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