Folgen

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

    From Story Seeds To Stories, And Writing An Author’s Note, With Joanna Penn
    Oct 7 2026
    How do you find and notice story ideas, and how do you turn those into short stories, novels, or as anecdotes for your non-fiction or memoir? Why is an author's note so important in an age of AI, and what might it contain? Joanna Penn shares her thoughts, and her short story, The Black Church, along with its author's note. In the intro, Ebook Preorders on Smashwords; Two titles per week on Amazon KDP; AI-related Digital Publishing Awards at Frankfurt Book Fair [Publishing Perspectives]; AI webinars in November; JFPenn YouTube; This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn Joanna Penn is an award-winning New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of thrillers, dark fantasy, short stories and travel memoir under J.F. Penn and also writes non-fiction for authors and hosts The Creative Penn Podcast. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes From story seeds to stories Writing an author's noteThe Black Church, a short story, available as a stand-alone or as part of The Buried and the Drowned collection.Author's Note for The Black Church You can find How to Write, Publish, and Market Short Stories on all platforms, in all formats: www.TheCreativePenn.com/shortstorybook From story seeds to stories One of the most common questions that writers get asked is ‘Where do you get your ideas?’ This is a strange question for many of us, since we are often so deluged with ideas that the difficulty is sifting out which ones to turn into a story. The trick is to tune into your curiosity and start noticing what grabs your interest. As Elizabeth Gilbert writes in Big Magic, “The universe buries strange jewels deep within us all, and then stands back to see if we can find them.” What do you see that others don’t? What turns your head while others pass by? What do you want to learn more about? What questions come up for you? What obsessions do you keep returning to? Each of these may be a fragment, a word, or a few lines. I call these story seeds. An idea, in its earliest form, is like a seed. It’s small, easy to miss, and nothing like the thing it might grow into. You literally can’t tell what it will look like when it’s grown, but there is potential in it. A seed isn’t a plot, or a character, or a full setting. It might be a line in a book or a film, a headline in the news, something you see in a museum display, or a place that made you feel something. It might be a question that bubbles up, or a feeling that won’t let you go. You just have to notice these seeds and, importantly, write them down! Capturing your story seeds Thoughts and ideas and story seeds will flit through your mind all the time if you let them, but they are fleeting, so you need a way to capture them before they leave once more. It doesn’t matter how you do this, but you need some kind of simple process. I use the Things app on my iPhone, which syncs to my Mac so I can always access it. Other people use a note-taking app or a physical notebook. It doesn’t matter. You just have to get it down. My story seeds are often one-liners, quotes, or links to articles I’ve seen that I want to investigate later. They might be passages from books I have underlined, or places I visit, or questions I have while out in the world. Here are a few examples from my Fiction Ideas file that might even spark ideas for you: United Arab Emirates plans world’s first underwater bullet train connecting Dubai to MumbaiL’appel du vide. The call of the void. The compulsion to jump.“Vengeance of the lost garden.” Ben Okri. A Fire in My HeadNoah’s Ark on the moon, like the Svalbard seed bankThe Wicked Bible. Printing error. Thou shalt commit adultery. 1631. You can see that these are not fully formed ideas. They are just seeds. Most will lie dormant, but some will sprout, appearing in stories or books years later. When I’m thinking about writing a new short story, I sometimes go to a cafe and sit with a coffee and scroll through my seed folder and notice patterns and see what strikes me as interesting. Sometimes I won’t even know an idea came from a seed I once found, but I look at my list later and discover I had thought about it once before. It’s a wonderful way to plant ideas and later find they have grown into something wild and curious. If you haven’t already got a way to capture your story seeds, establish a simple process now. Don’t overthink it. Just start noticing and writing them down. They might not make sense at the moment, but they may flower later. Searching for story seeds Julia Cameron discusses the idea of an Artist’s Date in her book The Artist’s Way, and this practice has always been important to me. It involves taking time out on your own to go somewhere and fill your creative well, whatever that means to you. For me, it’s often...
