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Protecting Your Work Before Publication

Let’s face it, traditional publishing is not for everyone.

The number of self-published authors continues to grow as technology makes the self-publishing process easier (until it comes time to market, but that’s a whole different conversation).

With so many authors choosing self-publishing, it’s more important than ever to know what to do to protect your work.

Below is a checklist of copyright-related tasks to take care of before you publish:

Verify Rights and Permissions

1. Make sure you have all the rights and permissions you need. 

Double-check that all your content is original to you.

If there’s anything that’s not original to you, make sure a) it is not copyright-protected or b) you have permission to use it.

2. Make sure you have contracts in place for any co-authors or service providers.

I’ve known a number of authors over the years who came to grief because they did not have a written agreement in place with their co-authors, ghostwriters, illustrators, or other people who put their hands (physical or digital) on the manuscript.

Save yourself the hair-pulling and have signed agreements that state who owns the copyright and how and when people will get paid.

3. Fill out the copyright notice page. 

This is the page at the front of the book that states what year the book was copyrighted and who the owner is.

Some other information you can put on this page:

• • Contact information for permissions.  This tells people how to contact you if they want permission to use your work.
  • Disclaimers. This is more for trademark or right of publicity issues, but a disclaimer can be helpful to show that you’re not trying to claim ownership of a trademark or model a character after a real person.

For example, most movies have a line in the credits that says something along the lines of “This is a work of fiction.

Any resemblance to real people, living or deceased, is coincidental.”

• • Permissions or limitations. You could give limited permissions on this page, e.g., saying it’s okay to quote from the book as long as the quote is three sentences or less.

You can also put limitations on this page; a popular one these days is “You may not use this work to train AI software and/or large language models.”

4. Keep copies of notes and drafts.

There are two reasons for this.

First, it can show the work is original to you and not AI-generated.

Second, it can establish that the work existed in a certain format at a certain time.

If there is a copyright infringement lawsuit or if the Copyright Office claims the work is AI-generated, having these drafts and notes will prove helpful.

Final Thoughts

Those are the key steps to take before you publish to protect your work.

In Part 2 next month, we’ll cover what to do after your book is published to maintain and enforce your rights.

If you’d like to take a closer look at your manuscript or make sure everything is properly in place, feel free to reach out at kaway@kawaylaw.com or visit https://kawaylaw.com.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kelley Way was born and raised in Walnut Creek, California. She graduated from UC Davis with a B.A. in English, followed by a Juris Doctorate. Kelley is a member of the California Bar, and an aspiring writer of young adult fantasy novels. More information at kawaylaw.com.

The post Self-Publishing Copyright Checklist: What to Do Before You Publish by Kelley Way appeared first on Writer's Fun Zone.

How To Find the Right Illustrator for You with Anna Leitensdorfer – How To Write the Future podcast, episode 209

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“Since it was my first book cover there, I learned a lot. There was a big process involved. Lots of figuring out, print lingo, making sure things are where they should be. So it was definitely a learning process.” – Anna Leitensdorfer 

In this How to Write the Future podcast episode, titled “How To Find the Right Illustrator for You with Anna Leitensdorfer” host Beth Barany interviews book illustrator Anna Leitensdorfer, who creates maps, character art, interior illustrations, and recently completed her first book cover.

Anna explains how authors can choose the right illustrator by narrowing in on style and, for covers, matching genre expectations through comparable titles.

She shares ways to avoid scams, including watching for unsolicited DMs, inconsistent portfolio quality, and verifying prior projects, referrals, and a clear online presence.

Anna discusses timing for commissioning maps and character art, emphasizing the importance of knowing trim size for print work and planning ahead for an artist’s lead time.

She outlines her process and booking system, including contracts, revision stages, deliverables for web and print, and provided specs and files. She also notes she specializes in fantasy and romantasy and enjoys collaborative communication.

00:00 Welcome and Introductions 

00:38 Meet Anna the Illustrator 

01:18 From Maps to Book Covers 

02:38 Choosing the Right Style 

05:52 Avoiding Artist Scams 

09:09 When to Commission Art 

13:01 Booking and Lead Times 

14:39 Anna’s Mapmaking Workflow 

18:56 Genres and Creative Freedom 

20:29 Write the Future and Farewell

Platforms the podcast is available on: Apple Podcasts | Buzzsprout | Spotify| YouTube

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About the How To Write the Future podcast

The How To Write The Future podcast is for science fiction and fantasy writers who want to write positive futures and successfully bring those stories out into the marketplace. Hosted by Beth Barany, science fiction novelist and creativity coach for writers. We cover tips for fiction writers. This podcast is for readers too if you’re at all curious about the future of humanity.

This podcast is for you if you have questions like:

– How do I create a believable world for my science fiction story?

– How do I figure out what’s not working if my story feels flat?

– How do I make my story more interesting and alive?

This podcast is for readers, too, if you’re at all curious about the future of humanity.

ABOUT ANNA LEITENSDORFER

Anna Leitensdorfer is an illustrator specializing in fantasy art dedicated to assisting authors with bringing characters from their books and scenes from their worlds to life in a visual format. With a background in animation, her art style reflects cinematic framing and dynamic posing while also channeling that inner old-timey fantasy vibe! The best part? NO AI in ANY of her work! Projects with dragons are particularly her favorite. She currently lives in Missouri with her 2 Shetland Sheepdogs and is working on writing her own novels while pursuing doing illustration full-time.

Website: https://www.annaleitensdorfer.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/valkyrie_hero/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/anna.leitensdorfer

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-leitensdorfer-288558138/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@valkyrie_hero

Transcript for Hiring an Illustrator Without Getting Scammed with Anna Leitensdorfer

Welcome and Introductions 

BETH BARANY: Hi everyone. Welcome to How to Write the Future podcast. I’m your host Beth Barany, and I am an award-winning science fiction and fantasy author, editor, and teacher. I’m also a keynote speaker and filmmaker. Yep. I have a lot of irons in the fire, and one of the things I’m very passionate about is talking to other creative people who are part of the creative process and making our books, but also do some amazing things that can help us.

So I’m very excited today to bring in Anna. Anna, why don’t you introduce yourself. Tell us what you do and Yeah, I’m excited to jump in. 

[00:38] Meet Anna the Illustrator 

ANNA LEITENSDORFER: Well, thank you so much, Beth. Hi everybody. My name is Anna. I am currently based in St. Louis, Missouri. Co, I studied animation in college and, things just, one thing after the next and, job wise, it was a very competitive job market out there.

So I decided to look into something a little different. And as it turns out, I illustrate for books now, so I do all kinds of author services for them when it comes to the art side of their books, so they don’t have to worry about it, because that’s my job. I get to make so many, so much pretty artwork and I love doing it and I can’t wait to do more. This is this is my third year doing it, so I’m super excited. 

BETH BARANY: That’s so great. 

[01:18] From Maps to Book Covers

I don’t remember how we met. It may have been in some other networking group, but I was really excited to hear about what you do both from, just from a filmmaker’s perspective too, because I’ve been working with designers over there, and as a science fiction and fantasy writer, I daydream about the maps. I daydream about my settings. So one of the things I saw on your website is that you make maps and you do character art. Do you also do covers? 

ANNA LEITENSDORFER: It’s funny you say that. I actually did my first book cover last month.

Right now it’s just the ebook. The author already has it uploaded to Amazon ’cause she was so excited. It was just a surreal feeling, seeing my cover on Amazon. But, working on the paperback version as we speak. Since it was my first book cover there, I learned a lot. There was like a big process involved. Lots of figuring out print lingo, making sure things are where they should be. So it was definitely a learning process and it’s like a, it’s like a witchy romance or witch fantasy romance, that sort of thing. So she’s just like, we gotta have the two characters on the front cover. And I was like, say no more. I got you. 

So, I’m in the middle of finishing the second half of that. 

BETH BARANY: Ah, that’s so exciting. So, you’ve written a few articles for our blog Writer’s Fun Zone, and so folks wanna read more about how you work with authors that can go there. But since I have you.

[02:38] Choosing the Right Style 

Can you tell us, and this is something I’ve thought about as well, how do you find the right illustrator for your book? And by illustrator are we talking about people who do maps or people who do inset art? like what is the kind of art that you have been providing? And then how do authors find the right illustrator for them?

How to vet them to avoid scams? 

ANNA LEITENSDORFER: So I think what it comes down to is just style. What style do you like? And of course that applies depending on which aspect. So character art, you could look at a bunch of different styles, maps, bunch of different styles, but book covers are a bit more narrow. In the sense that if you have a specific genre, you book cover needs to reflect other, you have to look at other comparative titles in that genre. So what those covers will look like. And that’s what your, your cover artist is gonna look at too because when I’m walking around a bookstore and I want to find a, romantasy cover, I’m not gonna be looking in the nonfiction section because all the nonfiction covers are gonna be, bold colors, simple text. Like they’re not gonna be, a bunch of filler gray and like skulls and roses and all that other stuff. So that’s a bit more narrow because you do have to fit the genre expectations when it comes to covers. 

Now of course you can do other things as well, but just, keep that in mind.

However, when it comes to maps and character art, you’ve got a little more freedom and it’s just what you like style wise. And what I mean by style, I mean that illustrator’s signature look. So like children’s books have a very distinct style to them.

They’re very whimsy, they’re very colorful. They’re very stylized. I attribute them a lot to fun little, like watercolor paintings. Like children’s book illustrators have a very distinct look to them.

Other styles include anime, cartoony, stylized, painterly, semi realistic, realistic. So when you look for illustrators, narrow down what style you want because you don’t want somebody commenting or placing in a bid and their style is the complete opposite of what you’re looking for.

So that’s how you can narrow down other illustrators. 

I have three, roughly three different styles that I’ve been working on over the years. A lot of my interior illustrations, full pages and my illustration boards, which you use to pitch to film studios back in the day. I love doing that size, but that’s more, painterly. So it’s very stylized, very painterly. There’s no outlines, very colorful. With my background in animation, I lean a lot towards cinematic framing, like if I were filming this on a camera for IMAX, what would this shot look like? So I am very partial to something like that.

And then also when I draw character art, that’s a little more stylized on the cartoony side, because in animation, they taught us, take a character but exaggerate, certain features and just keep, drawing it and drawing it until you get a good silhouette or proportions that you really like or just fit that character.

So there’s all kinds of tests involved. So my character art is very, noticeable by line art. I like to do dynamic poses. And I will line art the characters and either painterly the background or line and color the background as well. So mine are a bit more on the stylized side, what you would probably see them in more an animated feature.

So they’re a little bit more on that side as far as style. 

[05:52] Avoiding Artist Scams 

BETH BARANY: How do you advise authors to avoid any kind of scams with shopping for an illustrator?

ANNA LEITENSDORFER: A lot of authors will be on threads and they will put a call for artists, whether it’s, book cover, character art, maps, what have you. They’ll be like, Hey, I’m looking for a character artist.

They’re gonna get a flood of comments saying, X, Y, Z. There are legitimate ones, but there’s also a bunch of scammers in there. And a big ginormous tell is if they direct message you without your consent. If you both do not mutually agree, for example, in the comment section, then that’s a big tell.

That’s a scam. 

And then the second thing is looking at art, their art style. 

So, granted I have three art styles and I’m constantly evolving, learning them, how to get better at them. But another big tell is when an artist or a scam account has drew something really bad, two weeks ago, and then they post again and it’s so fully rendered it’s like crazy. And it’s this doesn’t add up. Something isn’t, there’s no way they got that good in two weeks. You wanna see a natural progression. You wanna see styles that are similar. ‘Cause some artists they just work in one style and that’s all they post, which is completely fine.

And then other thing is when you’re vetting artists, look for previous projects. So, for example, on my website, I am not shy. I always ask the authors, Hey, how would you like me to credit you for your IP on my website? ’cause I want people to know this is who I did the work for. Go check out their book ’cause it’s freaking amazing.

So I will name the author and their book and I’ll also name the publication date if it is applicable. Some of ’em, they get the art done way ahead of time, and they don’t have a publication date yet, and some are already published. So depending on that I also list the publication dates so it’s easy to find them because then if you want, you can message the author directly and be like, Hey, I got a question. Well, how was your experience working with this artist? So they know it’s a real person. 

So another thing is also asking other authors is a good way to vet illustrators because a lot of authors will find out if their illustrator was AI and they’ll cancel the project and be like, Hey, beware this person, they charged me X amount for AI and not, actual human hand-drawn artwork. 

So referrals are also a big thing, because you can always search up. If you’re scrolling Instagram for some reason and you follow a lot of authors and you see artwork pop up and you’re like, Ooh, I love that character art, nine times outta ten, it’ll be signed by the artist, either with their signature or their tag online, and then you can go and find them. Or the author will have them tagged in the description or in the comments so other people can look them up as they want as well which brings me to my next point is their presence. If the illustrator has a very good social media slash online presence, that will do wonders. 

My tag on Instagram is the same as threads, TikTok, and X. So it’s easy to find me everywhere and I also like websites because you can showcase your portfolio to a much wider audience. 

I like to communicate through email a lot because that way we have records for the both of us. Everything is in writing, so that way we we all make sure we are on the same page.

[09:09] When to Commission Art 

BETH BARANY: Let’s jump to timing. Let’s talk about scheduling.

Like, there I am. I’m editing my novel and is now a good time to think about maps and character art for marketing? I personally start thinking about cover design in editing process. I haven’t yet hired anyone to do maps, and I’ve only done some playful, character art, as I was starting to explore my film process for the project.

But I’ve never really tied that kind of thing to the book production process. So what do you recommend? When do authors need to start thinking about, oh, I wanna map, I’m ready to put some funds aside for that, or, oh, I want character art for my Kickstarter or for, marketing. 

ANNA LEITENSDORFER: So when it comes to maps, if you’re putting it in your book, I’ve done maps as early as the author had written the first few chapters, and they’re like, I need a map so I know where my characters are going. Like, this is insane. I need to get this mapped out so I know what their journey is. So I’ve done it as early as that, but I always ask them, what is your trim size?

Because if you plan on putting this in your book, you need to know the trim size of your novel. And that goes for any KDP. One of the standards for romantasy, for example, is six inches by nine inches. So anytime I draw the map, I do it based off of those measurements. But I always tell the author, Hey, I can sketch out everything, but I need to know, finalize what your size is before I ink, line, and color, because that is gonna be very hard to change if your trim size changes. So you gotta know your trim size. And that goes for book covers, that goes for children’s books, that goes for interior illustrations. You’ve got to know your trim size and even though you’ve just written a few chapters and you’re like, oh, I still need to finish, draft one, but you’re really set on getting the book done. You gotta know your trim size. Very, very big. 

So I can get started on that map as early as draft one or when you’ve edited everything and it’s ready to be published, you just need to put a map in the book. So maps are flexible in that regard. And then as far as character art, that can be done pretty much whenever. I think the best timing for that though, if you really wanna utilize it, is, pre-release of a book. You can use it as a teaser. You can use it as a newsletter, sign up, grab like, Hey, if you wanna see this, if you wanna see character from my upcoming book, you gotta come on, gotta join my newsletter. 

So it’s a way authors can, I wouldn’t say suck you in, but draw you into the book so you’re ready for it when it’s published. And I’ve seen, you can go as early as, three or four months before your book releases. But depending on what artists you choose, you gotta look ahead and see A, their prices and if it’s within your budget, and B, if they have openings for that time and see how long it will take them to do. So for me, character art takes about two to three weeks, for a fully illustrated thing with all the fixings. So I can get that done relatively quickly, where some artists, depending on their style, it might take them two months.

So just, touching base with the artists, asking them, Hey, how long is it gonna take you to do this? So you have it in time for your release. Now, you can also get character done after the book has been published as a fun incentive to be like, Hey, if you want a special edition of this book, it comes with character art as well.

So it’s a great marketing tool. And it’s fantastic to use to draw, ’cause I’m an artist, I see pretty art for a book, I’m gonna go run to find out where the pretty art came from. And if it has a book attached, I’m probably gonna buy the book because it looks fantastic. 

Character art is just great before the book is out in my opinion because then you can really get that audience, tease them. Then once the book releases, they’re gonna be chomping at the bit to find out what more to the story. 

BETH BARANY: Yeah. Great. Yeah. Great promo idea. 

[13:01] Booking and Lead Times 

And lastly, let’s talk about how people work with you, because you were saying, every artist that you wanna hire is gonna have a lead time.

You need time to make the art of course. There’s also, we gotta build in time, to hire someone. And I’m a producer, so I’m thinking about all of these, like there’s the end product and say the publishing date is here, how early do they need to come in and talk to you? and then how do you work with the authors?

What’s the process that you take the authors through? 

ANNA LEITENSDORFER: So I’m gonna start with, looking ahead, So for me, every artist is a little different. I do everything in six month chunks. So at the beginning of January I opened up slots from January till June. And, just letting people know you can book me out as far as June right now.

Now, next month in May, I will open up slots for the rest of the year. So July to December. I’ve already got people asking me and I was like, I’ll open those up in May and then you can pick your slots. But that’s just how I work. Some artists they do it on a month by month basis or they book out as far as a year in advance.

So it really depends. I have a booking schedule on my website. So I have it all on there, like, Hey, here are the slots that are currently open for these months. So even if you’re not ready or you need to save up, you can look further along in the year to see if I have an opening, because you can have the contract signed and ready to go as early as May for work in October, but that just means you’ve solidified your spot. Nobody else has taken that spot so that way you have time to save up the money. And I also offer half and half if that works better within your budget.

So just communicating with the artist, see what their booking schedule is like. 

[14:39] Anna’s Mapmaking Workflow

As far as me, I’m gonna do a map example. I love my map example. So when you commission me for a map, we talk all the dirty details. We make sure, do you want continent, regional? Do you want any of these add-ons? ’cause I do offer illustrated borders, icons, accent color, texture, background, and full color. So those are all different add-ons. You can pick and choose which ones you would like, or if you just want the base, that’s totally fine too. So we hammer out all this details in email.

And once those are all finalized, I send out a contract and licensing agreement for the author to sign. I always tell them, please read it over carefully because some, sometimes I will accidentally misspell something or I will have the wrong number. I always tell them, please read it over carefully before signing. That goes for any artist, not just me. And that goes for any artist you do a contract with. So that being said, once all that is done, say it’s for the month of May 1st, I get started. If it’s for a map, I will do three silhouettes. So I’ll sketch out three different silhouettes for a continent, for example. I’ll place all these cities and towns that they described ’cause the author will send me either a sketch version of their map and or a Word document with a bunch of descriptions, and I interpret from there. And then I send the sketches to the author in a flat book with my branding via email and they will, they can either pick one and you’re good to go, or they get a revision stage as well. So if they wanna pick one and make changes or if they wanna see three entirely new silhouettes, perfectly within, it’s built into the price. So revision stage. And then after that revision one is approved, I move onto line art.

So I ink everything I write everything down, put in the name city towns names, put it together. Put in a flat book, send it to the author, after that is revision two. So at that point, checking for spelling, checking for, readability, all that other fun stuff to make sure your map is coming away exactly how you want it. So you get a revision stage after that. And then once that is all approved, then we go on to the finals. 

So if your map has any color that will be put in there, any final renderings. And then once that is finished, it gets put into a flat book sent to the author for a final round of revisions if needed.

So there’s three revisions built into my mapmaking process, and then they can either revise or they’re like, Hey, looks good. Good to go. I package it up into a final package. I have an RGV folder for web digital, and I have a C-M-Y-K folder for print. Everything is, everything is prepped and ready to go depending on where you wanna put it.

I also put in a Word document, which has all your specs. So if you ever have like a book designer who’s like, what size is this map? I put it all in the spec sheet so you don’t have to go digging for it. And then I also include a bleed example. So if your book is in print, I give you a bleed example with the gutter and the bleed on the outside.

So when you’re sizing your book, yourself, for example, and a formatting software, you can see how to size the map properly,on the pages. So the bleed area is just what gets cut off. It’s just me showing the author, Hey. Here’s a visual, here’s where the gutter is. That’s why nothing important is in the middle of your map because it’s all going into the center of the gutter. That’s why you don’t wanna put anything important around there ’cause it all folds in. So I gave a bunch of examples that way. And then I also include the Photoshop files that I worked in, because I’m not scared about sharing my process. 

The reasoning behind that is in the event your book designer needs to fix something small or they just make a, a couple minor adjustments to suit the size of the book or whatever ’cause that stuff happens. They’re like, yeah, by all means you do you, all I ask is that is the only thing those Photoshop files are used for.

They’re just to make sure you get your tiny little adjustments. They’re not to be used for anything else. So they’re just me just being transparent and letting here’s your files. Have at it. 

BETH BARANY: That’s really great. And just for those of us who don’t know, what is flat book? Is, that’s a piece of software?

ANNA LEITENSDORFER: It’s a PDF, with my branding on it, and it’ll have my name, the author’s name, the project type for example, your fantasy map and on the back it’ll list, if it, what stage it was or what revision it was. You can look back and see like the progress made or if it’s like your, for your records kind of thing.

So it’s just a way for artists to showcase their work in a professional manner. 

BETH BARANY: Well, I think you’ve given us a really thorough discussion and overview of what it’s like to work with illustrators, what it’s like to work with you.

[18:56] Genres and Creative Freedom 

Is there anything else that you wanna offer up to authors? What’s your favorite kind of genres do you work with? Is it science only? Science fiction and fantasy, romantasy, that kind of thing. And what do you, who do you like to work with? 

