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The following is a transcript of a free podcast interview with Mur Laffertyinterviewed by Joanna Penn of The Creative Penn

.Click here to access the free audio. The Creative Penn podcast has over 50 free audio interviewson writing, publishing options, internet marketing andpromotion for your book. It is aimed at authors, writers andpeople interested in books and publishing.You can see the fullbacklist of podcasts by clicking here. You can also Click here to subscribe on iTunes. Hi everyone. This is Joanna Penn for the Creative Penn

podcast and today I‟m interviewing

Mur Lafferty.Mur is an author, podcaster and freelance writer. Her firstnovel, Playing For Keeps,won the 2008 PASEC award for best novel and was subsequently published by Swarm Press. Itreached number 1 in science fiction on amazon.com and is alsoavailable as a free podcast novel.Mur has also co-authored a book on podcasting as well writingrole playing games. She is currently working on the Heavenseries of Podiobooks as well as new projects and has also joined NanoWriMo this month. On top of all of this, Mur hasa fantastic podcast for wannabe authors called, I Should BeWriting,which I highly recommend. So, welcome Mur.ML: Than

ks Joanna. I‟m really excited to be on here. One of my favourite things to

do after waking up is checking Twitter to see all of your awesome tweets onwriting and all of the web sites I have to look at immediately.JP: Thank you so much for that. I

t‟s great to be able to connect on Twitter because Iwouldn‟t have met you otherwise so, it‟s a fantastic thing.

So, maybe you can just start by telling people a bit about your writing background and your

journey because you’re so busy and suc

cessful now but has it always beenlike this.

ML: Oh no, no, no. I wanted to

–

I guess I decided I want to be a writer when I wasaround twelve and then I wrote stories and stuff throughout high school andcollege and in college I discovered the horrible realisation that there were peoplebetter than me. So instead of taking the challenge and working harder I decided

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to quit and go into the corporate lifestyle but always in the back of my mind it

was, no I‟m really writer. I do this thing but at night time I fight crime and I‟m

really a writer even though I was doing neither of those things.When I finally got laid off a friend of mine at Red Storm Entertainment where Iwas working, offered to give me a little bit of mentoring because he had writtenseveral novels and he also introduced to me to people at White Wolf. His goodrecommendation actually got me my first job there and then once you complete a

job and it‟s pretty good and it‟s delivered on time, then you get more work. So

my role playing work

kind of snowballed from there and that‟s when I kind of

gave myself permission to start learning how to write fiction again.

I guess that was around 2001 and so I‟ve been writing freelance role playing

games and fiction since then and things are slowly moving along with actualsales, but starting to podcast my work is actually what has built me an audienceand gotten me the most attention from

–

for example by publisher Swarm and

then agents and stuff like that. So, it‟s been a bit of a snowball. I don‟t

–

you say

I‟m busy and successful. I‟m just still busy. I feel like I‟m in a kind of holding

pattern right now, but hoping cool things will begin to happen soon.JP:

And you‟ve said a couple

of things there that were really resonant with me. You

said first of all that you thought people were better than you and that‟s something

I thought. When I was younger I used to read Umberto Eco, The Name Of TheRose was my favourite book, and I thought I had to write like him in order to be a

writer, but obviously he‟s one of those sort of great literature writers.

So, howdid you break through that mental block of should I have to be that greatliterature writer or can I just write what I like?

ML:

I don‟t know. I hope this

isn‟t for everybody, I don‟t want to tell everybody they

have to wait until their thirties, but I was wide eyed and naïve and really believingin my own awesomeness in my twenties. I still questioned by own awesomenessbut at the very moment that my awesomeness was questioned by someone else,

and not saying somebody else said I wasn‟t good, but it was somebody showing

me fiction that they w

rote. And I‟m lik

e, wow

you‟re my peer, why are you so

much better than

me? I just let that completely shut me down and it wasn‟t until

later when I realised that nobody is going to help me.People will help me if I ask them to but nobody is really going to do this for me.

They‟re not going to wake me up in the mor

ning and tell me I have to write andmake sure I get my word count done and hold my hand and all that stuff. I haveto do it all myself, so if I was going to actually do this writing thing I was going tohave to do it no matter where I started. And then I realised that if you keep doing

something everyday you‟re going to get better at it and so I began to appreciate

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the hard work involved and realising that if I just kept at it something good wouldhappen just from sheer stubbornness.JP: And I guess following on from that, you also said you were slowly moving along

and you‟re talking about the hard work there and I guess I feel in this sort of

world of fast, fast Internet everyone expects to become a successful writer sort of overnight.

Can you maybe comment on the journey of being a writer andhow you see that as sort of a lifetime thing.

ML:

Oh, it‟s funny. I heard

at least

Elizabeth Bear say this but I‟ve heard a lot of other

people say it is the, well it takes ten years to make an overnight sensation. Likesuddenly when an author bursts onto the scene everyone says,

„O

h where did they

come from?‟ and the author is thinking, „Well I‟ve been writing books for tenyears, why haven‟t you paid attention to me?‟

But it really is a

–

it‟s a building

thing. I mean like in podcasting people wonder how to get successful like ScottSigler or J.C. Hutchins

or to a lesser extent me. I mean I‟ve got the audience. Idon‟t have the book deals they do but I‟ve got a larger audience.Scott always says, “Look we‟ve been doing this for years.” You have to start, youhave to build a foundation and keep going. I mean yes it doesn‟t seem like thatlong but in podcasting we‟ve been doing this a

long

time and again it‟sstubbornness. It‟s you come up with an idea and you say hey let‟s do it. I‟ve losta lot of my fear of failure because I know that if something fails then I‟ll justmove on to the next thing. It‟s not such a big deal.

I just keep throwing darts at the dart board and if one of them hits then yeah and if one of them

hits the wall then I say I‟m sorry and go and patch up the wall but

then keep moving. So, it is just a matter of keeping going and no matter whonotices you or not eventually stubbornness does work.JP:

No that‟s great and it‟s inte

resting. You say you lost your fear of failure because

you also do your kind of lessons learned don‟t you? On your podcast I S

hould BeWriting you talk a lot

about things you‟ve learnt which I really appreciate and

really recommend that podcast to people.

One of the things you did recently I

think was, It’s Okay To Suck, which I thought was brilliant. Maybe you

could just talk a bit about that.