    Mehr anzeigen Weniger anzeigen
    1 Std. und 19 Min.
  • Write For Money And Power: Becoming A Creator CEO With Amy Suto

    Write For Money And Power: Becoming A Creator CEO With Amy Suto
    Oct 21 2026
    How can you move from the starving artist mindset to becoming a creator CEO with multiple streams of income? And how can you get traction on Substack if you're starting from zero? Amy Suto shares her tips as a former Hollywood TV writer turned author, Substack creator, and ghostwriter. In the intro, Novel November with ProWritingAid; Book Marketing in a Changing World [ALLi Podcast with me and Orna Ross]; Navigating tough times in indie publishing [Wish I'd Known Then]; watch out for fake agent emails [Write Beware]; AI-Assisted Artisan Author webinars for beginners and advanced. Today's show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with writing software, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 15% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn Amy Suto is a former Hollywood TV writer and the bestselling author of books around freelance writing, as well as romance, fantasy, and detective fiction. She's also a ghostwriter and a top 25 ranked Substack creator. Her books include Write for Money and Power. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes How to take back power when your dreams are in the hands of gatekeepersMoving from the starving artist mindset to creator CEOThe income flywheel of freelancing, a paid newsletter, and book royaltiesHow serialising fiction on Substack can build true fans and supercharge pre-ordersGetting traction on Substack, and how to manage comments and NotesUsing AI tools like a scalpel, and how to move past the fear of backlash You can find Amy on her Sunstacks, Make Writing Your Job and Sutoscience. Transcript of the interview with Amy Suto Jo: Amy Suto is a former Hollywood TV writer and the bestselling author of books around freelance writing, as well as romance, fantasy, and detective fiction. She's also a ghostwriter and a top 25 ranked Substack creator. So welcome to the show, Amy. Amy: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here. Jo: Yes, lots to talk about. First up— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing. Amy: So I came up in Hollywood as a TV writer, and I was climbing my way up the ladder, starting as an assistant, working in Los Angeles, and then eventually, finally got to start to write episodes of TV. When I hit what I thought was my peak, I was working with a CIA agent on a spy show. It was literally my dream, to be able to pick his brain about all the conspiracies that were actually true and be able to write TV around that. I found myself a little bit disillusioned with the way the system was running. I found that I really wanted to spend more time writing my own original work instead of being work for hire on other people's shows. So when 2020 happened and everything shut down, I ended up being able to travel the world, ghostwrite memoirs for Olympians and CEOs, and have some crazy experiences as a digital nomad, which then inspired my first fiction book, The Nomad Detective. From there I continued writing novels and also non-fiction books about my experience as a freelance writer, to help other authors and writers figure out how to have this balance of both being able to pay the bills as a writer while also having creative freedom to put together your own work. Jo: I love that. I guess just to address the dream—so you hit this dream of Hollywood TV writing, which of course for some people, that's their dream and they never got there, and then you left it all. I mean, the strength to walk away from that. So if people have that dream, or there's the dream of the eight-figure movie deal for a novelist and all this. So can dreams end up not be the thing we really want, I guess? Amy: This is a great question, and I think that the thing that I was running into is that I was putting my dreams in the hands of gatekeepers. I think that when you hand over that power, then suddenly you are left without agency and you are finding yourself working for free or doing work for producers that maybe you didn't sign up for. People are dangling your dreams in front of you to get you to do what they want you to do. That was a little bit of what I was beginning to experience, and seeing in other writers that I was talking to in the industry. So I knew that I wanted to take back that power for myself. I also love books. Writing novels is something that is very close to my heart and part of my own dream as a writer as well. So when 2020 was happening and everything was shutting down and the writers' room that I was in went to a Zoom room, I thought, “This is a perfect ...