ANNA LEITENSDORFER: Going back to our style conversation earlier is when looking for artists, look at what genres they specialize in.

So I specialize in fantasy and romantasy. I love drawing creatures as well. So like unicorns, dragons, love that stuff. I also have done some sci-fi, some dystopian maps. 

I’m open to other ones. 

BETH BARANY: Mm-hmm. 

ANNA LEITENSDORFER: If you like the style, so it just comes down to the style. Authors I love working with are ones who are just like, here’s a general overview or here’s the scene that I want drawn, but do whatever you want, man. So they can give me the scene, but I could draw it differently than how it’s depicted. I think like a camera movement. If you’re looking at something dead on with a camera, well, I might be thinking of the scene as an overhead shot. So a little different than what the author had in mind.

So I like doing a lot of that. An author I’m working with right now. I was like, Hey, How would you like me to draw this dog for your interior? And she’s just like, well, here’s some descriptions of him, but honestly, do whatever you want. And I was like, okay, I love that. I just like little bit of freedom is nice, but I also wanna make sure that it’s exactly what the author had in mind and communication is real big.

So when me and the author are just messaging back and forth, just nerding out over sketches, it’s so much fun. I enjoy it so much. 

BETH BARANY: That’s so great. Oh, I love it. 

[20:29] Write the Future and Farewell 

As we wrap up this interview today, I wanted to ask you a question that I like to ask all my guests, which is, when you hear how to write the future, what does that bring up for you?

ANNA LEITENSDORFER: To me, it brings up, changing the norms, taking genres and changing them up a little. Because from personal experience, some of my favorite genres, romantasy for example, but I wanna see something a little more. Something a little different, but still in the same genre. So I think how to the future is thinking of unique ways to I wouldn’t say reinvent the genre, but make it your own. Just make it something that that you really love. 

BETH BARANY: Yeah. I love it. Oh, I love it so much.

And just to remind everyone where they can find you on the socials, on your website, what’s your tag? What’s your website? 

ANNA LEITENSDORFER: So my website is www.AnnaLeitensdorfer.com. And on my socials, I am on Instagram, TikTok and Threads mainly. I do have an X, but I mainly post to the other three. My tag is AT (@) all lowercase valkyrie_hero.

BETH BARANY: Fabulous. I love it. I love it. I love it. Well, thank you Anna. And everyone, be sure to check out Anna’s work on the socials on your website. Also, Anna writes for our blog where she goes into great depth on how to work with Illustrator, and other awesome tips for authors and working with illustrators.

So thanks again, Anna, for coming on to How To Write the Future. I so, so appreciate it. Everyone. That’s it for this week. 

ANNA LEITENSDORFER: Thank you so much for having me. 

BETH BARANY: Write long and prosper. Alright, that’s a wrap.​ 

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ABOUT BETH BARANY

Beth Barany is an award-winning fantasy and science fiction novelist and creativity coach for writers. They help novelists write, revise, and publish stories that matter—blending practical craft guidance with a big-picture commitment to imagination, meaning, and possibility. 

Learn more about Beth Barany at these sites: 

Author site /  Coaching site / School of Fiction / Writer’s Fun Zone blog

CONNECT 

Contact Beth: https://writersfunzone.com/blog/podcast/#tve-jump-185b4422580

Email: beth@bethbarany.com

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CREDITS 

• EDITED WITH DESCRIPT: https://www.descript.com?lmref=_w1WCA (Refer-a-Friend link)
• MUSIC CREDITS : Music from Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/soundroll/fuzz-buzz License code: UMMKDRL02DFGKJ0L. “Fuzz buzz” by Soundroll. Commercial license: https://musicvine.com/track/soundroll/fuzz-buzz.
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• SHOW PRODUCTION BY Beth Barany
• SHOW CO-PRODUCTION + NOTES by Kerry-Ann McDade

c 2025 BETH BARANY

https://bethbarany.com/

For more “How To Write the Future” episodes, go here.

If you’d like to invite Beth onto your podcast, drop her a note here.

The post How To Find the Right Illustrator for You with Anna Leitensdorfer appeared first on Writer's Fun Zone.

***

“Community helps me be a better artist. It’s imperative to be able to ping pong ideas off other creatives & makers. There’s also a social energy that comes about when artists get together in a room together. Ideas begin to flourish and it’s a remarkable thing.” — Jeff Golenski, A photographer for JetPack.

Artists Need Other Artists

I searched through my library to find examples of creative communities and after collecting a dangerously high stack of books, realized there are few artists who did not belong to an artistic community.

From the pre-Raphaelites to the Impressionists to the Surrealists to the women of New York City’s 9th Street to the Beats to you, artists need each other.

We need to discuss our art with people who understand the language.

We need inspiration and helpful criticism.

We long for support and feedback. 

We need to know we are not crazy.

We need our friends.

Lady Gregory and the Irish Renaissance

Lady Gregory (1852 – 1932), married an English Lord but was a life-long resident of Ireland.

She not only was devoted to preserving the indigenous Celtic language but she also headed and supported the Irish Renaissance and was the founder and sustaining member of the Abby Theater specializing in Irish plays.

She supported WB Yeats, and helped him master the local dialects in his plays.

She defended JM Synge’s inflammatory The Playboy of the Western World (1907).

Lady Gregory researched, wrote, and produced her own plays, which were more popular than either Synge or Yeats (together).

More importantly, she nurtured and encouraged Irish artists in their efforts to return Irish history and traditions back to their own people.

Mabel Dodge Luhan’s Artistic Haven

Mabel Dodge Luhan (1879 – 1962) was born to be a salon hostess.

Her well-to-do family encouraged her to follow her bliss. 

She first concentrated on collecting art then advanced to collecting the artists themselves.

She retreated from the industrial north to New Mexico renovating and building out the Mabel Dodge Luhan House attracting both writers and visual artists like DH Lawrence, Willa Cather, Jean Toomer, Georgia O’Keefe, and Ansel Adams.

Luhan offered accommodations, and respite, but her job was Artist Muse.

She encouraged and at times, bullied her artist friends to create and be their best selves.

And they did.

The Bloomsbury Group

Finally released from catering to her overbearing father, painter Vanessa Stephen (1879 – 1961) started up evening salons in her home.

She essentially created what was even then called the Bloomsbury Group.

From her husband Clive to her sister Virginia Woolf, this group of friends gathered every week to talk, paint, organize shows, and inspire each other to do their best work.

Clive Bell, Vanessa’s husband was a formidable art critic and Roger Fry, Vanessa’s lover, was the first gallery owner to show the work of the Post Impressionists inspiring the art changing exhibit in New York City, The Armory Show (1913).

These infamous community members argued, fought, featured each other in novels and paintings, slept with each other’s partners and ultimately served as the Muse to improve their art and increase the opportunities to share their art with the world.

Many were wealthy enough to not care if the art sold or not, a very nice place to be.

Why Community Matters

Can you go it alone?

In the beginning when you are just getting your work together and figuring out your vision, yes.

But eventually, or even tomorrow, you’ll want and need a group, your people, your tribe.

Tribes are important.

Ezra Pound started, essentially, a Go Fund Me campaign to raise enough money so his friend TS Eliot could quit his bank job and write poetry full time (Eliot declined the help).

Lady Gregory’s lover, John Quinn, defended Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap during their 1921 obscenity trial in NYC.

The work?

Ulysses, which Sylvia Beach took on and published in Paris in 1922.

Creative Communities Through History

Artists are famous or infamous for shocking their staid community.

Lady Gregory shocked audiences by accident but some of her playwrights did it on purpose and she stayed with them.

Members of the Bloomsbury group shocked on purpose, as did the Beat Poets.

In post-war Paris, women like Gertrude Stein and Sylvia Beach fled US Prohibition and cramped ideas about gender to find their own loves and lives in the City of Light.

When artists move into an affordable town or urban neighborhood, they immediately upgrade and improve the space.

The city of Detroit even offered artists the chance to live in abandoned houses rent free.

The artist need only agree to contribute art to the community.

To date, several homes have been restored, and the program, though small, is lauded for its creative approach to neighborhood revitalization.

Research on Creativity and Collaboration

In their article Collaboration and Creativity: The Small World Problem, authors Brian Uzzi and Jarrett Spiro commented, “ Many of history’s great creators — such as Beethoven, Marie Curie, the Beatles, and Maya Angelou — were involved in creative networks in which members critiqued, encouraged and collaborated on each other’s projects.”

Building Community Around a Project

A big project will often create its own community.

A friend is writing a play on a forgotten philosopher, she is also writing the annotations and history of the play.

She is contacting theaters and spaces to bring the play to life.

She meets with conference organizers and scholars.

She even met the philosopher’s granddaughter. 

The entire project has gathered a creative community around her.

She is self-publishing her play/annotated book because she may not have much time to waste with traditional outlets.

She is 87.

Start Small: One Friend Is Enough

Community can be as simple as one friend.

When Natalie Goldberg was writing her first book (Banana Rose concurrently with Writing Down the Bones) she scheduled meeting a friend at a local cafe at 3:00 PM.

Whether the friend actually showed up wasn’t the point.

At 3:00 PM, Natalie showed up and wrote for an hour.

It was her way of creating accountability, and getting out of the house. Invite one friend.

Encourage her to invite another friend — he invites a third.

Online Communities Count Too

Or meet online.

Many newsletters and missives I receive, invite readers to join the online writing group.

Members Zoom in, check in, then write together.

Artists must meet, they must exchange ideas.

Artists worked together out in the fields (haystacks, lakes, train stations).

For female artists, working with another artist was necessary, as working in public was risky.

If you are a musician and you play in a band or symphony you are lucky, there is no other choice but to literally play nicely with others.

Create the Community You Need

Creating your own artist community is worth the effort.

The group will support you and your art will thrive. 

More importantly, you will too.

Learn More

Look for my new book — Take Up Space — Art is Your Second Act.

***

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***

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Catharine Bramkamp is a successful writing coach, Chief Storytelling Officer, former co-producer of Newbie Writers Podcast, and author of a dozen books including the Real Estate Diva Mysteries series, and The Future Girls series. She holds two degrees in English and is an adjunct university professor. After fracturing her wrist, she has figured out there is very little she is able to do with one hand tied behind her back. She delights in inspiring her readers.

The post Create Your Own Art Community by Catharine Bramkamp appeared first on Writer's Fun Zone.

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Discipline

I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with this word: “Discipline.”

I love it because it keeps you organized. 

It speaks to consistency.

It’s tied to results.

You see the fruits of your labor sooner when you’re “disciplined.”

But the hate part comes from how it’s used.

Because when people struggle with discipline, myself included, it’s often labeled as laziness.

And I’ve made that comparison, too.

When someone says they don’t have time to write or work on a creative project, the immediate thought is:

Well, maybe they don’t actually want it.

Maybe they’re just not disciplined enough.

And we hear the stories all the time — writers waking up at 4 or 5 a.m. to write before the day begins.

So, we know it can be done.

I wonder, could I be one of those people, writing as the morning glow breaks through the horizon?

Absolutely not.

And that used to feel like a failure.

The Myth of Discipline

But here’s what I’ve come to realize:

When you are a creative founder or entrepreneur, discipline is rarely the problem.

You are already doing a lot.

You are running a business.

You are managing clients.

You are showing up, delivering, and figuring things out as you go.

That is discipline.

So when the writing doesn’t happen, or the creative work gets pushed aside, it’s not because you lack discipline.

It’s because of something else.

It’s because of the noise.

The invisible noise.

The Invisible Noise

Think about everything a small business owner is holding at once:

• onboarding new clients
• sending emails
• creating content
• posting consistently
• scheduling
• managing inboxes
• organizing files and archives
• handling admin tasks
• sending invoices
• not to mention, planning and visioning new business projects

Just writing that list makes my heartbeat pick up a little.

That’s not laziness.

That’s load.

And all of it takes up mental bandwidth.

No wonder the creative work, the thing that made you start in the first place, starts to disappear into the background.

It becomes something you’ll get to later.

And later rarely comes.

These tasks are repetitive. 

Ongoing.

Never fully finished.

It starts to feel like Groundhog Day.

And slowly, the invisible noise builds.

Until one day, the thing you loved — the reason you started your creative business — feels heavy.

Or distant.

Or even… you feel resentful.

And then comes the word we all know too well:

Burnout

Creativity Needs Containment

Here’s the shift that changed everything for me:

Creative people don’t need more pressure.

They don’t need perfect routines.

And they definitely don’t need rigid systems that suffocate them.

They need a container.

They need a structure that feels safe.

A structure that holds things in place so their mind doesn’t have to.

Once you put that structure in place, you get:

• clear workflows
• fewer decisions
• defined processes
• protected time

Because when those things are in place, something important happens:

The noise quiets down.

And when the noise quiets down, creativity has somewhere to land.

Structure Is Not the Enemy

I know a lot of creatives resist systems.

Especially now that AI is entering the picture, there’s even more hesitation.

There’s a fear that structure, or systems, or tools will somehow take away from the work.

That they will make things too easy.

Or worse — less meaningful.

And to some extent, that concern is valid.

If you use AI to replace the creative process, then yes — you lose something.

You lose the friction.

The problem-solving.

The tension that often leads to something beautiful.

But that’s not how systems are meant to be used.

Systems are not here to create for you.

They are here to support you.

When used correctly, systems don’t kill creativity.

They protect it.

They take care of everything around the work — so you can return to the work itself.

What Protection Looks Like

Protecting your creative space doesn’t require perfection.

It requires intention.

It can look like:

• Creating simple, repeatable workflows
• Delineating clear client onboarding
• Setting up tools to capture meeting notes and summaries
• Initiating boundaries around your time
• Delegating what drains you
• Using tools to hold information so your mind doesn’t have to

Even something as simple as having everything in one place: your client details, notes, tasks, and all the moving pieces you’re trying to hold in your head, can create a sense of relief.

Because you are no longer carrying everything at once.

You are supported.

A Different Way to Think About Discipline

So maybe discipline isn’t where we start.

Maybe structure is.

Structure creates clarity.

Clarity reduces noise.

And reduced noise creates space.

And in that space — creativity can return.

Final Thought

Most creatives do not need more discipline.

They need more protection.

If this article resonated with you, I created a short Creative Capacity Check-In Assessment to help you identify where your business might be quietly draining your creative energy — and where structure could support you instead.

***

About The Author

Iman Llompart is a Creative Systems & Delegation Strategist who helps writers, book coaches, and creative founders protect their creative capacity by building the structure around their work — through workflows, client systems, and operational clarity.

Take her Creative Capacity Check-In Assessment to identify where your business may be quietly draining your creative energy.

Instagram @imanllompart • Instagram photos and videos

The post Protecting the Creative Life: The Fragility of the Creative Space by Iman Llompart appeared first on Writer's Fun Zone.

Turn Your Wish Into Story Fuel with Brownell Landrum 

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“I researched over 70 different scientists. And so it was really, really fun to go into that exploration of what are the sciences of wishing.” – Brownell Landrum

Do you know what sciences we use in making a wish? When blowing out the candles become more than a birthday moment?
In this captivating How To Write the Future podcast episode, titled “Turn Your Wish Into Story Fuel with Brownell Landrum” host Beth Barany interviews storyteller and inventor Brownell Landrum where together they discuss Brownell’s novel where she shares the science exploration behind making a wish and how she researched over 70 scientists calling it a “cosmic whack-a-mole.”

Platforms the podcast is available on: Apple Podcasts | Buzzsprout | Spotify| YouTube

RESOURCES

JOIN: For fiction writers! You’ve finished your first draft! Congrats! Now what?

Join the Future-Ready Writer membership and get premium weekly lessons and a monthly Q&A on Zoom. Subscribe: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2012061/subscribe

FREE: Sign up here to get your World Building Workbook for Fiction Writers

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SHOP**: Sci‑Fi & Fantasy 24 Writing Prompts:** https://ko-fi.com/s/4ac9160a74

Want to be interviewed on the podcast? => Email us!

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Sign up to be notified when our training opens and get a short Creative Business Style Quiz to help you create success.

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GET SUPPORT FOR YOUR FICTION WRITING BY A NOVELIST AND WRITING TEACHER AND COACH

Schedule an exploratory call here and see if Beth can support you today: https://writersfunzone.com/blog/discovery-call/

About the How To Write the Future podcast 

The How To Write The Future podcast is for science fiction and fantasy writers who want to write positive futures and successfully bring those stories out into the marketplace. Hosted by Beth Barany, science fiction novelist and creativity coach for writers. We cover tips for fiction writers. This podcast is for readers too if you’re at all curious about the future of humanity.

This podcast is for you if you have questions like:

– How do I create a believable world for my science fiction story?

– How do I figure out what’s not working if my story feels flat?

– How do I make my story more interesting and alive?

This podcast is for readers, too, if you’re at all curious about the future of humanity.

ABOUT BROWNELL LANDRUM

Brownell Landrum is a storyteller, speaker, inventor, and change catalyst. She’s the author of over a dozen books, including The Art & Science of Wishing and the upcoming The Art & Science of Wishing at Work. She got curious about the sciences involved in wishing while writing a novel entitled A Love Story to The Universe. Brownell combines her corporate and entrepreneurial background and logical, business-oriented skills with a compelling storytelling style. The motto for her stories is “Lose yourself in the fiction… Find yourself in the truth.”

Site: https://brownelllandrum.com/

Here’s the link to Chapter 1 of the Art & Science of Wishing

https://dl.bookfunnel.com/qfhl9a3m8v

Link to Part 1 of A Love Story to the Universe

https://dl.bookfunnel.com/a4s6x8lwk5

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brownell.landrum.author

X: https://x.com/BrownellLandrum

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brownelllandrum/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@brownell.landrum

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@brownell.landrum

Transcript for Turn Your Wish Into Story Fuel with Brownell Landrum 

Welcome and Premise 

BETH BARANY: Welcome to How to Write the Future Podcast. I’m your host, Beth Barany. I am an award-winning science fiction and fantasy novelist and a book coach for science fiction and fantasy writers. I run this podcast because I love talking to people about wonderful new ideas, and my whole premise here is about how can we bring our new visions of how we could be in the world and with each other into our story. So I have a special guest with us today. I’m very excited to introduce you to her, and we’re gonna have a conversation that I’m sure is gonna be wide ranging and full of interesting, fun things. I would like to introduce you to Brownell Landrum. Brownell, please introduce yourself and, and welcome to How to Write the Future.

[00:43] Meet Brownell Landrum 

BROWNELL LANDRUM: I’m excited to be here. I, I, I love your show and I love this whole realm. So I, obviously, I’m a writer. I write fiction and nonfiction and, and so the latest thing is I like the idea of how can fiction, which I think is part of what your message really is, is you’re writing the future. Can you write something that’s fiction that actually manifests in the future, in reality, right? And helps us envision another future. And so, and that. Kind of what I did. So I’ve written, I get into, my novels are kind of in the realm of, kind of in a metaphysical kind of realm. So like, I came up with the trilogy, a little over a year, a year and a half ago.

That’s this epic reincarnation, mystery and love story about a famous couple from history who’s brought back today to fulfill a prophecy, you know, that kind of big, epic adventure. And then I have a, another book that I came out with after that that’s semi autobiographical that I’m sure you’re gonna ask me about.

And then I have a nonfiction book that’s new, so I cover a lot of ground.

BETH BARANY: That’s so wonderful. 

[01:38] From Novel to Wishing Science 

And let’s talk about a semi autobiographical novel called how The Art and Science of Wishing, is that the right title? 

BROWNELL LANDRUM: Actually the novel’s called A Love Story to the Universe, and then that spun off on a nonfiction book that’s called The Art and Science of Wishing. So that’s, that’s kind of how it all worked, is like, and, and you’ve probably been there. That, you know, I was writing this book and I was writing it kind of in this fantasy world of what I call upstairs, you know, and these guides that are up in this other realm and they’re looking at these humans going what are y’all doing?

And how do we get, how do we corral these humans that are doing these crazy things? And so I was writing this book, and, and that’s a whole nother thing that I can get into as far as if you wanna know more about how that story. And then, but I, it’s written in sort of four parts. And the fourth part got into, the, I was creating this realm of wishes and wishing, and I had these wish fairies that were, you know, seeking out wishes and how do you sort wishes.

And they had this huge realm, I called it Astraya. And like, and they, so they go find wishes and then figure out who deser, you know, where they go and, you know, the whole world of wishes and wishing. And then, and one thing that’s so interesting about science fiction, right? Is like, there’s science and then there’s fiction.

Well, I kind of, I kind of bridged that gap, in a, in a unique way, I think is, so I was doing world building, right? And, you know, I’ve seen your show, when you’re talking about the world building and how you have to make some decisions about what’s your world. And I’m having to decide what’s the difference between a wish, a prayer and a goal, you know?

And so I’m, I’m getting my brain on this topic, and then while I’m writing this, I am, sometimes I’m kind of weird and I listen to science lectures to help me fall asleep. So when I can’t fall asleep, I listen to science lectures. 

[03:18] Researching Wishing Sciences 

And, one night I was listening to a lecture on neuroplasticity, and it made me wonder, I was like, wait a minute.

Is there science in wishing? And that led me into this huge, like, I call it a game of cosmic whack-a-mole ’cause these sciences just kept popping up everywhere. and that led me to write The Art and Science of Wishing, which is, nonfiction. And I researched over 70 different scientists. And so it was really, really fun to go into that exploration of what are the sciences and wishing.

