did those conversations play out, and ultimate how did Mur decide on signing with Seth?
  • What the Ditch Diggers have coming up in 2021, including a (hopefully) new release schedule, format changes, increased accessibility, and live-streamed events.
  • The first end-of-episode shilling of the year! Mur pumps the Ditch Diggers Patreon and she also writes books, including the Escape Pod 15th Anniversary anthology. Matt’s first middle-grade novel, BUMP, in which Matt could not and did not use curse words, releases on Tuesday, January 26th!

Mentioned in this Episode…

Coming next, livestream via Twitch!

January 7, 2021 – Season 7 Ep 1 – Copyright 2021, Mur Lafferty and Matt Wallace – BY-NC-SA 3.5 License – murverse.com