    Mehr anzeigen Weniger anzeigen
    1 Std. und 4 Min.
  • Bad Choices Make Good Stories: Character, Critique And Community With Erin Dionne

    Bad Choices Make Good Stories: Character, Critique And Community With Erin Dionne
    Oct 14 2026
    How can giving your characters two bad choices raise the stakes in your stories? And how do you ask for the feedback you need from a critique group, and disregard the rest? Erin Dionne shares her writing and publishing tips after more than 20 years as an author and professor. In the intro, The Future of Listening Audible survey [Publishing Perspectives]; Spotify expand audiobooks globally; Audible announce immersive new AI features [Publishing Perspectives]; Writing Storybundle; SPS Live USA conference; AI-Assisted Artisan Author webinars in November. Today's show is sponsored by Bookfunnel, the essential tool for your author business. Whether it’s delivering your reader magnet, sending out advanced copies of your book, handing out ebooks at a conference, or fulfilling your digital sales to readers, BookFunnel does it all. Check it out at bookfunnel.com/thecreativepenn This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn Erin Dionne writes middle grade novels, picture books, chapter books, and nonfiction, as well as cosy mysteries under a pen name. She's also a college professor, and her latest book for writers is Bad Choices Make Good Stories: Conversations About Writing. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Why two bad choices beat an easy choice and a hard oneHow pre-writing in a notebook builds confidence in your characters before you draftGiving characters dimension beyond the bubble of their storyHow to ask for the feedback you want, and protect the core of your storyForming an indie press with your critique groupHow to get school visits through librarians and conferences You can find Erin at ErinDionne.com. Transcript of Interview with Erin Dionne Jo: Erin Dionne writes middle grade novels, picture books, chapter books, and nonfiction, as well as cosy mysteries under a pen name. She's also a college professor, and her latest book for writers is Bad Choices Make Good Stories: Conversations About Writing. So welcome to the show, Erin. Erin: I'm thrilled to be here. Thank you for having me. Jo: There's lots to talk about. First up— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing. Erin: Sure. Like some of the other people that you've talked to on the podcast, I've been a huge reader and writer ever since I was a little kid, but when I was about seven, I realised that it was people that wrote books. I thought that they came out of a machine or something. When I found that out, I thought, oh my goodness, I love reading stories, so being a writer must be the best job in the world. So I was single-mindedly focused on being an author as a career after that. I wrote off and on in school. I wrote short stories and things. When I went to college, I got a degree in English and communications, and then I went and got my MFA in creative writing. While I was in school, I also decided that I wanted to learn about the publishing industry, so I worked as an intern for a local magazine. Then after I graduated, while I was in grad school, I actually worked in publishing for Houghton Mifflin in their marketing department. I became an editor for a magazine, and then ultimately, I became a professor, and I work at an art school. It was at that point, finally, when I was surrounded by other creative people, that I thought, “Okay, I've learned all this stuff. I need to actually put it into practice.” So I got serious about my work in 2005, and my first book came out in 2009, a traditionally published children's book, and I published in the children's book field for the next 11 years. I released my first indie book in 2021, and now I consider myself a hybrid author. I do some books traditionally published, some books indie, and I really like being able to have control in different aspects of my career. Jo: Well, that's great. Wow, you've just done so much across the whole industry. That's fantastic. I do want to ask you then, before we get into the book, you did an MFA, and obviously you love studying. I also love studying. I understand that. I wonder where you stand now on whether people need to study so much. I found personally, as someone who also enjoys studying, that sometimes I make myself not do the practice. I'd rather sometimes be learning than doing. So how can people balance learning a lot with actually writing the book? Erin: Yes, I think that's a great question. For me, my undergraduate degree in English was not creative writing focused. We didn't have that. So I thought, “I need to learn how to write.” What I really learned in grad school was how to revise and how to teach. I think now, 20 years later, with the cost of education, you don't have to have a master's degree to write. You don't have to have a degree in English to write. You have to read a lot, and you have to write a lot. I think ...