And, did you know that every time you make a wish you engage over a dozen different sciences?

BETH BARANY: I did not know that. So are, is it because we’re using all different parts of our brain and biology and physics and chemistry?

BROWNELL LANDRUM: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. There’s so many different anthropology, right? With, with rituals, because usually ritual wishing comes around a ritual, whether it’s blowing out candles on a birthday cake or, you know, seeing a time on the clock or something like that. So it just got really, really fun looking at the different sciences, and that’s what led me to, to write the. It’s kind of like, you know, the, the, if you look at some of the episodes like of the Simpsons and then they predicted things that happened in the future, you’re like, this, this, this idea of wishes. And then I was like, wait a minute. How do we, how do I learn from that? How do I apply the science to that? And then how do I bring that into the world to create a better future? Right? So that ties into your whole theme is like, because the theme of my novels is Lose yourself in the fiction. Find yourself in the truth.

BETH BARANY: That’s beautiful.

[04:48] Testing Wishes in Real Life 

As you were working on your nonfiction book, did you notice this operating in your own life? Or did you make some experiments on yourself around wishing and then go, oh, look, look what I manifested, or any kind of things like that?

BROWNELL LANDRUM: Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, because the way I look at, it’s like I’m very clear, I’m a storyteller, not a scientist, right? And so, and when I meet people that are scientists or people who are listening, that might be scientists, I’m like, I respect you. If you got questions or concerns or improvements or any, you know, corrections or anything like that, I’m, I’m all ears.

And and so I feel like, like I, maybe I’m more like one or two steps ahead of most people because I’ve done the research, but I’m still kind of learning as I’m going through this. And when I was first writing it, like I said, the the fiction book, the A Love Story to the Universe, I was making wishes myself and I was like, wait a minute, this is an unusual way to make a wish.

Is that, what’s the impact? And it led to this kind of question of what would happen if people stopped wishing. You know? And, and that’s that kind of the fantasy world, right? Is that there’s a crisis on earth where the main character stops wishing as she, she flips the script on wishing, and then all of a sudden there’s chaos upstairs because what would happen, and it’s happened before in history. And so they have kind of these experiences where, you know, there could be a whole system shut down.

And and so that’s kind of the. Jumping off point is what would happen if we, if we lost it? And then, and so that was part of the exploration. And then the next part of the exploration is what would happen if we started wishing together.

BETH BARANY: Which we kind of do in our collective rituals that we do, through religion, through sports, through song, through performances. You could even call all of those collective tools. 

BROWNELL LANDRUM: I talk about the four responses to a wish. And they’re “yes,” “no,” “wait,” or “something better.” And so when you ask like, am I experiencing this? Yes, there are things that I’m experiencing it and learning my own process of the sciences, to apply the sciences to the wish and watching my own world expand.

And one area I think you probably really like is, I, in fact, I’m getting ready to do a Ted Talk. And I’m super excited. 

[07:03] Writing Rituals and Brain Modes 

I’m gonna be talking about this and I’m gonna be talking about something called the Default Mode Network. And as a creative person, you know what that is, right? You know, when we get into this mindset and we’re trying to come up with something, it’s hard but when then we go wash the dishes or take a shower like Aaron Sorkin, you probably know that his thing is when he can’t, when he is in writing mode, he’ll take seven showers a day sometimes just to get into the default mode network. So it’s just fun stuff, you know, the science is fun.

BETH BARANY: I like washing the dishes and I also like walking. Walking is key to my writing ritual and then sometimes it’s self-talk. So walking and talking before I sit down to write.

BROWNELL LANDRUM: Right. And then sometimes if you’re writing and you get stuck, right, sometimes those little breaks, and what’s happening in the brain, it’s turning off one part of your brain and turning on another part and that’s what the default mode network is. So you think, oh, I’m zoning out. And especially if you start out with a wish.

So I think here’s a ritual for your writers is start out with the wish. What do you wish for this book? What do you wish for this story? What do you wish for your audience? What do you wish for your characters? And write from there. And then all of a sudden you’re gonna see it’s gonna turn on something called the reticular activating system, which is going to be looking for those stories.

And then the default mode network happens in a different level of the brain that says, okay, well, I’m not thinking about it is when the ideas come and then you have to capture ’em when they do, right?

Because sometimes they go and come and go and then we’re like those middle of the night ideas. We need to, you know, write down or voice record is what I use.

BETH BARANY: Yeah, I was gonna say voice recording is great. Writing them down. I have a lot of pencils and notepads by my bedside ’cause pens don’t always work. And a pencil will work even if you’re like lying on your back trying to write upside down. Yeah. And getting into the habit of capturing your ideas as they come.

That’s great. I love those questions. They are core to anytime I’m stuck in the editing process, I go right back to those questions in terms of: What is this story really about? What does my character want? What do I want as an author? And what do I want my my readers to experience? And what are they reaching for? So those are such great, great core questions. 

[09:10] Prolific Output and Writer Tips 

So understand, you’ve got the novel that led into the nonfiction book, and then you said there’s another, is it a fiction that you have after that?

BROWNELL LANDRUM: Before that, that’s the big epic reincarnation, mystery, and love story. It was a trilogy. I’ve written over a dozen books, so it’s like, well, which one? ‘Cause I do have a, a Tetralogy, which is four books of a more like a love story, but it’s, it’s a metaphysical, you know, going into past lives, and then the fantasy of this, of that.

And then the most recent one it’s called We Meet Again and it’s a trilogy. And then who knows what’s next. 

I’ve written a bunch of screenplays. The couple of screenplays that I’m, I’m halfway in the process of writing. One’s a, a young adult, kind of adventure kind of thing and it gets, you know, it all gets into the mystical and metaphysical and things like that. So it’s, it’s fun.

BETH BARANY: I love how creative you are too in working on scripts.

[09:57] Whats Next and Free Resources 

So when you are, uh. and about in the world. Do you offer any goodies or freebies or anything that people can go, Ooh, I want that. So people, can sign up for, do you have a newsletter people can sign up for?

BROWNELL LANDRUM: Yeah, I’ve got, you can read the, the, the A Love Story to the Universe is written in four parts. So the first part, I can give to your listeners, for free, and if you wanna read the first chapter of The Art and Science of Wishing, I can also offer that. So.

BETH BARANY: Oh wonderful. Yeah, be sure to give me the link for that. So we’ll be putting that everyone in the show notes and people can find you @brownelllandrum.com. Right?

BROWNELL LANDRUM: That’s right. I’m the only Brownell Landrum, so I’m on all the social media and I’m gonna be building my YouTube channel. Look for that because we’re gonna be having some fun things with what I call cosmic wishes. And, it’s gonna be really, really cool. So, please, please stay tuned back.

[00:10:46] Writing the Future Closing

BETH BARANY: I love that. Well, as we finish up, I love to ask my guests this question outta the blue, but not so much, which is when you think of how to write the future, what does that make you think of?

BROWNELL LANDRUM: It makes me feel like there’s a responsibility to deliver something that has enough meaning and purpose. Like I talk about cosmic wishing needs to be peaceful, positive, and purposeful. And if it’s purposeful, then you can actually guide people toward a better future and more positive future.

BETH BARANY: I love that. I love that. Well, thank you so much Brownell, for coming on today at How to Write the Future Podcast. And I just wanna say to everyone here, write long and prosper. Bye. 

Loved this episode? Leave us a review and rating here: 

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2012061 

Need instructions on how to leave a review? Go here.

***

Support our work for creatives: leave a tip: https://ko-fi.com/bethbarany 

***

ABOUT BETH BARANY 

Beth Barany is an award-winning fantasy and science fiction novelist and creativity coach for writers. They help novelists write, revise, and publish stories that matter—blending practical craft guidance with a big-picture commitment to imagination, meaning, and possibility. 

Learn more about Beth Barany at these sites: 

Author site /  Coaching site / School of Fiction / Writer’s Fun Zone blog

CONNECT 

Contact Beth: https://writersfunzone.com/blog/podcast/#tve-jump-185b4422580

Email: beth@bethbarany.com

LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/bethbarany/

IG: https://www.instagram.com/bethbarany/

TT: https://www.tiktok.com/@bethbarany/

FB: https://www.facebook.com/bethbarany

X: https://twitter.com/BethBarany

CREDITS 

• EDITED WITH DESCRIPT:  https://www.descript.com?lmref=_w1WCA (Refer-a-Friend link)(Refer-a-Friend link)
• MUSIC CREDITS : Music from Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/soundroll/fuzz-buzz License code: UMMKDRL02DFGKJ0L. “Fuzz buzz” by Soundroll. Commercial license: https://musicvine.com/track/soundroll/fuzz-buzz.
• DISTRIBUTED BY BUZZSPROUT: https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1994465 (Refer-a-Friend link)
• SHOW PRODUCTION BY Beth Barany
• SHOW CO-PRODUCTION + NOTES by Kerry-Ann McDade

c 2025 BETH BARANY

https://bethbarany.com/

For more “How To Write the Future” episodes, go here.

If you’d like to invite Beth onto your podcast, drop her a note here.

Like the work we do? Tip us! https://ko-fi.com/bethbarany

The post Turn Your Wish Into Story Fuel with Brownell Landrum appeared first on Writer's Fun Zone.

Edit Your Novel Checklist: First Read, No Edits

***

“Read through the checklist, put it in your mind, and let it just float there. Don’t be so restrictive about it. You can always revisit it whenever you want.” – Beth Barany

In this episode of How To Write The Future, Beth Barany walks you through the first step of revision: the first read-through, with no editing.

You’ll learn how to use the Edit Your Novel Checklist as a simple guide for reading your draft like a reader, so you can spot what’s working, what’s unclear, and what you want to revise next.

Titled “Edit Your Novel Checklist: First Read, No Edits,” this episode helps you choose the best way to read your manuscript, decide how much distance you need from the draft, and capture observations without getting pulled into fixing sentences too soon.

Be sure to get your Edit Your Novel Checklist here: https://bethbarany.com/eyncklst.

Platforms the podcast is available on: Apple Podcasts | Buzzsprout | Spotify| YouTube

RESOURCES 

JOIN: For fiction writers! You’ve finished your first draft! Congrats! Now what?

Join the Future-Ready Writer membership and get premium weekly lessons and a monthly Q&A on Zoom. Subscribe: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2012061/subscribe

FREE: Sign up here to get your World Building Workbook for Fiction Writers

Overwhelmed by world-building for your sci-fi/fantasy novel? Use these prompts to brainstorm your story’s world: https://writersfunzone.com/blog/world-building-resources/

SHOP**: Sci‑Fi & Fantasy 24 Writing Prompts:** https://ko-fi.com/s/4ac9160a74

Want to be interviewed on the podcast? => Email us!

FOR CREATIVE WRITING PROFESSIONALS – BUILD YOUR BUSINESS SERVING WRITERS

Sign up to be notified when our training opens and get a short Creative Business Style Quiz to help you create success.

https://bethbarany.com/apprenticeship/

Support our work for creatives!

Buy me a coffee: https://ko-fi.com/bethbarany

GET SOME FREE WRITING COACHING LIVE ON THE PODCAST

Sign up for the 30-minute Story Success Clinic with Beth Barany: https://writersfunzone.com/blog/story-success-clinic/

GET SUPPORT FOR YOUR FICTION WRITING BY A NOVELIST AND WRITING TEACHER AND COACH

Schedule an exploratory call here and see if Beth can support you today: https://writersfunzone.com/blog/discovery-call/

About the How To Write the Future podcast

The How To Write The Future podcast is for science fiction and fantasy writers who want to write positive futures and successfully bring those stories out into the marketplace. Hosted by Beth Barany, science fiction novelist and creativity coach for writers. We cover tips for fiction writers. This podcast is for readers too if you’re at all curious about the future of humanity.

This podcast is for you if you have questions like:

– How do I create a believable world for my science fiction story?

– How do I figure out what’s not working if my story feels flat?

– How do I make my story more interesting and alive?

This podcast is for readers, too, if you’re at all curious about the future of humanity.

Transcript for Edit Your Novel Checklist: First Read, No Edits 

Introduction 

BETH BARANY: Hey, everyone. Welcome to How to Write the Future podcast. I’m your host, Beth Barany, and this is a special episode because this is an episode that I released for my premium members of the Edit the Future Sci-Fi/Fantasy Revision Lab, and I realized, you know what? I want everyone to have this because I invite all of you to come and do the Edit Your Novel checklist, so everyone needs to have the explainer.

So I recorded this explainer for the membership, but I also have it for you here. 

If you’re curious about joining the Edit the Future Sci-Fi/Fantasy Revision Lab, or as one of my members called it, Edit Lab, be sure to sign up for the checklist, and you’ll learn all about it.

So that’s all I’m gonna say here. Enjoy the walkthrough through the checklist. Be sure to sign up to get your own so you can stop the confusion and start with the clarity. And have a step-by-step process for editing your novel. Enjoy. 

[01:03] Getting the Checklist 

Today I am going to go through the Edit Your Novel Checklist to walk you through it.

So if you don’t already have the checklist, be sure to get it at edit your novel checklist.com. 

Alright, so once you sign up for the edit your novel checklist, you’ll be jumped over to a Google Doc that you can copy and put on your Google Drive. Download. Make it your own.

It’s editable, so you can, of course, make any changes that you want to the document. This is a working, living document, so use it, even print it out and, and put it with your writing materials. Put it on the wall. This is for you to use. 

[01:46] First Read No Editing

So number one, you want to decide how you wanna read your manuscript.

The edit your novel checklist is designed to be a reference document as you do your very first read through of your first draft. Your rough draft. Your discovery draft, however you wanna call it. And if you’ve never done this before, or even if you have, take a moment and think about how you wanna read through your manuscript.

The point is not to make any edits. The point is to read it as a reader, meaning you might need some distance from the time you wrote it, a week, a month, a year. Really, there’s no hard and fast rule on how much distance you need from your manuscript. But what I’ve noticed is that writers need like a cooling-off period, so that they can read their whole manuscript the way a reader would.

That’s the goal. You wanna have some distance, and you wanna have some curiosity. Oh, what is this thing I wrote?

Some technical things that can help you do that is you can either print it out so it’s on paper, or you could send it to your Kindle, iPad or another reading device, so it feels like you’re reading it like a reader would. Put on a tablet or put it on a different kind of computer screen or in a different kind of font.

There are some people I know who will have Microsoft Word read the manuscript to them. That’s an option as well. Whatever works for you. So choose how you want to read through your manuscript. Great. 

Once you have decided that, what I recommend is number one: read through this checklist. It’s short. It’s like four pages long, all totalled — three pages of checklist, one page of instruction.

Read through the checklist, put it in your mind, and let it just float there. Don’t be restrictive about it. You can always revisit it whenever you want.

Your goal in this read-through is to pay attention to whatever jumps out at you as incorrect. Maybe it makes you uncomfortable for some reason. Maybe you find your attention waning, moving away, or you’re like, ugh, lemme check email. Let me play my games. Those are points to just notice. Put a question mark on the manuscript. Put a check mark. Put a sticky note, but you’re not editing. Please do not edit your manuscript right now.

You’re just reading it through so you can get a lay of the land; so you can get a big picture; so you can notice maybe the things that you don’t like, but also the things that you do like. 

[04:13] Reading Methods and Notes 

So just real quick, when I go through my manuscript for the first time, I like to put it onto my Kindle. It’s a little black and white, gray-scale Kindle, and that way, it’s not easy to make fixes. So I’m not tempted to make fixes, and I just make mental notes of what I wanna change. Granted, I’ve been doing this a long time, but I’ll even write them down in my notebook or, in Scrivener, where I keep all my story notes.

Ezra, my co-teacher and husband, and also a writer, he likes to print out the manuscript. He likes to write in the margins, circle things, and sometimes he will put the manuscript on his iPad and read it aloud to himself to find typos, clunky sentences. He does that, actually, when he is really certain the manuscript is pretty clean.

So you don’t have to stick to one way of reading through your manuscript. You can change it up.

[05:05] Know Your Genre

Third piece of preparation, you need to know your genre. Just make your best guess. I’m inviting in people who are science fiction and fantasy writers. We can also call that speculative fiction, right? That’s the broad umbrella term. And inside of that lives science fiction, lives fantasy, lives horror, lives science fiction romance, fantasy adventure romance.

Let’s see. Spicy romantic fantasy, all kinds of things, right? 

So you decide what is your genre for now, make your best guess. Maybe it’s a mashup. Awesome, I love that. And just write it down on the checklist, just so you can keep it in mind, because I’m gonna be asking you questions for as you go through your checklist.

So remember, at this stage, do not edit your work. Just make notes in the margins or on sticky notes or in Scrivener, or on a notepad. Use track changes, although that’s kind of starting to push it. Uh, but if that is fun for you and easy, do that. We’re looking for fun. We’re looking for easy, and we’re looking for you to read your book as a reader, so as much as possible. So whatever supports that. Because I repeat, you’re not making changes or fixes or rewrites, none of that. You’re just reading to notice strengths and weaknesses, what’s working and what’s not working. 

That’s your job in this read-through.

And this big picture evaluation will help you get, get a big picture of how your manuscript is doing. 

[06:35] Checklist Overview 

So there’s three main parts of this checklist. The first part is about the story, the plot, what happens. 

The second part is about character. 

And the third, I call proofing, but it’s not like final proofing. It’s just all the dibby dabby things, grammar, punctuation, that kind of thing, because most likely you’re gonna notice those things in this first read through. So I have made a checklist section for that as well. 

[07:04] Story and Plot Checks

So let’s start at the top with story and plot.

Emotional Pacing: Does the story move at the right pace for the emotions you want to convey? Or does it move too slowly or too quickly?

Plot Pacing: Based on your genre, how is the balance of dialogue and action?

Story Logic: Are there gaps in story logic or in the actions of the characters? Can you follow the flow of action from one moment to the next? 

Act Structure: Act 1, 2, 3, etcetera. Does your story have a compelling beginning, rising action, complications? 

And then closing resolution as appropriate for your genre. Does it start in the right place? Have enough action in the middle, have a satisfying ending?

Scenes: Do your individual scenes start and end at the best point of interest for you? Does each scene have a compelling beginning, rising action and complications, and closing resolution? 

And then Reader Expectations: Do you meet reader expectations for your genre for plot and pacing? Do you surprise the reader and yet fit the genre?

[08:11] Character Checks 

Alright. 

Our second section on character: Goal, Motivation, Conflict, or GMC. Do your characters have clear goals? Clear reasons, motivation for their actions, and goals. Do they have conflict, preventing them from reaching their goals?

Point of View: Do you stay in one character’s point of view per scene?

Setting: Is the setting conveyed from the point of view character? Is the information shared relevant to the story’s tone and moment? 

Dialogue: Does the dialogue sound different for each character? And some more questions on dialogue. Does the dialogue move the action forward or enhance character, or is it appropriate for the pacing of the moment, such as to lighten the mood, for example?

Consistency: Does the character stay in character? 

And lastly, for this section, Readers’ Expectations: Do your characters behave as your readers expect they would for your genre?

[09:14] Proofing Checks 

And then the third section. 

Proofing / Grammar: Do you keep the story in the tense you’ve chosen? 

Punctuation: Is your punctuation correct and consistent, given your artistic purposes and genre conventions? 

Word usage: Are you using specific nouns and verbs versus vague nouns and verbs? Are you using emotionally charged adjectives as appropriate for your genre? 

Spelling: Is your spelling correct and consistent for your artistic purposes and genre conventions? 

Metaphor: Do you use metaphor and simile to convey emotion rooted in the point of view of the character?

And lastly, on the checklist, Reader Expectations: Is your book clear of errors in a way that makes the reading easy and clear for readers of your genre?

So that is the Edit Your Novel Checklist.

Hope you found it helpful. Be sure to grab your own checklist at EditYourNovelChecklist.com. 

[10:13] Scoring and Next Steps

Once you have gone through your manuscript and read the entire thing and made notes using the Edit Your Novel Checklist, now it’s time to score all the elements.

Simply on a scale from one to five, one being needs the least work and five being needs the most work. Go through every element on your checklist and give it a number.

Just number it from one to five, and you can do granularly on every single element in the three sections. The story and plot section, the character section, and the proofing section. 

And once you’re done. If you feel like it’s fun to do, go ahead and add up your score. That will give you an overall sense of how much work you need to do.

Don’t let this number intimidate you. This is just information, just helping you understand where you feel you are in your manuscript. 

[11:11] Wrap Up and Farewell

Alright, that’s it for this week, everyone. 

Happy editing, and connect with you in the next episode. 

Write long and prosper. 

Loved this episode? Leave us a review and rating here: 

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2012061 

Need instructions on how to leave a review? Go here.

***

Support our work for creatives: leave a tip: https://ko-fi.com/bethbarany 

***

ABOUT BETH BARANY 

Beth Barany is an award-winning fantasy and science fiction novelist and creativity coach for writers. They help novelists write, revise, and publish stories that matter—blending practical craft guidance with a big-picture commitment to imagination, meaning, and possibility. 