    Mehr anzeigen Weniger anzeigen
    58 Min.
  • Writing And Creativity In Midlife With Jordan Rosenfeld

    Writing And Creativity In Midlife With Jordan Rosenfeld
    Sep 30 2026
    How can you keep writing when midlife brings grief, exhaustion, rage, and a creativity that seems to have dried up? How can you accelerate if midlife brings you more energy? And how can you market your books authentically when your energy and your interests have changed? Jordan Rosenfeld shares what she learned from writing through her own pause. In the intro, how to write short stories [Novel Marketing Podcast]; Bestsellers: Excavating the Tools and Techniques of Successful Novels – Kristen Tate. Plus, Hugh Howey: The AI Bubble Explained; NEO writing software; Will the AI Bubble Destroy our Retirement? By Mr Money Mustache; Future Vision X Prize winner, The Gifted; and my Cathedral Zero trailer; How to Market a Book Fourth Edition survey. Today's show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with writing software, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 15% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn Jordan Rosenfeld is the author of psychological suspense novels and books on writing craft, as well as an editor and writing coach. Her latest book is Writing Through the Pause: Mining Midlife for Powerful Writing. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes What midlife is, and why so many changes seem to arrive at onceDisenfranchised grief, empty nest, perimenopause and the losses nobody talks aboutA fallow period is a germinating period, not a dead oneDon't isolate, try something new, and learn to write as playHow to market your books in a way that reflects who you are at your coreVulnerability, curation and how much of yourself to share online You can find Jordan at JordanRosenfeld.net. Transcript of the interview with Jordan Rosenfeld Jo: Jordan Rosenfeld is the author of psychological suspense novels and books on writing craft, as well as an editor and writing coach. Her latest book is Writing Through the Pause: Mining Midlife for Powerful Writing. So welcome to the show, Jordan. Jordan: Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here. Jo: Yes, this is an excellent topic. First up— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing. Jordan: Absolutely. I'm really one of those annoying writers who's been writing all my life since I was a little girl, and it was all I really wanted to be or do. I'm a Gen X-er, so of course we grew up before the internet, and I read for pleasure and escape. So I was really dogged in figuring out how does one go about becoming a writer, because it was the only thing I wanted to do. I remember going to the library and checking out—eventually, later in my 20s—this massive tome, I forget what it was called. Like the Writer's Guide to Publishing, one of those big old things that has all of the editors, agents and stuff. It was really just figuring out how to do it and sending snail mail queries and going to writing conferences. So I think I was just dog on a bone with it, really, since I was young. Like anything, once you get your toe in, it's a little easier to keep publishing. I laugh because the first traditionally published book of mine was actually a book on writing craft before I had published any of my novels. So that felt strange, but I wasn't complaining at the same time. Jo: So when was that, and what has your career looked like so far? Jordan: So I published Make a Scene: How to Craft—oh my gosh, I'm forgetting my own subtitle—Crafting Powerful Scenes in 2005, which means I pitched it in 2003. That was the beginning of my era as a writing craft teacher as well. I was right out of graduate school at that point. Then eventually I published my first novel. When I say my first novel, I just mean the first one that hit the world. It wasn't my first one written, but Forged in Grace. Then I eventually started putting out a writing craft guide every couple of years, just thanks to the wonderful people at Writer's Digest. I just found a niche early on. Sometimes that just happens. I also like to point out that I was pitching books at a time before this whole concept of platform was a big deal. So you could be just any old body without a big following, because we didn't really have social media. I did write for the magazine, the Writer's Digest magazine, which I think gave me a leg up in the book part. So writing craft became my niche, and then I always have really found success with small press for my novels. So my current publisher is called Sibylline Press, and they are a publisher of women 50 and over, actually. That's their whole thing. Jo: Oh, okay. That's interesting. Well, ...