Learn more about Beth Barany at these sites: 

Author site /  Coaching site / School of Fiction / Writer’s Fun Zone blog

CONNECT 

Contact Beth: https://writersfunzone.com/blog/podcast/#tve-jump-185b4422580

Email: beth@bethbarany.com

LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/bethbarany/

IG: https://www.instagram.com/bethbarany/

TT: https://www.tiktok.com/@bethbarany/

FB: https://www.facebook.com/bethbarany

X: https://twitter.com/BethBarany

CREDITS

• EDITED WITH DESCRIPT: https://www.descript.com?lmref=_w1WCA (Refer-a-Friend link)
• MUSIC CREDITS : Music from Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/soundroll/fuzz-buzz License code: UMMKDRL02DFGKJ0L. “Fuzz buzz” by Soundroll. Commercial license: https://musicvine.com/track/soundroll/fuzz-buzz.
• DISTRIBUTED BY BUZZSPROUT: https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1994465 (Refer-a-Friend link)
• SHOW PRODUCTION BY Beth Barany
• SHOW CO-PRODUCTION + NOTES by Kerry-Ann McDade

c 2025 BETH BARANY

https://bethbarany.com/

For more “How To Write the Future” episodes, go here.

If you’d like to invite Beth onto your podcast, drop her a note here.

Like the work we do? Tip us! https://ko-fi.com/bethbarany

The post Edit Your Novel Checklist: First Read, No Edits appeared first on Writer's Fun Zone.

AI Content Licensing for Authors: Julie Trelstad

***

“Amlet AI creates a tool that allows authors to make it known to machine to developers that their work can be licensed and is available and that they expect to be compensated.” – Julie Trelstad

In this How To Write the Future podcast episode, titled “AI Content Licensing for Authors: Julie Trelstad,” host Beth Barany interviews publishing professional, Julie Trelstad. Julie shares her publishing journey, what AI content licensing is, and how authors and publishers can protect themselves against copyright or AI theft by using the newly created Amlet AI.

Amlet AI is a platform where authors can register books with machine‑readable metadata to enable licensing, compensation, and control over AI training use; it covers European deadlines, opt‑out options, ISCC standards, metadata enrichment.

Platforms the podcast is available on: Apple Podcasts | Buzzsprout | Spotify| YouTube

RESOURCES

StreetLib Distribution: https://www.streetlib.com/

Writing Tool: https://paperbacksandpixels.com/book-description-autopsy

FOR CREATIVE WRITING PROFESSIONALS – BUILD YOUR BUSINESS SERVING WRITERS

Sign up to be notified when our training opens and get a short Creative Business Style Quiz to help you create success.

https://bethbarany.com/apprenticeship/

Support our work for creatives!

Buy me a coffee: https://ko-fi.com/bethbarany

GET HELP WITH YOUR WORLD BUILDING – START HERE

Free World Building Workbook for Fiction Writers: https://writersfunzone.com/blog/world-building-resources/

GET SUPPORT FOR YOUR FICTION WRITING BY A NOVELIST AND WRITING TEACHER AND COACH

Schedule an exploratory call here and see if Beth can support you today: https://writersfunzone.com/blog/discovery-call/

About the How To Write the Future podcast

The How To Write The Future podcast is for science fiction and fantasy writers who want to write positive futures and successfully bring those stories out into the marketplace. Hosted by Beth Barany, science fiction novelist and creativity coach for writers. We cover tips for fiction writers. This podcast is for readers too if you’re at all curious about the future of humanity.

This podcast is for you if you have questions like:

– How do I create a believable world for my science fiction story?

– How do I figure out what’s not working if my story feels flat?

– How do I make my story more interesting and alive?

This podcast is for readers, too, if you’re at all curious about the future of humanity.

ABOUT JULIE TRELSTAD 

Julie Trelstad is the founder of Paperbacks & Pixels, where she coaches authors on building publishing platforms with AI as a collaborator. She has been in publishing since 1989. Originally trained as an architect at Columbia and Parsons, she ran the Architectural Graphic Standards franchise at John Wiley & Sons, acquired Sarah Susanka’s The Not-So-Big House at The Taunton Press, served as Director of Digital Rights at Writers House, and led US Publishing at StreetLib. She is also Head of US Publishing at Amlet AI, an AI rights registry helping authors and publishers participate in AI licensing on fair terms.

https://paperbacksandpixels.com

Run a free AI-driven autopsy on your book description with resuscitation instructions. paperbacksandpixels.com/book-description-autopsy

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/paperbacksnpixels

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julietrelstad

Transcript for episode 206 – AI Content Licensing for Authors: Julie Trelstad

Welcome and Introductions

BETH BARANY: Hi everyone. Welcome to How to Write the Future Podcast. I’m your host, Beth Barany. I am very excited to have a special guest with me today, Julie Trelstad.

Julie, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what brought you to our show?

[00:16] Julie’s Publishing Journey

JULIE TRELSTAD: Yeah, I have been a book publishing person for my entire career. But I was an Acquisitions Editor, buying architecture books for publishers like Reader’s Digest and John Wiley and Sons and Sterling, which was part of Barnes and Noble before I went off and started a publishing company.

And then Borders went under with my whole publishing company. And since then I’ve been working in the digital space with authors and publishing companies, helping authors self-publish, helping them build platforms, and also helping people like literary agents and, and digital publishers, run their businesses.

BETH BARANY: So really helping people on the backend of their business.

JULIE TRELSTAD: Exactly.

[00:54] What AI Content Licensing Means

BETH BARANY: So I understand that you are also in the AI content licensing space.

JULIE TRELSTAD: Yes.

BETH BARANY: Very interesting. Can you tell us about that? I have not even dabbled into that. I mean, I’ve heard about it, but I don’t know anything about it.

JULIE TRELSTAD: It is brand new. It truly is. The whole concept between AI licensing around AI licensing is that AI reads a heck of a lot of books. And what happened in the last couple of years, I’m sure you’ve heard a lot about, Anthropic, Claude OpenAI, they all built their models, trained on novels. and fun fact these, no, Anthropic was around our, our actually OpenAI was around a long time before they actually launched it as a product. And it wasn’t until they started feeding it fiction that it began to be able to talk to people and have this conversational style that really became essential to the products.

But in order to do that, no publisher was gonna say, sure, you can feed my books to a robot. So, the developers ended up building these models based on big databases of pirated books and in the United States, that is against the law. In Europe, it’s really against the law because models aren’t even allowed to train on any copyrighted content without author compensation, which is something we can talk about in a bit.

So licensing on the long wind around that is a way for AI companies and developers to compensate authors for the very, very valuable human created content that is used to trade models or to do deep research or to, be used in the chat bot applications that are being built, by not just the big guys, but you know, thousands of developers or building applications and are using content to enrich these applications and authors need to be paid.

So Amlet AI creates a tool that allows authors to make it known to developers that their work can be licensed and is available and that they expect to be compensated.

[02:59] How Authors Register and Get Paid 

BETH BARANY: Oh, so what do I do? I’m an author. I have 12 novels out, five nonfiction books. Do I just say here Amlet, put my books into your database or do I have to pay them?

JULIE TRELSTAD: You can. So Amlet AI was created by the same people who have StreetLib Distribution. So one thing you can do as an independent author is put all of your books in StreetLib Distribution and that automatically gets you into the Amlet AI system.

The individual registration is free, but StreetLib Distribution has like a $300 2.99 one time setup fee, which is a lifetime license to use StreetLib. It also gives you global distribution, so that will get you into bookstores across Europe with your digital books. So there’s a lot of benefit for being in that, but the but, and there’s no per book cost. 

[03:49] Europe Deadline and Opt Out Choices

You can upload all 12 of your books and immediately be registered. And it’s a really good time to do it because in August, by August of next year anyone who has not registered their book in a machine readable way, and Amlet is the only one that I know of that is accessible to self-publishing Authors currently, will not be able to be compensated in Europe under their laws. So you actually have to register in a way that the European authorities can find you by August or you will miss out on all the European revenue that you could get, even if you’re an American.

I think sometime in August, 2026 is when you have to be registered.Everyone who’s distributing digital books in Europe. If the book is sold in Europe, and if you do not opt out, if you do not join a licensed registry, they’ll consider you like, oh, this content’s good to grab, and it will go uncompensated. If you don’t register, you will not be able to get compensation under the new law that’s taking effect this year.

And if you’re a larger publisher, StreetLib is, at no cost, at this moment bringing in databases but it’s like a bulk thing.

There will be a cost in the future that the model for Amlet is that we’ll take a percentage of the licensing revenue that you get in. So there is no cost at this moment to register your book.

BETH BARANY: And then StreetLib Distribution will put it into Amlet AI, which makes books available for engines to….

JULIE TRELSTAD: And the other thing it does in distribution, if say you’re using, StreetLib to get into Apple Books or Cobo or any other, the wide distribution and you can opt in or app, we may already be distributing there, it will send the signal to the retailer that that book is restricted and cannot be used for training from the retailer’s point of view either.

BETH BARANY: So you can register it, but decide, no, I don’t want my book used for licensing.

JULIE TRELSTAD: That is what everyone is doing right now,

BETH BARANY: Yeah.

JULIE TRELSTAD: Right? Because this whole set of like, how much are AI companies paying for a license? It’s all unsettled. 

BETH BARANY: Yeah. 

JULIE TRELSTAD: So, the default right now is everyone do not use it to train it but here I am and I’m available and if you wanna contact me to license this work, this is how you reach me. And it does it through a machine readable fingerprint of your book. The AI licensing that Amlet uses is actually based on the content of the book itself. So if somebody were to pirate your book or to use it without your permission, you would be able to compare your licensed book with their unlicensed book and have basis for a claim.

BETH BARANY: So it’s a way to put another layer of protection that a private company is doing. So this isn’t the copyright office, this isn’t the government. This is a private entity that would allow us to say, no I don’t want my books to be used for training data for the AI engines. Or, I do. And I am. I’m like, well, if they pay me a lot of money, I might consider it. So my default is no, but each will need to make their own decision. 

[06:42] ISCC Standards and Legal Landscape

Do you ever foresee the US government or other governments making it easier, to go in one direction or another or to have this all a national licensing board or something like that?

JULIE TRELSTAD: It would be amazing but what we’re really looking at right now, and, and this company, Amlet.ai, is based in Milan. It was founded in, in Europe. It was founded in response to the fact that in 2019, Europe did pass law that said that every bit of copyrighted material that’s brought into computer applications needs to be compensated. That’s not true in the US.

In the US it’s illegal, you can’t pirate books, but you can go to the Strand and scan it so the author doesn’t necessarily have to get compensated. So it’s a shade of gray. And so, this particular Amlet was built, in order to comply with that law, right?

So this law was passed, and then the AI companies are like, we have no way of knowing what content is licensable or not. And so actually, one of the founders, Titusz Pan, who’s in Germany, created something called the ISCC, which is the International Standard Content Code. 

Amlet then is built on top of that as very specifically for the book industry and very specifically for you to determine which rights you are giving or no rights at all to the AI companies. 

[08:01] Being Findable in AI Search

What’s really interesting, Beth, is right now in the last year all these AI bots have gotten, so sci-fi right? have gone out into the inter, into the internet and they are actually digesting and reading books and then recommending them. So like one of these bots can read a million books in a day, right? And it can hold thousands of them in its context.

And in the morning it can deliver to your email box a summary of all these books, or all of this wrapped up together or recommend a book. So if your book is set up and registered for this kind of environment where bots are reading books first before people, it puts you, you know, miles ahead of people who aren’t thinking about this yet.

BETH BARANY: Yeah, I mean, I’ve been seeing lots of emails coming, well, a few emails coming through from, from one of the companies that I follow How do you make your book marketing efforts, findable by the AI search engines.

JULIE TRELSTAD: Yeah. Yeah.

[08:56] Metadata and Book Description Tools

So like there are little things we can do, but, but then registering with the AI so that like with Amlet, there’s like what we call an open API, which is the way computers talk to each other. So these developers can easily find your book, and also find what it’s about, and you enter the metadata along with, with your Amlet.ai.

BETH BARANY: Yeah, it’d be interesting if there’s additional metadata now we need to add to our book descriptions. Or is it just the standard book description category, keyword tropes, comps. 

JULIE TRELSTAD: Yeah, exactly. But yeah, have those available, make them rich. definitely.

BETH BARANY: That’s great. I give my clients a metadata document template so they can build their metadata once they’re working on their editing, so that it’s much easier to have it on hand when they’re ready, you know, to publish. Yeah.

JULIE TRELSTAD: I love metadata. Yeah. Like one thing we’re working on in Amlet and StreetLib as well is to use AI to enrich the metadata. You know, to find more comps to, you know, review, to make sure that the, that the content in the book really matches what’s on the book page. You know, that’s a real problem actually.

And, and the, booksellers have gotten a lot more sophisticated. They’re using AI tools, right? And if they determine that what the content of your book doesn’t match what you say it is, that can really work against you.

BETH BARANY: Yeah, I mean, that is something that, I mean, I’m a big proponent for the creative needs to create and then use the AI tools to, adapt into other forms for marketing messages of all kinds, but you the creative, needs to sit down and be the one who does the creative work and work with other human beings to polish that thing up to a gem..

JULIE TRELSTAD: Agreed. Yeah.

I have a free tool on my website that’s based on this it’s a, it’s called the Book Description Autopsy. And you can, I actually, I’m working on it right now, but by the time this episode airs, it will be up and running. I fed it everything I know about making a good book description and, you can drop your book description in and it will tell you exactly what you need to do and if it is DOA or not.

BETH BARANY: Oh, that’s so great. I can’t wait to test that for you and to share it with everyone because what I’ve noticed is that there seems to be trends in how a book is marketed. Are you combining what you know with, from your history with all these AI tools and what they’re requiring?

[11:14] Positioning Tropes and Unique Pitch 

JULIE TRELSTAD: Definitely I have this one and I have another. My favorite one was I was an acquisitions editor, nonfiction acquisitions editor for a really long time. And like the one thing that I always had to do when I brought a book in is I had to prove that this book was just like last year’s book. That was the bestseller. Or you know, it has that like a solid comp or solid backlog of comps.

Yet it is unique in all the world. So I’ve created a very specialized AI tool that helps authors figure out their positioning and their unique pitch. Like you don’t wanna be like any other author. And I think that what, that’s what we’re seeing now is like comps are always like really important, but we’re looking at it and we’re like, okay, this one got tweaked.

It’s like this, but a little different. I, I don’t think that’s really anything new, but it’s certainly something that I’ve doubled down on this year in terms of what the author brand is. And making sure that people are super unique, yet always mindful of the environment that they live in with other comp books.

BETH BARANY: I love it. Well, I feel like we could keep going and we’ll definitely have to have more conversations, because I’m very curious about where these new tools of AI are taking us as writers. 

[12:26] Writing the Future Curveball

So I have a curve ball question for you that I like to give all my guests, which is when you hear how to write the future, what does that make you think of?

JULIE TRELSTAD: Well, I, you know, I write sci-fi too, and you know, I definitely will want to join– When I finish my draft, I’ll join your group.

I studied architecture and city planning before I got into publishing, and I’m still fascinated with that. And, my novels are always set in a world that is the future that I wanna see physically. Like it’s set in this place where the cars are gone and people walk everywhere and communities have been rearranged and changed and I have very interesting ideas about that just from my studies of city planning. And when I think of write the future, that’s what I like. You know, I want to write the future that I want to see in the world because I want people to think, oh, the world could be this way. That’s so cool.

BETH BARANY: I love it. I wanna read it. I wanna read it. 

[13:21] Where to Find Julie and Wrap Up

So, Julie, if people want to reach out to you in your latest endeavors, where, where’s the best place that they can go?

JULIE TRELSTAD: Yeah, PaperbacksandPixels.com is where you can come and you can find the Book Description Autopsy and learn about my services. There’s a sly little link to find out about my writing there. And then, if you want to get your book registered within Amlet for AI training, that’s Amlet.ai.

And you can go there and/or you can sign up at StreetLib, but there’s information about that over at paperbacks and pixels. Or you can find out more if you’re an independent, Indie, how exactly to register your book for the future.

BETH BARANY: Fabulous. Fabulous. Well, Julie, thank you so much for being on today. I really enjoyed our conversation. 

[14:02] Final Sign Off 

Alright everyone. That’s it for this week, Write Long and prosper. ​ 

Loved this episode? Leave us a review and rating here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2012061 

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ABOUT BETH BARANY

Beth Barany is an award-winning fantasy and science fiction novelist and creativity coach for writers. They help novelists write, revise, and publish stories that matter—blending practical craft guidance with a big-picture commitment to imagination, meaning, and possibility. 

Learn more about Beth Barany at these sites: 

Author site /  Coaching site / School of Fiction / Writer’s Fun Zone blog

CONNECT

Contact Beth: https://writersfunzone.com/blog/podcast/#tve-jump-185b4422580

Email: beth@bethbarany.com

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CREDITS 

• EDITED WITH DESCRIPT: https://www.descript.com?lmref=_w1WCA (Refer-a-Friend link)
• MUSIC CREDITS : Music from Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/soundroll/fuzz-buzz License code: UMMKDRL02DFGKJ0L. “Fuzz buzz” by Soundroll. Commercial license: https://musicvine.com/track/soundroll/fuzz-buzz.
• DISTRIBUTED BY BUZZSPROUT: https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1994465 (Refer-a-Friend link)
• SHOW PRODUCTION BY Beth Barany
• SHOW CO-PRODUCTION + NOTES by Kerry-Ann McDade

c. 2026 BETH BARANY

https://bethbarany.com/

For more “How To Write the Future” episodes, go here.

If you’d like to invite Beth onto your podcast, drop her a note here.

Like the work we do? Tip us! https://ko-fi.com/bethbarany 

The post AI Content Licensing for Authors: Julie Trelstad appeared first on Writer's Fun Zone.

***

I recently made a guest appearance on a podcast about using AI in your writing (watch it here).

The discussion revolved around the dangers of using Large Language Models (LLMs), and in what circumstances AI can be useful and beneficial in your writing career.

It was a good conversation, and I thought a recap on my blog page would be beneficial.

The Dangers of AI-Generated Content

First, the dangers: AI-generated content cannot receive copyright protection.

(I covered this point in an earlier blog article on AI and copyrightability).

This means that if you asked an AI program to write your prose, you won’t have any exclusive rights to it.

And, because you can’t get copyright protection for AI-generated work, publishers are at best reluctant to publish a book with significant AI-generated content.

(The podcast episode was responding to a recent incident where a major publisher canceled an upcoming book launch, claiming the author didn’t disclose that the book was largely AI-generated.)

But does that mean you should treat AI like the plague and not let it get near your manuscript?

I think that’s throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

How AI Can Help Your Writing Career Instead of Hurting It

AI can be a very useful tool for writers; it just needs to be used properly.

Here are some ways you can safely use AI with your writing:

• Research. Gone are the days when writers had to travel to exotic lands, interview experts, or spend days in the library to make sure their book is factually accurate and realistic.

  AI programs are an excellent tool for data gathering, and this use won’t impact the future copyrightability of your work.

  (Just remember that AI programs should be a starting point, not an ending point. You still want to research and fact-check, but AI programs will give you some foundational knowledge and help you better target where and how to do a deeper dive.)

• Brainstorming. If you’re like me, you have a very limited number of people who are willing to listen to you refine your plot or characters for longer than maybe five minutes.

  If you want a sounding board, an AI program can be a great tool. It will “listen” and give feedback for as long as you want, without getting bored or demanding a change of subject.

  And its suggestions can help improve your story or characters.

  (Just remember that its feedback is the average of all the books and writing advice in its dataset, so while it can be useful, it won’t be original. Adding originality is your job.)

• Editing. AI programs make very good copy editors, and fixing typos or grammatical errors won’t affect the manuscript’s copyrightability.

  The fine line is when the editing software recommends a rephrase of a sentence – that’s a gray area that hasn’t been addressed by the powers that be.

  Minor tweaks are probably fine, complete rewrites are probably not, and we won’t know how much is too much until we get more guidance from Congress, the Copyright Office or the courts.

  (Just remember that AI software is not a substitute for a human editor; it just cleans things up enough that an editor can focus on the bigger issues.)

Final Takeaway

So, what’s the takeaway here?

Copyright protects creative expression, not facts or ideas, so as long as a human is providing the creativity and originality (i.e., writing the book themselves), AI programs can assist with the rest.

When in doubt, you can always talk to a lawyer to determine whether your use is safe.

Questions About AI and Copyright?

If you have questions about what AI can safely do for you or would like to discuss your use of AI programs, please email me at kaway@kawaylaw.com. And happy writing!

***

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kelley Way was born and raised in Walnut Creek, California. She graduated from UC Davis with a B.A. in English, followed by a Juris Doctorate. Kelley is a member of the California Bar, and an aspiring writer of young adult fantasy novels. More information at kawaylaw.com.

The post What Can A Writer Do With AI? by Kelley Way appeared first on Writer's Fun Zone.

The post Interview on The Resilient Writer’s Radio Show with Rhonda Douglas appeared first on Writer's Fun Zone.

Goal-Based Sci-Fi Research with Sue Burke

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“One thing I recommend is that if you’re really sure about something look it up cause you’re probably wrong.” – Sue Burke

In this How To Write the Future podcast episode, titled, “Goal-Based Sci-Fi Research With Sue Burke,” host Beth Barany talks to author and translator Sue Burke on the importance of goal-based research and how it can help generate conflict in your stories and avoid clichés.

Platforms the podcast is available on: Apple Podcasts | Buzzsprout | Spotify| YouTube

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About the How To Write the Future podcast

The How To Write The Future podcast is for science fiction and fantasy writers who want to write positive futures and successfully bring those stories out into the marketplace. Hosted by Beth Barany, science fiction novelist and creativity coach for writers. We cover tips for fiction writers. This podcast is for readers, too if you’re at all curious about the future of humanity.

This podcast is for you if you have questions like:

– How do I create a believable world for my science fiction story?

– How do I figure out what’s not working if my story feels flat?

– How do I make my story more interesting and alive?

This podcast is for readers, too, if you’re at all curious about the future of humanity.

About Sue Burke 

Sue Burke is an author and translator. Her novel Semiosis was nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and the Locus Best First Novel Award. Its sequels are Interference and Usurpation. She has also written the novels Immunity Index and Dual Memory, short stories, poetry, journalism, and essays, and she won the 2016 Alicia Gordon Award for Word Artistry in Translation from the American Translators Association. She was born in the Milwaukee, lived in Texas and Spain, and is now in Chicago.

Website: https://sueburke.site/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/burke.sue

X: https://x.com/SueBurkeSpain

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/sueburke/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sueburkespain/

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/sueburke.bsky.social

Transcript for Goal-Based Sci-Fi Research With Sue Burke

Welcome 

BETH BARANY: ​Hello everyone. Welcome to How to Write the Future Podcast. I am your host, Beth Barany. I’m a science fiction and fantasy writer who loves to talk to other writers and futurists and thinkers about how we can all create better futures for humanity. 

[00:19] Meet Sue Burke 

So I am so excited to have with me today a special guest, Sue Burke.

Sue, can you introduce yourself to everyone listening?

SUE BURKE: I’m a writer and also a translator. I started out as a journalist actually 50 years ago. I was very young and these days I write mostly science fiction. My best known work is a novel called Semiosis which is the first one in a trilogy. And it tells a story about some people who come from Earth and they go to another planet, they’re gonna set up an agricultural colony and they get there and discover that the plants are intelligent. And the thing to know is that most plant many plants do not mind being eaten but they have things they want in return. And that’s true here on earth.

BETH BARANY: Uh, so cool. 

[01:09] Goal Based Research 

I wanna start, with a focus, which is, How can writers implement goal-based research so they know when to stop searching and start writing? And I have to tell you, this is a very common problem.

I’m a writing teacher, and a coach and editor. And I hear this all the time, that people love their research so much that sometimes it, they don’t get to the writing part. What’s your stance on this?

[01:32] Research for Conflict 

SUE BURKE: Well, some of it all of course comes from having been a journalist, and you have to turn something at three o’clock this afternoon so get working but when you’re doing writing it helps to be looking for conflict. And by conflict I don’t mean enemies or opponents. What I mean is things that don’t work well because actually most things in this world don’t really work well. There’s problems and conflicts and for example. So okay I have my planet where there’s plants and they’re intelligent and humans come. 

When I was doing my research I discovered it’s possible for a planet to be formed such that there’s not a lot of iron on the surface. There is on our planet there’s plenty of iron but there’s not maybe on this planet. Plants need iron the way that plants also need nitrogen and phosphorus and things. On our planet if plants can can’t get enough nitrogen what do they do? Well they start hunting animals cause we have a lot of that. So okay, on this other planet you might have plants that are intelligent and they need iron and humans show up and like any other animal my blood is red because it’s full of iron so now I have a conflict. 

We have plants that are willing to cooperate but they’re hungry and we’re food and so that was the basis of the main plant character is that he’s just got a real problem that he can solve creatively. So look for things that are going to cause you a problem and when you get enough of them you can stop.

Eventually you get a feel for things but here’s one way to think about it so that all right, if you’re running a novel a typical novel length you need about 80 scenes of 1000 words a piece give or take. Do you have enough conflict to do that? If you are a an outliner or a milestoner which is what I do is like here we have the major plot points. Do you have enough to get from hither to yon? And you can start and if you fail or if you need more you can always go back and do more research but try enough that you’re going to take care of that.

If you’re doing something set in Boston you don’t need to know everything you know about Boston. You might just need to know about one restaurant and so you can do that a lot easier. 

[03:47] Avoiding Cliches 

BETH BARANY: So in terms of research-based conflicts, How can we make sure that we are not falling into cliches? How do we make it fresh, in, in our science fiction and fantasy stories?

SUE BURKE: One thing I recommend is that if you’re really sure about something look it up cause you’re probably wrong and that’s something I learned very early in my career of journalism is that the things that everybody knows are possibly not right. For example whales, when did most of the whales get hunted on our planet? 

BETH BARANY: 17, 18 hundreds? 

SUE BURKE: Wrong 1960s which is horrifying.

I was alive when they were killing most of the whales.

What went wrong? What was going on? So that’s one of the things and if you want to write something about whales you should probably know that we killed most of them.

Another one. Spanish Inquisition. They killed witches right? No they did not kill hardly any witches. They weren’t not in fact they just pretended they weren’t there cause there’s still witches in Spain. They were after something else entirely. So if you’re going to write about that, five minutes on Wikipedia these aren’t hard things to find out. But cliches are out there and if you’re really sure about something you double check. 

Another thing why do we have coal on this planet? Because plants discovered lignin then they started growing and then there was massive quantities of trees but bacteria had not figured out how to break down lignin. So that’s how we got coal was that the trees just did not decompose. On another planet will this happen? Very possibly not or very possibly something else. So these little details can make you develop a planet that can go in a very different way. 

Another idea. Okay so we’re gonna have a utopia in the future of the things that would be really nice, I live in a big city and we’re talking about well couldn’t we have like free transport free buses free airlines? It would be a great thing and it really would be a good thing for the city.

What would happen? I checked out a little bit if buses are free they tend to be really crowded cause everyone wants to take the bus .Okay that’s good. That’s a good thing. So you having a romance you’re gonna have the meet cute that you always have so just cute and it’s meet. They’re on a free bus and it’s so crowded they can’t get to each other. They see each other and then how do they meet the next time?

So you’re in utopia at least a transit utopia and people are having trouble falling in love cause it’s just such a wonderful bus system.

BETH BARANY: I love that .Have you ever done some research and you’re like, oh, that changes my idea of the story completely? 

[06:18] Rabbit Holes and Shortcuts

SUE BURKE: I’m more likely to use shortcuts well. So I was trying to create another planet and you gotta populate with animals and stuff. And so I decided I’m gonna use drop bearers. Drop bearers are something in Australia that don’t really exist. It’s something they made up to frighten tourists as one more thing in in Australia that’s going to kill you but they don’t really exist but I checked out their lore. They live in trees then they fall down. They have giant claws and they kill you and so I put them on my planet as aliens. It is a shortcut. I also needed more aliens and earth ants are really strange and wonderful things. 

Did you know ants can chirp? They’re so tiny you can’t hear that. I’ve seen them do that on my hand and I can’t hear them but they can chirp. They make all sorts of smells that have very specific meanings, that’s how they communicate. They lead complicated lives. A lot of ants are really hairy and I I had some really cool fuzzy aliens that make a lot of noise and smell actually sometimes very pleasant but it means specific things so that was just a shortcut. Could have been a rabbit hole except that there was a wonderful exit from that a quick way to meet things.

Another idea that I should make into a story sometime is that I discovered that what if you went to Mars and you were gonna grow plants like that guy in that movie? You can’t because there’s too much cadmium on Mars. It’s a poison that’s in the soil. This was actually on earth poison. If you went back and tried to eat a tyrannosaurus rex, you’d die because the meat is poisonous because there’s too much cadmium. So if you’re gonna go to Mars you’re gonna have to overcome that. That could be a really interesting story and the reason I say that is is I have al there’s a story that I read. It’s called The Man Who Bridged the Mist and it’s by Kij Johnson and it won the Hugo the 2012 Hugo. And what it is it’s a story of this guy he’s gonna build a bridge. Everyone agrees the bridge is the greatest thing. They want that bridge. It’s a wonderful thing. There are no villains in this story. It’s just that it’s really hard to build a bridge and the story is about how he overcome overcame those problems, and one of them is that he didn’t think he could do that but he did.

BETH BARANY: Yeah.

SUE BURKE: So we’re gonna go to Mars, we’re gonna clean up the cadmium. It’s gonna be hard but we’re gonna do that and then we’re all gonna live there and there’s not gonna be tyrannous rexes cause they’re poisonous. So the stories are out there. You can have all sorts of fun. Another thing I did.

BETH BARANY: Yeah.

SUE BURKE: So I wrote a story it’s in called Who Won the Battle of Arsia Mons and it’s in Clark’s world November of 2017. And I thought the stupidest thing I could do with robots on Mars is have them get into a fight. There’s a battle between robots on Mars and it’s meant as a sport. And so how am I gonna do this? So I poked around a little bit and discovered that there is something called robot sumo wrestling. And it started in Japan but now it’s all over and it’s a fascinating little thing and so they have little robots and they try to fight. And that’s basically how I made my fight scenes as I watched them robots sumo wrestling and I copied their fight moves and it was a lot of fun. But it was also a quick way to get through something I that would’ve been hard for me to figure out . But we had some very fine college students figuring this out for me of how you could make robots try to fool each other in a fighting ring.

BETH BARANY: Yeah. Oh, that’s so wonderful. I love how you have an idea, you go research it, and you enhance your problems in the story because of what you discover. 

[10:10] Ideas First Then Research

What comes first for you? A story idea or noodling around in some area of interest, researching some area of interest?

SUE BURKE: It starts with an idea. The one with the robots on Mars was just I saw a meme that said that Mars is the only planet that we know of that is inhabited solely by robots and then I was thinking about that and I just said what is the stupidest thing I can do with that idea? So I start with ideas. Other people start with characters which is fine. I know of one novel that started with the title. You can start with studying any way that you come at it. The question is can you do with that in a way that can be made into a story sometime before you die of old age.

BETH BARANY: That’s right. 

[10:58] Notes and Just in Time

So in terms of research, do you take copious notes?

Do you just sort of let it wash over you? Like what are some of the details around that?

SUE BURKE: I take sloppy horrible notes and I also I’ve been at this for a while and I have this idea that when I’ll do enough story research to start the story and then when I get to the part where this is going to happen or they’re going to go there, I will research that part, then I’ll write move on and then I’ll research the next part of it. I have the confidence that I will find out the information when I need to do that. I was a journalist and you need to do that or you lose your job.

BETH BARANY: Yeah. So you have that built in skillset. 

[11:36] Current Projects

So what, what, what are you working on right now?

SUE BURKE: Let’s see I’m writing a story that’s a space opera. And as an example of the research at one point I needed to have an alien thing that was like slime molds which are fascinating thing here on earth. So I did as much research as I need to write that part of it. And now I’m going to go and write a part where someone dies horribly and I’m going to need to research all the ways that you feel bad when and survival guilt cause that’s what’s going to come up next. 

BETH BARANY: When you do this research, are you saying to yourself, I’m gonna spend an afternoon, I’m gonna spend an hour, I’m gonna spend a few days. Do you give yourself any kind of timeframe around the research period?

SUE BURKE: I try to write a thousand words a day so that gives me an operational problem of how am I going to do this and also meet my quota. But yeah as soon as I have enough I try to go just because I’m old and I’m I wanna finish this before I die.

[12:38] Historical Novel Tease

BETH BARANY: So where can people find out more about you?

SUE BURKE: I have a website. It’s called Sue Burke dot site and everything’s pretty much linked up through them.

[12:49] Writing the Future 

BETH BARANY: I like to throw a curve ball at the end of the interview to folks. I always like to ask when you hear how to write the future, what does that mean to you?

SUE BURKE: First of all a whole lot of fun. The sort of person who thinks more about what’s going to happen than what has happened but I also think that there’s a lot of possibilities to write things that that that could be optimistic. There’s lots of problems but problems can be solved. There’s no guarantee that they’re going to but again for my journalism days is I learned that there’s this thing in the city. Can we solve it? Yes we can. Do we want to? Maybe maybe not and that’s what I read about that day is what’s going on with that thing.

BETH BARANY: Yeah. I love that. I love your optimism, and I, I love that. 

[13:39] Recommendations and Farewell

Your stories sound fabulous. I wanna recommend them to everyone. Check out Semiosis. Sue, thank you so much for coming on How To Write The Future and sharing with us about your research process and a little bit about your stories that you’re working on.

I’m excited to share this with everyone, so thank you. Thank you so much.

SUE BURKE: Thank you for having me. It’s been fun.

BETH BARANY: Yay. 

Loved this episode? Leave us a review and rating here: 

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2012061 

Need instructions on how to leave a review? Go here.

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Support our work for creatives: leave a tip: https://ko-fi.com/bethbarany 

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ABOUT BETH BARANY

Beth Barany teaches science fiction and fantasy novelists how to write, edit, and publish their books as a coach, teacher, consultant, and developmental editor. She’s an award-winning fantasy and science fiction novelist and runs the podcast, “How To Write The Future.”

Learn more about Beth Barany at these sites: 

Author site /  Coaching site / School of Fiction / Writer’s Fun Zone blog

CONNECT

Contact Beth: https://writersfunzone.com/blog/podcast/#tve-jump-185b4422580

Email: beth@bethbarany.com

LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/bethbarany/

IG: https://www.instagram.com/bethbarany/

TT: https://www.tiktok.com/@bethbarany/

FB: https://www.facebook.com/bethbarany

X: https://twitter.com/BethBarany

CREDITS

• EDITED WITH DESCRIPT: https://www.descript.com?lmref=_w1WCA (Refer-a-Friend link)
• MUSIC CREDITS : Music from Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/soundroll/fuzz-buzz License code: UMMKDRL02DFGKJ0L. “Fuzz buzz” by Soundroll. Commercial license: https://musicvine.com/track/soundroll/fuzz-buzz.
• DISTRIBUTED BY BUZZSPROUT: https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1994465 (Refer-a-Friend link)
• SHOW PRODUCTION BY Beth Barany
• SHOW CO-PRODUCTION + NOTES by Kerry-Ann McDade

c 2025 BETH BARANY

https://bethbarany.com/

For more “How To Write the Future” episodes, go here.

If you’d like to invite Beth onto your podcast, drop her a note here.

Like the work we do? Tip us! https://ko-fi.com/bethbarany 

The post Goal-Based Sci-Fi Research With Sue Burke appeared first on Writer's Fun Zone.

Beth Barany, an award-winning science fiction and fantasy novelist and certified creativity coach for writers, joins Savannah Gilbo on the

In this conversation, Beth shares how writers can approach marketing in a way that feels authentic, values-driven, and sustainable without relying on overly sales-focused tactics that often leave creatives feeling overwhelmed or disconnected from their work.

Watch on You Tube

#238. How to Market Your Book in a Way That Actually Feels Good (With Beth Barany)

Listen on Savannah’s website

https://www.savannahgilbo.com/blog/how-to-market-your-book-with-beth-barany

Beth Barany helps science fiction and fantasy writers bring their novels to life through her courses, coaching, and consulting.

She also supports creative entrepreneurs who help writers flourish in their businesses.

Drawing from her years of experience as both a novelist and creativity coach, Beth believes that marketing can become an extension of a writer’s creative values rather than something separate from their art.

Throughout the interview, Beth and Savannah explore what heart-centered marketing really means for authors and why it can be especially powerful for writers who resist traditional promotional approaches.

Beth shares practical strategies for identifying the core values behind your stories, building meaningful relationships with readers, and creating sustainable marketing practices that support long-term creativity instead of burnout.

Listeners will also learn how to redefine success beyond sales numbers by focusing on reader connection, engagement, impact, and personal fulfillment.

The conversation offers encouragement and actionable insight for writers who want to share their work in a way that feels genuine and aligned with who they are.

When not teaching or coaching, Beth writes magical tales of romance, mystery, and adventure that empower women and girls to become the heroes of their own lives.

Her latest works include science fiction mysteries centered around a space station investigator.

Key Takeaways from the Episode

• What heart-centered marketing means for authors and why it works
• How to identify and incorporate your core creative values into your marketing
• Practical ways to create meaningful reader connections and community
• Sustainable marketing practices that support creativity rather than drain it
• How to measure success through impact, fulfillment, and engagement—not just sales

Free Resource Mentioned in the Episode

Trust Your Creative Heart Roadmap Workbook

A free downloadable workbook designed to help science fiction and fantasy writers move from idea to finished novel, including videos and additional creative resources.

Connect with Beth Barany

Website: https://www.bethbarany.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bethbarany
Podcast: HOW TO WRITE THE FUTURE — http://howtowritethefuture.com

About Fiction Writing Made Easy

Hosted by Savannah Gilbo, Fiction Writing Made Easy helps aspiring and established fiction writers learn the craft of storytelling, strengthen their writing process, and finish novels readers will love.

***

Trust Your Creative Heart Roadmap Workbook by Beth Barany

How to go from idea to finished science fiction or fantasy novel

Start your journey from blank page to completed novel by downloading your free Trust Your Creative Heart Roadmap Workbook today!

A PDF downloadable workbook, plus videos and other goodies!

Sign up here!

The post Interview with Savannah Gilbo: How to Market Your Book in a Way That Actually Feels Good appeared first on Writer's Fun Zone.

Alex Kingsley: Writing Speculative Futures

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In the latest How To Write the Future podcast episode titled, “Alex Kingsley: Writing Speculative Futures,” host Beth Barany chats with Alex Kingsley, a science fiction writer, playwright, game designer, and more exciting roles that inform their fiction writing.

Together they talk about AI cognition, the importance of human intelligence in creating for the future, how speculative fiction can help readers cope with complex issues, and why compassion matters in sci-fi.

Platforms the podcast is available on: Apple Podcasts | Buzzsprout | Spotify| YouTube

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About the How To Write the Future podcast 

The How To Write The Future podcast is for science fiction and fantasy writers who want to write positive futures and successfully bring those stories out into the marketplace. Hosted by Beth Barany, science fiction novelist and creativity coach for writers. We cover tips for fiction writers. This podcast is for readers too if you’re at all curious about the future of humanity.

This podcast is for you if you have questions like:

– How do I create a believable world for my science fiction story?

– How do I figure out what’s not working if my story feels flat?

– How do I make my story more interesting and alive?

This podcast is for readers, too, if you’re at all curious about the future of humanity.

ABOUT ALEX KINGSLEY

Alex Kingsley (they/them) is a writer, comedian, game designer, and playwright. They are a co-founder of the new media company Strong Branch Productions. They are the author of Empress of Dust, Relic of Haven and The Strange Garden and Other Weird Tales, as well as short fiction appearing in Translunar Travelers Lounge, Radon Journal, Sci-Fi Lampoon, and more. Alex’s sci-fi plays have been produced in LA, Philadelphia, and Chicago. Alex’s SFF-related non-fiction has appeared in Interstellar Flight Magazine and Ancillary Review of Books. Their games can be downloaded pay-what-you-will at alexyquest.itch.io. Alex is currently a graduate student studying speculative fiction at the University of Illinois Chicago.

Website: http://alexkingsley.org

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alexkingsleywriter

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alex.kingsley.332

X: https://x.com/alexyquest

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hitchhikersguidetothealexy

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-kingsley-56342a139/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@alexyquest

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@alexyquest

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/alexyquest.bsky.social

Newsletter: Newsletter: https://alexkingsley.substack.com

Transcript for Alex Kingsley: Writing Speculative Futures 

Welcome and Mission 

BETH BARANY: Hello everyone. Welcome to How to Write the Future Podcast. I’m your host Beth Barany. I’m a writing teacher and a coach and I specialize in writing and also supporting science fiction and fantasy writers because I believe when we envision the new that fantasy and sci-fi in speculative fiction can invite us into, we actually get a chance to envision ourselves in new ways and therefore create hope for the future, create alternative ways of being in the world. I think that’s really powerful. So I’m really excited to bring a guest to you today, Alex Kingsley, writer, and all kinds of other things, academic and, and more. I look forward to hearing everything that you’re doing. Alex, I know will have a very interesting conversation.

So why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and introduce yourself to everyone.

[00:49] Meet Alex Kingsley 

ALEX KINGSLEY: Absolutely. So I am a science fiction writer in many veins. I am a novelist, short story writer, playwright, and also a standup comedian on occasion, though that usually does not have to do with sci-fi. And a game designer as well. I love to play in many different mediums. I am the author of The Bastion Cycle.

That is the series that my debut novel Empress of Dust is in. The third and final installment of The Bastion Cycle will be coming out this fall with Space Wizard Science Fantasy, as well as the author of short fiction, some plays that have been produced in LA, Chicago, New York. And, yeah. I also am a, an MA student at UIC studying speculative fiction and, writing the future and speculative futures is a huge part of my studies and the things that I am interested in.

I’m doing a presentation later this year on Always Coming Home and the importance of representing agricultural communities in the future in sci-fi. So that is super, super important to me in everything I study and everything I believe.

BETH BARANY: So wonderful. I love the diversity of all the things that you’re doing. And, you, you said the acronym of the university. Why don’t you speak out the whole thing so folks know? 

ALEX KINGSLEY: Yes, good point. the University of Illinois, Chicago.

BETH BARANY:  Great. And we’re gonna do some improv today ’cause you gave us some questions ahead of time that you were like I don’t even remember what I gave you, which is so cool. So, I would love to really know,

[02:20] Many Mediums One Practice

So you work in audio, you work in theater, you work in comedy, improv, and game design and fiction, and you’re in academia. To me, you’re working in all these different mediums. So looking at all the mediums that you work in, and then how does that affect you as a fiction writer?

ALEX KINGSLEY: Yeah, I kind of think of it as having a lot of different tools at my disposal. I am a really big fan of learning a little bit of this thing, a little bit of that thing because every experience that I have, I is going to somehow end up in my writing in some way, can somehow like, fuel something that I’m writing and inform it.