    Mehr anzeigen Weniger anzeigen
    1 Std. und 2 Min.
  • Reclaiming Your Mind: How To Teach Yourself Anything With J. Daniel Sawyer

    Reclaiming Your Mind: How To Teach Yourself Anything With J. Daniel Sawyer
    Sep 16 2026
    How can you teach yourself anything, even when it challenges the way you see the world? And how can you organise what you learn so it turns into books your readers will find? J. Daniel Sawyer shares his self-education toolkit after decades as a largely self-taught author. In the intro, Spotify for Authors has expanded AI-assisted creation of audiobooks [Spotify]; Who is Narrating the Future? [Publishing Perspectives; 9 ways AI will disrupt authors and publishing from 2019]; Author Voice, Creativity, and Building a Career as an Intuitive Author-Entrepreneur [How Women Write]; A fallow season [Systems and Soul]; How to Write, Publish, and Market Short Stories – Joanna Penn. Today's show is sponsored by Bookfunnel, the essential tool for your author business. Whether it’s delivering your reader magnet, sending out advanced copies of your book, handing out ebooks at a conference, or fulfilling your digital sales to readers, BookFunnel does it all. Check it out at bookfunnel.com/thecreativepenn This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn J. Daniel Sawyer is the author of over 30 books across science fiction, fantasy, crime, short stories, and nonfiction, as well as being a podcaster and filmmaker. His latest book is Reclaiming Your Mind: An Autodidact's Bible. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes What is an autodidact, and why school doesn't teach you how to learnHow to triage information in a world of way too muchHow to recognise fear in your body and turn it into excitement for learningSandboxing dangerous ideas so you can learn without threatening your worldviewHow to organise research and check quotes when writing nonfictionWhy you should never publish a book dead You can find Dan at JDSawyer.net, and The Autodidact's Bible is out now on Kickstarter. Transcript of the interview with J. Daniel Sawyer Jo: J. Daniel Sawyer is the author of over 30 books across science fiction, fantasy, crime, short stories, and nonfiction, as well as being a podcaster and filmmaker. His latest book is Reclaiming Your Mind: An Autodidact's Bible. So welcome back to the show, Dan. Dan: Hello, Joanna. It's great to be back. Jo: Yes, indeed. You were only on the show a few months ago, which is rare I have somebody twice in the same year, so that is quite exciting. We talked about voice mastery last time, very different to the topic of today. But because we did talk a bit more about your background last time, we're going to jump straight into the book. So what is an autodidact, and why write a book on it? Dan: Well, an autodidact is someone who teaches themselves things rather than taking a course. It's not incompatible with being taught by others, of course, but there's a set of skills for being able to pick up new information, new disciplines, new hobbies, whatnot, that's really useful to have. I wrote the book because I was mentoring a friend's kid through high school. They weren't teaching her anything, and she was having a hell of a time figuring out how to get an education in a school that was just not interested in providing one. The process of the conversations over the course of a year forced me to surface all of the tools that I had developed, starting as a child, that allow me to pick up all of those disciplines you were talking about before, plus blacksmithing and academics and other stuff like that. While I have had access to a lot of amazing teachers in my life, I'm largely self-taught, and have become the world expert on a couple of topics as a result. I realised that the tools that you need to teach yourself and the tools that you get in school no longer overlap very much, at least in the US. The old style of classical education, and then the middling style of early school education, both gave you those tools so that when you left school, you were able to continue through the world growing. Nobody does that anymore, so I realised I needed to write a book about all this stuff while it was fresh in my mind, so I did. Jo: I love that. I don't know if it always was like that for some people, too. We all know now more about neurodivergence. Back in the day, when you and I went to school, that wasn't really talked about. It was like if you couldn't learn stuff in the way that it was thrust at you, then you were just dumb, maybe. Dan: Well, what you and I got in school was the very late end of the German model. The German model of education is what arose in the industrial era, and its job is to create good, obedient workers, not necessarily to create independent citizens who can think for themselves and who can move through a world that's changing and learn things. That kind of education came from an older tradition, but it wasn't well suited to pulling people out of the hinterlands and putting them in the factories in a way that ...