One of the biggest connections is between theater background and prose writing, because having directed actors having had that, like the collaboration that comes from that, the play that comes from that, but also really having to take a text, visualize the scene, understand the motivated movement in that scene, understand the minutia of the blocking.

All of that has been super useful for me in like, when I am writing the physical layout of a scene, I’m thinking of it like I’m blocking it as a play. I thought I was gonna be a playwright originally. I, I mean, I am, but I thought I was going to be primarily a playwright, so I was really focused on the dialogue and of course writing all that dialogue pretty much exclusively dialogue has had a huge influence on the way that I write dialogue, but it meant that I was very comfortable with that and less comfortable with everything else and imagining it as, okay, this is actually just a play that I’m directing, was really, really huge. And then the Improv comedy and tabletop game. I mean, tabletop roleplaying games are a form of long form improv, but generally, when people think about improv, they’re thinking about short form comedy, getting jokes in. They’re coming up with jokes, off the top of your head and table, anyone who has played tabletop role play games know that it’s more about really understanding your character, understanding what kind of choices your character would make in a situation, and being able to make those choices on the fly because you don’t know what, you don’t know what choices the other characters are going to make, you don’t know what choices your game master is going to make. So it’s all about having that intimate character knowledge and being able to make choices for them. 

And that’s exactly what you’re doing when you’re writing fiction. Like I have always been much more towards the pantser side of things than plotter. Definitely things start to emerge and I start to see structure. But where I really like to start is character. Like have a strong sense of who I’m writing and just the general concept, just the general situation that, the thing that I always say is put that beast in a situation. Like, I like to imagine my characters that’s like mice in a lab, rats in, in the maze.

I just gotta have a maze and some rats. And once I know my rats really well, I know what kinds of decisions they’re gonna make when they get into that maze. So I’ll end up writing scenes and be like, oh my God, I had no idea that was gonna happen. But that’s so crazy. ’cause that’s, yeah, that’s exactly what she would do in this situation and that, that’s part of the joy of it for me. 

So all of those pieces, and then the ac, the academic piece is just all that but studying it. Studying how other people do it, and how other people imagine the future and how other people use sci-fi, speculative, any kind of departure from our reality in fun and interesting creative ways and the ways that that can impact our society on a whole.

So it does seem, I think like when I’m like, I do this, I do this, I do this, I do this. Like I am doing 5 billion things at once. It’s actually just the same artistic practice, but it’s taking a ton of different forms. 

BETH BARANY: Yeah, I can really relate as someone writing teacher, filmmaker, and writing scripts and novels, a trainer and a curriculum developer. Did I say editor too? I edit fiction and video and you know, my own podcast. I’m my own, I’m gonna be doing it for clients as well. 

[06:25] Why Study Speculative Fiction

So let’s come back to academic work. You mentioned that you decided to study speculative fiction because, because why?

Tell us a little bit more, why you decided to study it, and also how does it tie into your own creative work as a writer?

ALEX KINGSLEY: Yeah, totally. I for a long time thought that I just wanted to be a creative writer, and I had this very rigid view of like, I do this and not this. Like I am a humanities person and not a STEM person and I am a, a creative writer and not an academic writer. Like I had all these sort of firm boundaries in my head I think ’cause that felt comfortable and safe and it made me feel like I knew what I was and it didn’t put me in danger of trying something that I was bad at and then being like, oh no, I’m bad at this. Because definitely we get a lot of that in our upbringing in school and then we kind of put ourselves into boxes for our own safety.

Eventually I started realizing I don’t have to do that. I don’t have to just be one thing. Which again, is one of those things where like, sounds really obvious when I say it out loud, but I, it’s, it was like a truth that I had not internalized until I was like, but what if, what if I actually did other stuff?

Part of it was I am always spreading the Gospel of Brandon Sanderson’s lecture series. I think he is such a, an intelligent teacher, and puts things in a way that is like so clear and understandable and digestible. And one of the things that he talks about in that lecture series is learning about the things that interest you and like not having to be just a writer because the material that you write about is going to come from all of your other life experiences.

And he talks about like John Grisham being a lawyer. And so all of his stuff is like law thriller. And you will have to combine your life experience with your writing skills, like you’re not just gonna be one thing.

And I went to the Nebula Conference for the first time in 2024 and there were all these academics there. And I was talking to them about all these like really specific topics. I was talking to someone who was like a token expert, had a PhD and I just like had this revelation where I was like, wait, I wanna be an expert. I wanna be an expert in this. I wanna be an expert in sci-fi. Like it’s, it’s what I love. Why have I confined myself to only loving it as a fan and a creative writer when I could also love it as an academic and study it as a discipline? At that point I had applied to MFA programs, and did not get into any of the ones that I wanted to, so I didn’t end up going that year.

But for one of the applications, I had to write a critical piece, which I really hadn’t done a lot of, and I had so much fun writing the application. And I was like, well, that’s not normal. People don’t usually have fun writing applications. So, I, I realized I really like to write critically and analytically about the stuff that I enjoy reading, not just producing, you know, ingesting it and producing my own fiction, which was how I started writing reviews for ancillary review of books.

Now I also write for Interstellar Flight Magazine and Strange Horizons. I realized it was, it is just a thing that I love to do. So why not go to the place where they will pay me money to do it and I get to teach students how to do it and share all this joy that I am constantly, you know, constantly needs to, is flowing over, is brimming and needs to spread.

I can share that with people. It seemed like the most natural path. And as soon as I started telling people, yeah, I think I’m gonna do this, they were like, that checks out. 

I thought it was gonna be a big announcement to be like, mom, dad, I’m going to grad school for English. And they were just like, well, yeah, of course you are.

BETH BARANY: Yeah. That’s so great. So funny. People often see us in that way before we do.

ALEX KINGSLEY: Yeah.

[10:23] Defining Speculative Fiction

BETH BARANY: I love to ask folks all kinds of questions about their passion for science fiction and fantasy, and I, I generally say science fiction and fantasy ’cause it’s easier to understand for people who aren’t in, who aren’t inside the publishing industry or the academic industry.

But we can also say just for folks who aren’t familiar, speculative fiction is the umbrella term for science fiction and fantasy and weird fiction, and I think horror could fit it under there. And anything that is outside of what we call contemporary fiction or even historical fiction, if it has any element of magic, make believe, maybe the lines are blurred. We can point to it and say this doesn’t exist in real life, even though most fiction is, you know, obviously a stretch of the truth. So now that I’ve defined speculative fiction, I would love to hear your definition of speculative fiction and also why you think it’s so important. 

ALEX KINGSLEY: Yeah. My short answer of like, why I enjoy speculative fiction is reality is boring. We already live there. I, and it sucks a lot not to be a downer there’s lots of, there’s good stuff too. But also every day there’s the horrors. So I’m like, I really, when I’m reading, I wanna be reading about things that are not this, but not for the reasons that people often describe. I think that for people who are not big readers, they kind of assume that reading fiction is always escapism. And I’m sure as a sci-fi reader and a writer yourself, you know, that is not the case. Fiction is a wonderful arena for dealing with some really complex topics and some difficult issues in a safe space.

Being able to grapple with these ideas that are really hard, from the comfort of your own home with a cat on your lap and a cup of tea. And it’s really important that we be doing that work constantly as a society, because it’s how we work through things is how we process complex issues.

And like I said, reality sucks. There are complex issues in the world. The reason that speculative is so important to me is because it opens up this whole new realm of play and of possibility. It allows us, there are so many complicated things to deal with in our reality, if you are going to use it, so many constraints, if you’re going to use it in your story and being in the speculative realm, I think it frees you from all of those constraints.

It allows you to imagine, okay, what would a society look like if we had this? What might the human race look like in thousands of years? What would a totally different species look like. 

[13:11] AI Cognition and Personhood

One of my main areas of study right now is alternative cognitions. Imagining using our own, you know, we’re, we’re kind of stuck with human brains, but how can we use our very human understanding of the world to conceptualize what it would be like to have a different form of cognition. I think that’s especially important with the increasing importance in our society, whether we like it or not, of AI, to be able to understand, okay, the anthropomorphization of large language models that corporations are doing is a manipulation tactic, and we need to understand the kinds of processes that are happening that differ from human cognition.

So we don’t start attributing things to machines in a way, like assuming that they are human and assuming that decisions are made in the same way that we would make decisions because they’re not. Also the idea of expanding personhood. What does it mean to be a person? Why is, I’m a big fan of like decentering humanness.

I think a lot of, when we talk about, you know, human nature and humanity and a lot of times when we talk about AI, like when will it be human intelligence? And I’m like, I would love to see humanness not really being the benchmark, cause also there’s plenty of people who are humans who are not getting human rights in our reality.

So I’m like, I would love for us to just establish a, like how can we treat a person and do that before we start asking is or isn’t this thing human because does it matter? Because we’re still treating humans poorly, in lots of places.

BETH BARANY: We’ve centered everything, humans being the benchmark, but actually our intelligence hasn’t, has done a lot of things poorly. Our so-called human intelligence. And, you know what, if we lived like whales or dolphins or bees or owls or, or, or the wolves? 

ALEX KINGSLEY: Yeah, exactly.

BETH BARANY: Why do we assume that what the way we think is, is the pinnacle? And I, and I know why there’s a whole history of that, but

ALEX KINGSLEY: Yeah.

BETH BARANY: Yeah, I appreciate what you’re saying about decentering human or human intelligence because we’re animals just like the rest of ’em.

ALEX KINGSLEY: Yeah.

BETH BARANY: And we forget that. We act as if we’re at some kind of pinnacle. And very interesting what you were saying about AI. I had an AI expert on, 

ALEX KINGSLEY: Ooh.

BETH BARANY: Some episodes ago, and you know. We never talked about it with that person, but I keep wondering why the people who design AI want to replace humans. To me, it feels like they want to replace humans. And I’m like, well, why? Why are you erasing, the very thing that you know, you are. I’m trying to understand the philosophy beneath this quest to everything, to be robotic. And I’m like, that’s weird because you know, if you don’t have a body, you don’t have emotions. And, and we don’t actually even really understand emotion fully.

ALEX KINGSLEY: Yeah.

BETH BARANY: So anyway, I could go off down that rabbit hole.

ALEX KINGSLEY: Yeah, I mean, I’m sure someone who is an expert in the field of AI could tell you more than I could, my, I do focus on, representations of AI in fiction. So definitely discussing robots and how we perceive robot, and I use those terms often when I’m talking about fiction interchangeably, just because they are like very murky. No one really has a firm definition. 

I have been looking a lot at the way that we perceive these things, and I mean, it does seem like a lot of it is money, because when the companies that are making the AI are able to then sell them to companies and say, Hey, why would you pay a hundred people to do this when you could have this machine do it for you?

It doesn’t matter to them if the quality is going to be good or if the people who are being laid off are not going to be able to support their lives, like that just doesn’t matter to them. So it gets marketed as a replacement and it also gets marketed as humanlike, uh, because we have our own assumptions about what intelligence is and how it has to resemble humanity ’cause that is what a lot of earlier sci-fi has taught us to expect. 

First ever robots in fiction looked just like humans ’cause it was a play and they were human actors. That’s part of what we have been led to expect from our fiction. But also there’s this attribution error that happens where people focus so much when AI does something bad on the AI itself.

Because we have been led to think of it as a person, so it’s not this company has caused this harm. It is, oh, Claude did this. That’s not, that’s not a person. We’re not there yet. We’re not there. That is a statistical model that is trying to sound like a person and doing a good job, but the more we attribute problems to the AI itself and not the people making it, the more we let them get away with a lot of bullshit. 

BETH BARANY: I agree. I agree. I mean, someone once said to me, oh, the algorithm decided this. I’m like, somebody designed that algorithm. That’s people behind that and they’re like, oh yes, well, blah, blah, blah. You know, like I constantly feel like I’m reminding people that we made them. Humans made these things and it’s complex processes that humans designed.

ALEX KINGSLEY: Yeah. And absolutely like things can come out of that that were not intended or anticipated, but that does not mean the, the thing, the product equals a human intelligence, and that is not placing a value judgment saying like, it is less intelligent than humans because there are things that large language models can do that Humans can’t or, or they do it a lot faster than humans could, or more accurately than humans could. Like that is not placing a value judgment. It’s just saying it is very, very different from human cognition and needs to be treated as such.

BETH BARANY: Yeah, I agree. I feel like you and I could keep going,

ALEX KINGSLEY: Yeah.

BETH BARANY: So we’ll definitely have to have a future conversation. 

[19:24] How to Write the Future

I like to end my interviews with this question, which once you hear it won’t be so odd. But I like to spring it on folks, which is, when you hear how to write the future, what does that call to mind for you?

ALEX KINGSLEY: It calls to mind any kind of forward looking fiction. Any, anyone who is imagining what the future could look like. And a lot of times, I think when I talk about writing the future, people assume I’m talking about utopian specifically and like a good future, but I am a big fan of being somewhere in the middle.

Like, I really like Ursula K. Le Guin’s term for the dispossessed. An ambiguous utopia. This idea of, there’s a lot of stuff going on and it’s a, it’s very complicated and it’s not. Hey, this is the ideal world and it’s not. This is purely dystopia. Terrible. Because nothing is really ever so black and white, at least it rarely ever is, and that would also not make a very interesting book. And I think that she is someone who was really a, a master of doing that. 

Like a lot of what I’m talking about in my presentation about always coming home is it’s not like, hey, this is presented as the ideal future. It is still important to imagine that a future like this in which we have returned to embedded communities as opposed to a concept of nation that expands beyond us. It is important to imagine what a future like that could look like.

Doesn’t mean that’s exactly what we’re aiming for. It’s so important that we are imagining what it could look like if, hey, what if every, everything was sentient.

What if the worms were solving complex math problems? Like what, what would that look like? Having this space to play in the world of what if, because we’re not gonna be able to predict what’s gonna happen, and it’s not our job to be able to predict what’s going to happen. But the more we can imagine, the more we can ask ourselves, what would we do in this situation? The more prepared we will be for what does happen. And most importantly, the more prepared our empathy will be

A professor who I kind of like grew up listening to and talking to and all of that, he would say at the core of sci-fi is asking what happens when our capabilities expand faster than our compassion?

And I think that’s why sci-fi is important. Is saying, hold on, let’s slow down and let’s make sure our compassion is there as well. And that’s honestly probably one of the reasons that Murderbot is so important to me. Is so many robot stories are about what if there was a robot that was conscious and everyone was like, no, you’re a machine.

And it’s so refreshing to have a book series where there’s a robot that’s conscious and immediately everyone’s like, and we love you. I I think that’s really beautiful

BETH BARANY: I have to read that. 

ALEX KINGSLEY: Yeah. 

BETH BARANY: That is beautiful.

ALEX KINGSLEY: It’s, that was a, that like a huge reduction of what those books are, 

BETH BARANY: That’s ok.

ALEX KINGSLEY: But that was something that is, is so delightful about them is the immediacy of the humans being like, and you’re a person too, and we won’t take that away from you. 

[22:31] Where to Find Alex 

BETH BARANY: Let’s do wrap up. Where can people find out about you and your fiction and stay in touch and all that good stuff.

ALEX KINGSLEY: Absolutely. I am on Instagram @ HitchhikersGuidetotheAlexy. I am on BlueSky @alexyquest and my website is alex kingsley.org. I also, I, I mentioned I do tabletop games. You can find my games @alexequest.itch.io. Those are the main places on the internet where you can find me. If you reach out to me, any of those places, I’ll see it and I’ll respond.

BETH BARANY: That’s great. And we’ll be including that information. So be sure to look in the show notes, the information that travels along with the podcast, and also on YouTube. 

[23:13] Final Wrap Up

So I’m gonna wrap it up here. Alex, it was so wonderful chatting with you today. I really love everything that you’re up to.

It’s so interesting and I would definitely wanna have you back. I’m gonna wrap it up here with my little sendoff. That’s it for this week, everyone. Write long and prosper. 

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Support our work for creatives: leave a tip: https://ko-fi.com/bethbarany 

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ABOUT BETH BARANY 

Beth Barany teaches science fiction and fantasy novelists how to write, edit, and publish their books as a coach, teacher, consultant, and developmental editor. She’s an award-winning fantasy and science fiction novelist and runs the podcast, “How To Write The Future.”

Learn more about Beth Barany at these sites: 

Author site /  Coaching site / School of Fiction / Writer’s Fun Zone blog

CONNECT

Contact Beth: https://writersfunzone.com/blog/podcast/#tve-jump-185b4422580

Email: beth@bethbarany.com

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CREDITS

• EDITED WITH DESCRIPT: https://www.descript.com?lmref=_w1WCA (Refer-a-Friend link)
• MUSIC CREDITS : Music from Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/soundroll/fuzz-buzz License code: UMMKDRL02DFGKJ0L. “Fuzz buzz” by Soundroll. Commercial license: https://musicvine.com/track/soundroll/fuzz-buzz.
• DISTRIBUTED BY BUZZSPROUT: https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1994465 (Refer-a-Friend link)
• SHOW PRODUCTION BY Beth Barany
• SHOW CO-PRODUCTION + NOTES by Kerry-Ann McDade

c 2025 BETH BARANY

https://bethbarany.com/

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“If there’s ever a problem, I film it and it’s no longer a problem. It’s a film.” — Andy Warhol, artist and film maker

When Anger Meets the Everyday

It was a week of the apocalypse.

The streets were filled with chainsaws, chippers and wrecked trees.

Traffic stopped as the 120-year-old remains of a redwood were unceremoniously dropped to the side of the road.

Left for dead.

PG & E, not the most beloved of California utilities, was systemically cutting any tree within ten feet of a power pole.

I was in a mood to insist the trees were there first.

No one was listening to me.

Walking Through the Aftermath

The day after the last chain saw and lift moved up the road and out of hearing, I walked the neighborhood.

It was like walking through a bomb site. 

Tree trunks ripped and tossed aside, bricks of cement scattered along the road, but hey, new power poles!

Sustained anger contributes to high blood pressure, which can increase the risk of stroke and heart disease.

I did not want to be that person who has a stroke just because she’s mad at PG & E.

The question was then, where to put the anger (and the grief)?

Turning Anger Into Art

As I walked the ruins approved by remote corporate calculations, I began taking pictures.

I photographed a close up of splintered trunks, fallen branches, chunks of cement, even the cliche shot of a flower poking through the debris.

An hour later, I assembled a collage.

Prepared the images.

Placed the images. 

Searching for an angry background.

By the time I was halfway done with a (somewhat) cohesive collage, my anger had cooled into art.

After bad news, I walk. 

After good news, I create.

When I’m depressed or upset, I do both.

Mad or Material?

When bad news whips around the corner and assaults you, what is your response?

Mad or material? 

Can you channel that energy onto a canvas, a sculpture or a violent symphony?

This could be the perfect time to pick up the pastels you swore you would use but it’s been six months and you know because the holiday wrapping is still stuck to the box.

But the pastels are smooth, messy and once you’re in, you can’t really do anything else.

That is good.

Art in Times of Crisis

A popular saying is that in times of crisis, the arts thrive.

I think that’s because making art keeps us sane: we don’t know how the crisis will end, and we don’t know how our art will turn out.

Painting Guernica was Picasso’s protest against the bombing of the Basque town during the Spanish Civil War.

Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin to express her crushing grief over losing a child.

We understand more about the plight of hidden Jews by reading The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank than we would sitting through a history lesson on WWII.

During crazy times with my children, I used their, ahem, adventures, to populate a weekly newspaper column.

By the time the upsetting incident was mined for humor, it had lost its intensity.

Creating a Response

How can you express the world?

How would you fix the world?

Your art doesn’t even need to express anger, maybe you imagine a solution.

A member of one of my writing groups is working on a utopian novel, spending her time and energy creating the perfect society, art that keeps her spirits up.

Find an art outlet that helps express your big feelings.

When we channel our extreme emotions onto the page, onto a canvas, into a protest song, we not only make ourselves feel better, we contribute to the history of this time.

We leave a legacy as either a warning or a call out.

We can use our art to save ourselves. 

It may not be good.

But it will be art.

Learn More

Look for my new book — Take Up Space — Art is Your Second Act.

***

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Catharine Bramkamp is a successful writing coach, Chief Storytelling Officer, former co-producer of Newbie Writers Podcast, and author of a dozen books including the Real Estate Diva Mysteries series, and The Future Girls series. She holds two degrees in English and is an adjunct university professor. After fracturing her wrist, she has figured out there is very little she is able to do with one hand tied behind her back. She delights in inspiring her readers.

The post How to Be Mad by Catharine Bramkamp appeared first on Writer's Fun Zone.

Hip Hop for the Future – How To Write the Future podcast, episode 203

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“I’m trying to make sure we have artists, the next generation people who can get to the open mic for the first time and learn how to hold a microphone” – Khafre Jay

In the latest How To Write the Future podcast episode, titled “Hip Hop for the Future” host Beth Barany interviews hip hop organizer Khafre Jay where they discuss the importance of hip hop as a culture within the San Francisco Bay Area and his plans for the future to get more community members involved.

From his business creating slogan clothing, to building local creative spaces to his beliefs on public health and the impact live music can have on an audience, this episode is sure to broaden your horizons on the entire hip hop culture.