    Mehr anzeigen Weniger anzeigen
    1 Std. und 7 Min.
  • Time Freedom: Rethink Your Work And Money With Brian Herriot

    Time Freedom: Rethink Your Work And Money With Brian Herriot
    Sep 23 2026
    How can you design your year around seasons of work and rest instead of waiting for financial freedom? And how do you build the money confidence to take extended time off when you come from a scarcity mindset? Brian Herriot shares his ideas on time freedom after a career as a financial advisor and consultant. In the intro, The end of the spectrum [Seth Godin, Akimbo]; List of money books; Lessons learned from 15 years as a full-time author entrepreneur; My author timeline since 2005; Producing AI-narrated audiobooks with Simon Patrick. Plus, please do my short How to Market a Book survey (by 7 Oct); and here's my Cathedral Zero Trailer. This podcast is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo eco-system. You can also subscribe to the Kobo Writing Life podcast for interviews with successful indie authors. This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn Brian Herriot is a financial advisor, professional speaker, and the author of Time Freedom: Rethink Your Work and Money to Create a Life You Love Now. He's also the host of The Time Freedom Podcast. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Why writing, speaking and podcasting can build authority without social media What time freedom is, and how it differs from work-life balance and financial freedom How to design your year around seasons of work and rest The three money personalities: minimiser, manager and maker How to build flexibility into your work whether employed or self-employed How a book that leaves nothing out can be the foundation of a business You can find Brian at timefreedom.life. Transcript of the interview with Brian Herriot Jo: Brian Herriot is a financial advisor, professional speaker, and the author of Time Freedom: Rethink Your Work and Money to Create a Life You Love Now. He's also the host of The Time Freedom Podcast. So welcome to the show, Brian. Brian: Thank you so much for having me. Jo: Yes, this is a great topic. First up— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing. Brian: I am a financial advisor, and now I am an author officially. I found writing just short of three years ago. I was actually doing some research on behalf of my wife, because she's always been an incredible writer, in the fiction side of the world. So I was researching different writing programmes and things like that, and came across one that I thought, “Hmm, this is for nonfiction, and boy, it sounds very interesting. I think it's something maybe I need to do.” The reason why I was looking at all, even for myself, is I was transitioning into a new line of work, and it was work where you needed to develop some authority and visibility. Everything everybody was telling me was that I needed to do a lot of social media, which I did not want to do. I forget where I heard it, but they're like, “Or you could do the author speaking thing.” And I thought, “Ooh, that sounds a lot better.” So that's the path that I ended up on. Jo: Interesting. Can you tell us what that different path you were looking at was? Brian: Well, a lot of what you see, at least online, if you're to develop a personal brand and try to attract business—in this case into my financial advisory firm—everyone says, “Well, you need to develop an online presence.” In the business world from a long time ago, I had used LinkedIn, but not for anything like developing a personal brand. So then all the advice started turning to, “Oh, well then you need to get onto Instagram and TikTok.” I don't know, I've always viewed all that scrolling as a waste of time, and I'd rather put my mind towards something more productive. So I was just so apprehensive to try and get into that space, that I just kept putting it off and putting it off and putting it off until I heard a podcast. I've always listened to lots of podcasts, and I heard a podcast that said, “Well, instead of developing authority that way, the other path that you could take would be through writing.” Because it's obviously longer form, you can put your thinking into it. Then that can lead to help getting into speaking as well. Between those two you can develop some of the same authority that you could if you went the social media route. There was also the podcasting part, which I do love, and that's been one of the most fun things I've been doing lately. So I do podcasting, writing and speaking instead of social media. Jo: I love that, and I know a lot of people listening love that too. I don't think this is an age thing, I think this is an aptitude for short-form video thing. I'm the same as you. I'm not really into the short-form video. For people listening, this is an audio-only podcast partly because I don't want to do video. Brian: And ...
    Mehr anzeigen Weniger anzeigen
    1 Std. und 7 Min.
  • What Machines Can’t Replace: Why AI Makes Us More Human With Anna McPhee

    What Machines Can’t Replace: Why AI Makes Us More Human With Anna McPhee
    Sep 9 2026
    How can you use AI to research, edit and handle admin and marketing tasks while still writing every single word yourself? How can you double down on being human and reach readers on a personal level? Anna McPhee shares her perspective as a software engineer, author and creative technologist. In the intro, How to Write, Publish, and Market Short Stories out now. This show is supported by my Patrons. Join my Community and get articles, discounts, and extra audio and video tutorials on writing craft, author business, and AI tools, at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn Anna McPhee is an author, software engineer, professional speaker, and creative technologist. Her latest book is What Machines Can't Replace: Why AI Makes Us More Human. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Why writing code is creative work, and what it shares with writing booksHow AI changed Anna's job as a software engineer without taking her employmentThe difference between AI assistance and generationHow to use custom skills for editing reports, research and repeatable tasksWhy the rise of AI makes us crave slow, imperfect, physical thingsResponding to a negative review by showing up as a human You can find Anna at Anna.kiwi and her new book at WhatMachinesCantReplace.com. Transcript of the interview with Anna McPhee Jo: Anna McPhee is an author, software engineer, professional speaker, and creative technologist. Her latest book is What Machines Can't Replace: Why AI Makes Us More Human. So welcome to the show, Anna. Anna: Hi, Joanna. Thank you so much for having me. Jo: Oh, this is going to be a fun conversation. First up— Tell us a bit more about you and your background in technology, as well as how you got into writing. Anna: I have been in all of these things my whole life, as long as I can remember. When I was just a little girl, writing was my favourite thing, writing stories. It was the whole reason I went to school, to be honest. I always pictured myself as a writer before anything else. My dad was a lecturer in software development, so when I was little, he would teach me how to code. So I've always done both, for as long as I can remember, and my mum is an artist. That's been my upbringing, at the intersection of technology and art, and then writing is my own personal passion. It's naturally flowed throughout my life. I've been in and out of some other careers and chased all the things that have made me feel interested and passionate, but writing has always been there in the background. It's something I do, whether it's been for a hobby or for a profession, so it's always been there. Jo: But you work in software, right? Anna: I do. I work in software, which came to me by chance. I set out as a digital nomad about 15 years ago now. I sold everything I owned and started travelling. The way I thought I was going to fund this was through freelance writing, which I was very optimistic about. We all know now that's a very challenging way to make an income, especially when you don't have a background in it or a portfolio. I did have this childhood background in software engineering and coding. So I set out to be a writer and travel the world as a writer, and actually what I ended up doing was building websites and writing software, because that's what people would pay me to do. So I fell into both at the same time through this chance I took. Jo: I think sometimes people think that programming and software development and these more technical fields are not creative. My husband was a programmer for a long time, and essentially programming is a language. Well, there are lots of languages, but you are creating in a language with computers, right? So is there that much difference? How do you fix these two things in your mind separately, or are they the same thing? Anna: They're so related. Many people might put writing into more of an art, and computer development and programming more into a maths or a science, but I just think there's so much creativity in writing code, in how you choose to structure things, in the language you select for something, the way you approach it. It's very similar to writing a book, I think. I've found a lot of things that are very similar about it, to do with architecture even. When you look at the basics, some people might write a book with no idea where it's going and see where it ends. It's the same with software. People might go into it and not have a plan. Most people will architect their software, or they'll architect their story in the same way. I think there's a lot of crossover between the two. Jo: And there's editing, and doing the “does this do what I want it to do?” I think with software perhaps it's more obvious when something doesn't do what you want it to do than with a book. Anna: Perhaps. Although with AI now, it's becoming a little more vague, because you can...