Platforms the podcast is available on: Apple Podcasts | Buzzsprout | Spotify| YouTube

RESOURCES 

Creativity as Strategy: Lessons from Khafre Jay

https://writersfunzone.com/blog/2026/04/13/creativity-as-strategy-lessons-from-khafre-jay/

FOR CREATIVE WRITING PROFESSIONALS – BUILD YOUR BUSINESS SERVING WRITERS

Sign up to be notified when our training opens and get a short Creative Business Style Quiz to help you create success.

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Support our work for creatives!

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GET HELP WITH YOUR WORLD BUILDING – START HERE

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GET SUPPORT FOR YOUR FICTION WRITING BY A NOVELIST AND WRITING TEACHER AND COACH

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About the How To Write the Future podcast 

The How To Write The Future podcast is for science fiction and fantasy writers who want to write positive futures and successfully bring those stories out into the marketplace. Hosted by Beth Barany, science fiction novelist and creativity coach for writers. We cover tips for fiction writers. This podcast is for readers too if you’re at all curious about the future of humanity.

This podcast is for you if you have questions like:

– How do I create a believable world for my science fiction story?

– How do I figure out what’s not working if my story feels flat?

– How do I make my story more interesting and alive?

This podcast is for readers, too, if you’re at all curious about the future of humanity.

About Khafre Jay 

Hailing from Hunters Point, San Francisco—a city with the highest income inequality in the nation—Khafre Jay has dedicated his life to fighting for socioeconomic justice and empowering his community through Hip Hop organizing. Over two decades, his grassroots efforts have employed nearly 1,000 community members, educated over 35,000 K-12 youth, and directed more than $8 million into underserved communities.

Now leading Hip Hop For The Future SPC, Khafre is pioneering the use of Hip Hop to reimagine public healthcare, aiming to increase Black life expectancy and bring transformative resources to marginalized populations.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hiphopforthefuturespc

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/khafrej/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/khafrejay/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/khafrejay/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@theunapologeticblackguy

Album: https://music.apple.com/us/album/critical-race-hip-hop/1757033018

Website: http://www.hiphopforthefuture.org

Transcript for Hip Hop for the Future: Write Brave 

Welcome Intro 

BETH BARANY: Hi everyone. Welcome to How to Write the Future Podcast. I’m Beth Barany, an award-winning science fiction and fantasy writer, published writer.

I’m also a writing teacher and creative entrepreneur trainer. This podcast loves to explore all things future, which is really about now. Little secret. It’s really about now, but it’s about what we can do now to make our futures better. And I am a positive, optimistic person overall, and I love talking with other people who are also looking towards building better futures for all of us.

So I’m so, so, so excited to introduce to you, today a local talent here in the San Francisco Bay area and educator. 

And yes, I love your hat. We’re gonna have you talk about that too. 

Khafre Jay who runs a fabulous organization here in the San Francisco Bay Area, Hip Hop For the Future. Welcome so much, Khafre. I’m really happy to have you here. You and I met on the street in my neighborhood

The best way, right? 

And I’ve been supporting artists. Hip hop artists for a long time and I was so happy to be able to support you guys and, and bring you on to hip hop, um, to how to write the future. So can you introduce yourself for us?

[01:13] Meet Khafre Jay 

KHAFRE JAY: Yeah. My name is Khafre Jay. I’m a Hip Hop organizer, angry black man from Hunters Point, San Francisco. A little forgotten about spot on the southeast side. But yeah, I’m, I’m just a man who’s been trying to save my culture, and empower my community for my entire adult life, and I’ve just been figuring out how. That’s it.

BETH BARANY: Yeah. Awesome. 

[01:32] Hat Slogans Humor 

And for those of you listening, you wanna tell us what’s on your hat?

KHAFRE JAY: Oh yea. This is my make racist afraid again, hat. I have a clothing line called Critical Race Threads. And you know, I I, I don’t really wear Nike signs or, you know, too many labels, but I, I feel like not only do I want to know who’s my friend, first and foremost before I even waste my, my energy on them, but yeah, I also got some funny things to say so people just know where I’m coming from. I can make people think. I have a shirt that says, dear police, I’m a white woman. And, as a man who got beat up twice at gunpoint by the SFPD before I was 17 in San Francisco, messages like that I think are important especially if they’re framed in a way that doesn’t create too much defensiveness. So, yeah.

BETH BARANY: Yeah. And I think you had some either a T-shirt or was on your clipboard, something like, white women. White women come support us, or something like that. Like if you’re a white woman.

KHAFRE JAY: I mean we’re not gonna make it about White women. White women have been a historical power node for America, for its movements, for its policy. So, that’s why you always catch me out in some random white neighborhood where people don’t really look like me, calling people in and calling people out of course.

BETH BARANY: Yeah, yeah, of course. And you do it with humor, with love, with music. And, I, I love the name of your organization, Hip Hop for the Future. 

[02:48] Why Hip Hop Future 

Can you tell us a little bit why you chose that name?

KHAFRE JAY: I mean everything comes through people’s experiences. And my experience as a hip hop cultured person from San Francisco is told through gentrification, you know what I’m saying? Much like hop to the Fillmore. It is happening right now in terms of hip hop culture. And for those who don’t know, hip hop is not rap.

It is not. Hip hop is how I walk, talk, dress, paint, think, act, dance. It’s something I can’t take off. Like people know I’m talking hip hop, they know I look hip hop ’cause I dress in our fashion style. We have an environment and the ecosystem hip hop is birthed from that necessitates certain entrepreneurial styles to access equity and capital.

You know what I’m saying? So we have a whole culture. It has norms, it has rules. You know culture has never really been commodified, authentically. I mean especially when black people who make up the majority of, you know, hip hop cultural norms and rules, we have no wealth to dictate how white media has ever represented any facet of hip hop culture. And the most commodifiable part of that is hip hop, rap music specifically, right? 

So, we’ve never dictated how blues looked on white media or how rock and roll did, or how disco did, or you know, how funk did or none of this. And I think people just think that hip hop is so on point, in representing young black culture. And culture in these hoods. And it just, it’s, it’s a farce to me. So when I see, black people go from 13% of the population in the eighties when I was born, to now about 5% of the population, but we make up 38.7% of the homeless in that gilded San Francisco city. And that’s, that’s erasure. It is. And so in spots that we wrapped that for 30 years in Oakland, they’re doing karaoke seven nights a week now lights on. For a different community. Now, it’s a wrap. It’s a wrap. It is not a smart business model to bank on black culture in the Bay Area. It is just, it’s not, it doesn’t work anymore. So in order for us to have access to our culture, in its truest forms, ’cause real talk, black people don’t have any efficacy in any facet of culture in society except our culture, you know what I’m saying? So any, any efficacy in any aspect of society except with our culture. So I’m just fighting to preserve spaces for that. That costs money. Money, you know, for black folks is like a revolutionary thing for us to amass enough money or a strategy to create math that sustains a stable platform.

So I’m, I’m happy we’ve done 70 weekly rap writing contests in Berkeley, broaching some of the most serious topics, and we’re really close to expanding a second weekly rap writing contest in San Francisco if I can get a little help and not go so grey doing it. And then San Jose needs some help too, so I’m really fighting to make sure we have hip hop for the future.

[05:25] Building Local Cyphers

I, I had my first show at Glen Park Rec Center, you know what I’m saying? At like a skateboard, kind of hip hop kind of community event. But they don’t do that anymore. I feel like it doesn’t even really have kids, you know, let alone brown kids like me. So I have to be that, that leader that creates those spaces, and we’ve gotta make the math work.

And for me, that’s been standing in really affluent neighborhoods, looking for people that care like you, you know what I’m saying? That can share resources, or platforms for social capital, so we can get more resources ’cause really, we just need places to shine.

And that’s what I do. I’m trying to make sure we have artists, the next generation people who can get to the open mic for the first time and learn how to hold a microphone, you know what I’m saying?

And see these older folks show what it means to be a, a MC. You know, I’m trying to have a place where live graffiti artists can come and do live painting inside the cipher and break dancers can come and battle. You know what I’m saying? We need that. And if we don’t have our griots and our, and our culture bearers, we have nothing.

BETH BARANY: Yeah, I, I love that you’re creating this in, in person, in local spaces and, I, I just love that so much. I feel like as humans, we’re actually genetically predisposed to learn together, learn in groups, learn through song, learn through modeling our elders. So I really, really love that.

I noticed in your mission statement recently that you’re really focused in on health and wellness also.

Can you say a a bit about that?

[06:50] Public Health Pivot

KHAFRE JAY: Often we talk about the future, we talk about hope, but my public health focus comes from a lack of hope. Just to be quite honest with you. I was a hopeful Activist. I did the largest environmental justice Eco summits at the Presidio Lawn with the Presidio Activators Council. You know, I used to do a lot of environmental work, political work too. I was, was really rooting for white folks. I, I was really rooting for him in the last election, so disappointed, at the Dobbs decision, not just at the Dobbs decision, but at the tepid response to the Dobbs decision. You know what I’m saying? 

I, I think I, it was a week before I started hip hop for the future. I saw that that protest at the Supreme Court and it wasn’t enough. It was, it was really disheartening to see that few people, and that few white women, you know, I, I was like, oh, no Dobbs, oh, white women who have the strongest political power are gonna go crazy and we’re gonna get some real change.

And that, you know what I’m saying? And that moment, I just realized that it’s gonna take a little while before I feel like organizing with other groups directly, you know, our, our are building strategies that rely on a mass of American voters to have the best interests of black people at heart. I, you know, so out of that I decided to turn to N Word as a lot of black organizers have. And you know, that doesn’t mean that I’m not gonna talk to white folks. Of course not. You know, ’cause I think that means I’m just gonna go towards individual grassroots means instead of organizing with big orgs that have strategies that are rooted in collective empathy. I don’t think we’re there yet so I decided to go to public health, you know, and Hunter’s Point Black people are going through it. We got higher rates of cancer, not to mention the stress traumas. The lack of access to care. hip hop for me has always been the strongest organizing tool for my people. You know what I’m saying?

Like, Black people might not want to go talk about colorectal cancer interviews, but if I get the rapper, yo-yo from the nineties, you know, who’s big for people who are in that age group that need to get colon cancer tests right now? And I throw a phat hip hop show, at the film, at the African American Arts and Culture Complex with break dancers from Pier 39 DJs, graffiti artists doing live graffiti of food, barbers, braiders, people doing hair, clothes. With the Director of Freedom Ford, Francesca Gonzalez, who helped me create this idea of Drip fest dropping resources in place, then we can get a whole bunch of black folks there comfortable, calm, you know, appreciative. And then they are confronted with access to healthcare. You know, we had, Dr. Hobb, he’s a dentist with flossing for smiles, right? Flossing is kind of looking good, as you know.

He was there taking care of people who hadn’t talked to dentists recently. You know, Umoja Health with Dr. Rhodes. She was there, you know, helping people get vaccinations, COVID checks, and colorectal cancer interviews, things like that.

This stuff is not hard when we’re doing it in the framework of people that have the cultural practices, and, you know, and, and the root of their strategy. So I, I just thought that would be really cool and, building around that, pretty soon I was doing, you know, hip hop therapy 101 for therapists. I want to integrate these methods authentically. you know, and, and hip hop in general, having spaces rooted in affirmation, like a cipher. And I know a lot of people they see hip hop in a frame of, of corporate media where in three companies own 90% of the means. But that’s not what it looks like in community.

You know what I’m saying? When somebody’s rapping for the first time around all these vets and these vets are like, yeah, go. You gotta keep going. Don’t worry. Just keep going, keep going. It’s such a supportive place. And that right there is one of the most healing places. Most affirming places, and that ecosystem that we’re building of these artists coming together and these community members, it’s, it’s something that we don’t really have so I think that’s essential. Public health is a cultural community zone. The middle, you know what I’m saying? The center of the community. I’m trying to build that around hip hop, and it’s just public health is the way to go. It’s the only thing that I have hoped for. It’s my ability to bring health directly to people because I, I don’t really have faith in everything else right now.

I’ll check back, I’ll check back in the midterms if we still have a country, so, yeah.

BETH BARANY: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I hear you. I hear you. The power of the young hip hop artists going up and holding the mic for the first time. The power of just coming together. I really see this is so beautiful, what you’re doing, and can you tell us a little bit more about, you know, what that’s like for you to create these events and I don’t know anything that you’re working on.

[10:58] Pregnancy Village Work 

KHAFRE JAY:  You know, I think the best way to talk about, I think the best way to talk about the power of live performance is that’s best viewed through the work I’ve been doing with the San Francisco Pregnancy Village. Away from my mother’s house, Bayview, YMCA which is in Hunter’s Point, not Bayview. They’re not the same. I hate how people put ’em together. It sounds like gentrification to me. But yeah, you know, I was doing Drip Fest, and I got to connect with the people working on the SF Pregnancy Village. 

For listeners who don’t know how bad the situation is for black people here in the United States. You know, all this stuff we’re talking about currently with ice, like we’ve been dealing with this type of authoritarianism, this type of lack of access to, body autonomy, rights, and whatnot for so long. And black women die four, three to four times more giving birth in Bay Area hospitals and in the United States, just because of sheer apathy. When black women are dealing with things like preeclampsia and they say, I’m feeling pain, they’re looked at as drug seeking more often instead of, hey, this lady might have some horrible thing going on, or, or they’re told to wait. They’re told to sit down and be patient and they’re forgotten about. That is the sheer you know, root of that is that that callousness, that apathy, that black women’s suffering gets historically in this country. And there’s lots of orgs that want to help. There’s lots of them. You know, but I want to help women. I really do you know, when I taught hip hop ed, I created this women’s empowerment workshop, but I didn’t want to ever teach that, and I didn’t want to just create it and be like, here, teach this ’cause it has to, you know, good intentions, you know, feel me? 

But I think a lot of these organizations that want to help, there’s not a lot of people like me in the decision making rooms, you know what I’m saying? So, when we get these interventions out, they’re not always the most successful.

That’s why DPH here walked up to me. They’re like, yo, do you teach about hip hop therapy? Because they have the resources, they have the degrees, they have the, all that stuff. But what they don’t have is the trust and that’s historic. And so they needed help from somebody like me, you know what I’m saying? The pregnancy village, Melanie she, is a nurse. She works, delivering babies, and she helps us to set up this stuff. She said she saw my website. She was like, yeah, this is what we need. 

You know? I don’t deliver no babies, you know what I’m saying? I don’t do prenatal care. I don’t do lactation coaching. All right. I don’t do anything like that, but what I do do is make black people very comfortable and I create spaces that are healing in and of themselves. And that kind of culture can be a catalyst to organize marginalized people around any services. It doesn’t matter, you know, whether it’s math, whether it’s working with Parks Cal and getting kids rapping about the toxic Superfund site next to Hunter’s Point where I grew up, which is why people are glowing over there, you know? But yeah, it is just been really cool to go there. And bring DJs and bring, you know, live graffiti artists like Laser one MCA or Buku one. And they’re setting up big graffiti murals that say love on it. And little babies are painting and stuff like that. We’re like, come on, kids start graffiti. And then DJ Lex, who’s like this world class dj, historic in the Bay Area, he’s bringing his turntables, letting kids scratch and things like that. 

And then we booked three or four artists to rap and perform and they make the village cry. And sometimes the, you know, the, the village makes them cry too. I think a lot of times people don’t know that rappers don’t just wanna rap at seedy dive bars, you know what I’m saying? Our words are not confined to settings that people are used to. And I think for me, a lot of my work was been given op opportunities to artists to get in environments that they’re not used to, where they can see the power of the words and then you get the feedback from these women. These people who are just like going through, you know, some of the most serious, you know, moments of energy, time, emotion, and then seeing ’em dancing, you know what I’m saying?

And, and seeing ’em, hear people rapping about pregnancy and, and beauty. I think it’s one of the reasons why the village grows. It’s one of the reasons why people come back happy. and yeah, I, I can add that to anything. So anybody need hip hop out there? You need a DJ for a birthday party. You want somebody to graffiti your infant’s room with math symbols or something like that? My job is just getting hip hop artists paid ’cause as long as we pay our storytellers, then our future will be bright. If we do not pay our storytellers, then we’re gonna need supplemental, mostly white LED NGOs, you know, nonprofits with their galas and their charcuterie boards. With whatever help they can have for black people that, you know, may or may not be impactful, you know what I’m saying?

They’re gonna hire some of us. I’ve gone to a few of those galas. It’s really cool. You know what I’m saying? They got great wine and cheeses but I, I don’t, you know, I, I love what Planned Parenthood does. I think that there’s so many black women that are rapping about those things that would create so much more impact on outcomes and health, if they got a quarter of the marketing budget that Planned Parenthood had. It’s just me. I think hip hop does that. So

BETH BARANY: Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. 

[15:36] Writing Future Question 

Well, I, I’m sure we could keep going, but I’m gonna wrap it up here. I have a surprise question, which is not so surprise. Yeah. So, what, when you hear how to write the future, what do you think of, what does that make you think of?

KHAFRE JAY: I think that makes me think first off is trying to like break off my chains, you know what I’m saying? I think trying to, trying to stop my impediments, you know, my preconceived notions to let myself flow, just flow. I think in order to think of the future, it’s really hard. We have so much baggage and bias that allows us to even think of the possibilities where technology might go, for example, you know what I’m saying? You look at Star Trek, you know, the next generation now, and you’re like, wow, we didn’t even think that we might have stuff floating in midair walking with this holograms. Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know how to be the Jules Vern of your time, you know what I’m saying? But yeah, I was just really focused on trying to be open, just clearheaded yeah.

BETH BARANY: I love it. I love it so much. 

[16:29] Where To Support

So how can people find out about you? Where do they go? What’s the first stop? They can just get all your awesome stuff, support you, bring you into their organization. Yeah. Where do they go?

KHAFRE JAY: I am not as important as my community and so if I could ever ask for any support for anything, it would be for my life’s work right now, which is hip hop for the future.org. We are really, really looking for long-term monthly support right now. We have about 350 ish monthly supporters that have allowed us to rock in Berkeley for 70 weeks, providing this beautiful platform.

We started people’s careers. We built an ecosystem, hopefully soon to build an economy around it. But we’re really close to getting enough monthly support to open up Flow Lounge San Francisco ’cause San Francisco used to be a historic place for rap, and that’s gone. Almost completely. And so we really need that support.

After that, we’ll be doing the same in San Jose ’cause tech has strangled people down there and all kids have, if they have hip hop, it’s that corporate, gangster, misogynistic, violent place that breeds unsafe conditions. We need your help for that down there. If you need DJs for a birthday party, break dances.

If you want team building, let me know if you want somebody to graffiti your business, atrium, with company mission stuff, galas, let me know. Hip hop should be in every strategy meeting. If it’s not, and you’re working with people, even if you think it’s not hood people, if you think, all those white CEOs, they love rapping too.

Don’t get it twisted. Yeah. I just, I just want people to go hip hop for the future.org. You can always find me Khafre Jay just type my name anywhere. I’m on everything. Check out my blog on LinkedIn 22,000 person following Unapologetic Black Newsletter. Listen to me on KPO o San Francisco 89 5 every Sunday playing three hour block of local barrier hip hop. Yeah, go to Critical Race Threads and dress like your mostly friendly neighborhood black activists.

BETH BARANY: Oh, I love it. I love it. I could listen to you forever. All right. This is so awesome. 

[18:18] Final Thanks Outro 

Thank you so much for being a guest on How To Write the Future. I’m gonna wrap it up. That’s it for this week, everyone. Write long and prosper. Woo. That’s a wrap.

KHAFRE JAY: That’s a wrap. Right. 

Loved this episode? Leave us a review and rating here: 

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2012061 

Need instructions on how to leave a review? Go here.

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Support our work for creatives: leave a tip: https://ko-fi.com/bethbarany 

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ABOUT BETH BARANY 

Beth Barany teaches science fiction and fantasy novelists how to write, edit, and publish their books as a coach, teacher, consultant, and developmental editor. She’s an award-winning fantasy and science fiction novelist and runs the podcast, “How To Write The Future.”

Learn more about Beth Barany at these sites: 

Author site /  Coaching site / School of Fiction / Writer’s Fun Zone blog

CONNECT

Contact Beth: https://writersfunzone.com/blog/podcast/#tve-jump-185b4422580

Email: beth@bethbarany.com

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CREDITS 

• EDITED WITH DESCRIPT: https://www.descript.com?lmref=_w1WCA (Refer-a-Friend link)
• MUSIC CREDITS : Music from Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/soundroll/fuzz-buzz License code: UMMKDRL02DFGKJ0L. “Fuzz buzz” by Soundroll. Commercial license: https://musicvine.com/track/soundroll/fuzz-buzz.
• DISTRIBUTED BY BUZZSPROUT: https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1994465 (Refer-a-Friend link)
• SHOW PRODUCTION BY Beth Barany
• SHOW CO-PRODUCTION + NOTES by Kerry-Ann McDade

c 2025 BETH BARANY

https://bethbarany.com/

For more “How To Write the Future” episodes, go here.

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The post Hip Hop for the Future appeared first on Writer's Fun Zone.

Read, Write, Repeat with David D. Levine – How To Write the Future podcast, episode 202

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“I was a science fiction reader from the beginning, and I continued to identify myself as a science fiction writer. However, a lot of my stuff would have to be classified as fantasy.” – David D. Levine 

In the latest How To Write the Future podcast episode, titled “Read, Write, Repeat with David D. Levine” host Beth Barany talks to science fiction author David D. Levine about his career path, the challenges of history research, and how he uses it in his novels, including gender throughout the ages.