    Mehr anzeigen Weniger anzeigen
    46 Min.
  • How To Redesign Your Author Business For The Environment That Actually Exists, With Tracy Cooper-Posey

    How To Redesign Your Author Business For The Environment That Actually Exists, With Tracy Cooper-Posey
    Sep 2 2026
    How can you redesign your author business for the publishing environment that actually exists, rather than the one you wish you had? And how do you decide which marketing efforts will still bring readers to your books in ten years' time? Tracy Cooper-Posey shares her solar sail theory after more than 25 years as an author. In the intro, reviving your backlist [The Indy Author]; AI as a medium [Tim O'Reilly]; How to Write, Publish, and Market Short Stories – Joanna Penn. ProWritingAid Storyteller sale: Thursday, 3rd September until September 13th 2026 — 25% off all annual licenses as well as Story Critique credits. Today's show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with writing software, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 15% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn Tracy Cooper-Posey is the multi-award-winning author of over 200 novels and works of nonfiction, science fiction, fantasy, romance, and historical fiction under three pen names. Her books for authors include The Indie Author Survival Guide and The Productive Indie Fiction Writer. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Learning to write again after chemo, one sentence at a timeWhat enshittification means, and why it is the environment rather than youThe hallmarks of an indie author business that persists over timeThe solar sail theory of long-term discoverabilityWhy social media and paid ads have such a short half-lifeHow to find and reduce the operational drag on your business You can find Tracy at ProductiveIndieFictionWriter.com or StoriesRulePress.com. Transcript of the interview with Tracy Cooper-Posey Jo: Tracy Cooper-Posey is the multi-award-winning author of over 200 novels and works of nonfiction, science fiction, fantasy, romance, and historical fiction under three pen names. Her books for authors include The Indie Author Survival Guide and The Productive Indie Fiction Writer. So welcome back to the show, Tracy. Tracy: Hi, Jo. It's great to be back. Jo: Yes. So you were last on the show in October 2023 talking about The Productive Indie Fiction Writer, and we went into depth then. So give us a bit of an update on your author business and also your life. Because it has been a bit of an up and down. Tracy: Yes, it's been a very interesting three years, because I had just gone into remission with cancer when we were talking last. Now I'm out of remission again and facing treatment in the next few weeks. My husband got cancer and went through treatment, and he's cured. So life has been pretty interesting. All that has made me do a lot of deep thinking about the indie author business and my own business and writing in general. So I'm still here. I'm still publishing, 200 plus books now. I had to learn how to write again. But the writing has shifted a lot towards science fiction and fantasy, including cosy science fiction now, which is the new genre that's just creeping in. All three pen names have been Aurealis Award finalists, which is nice. I'm still continuing the nonfiction work, which is something that you said the last time that we spoke. You said, “Now that you've written one, it's likely you'll write more nonfiction.” And I did. Jo: You did. They're excellent books. Just on that, you mentioned cosy sci-fi. For anyone who might not know, where is that genre? What's in that genre of cosy sci-fi? Tracy: It's not really officially a genre yet. It started off with cosy fantasy, which was where the cosy started. Actually, technically it started with cosy mystery, and everyone understands cosy mystery. The body and the murder are off stage. There's a lot of tea drinking. There's lots of friends, and it's all very polite and mannered. You're focusing more on the emotions and the feel, and they've picked up that cosy aspect of mystery and put it on fantasy. So you get books like, I think the primary one is Legends and Lattes. It's about an orc that's running a coffee shop because they got sick of fighting, and the adventures that they have trying to run their coffee shop. So if you pick up that same cosy sensation and put it on science fiction, that's cosy science fiction. But it's so new that it doesn't have a category on Amazon or anything like that. Cosy fantasy does now. Amazon just created a cosy fantasy category a while ago. But cosy science fiction is so new that people are still arguing over which books are cosy science fiction and which are not. Jo: Oh, that's interesting. You're incredibly prolific. You always have been. You mentioned there...
    Mehr anzeigen Weniger anzeigen
    1 Std. und 2 Min.