Platforms the podcast is available on: Apple Podcasts | Buzzsprout | Spotify| YouTube

RESOURCES 

FOR CREATIVE WRITING PROFESSIONALS – BUILD YOUR BUSINESS SERVING WRITERS

Sign up to be notified when our training opens and get a short Creative Business Style Quiz to help you create success.

https://bethbarany.com/apprenticeship/

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GET SOME FREE WRITING COACHING LIVE ON THE PODCAST

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About the How To Write the Future podcast 

The How To Write The Future podcast is for science fiction and fantasy writers who want to write positive futures and successfully bring those stories out into the marketplace. Hosted by Beth Barany, science fiction novelist and creativity coach for writers. We cover tips for fiction writers. This podcast is for readers too if you’re at all curious about the future of humanity.

This podcast is for you if you have questions like:

– How do I create a believable world for my science fiction story?

– How do I figure out what’s not working if my story feels flat?

– How do I make my story more interesting and alive?

This podcast is for readers, too, if you’re at all curious about the future of humanity.

ABOUT DAVID D. LEVINE

David D. Levine is the author of Andre Norton Nebula Award winning novel Arabella of Mars, sequels Arabella and the Battle of Venus and Arabella the Traitor of Mars, space-opera caper novel The Kuiper Belt Job, and over sixty SF and fantasy stories. His story “Tk’Tk’Tk” won the Hugo, and he has been shortlisted for awards including the Hugo, Nebula, Campbell, and Sturgeon. Stories have appeared in Asimov’s, Analog, Clarkesworld, F&SF, Tor.com, numerous Year’s Best anthologies, and his award-winning collection Space Magic.

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/david.d.levine.sf

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/daviddlevine/

Website: https://daviddlevine.com

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/daviddlevine.com

Transcript for Read, Write, Repeat with David D. Levine 

Welcome And Guest Intro 

BETH BARANY: Hi everyone. Welcome to How to Write the Future. I’m your host, Beth Barany. A science fiction and fantasy writer, also writing teacher and creative entrepreneur trainer. 

I’m so excited to bring in today my special guest, David Levine. 

David is a science fiction and fantasy writer, primarily science fiction.

Can you introduce yourself to us? 

DAVID D. LEVINE: Sure. The weird thing is I still think of myself as being a newer writer, even though I’ve been selling for over 25 years, but it’s always fresh. Every day is a new challenge, a new obstacle to be overcome. 

BETH BARANY: I love your book covers. I excitedly called my husband over. I’m like, look at this awesome book. Your Kuiper Belt book, the Heist Sci-fi. I love heist. 

[00:42] Sci Fi Versus Fantasy 

So do you consider yourself a fantasy writer or a science fiction writer, or both? A mix? I saw you have a cool anthology called Science Magic, which really kept my attention. 

DAVID D. LEVINE: I was a science fiction reader from the beginning, and I continued to identify myself as a science fiction writer. However, a lot of my stuff would have to be classified as fantasy. 

BETH BARANY: That’s great to know. I work with a lot of beginning writers and folks are working out the definitions and where they fit and how to describe their work. 

[01:10] Tech As Modern Sci Fi 

DAVID D. LEVINE: An awful lot of thrillers are by my standards would be considered science fiction because they depend on technologies that don’t exist.

Or you look at so many cop shows, the various criminal investigation shows are based on technologies. They portray technologies that don’t exist, which causes real lawyers and real police people a lot of difficulty when they try to talk to a jury and the jury says, show us the hologram.

BETH BARANY: Absolutely. Yeah. I write sci-fi mysteries, so I take great pains to figure out what exists and what doesn’t exist. And of course, I’m making stuff up. And then sometimes engineers write me and tell me what I got wrong.

DAVID D. LEVINE: Yeah. 

BETH BARANY: Which is hilarious. 

[01:49] History Research In Fiction 

I see that you’ve set a lot of stories set in an imagined past, and that really is reflected in your beautiful book covers. Can you talk a little bit about how your historical research and it sounds like you’re definitely a student of history, how that impacts your writing?

DAVID D. LEVINE: The weirdest stuff in my historical science fiction and fantasy is real. You know, the more peculiar and unbelievable something is, even if it’s like key to the plot. I’m not making any of that stuff up. I’ve found things I think it’s in the third Arabella of Mars book, there’s a steam powered wheelchair, equipped with a machine gun that is real, or at least it was proposed.

I don’t know if the person that invented it ever actually built it, but they tried to sell it to the military. All kinds of peculiar things. Real terminology, real people. There is a character, again in the Arabella books, who is a person who became a very famous military surgeon and in fact, invented a lot of techniques that saved many lives. And was the first person to perform a cesarean section where both the mother and the child lived. That person was a woman.

[02:56] Gender in Other Times

It’s tough to talk about gender in other times because if that person existed today, we would probably say, well, that person was using he him pronouns in their daily life, so it would be respectful to refer to them as he him, but we don’t know what that person would’ve used themselves because they were practicing a deception.

Were they living their true reality of the gender they perceived themselves as being, or were they dressing up as a gender they did not perceive themselves as being for purposes of having a career and being able to leave the house?

There was all sorts of roles that were imposed on people based upon their perceived gender and therefore people would change their perceived gender, in order to have adventures. 

That’s why Arabella dresses up as a boy, because, that is a thing that people definitely did do in reality, and happened, I believe even more in fiction of girls dressing up as boys, and running off to sea and becoming cabin boys and fighting in the wars and having adventures.

One of the writing challenges I have set myself and still not succeeded at is literature is full of girls who dress up as boys to have adventures. 

When boys dress up as girls, it’s either for comedic value, or in order to escape. You look in particular at the movie, Some Like it Hot, where a couple of boys dress up as girls in order to hide from people who want to kill them.

That is a challenge I have set myself at which I have still not succeeded. I’ve thought a lot about gender. I’ve thought a lot about why we perform gender as we do, which things are inherent, and which things are societally imposed. And how does it change over time? The roles of men and women of course have always changed over time. Pink used to be a manly color. There have been thousands of years when everybody wore what we would consider skirts. Everybody wore what we would consider pants. So that distinction is something that is very much peculiar to this time and place. 

[04:49] Starting Late And Career Path 

BETH BARANY: I appreciate that you’re doing that. 

I understand that you didn’t start writing fiction until you were nearly 40, so I think that’s a really wonderful to hear, for folks to hear. I myself didn’t start seriously until I was 30. I know people who started much younger. Let’s not measure each other against each other,I actually have a writing friend who started at 70. 

DAVID D. LEVINE: I would absolutely say it’s never too late to start. I was writing fanfic, well, I didn’t write fanfic in the modern sense, even though it existed.

I was never impelled to write about my favorite TV shows or what have you. I wrote science fiction in my teens. I know for sure that I have stories in my files that I wrote, in like fourth grade. So I’ve been writing for a long time, and I took a science fiction class in college and the teacher said, this is really good, you should submit. 

What happened was that I graduated, and I got a job as a technical writer. I was writing software documentation and that sopped up all of my writing energy. I tried and I was unable to write fiction while I was writing as a technical writer. And I was a technical writer for 20 years.

So during that whole time, I produced not one word of fiction. I changed careers, I changed from technical writing to software engineering, so I was still working in the same, you know, sitting in the same cubicle, working in the same division of the same company, and a different boss. And I had a different job.

And even though I was still typing, still staring at the same screen every day, suddenly I was no longer writing prose, I was writing code. And so I began to be able to write fiction again. So I spent 20 years writing technical manuals, and then I started to be able to write fiction again. 

[06:27] From Tech Writing To Prose [h3]

And after I’d been doing that for just a couple of years, I had the opportunity to go to the Clarion West, six week writers workshop in Seattle.

And I did so, and after I did that, I began selling. So I would say that the 20 years I spent writing technical manuals was not lost, because I spent 20 years learning how to put together a sentence, how to punctuate, how to spell, where to break a paragraph, how to outline, how to work with an editor. Ergonomics, how to pace myself, how to be productive, grammar and pacing. And there are so many skills from nonfiction technical writing that translated directly into fiction. And so I spent 20 years working on the mechanics of putting prose on the page. And then after I had done that, I had a really solid base of that stuff that beginning writers struggle with. And so what I had to do after that was add to that skills of creating characters and writing dialogue and and world building.

But even on world building, I think some of my nonfiction skills applied, so I divided my learning how to write process in two. One for the mechanics and one for the fiction. And I think, the fact that I started selling fiction to major markets within a couple of years of when I started submitting, I can put that down to the time that I spent working on the mechanics of writing.

So I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this as a learning process, but it worked for me and I think it, it produced a writer who has a particular skill set and produces a particular kind of fiction, which is, not to–, nothing is to everybody’s taste. My stuff is not, it’s not poetical.

I’ve got creativity in terms of the world building. I’m very proud of my aliens and of the unexpected plot twists I can come up with, but the prose itself is quite conventional. I do not, I’m not as Jay Lake described himself as a notorious style monkey.

I’m not a notorious style monkey. The prose is, my prose is intended to be transparent, not to get in the way of the reader’s experience of what? Of the the, you know, the world and the people being, being, portrayed. But it gets the job done. And I do, I do have a big vocabulary and I use it.

BETH BARANY: Mm-hmm. 

[08:46] Influences And Reading List 

I was curious about your reading habits because to be able to have gone from a tech writer into some great training for science fiction fantasy, and then to be published, I’m guessing that you have read widely all your life. And I just, if you wanna throw out a few of your favorite authors series, the kinds of things that you like to read, have read, besides the nonfiction history, I’d love to know what your story bank is like.

DAVID D. LEVINE: I would name Iain Banks, as one of my favorite writers and, I’m gonna have to name Larry Niven as one of my primary influences. Although the weird thing was, is that when I first discovered him, he was one of the Young Turks. And, and now of course he’s, you know, he’s in his seventies, definitely part of the old guard.

I don’t think I would name Niven as one of my favorite writers anymore because his prose is very much of the seventies, and hasn’t held up well. Mary Robinette Kowal, Elizabeth Bear- these are people who are friends of mine and also I really admire their, their prose, their, their world building Ann Leckie is fabulous. And, N. K. Jemison is also, just I am in awe of Jemison’s work. She’s phenomenal.

There is a lot of really good stuff being written today. and the biggest problem that all writers have is discovery because there’s such a huge mass of fiction, some of which is spectacular and some of which is terrible and it can be very difficult to find the good stuff, in the gigantic mass of fiction, which is being presented today, that discovery is our biggest problem as writers. 

BETH BARANY: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. You’ve got a great list here. We’ll put that on the recommended reading list of this episode. And also, it serves as recommendations. People are always looking for good places to start.

I heard the mark of a well-read person to have so many unread books because we collect them.

DAVID D. LEVINE: This is my emotional support, support stack of unread books. Yeah. 

BETH BARANY: That’s right. 

[10:43] Advice For New Writers

Well, is there anything advice that you have for writers starting out in science fiction or fantasy today? 

DAVID D. LEVINE: The most important thing is to read, to read deeply and widely in your chosen field.

I have read so many terrible stories and terrible books by beginning writers who say, I think I’m gonna write a science fiction book and make a pile. There are so many people who dive into writing science fiction or fantasy or romance especially, who have no interest in the field. They don’t even read it.

They say they think I watch a lot of science fiction movies, so I’m going to write a science fiction book and make a lot of money. A lot of these people seem to think that writing is their path to riches. And I got news for you folks. There is no money.

There is no money in fiction. This 

BETH BARANY: It’s tough out there. 

DAVID D. LEVINE: Yeah. okay. But anyway, so read widely, figure out what it is that you like and do that. And and also it’s really, really important to get feedback. To get feedback and to, to take it to heart. You have to. You have to seek out people who can be honest with you about where your work is good and where it is not so good.

So I think it’s important to seek and seek out feedback from people who can articulate what makes it work and what makes it not work.

This basically means other writers. Being in community with other writers is, I think, critical. It’s critical for any art. We do fortunately have a very large and well-integrated community of science fiction and fantasy writers around the world. And so it’s not that hard to find people to read your stuff and tell you whether or not it works.

And I think that’s critical is in order to improve, you’ve got to get feedback. 

And you have to listen to it ’cause I definitely have worked with newer writers who receive feedback and then keep turning out the same thing over and over again because they love their prose too much. 

BETH BARANY: I recently did an episode on feedback, for episode 192.

So take a listen to that. So critical. I too find the very same thing. If you aren’t comfortable with feedback, if you aren’t even sharing your work with, informed others, it can really stall your writing career. 

[12:52] What It Means to Write the Future 

I like to end my podcast episodes with a question, related to the title of my podcast, How to Write the Future. I’d like to ask off the cuff, what does it mean to you, how to write the future? 

DAVID D. LEVINE: Writing about the future. Science fiction is never about the future. It’s always about the present. It uses the future as a tool to talk about the present. So I have very infrequently written stories, which had any predictive value whatsoever.

I set my stories in imagined worlds, many of which are the future or a future, just because it’s an writing. Setting a book in the future, setting a story in the future means that you have a platform that you’re building upon. You and your reader have a common experience of the present and then you can say, okay, now my story is like that, but different in the following ways.

Whereas if you’re setting a story in a completely imagined time or place, then you don’t have that foundation that you share with the reader, and you have a lot more building and a lot more explaining to do. So setting a story in a future is a way of leveraging what’s in the reader’s head to produce the story.

90% of the work in any piece of fiction is done by the reader. The writer’s job is to guide the reader into imagining something that the writer has in mind. And the fact is you’re always going to fail to a certain extent. Your reader is never going to imagine your world exactly the way that you do.

But you have to do a kind of Jiu-Jitsu of using what’s in the writer’s, what’s in the reader’s head in order to create a shared vision of an entertaining story. And so when I write the future, I’m really writing about the present. I’m writing about the things that I care about. I’m writing about the things that I’m scared about, I’m writing about the things that I’m interested in.

A lot of my space-based science fiction comes out of the science that I write about. Gosh, wouldn’t it be cool to actually be able to bounce on the moon? Wouldn’t it be cool to, to pick up, a piece, a piece of, of, ice from the surface of Iist In your hand, wouldn’t it be cool to meet aliens?

And so these are all things that setting the story in the future provides a vehicle through which I can portray these things that I’m interested in because I’m interested in science. 

BETH BARANY: Oh, I love that. Thank you. 

[15:12] Closing And Where To Find 

Well, David, I’m gonna end our podcast here. Thank you so much for being a guest. 

Everyone, check out David’s work at daviddlevine.com. 

DAVID D. LEVINE: It’s been a pleasure. 

BETH BARANY: All right, that’s it everyone for this week. Write long and prosper. 

Loved this episode? Leave us a review and rating here: 

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2012061 

Need instructions on how to leave a review? Go here.

***

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***

ABOUT BETH BARANY

Beth Barany teaches science fiction and fantasy novelists how to write, edit, and publish their books as a coach, teacher, consultant, and developmental editor. She’s an award-winning fantasy and science fiction novelist and runs the podcast, “How To Write The Future.”

Learn more about Beth Barany at these sites: 

Author site /  Coaching site / School of Fiction / Writer’s Fun Zone blog

CONNECT 

Contact Beth: https://writersfunzone.com/blog/podcast/#tve-jump-185b4422580

Email: beth@bethbarany.com

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CREDITS 

• EDITED WITH DESCRIPT: https://www.descript.com?lmref=_w1WCA (Refer-a-Friend link)
• MUSIC CREDITS : Music from Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/soundroll/fuzz-buzz License code: UMMKDRL02DFGKJ0L. “Fuzz buzz” by Soundroll. Commercial license: https://musicvine.com/track/soundroll/fuzz-buzz.
• DISTRIBUTED BY BUZZSPROUT: https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1994465 (Refer-a-Friend link)
• SHOW PRODUCTION BY Beth Barany
• SHOW CO-PRODUCTION + NOTES by Kerry-Ann McDade

c 2025 BETH BARANY

https://bethbarany.com/

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The post Read, Write, Repeat with David D. Levine appeared first on Writer's Fun Zone.

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Writing the first draft of your book can be a daunting task, especially if you are a perfectionist.

The path from “blank page” to “finished manuscript” is long and winding and full of perils — the haunting presence of impostor syndrome, the siren song of endless scrolling on your phone, the screech and roar of your inner critic.

One of the biggest roadblocks to finishing the first draft of a book is the monster I like to call “creative shame.”

What is Creative Shame?

Creative shame is any “should” we carry about our writing and our writing practices (“I should be further along,” “I should be more disciplined,” “I should write every day.” You know the drill, I’m sure).

Any harshly self-critical narrative we bring to our writing practice that has a tendency to keep us from writing can generate creative shame.

We pick up creative shame as we travel along our writing path, and it is sticky.

Here are some ways creative shame frequently shows up for writers, novice and expert alike.

• A bad experience with an English teacher, editor, or critique partner — that nasty comment on a piece of writing that we still carry around and that pops up each time we approach our current manuscript.
• Unkind internal narratives about things like “discipline,” “talent,” and “motivation” — all the ways we compare ourselves to an imaginary ideal writer and find ourselves lacking.
• Negative, absolutist self-talk about our writing skill and practice — the ways we “always” mess up or “never” get it right.
• A fear of sharing our work with others, rooted in the belief that the draft is never quite “good enough.” Maybe one more revision, and then I’ll let someone read it… 
• Intense perfectionism that invites us to do things like critique and edit our drafts while we’re writing them, jolting us out of creative flow and into insecurity.

Creative shame, put simply, sucks.

It’s painful to experience and it keeps us stewing in old wounds and fears rather than striding boldly forward with the stories we are meant to share with readers.

Experiencing creative shame can keep us from ever starting the first draft of the book we desperately want to write — or talk us into abandoning that draft partway through (this is the origin of “shiny object syndrome,” where a new idea pops up it’s so tempting to let it take the place of whatever you’re currently working on).

Getting trapped in a creative shame spiral can also keep us from sharing the work we do manage to finish, because we believe it will never be good enough.

Or, if we muster up the courage to send something out, we end up feeling like critiques and rejections are personal attacks.

We get defensive instead of approaching feedback like an opportunity to grow.

Perhaps the most important thing to know about creative shame is that it does not work for creating positive behavioral change in our writing practices.

I have coached many writers who, speaking from a place of shame, have been trying to brute force a better writing practice based on every “should” they can think of and can’t understand why it isn’t helping.

The problem is that shame doesn’t result in positive change.

Creative shame keeps us small and tells us we don’t deserve joy in our writing practices until we accomplish some out-of-reach goal or adopt an impossible habit.

A path to sustainable, enjoyable writing that is not!

Shame also convinces us to isolate ourselves.

It can be hard to acknowledge how bad a shame-driven writing practice feels, or admit to the nasty things we say to ourselves each time we sit down to try to write.

The more isolated we get, the less access we have to the support and resources we need to promote our creativity and grow our skills.

The shame spiral gets deeper and harder to escape.

Yuck, right?

So, what can we do about it?

How do we beat the monster of creative shame and rebuild a healthy, sustainable writing practice?

Overcoming Creative Shame

Creative shame withers in the bright light of critical appraisal and supportive rituals.

Here are two activities you can use to start recognizing and combating creative shame so that you can return to your writing practice with confidence.

Critical Appraisal: The Shame Detective

Creative shame likes to be the loudest voice in the room.

It wants to dominate the conversation and keep you in place — and it absolutely does not want you to ask any critical questions about what it’s telling you.

Enter the Shame Detective.

Pick your favorite detective from literature — maybe the Honorable Miss Phryne Fisher, Sherlock Holmes, or Encyclopedia Brown — and break out your magnifying glass.

It’s time to turn the tables on your creative shame.

When you notice that you’re caught in a shame spiral, start by asking yourself two questions:

1. What evidence do I have for this belief?
2. What evidence do I have against this belief?

The first question gives you a chance to assess what truth might be tucked away in the narrative creative shame is trying to spin.

What helpful nugget can you glean from that story? 

Where has shame taken over something true or useful that you can work with, rather than beat yourself up about?

The second question puts all your detective skills to work and asks you to look for evidence and other clues about what’s going on beneath the surface.

Odds are really high that you are not the abject, miserable failure your creative shame wants you to think you are — and mustering the evidence can help you interrupt that shame and tell a stronger, truer story about your writing practice.

Gather the hard facts.

Then, follow up this exercise with a final question: How can I practice self-care and tell a more complete story?

Self-care is a critical component of defeating creative shame, because shame tells us we don’t deserve nice things — and facing our shame head-on can be difficult!

What restorative practice can you engage in to refill your cup?

Finally, telling a more complete story is the counter-narrative to creative shame’s bullying.

Remind yourself of the truth and pull out your factual evidence: your shame isn’t telling the whole story.

Over time, creative shame will start to give way to reality.

Supportive Ritual: Shame Release Activity

As you continue to claim the role of Shame Detective, you’ll reach a point where you’re ready to let go of some old shame-based story.

Maybe there’s an old wound that you realize has healed, or an internal narrative you’re ready to stop repeating.

Creating a symbolic gesture of release can help you banish old ghosts and welcome fresh new energy into your writing mindset and practice.

Plus, customizing your own ritual is a lot of fun!

Here’s how it can work:

• Choose an aspect of creative shame that you feel ready to release
• Write it down on a piece of paper
• Symbolically destroy the shame in whatever way feels right to you. You could scribble, paint, or collage over top of it. You might tear the paper into tiny pieces and bury them at the bottom of the trash. You could even burn the paper (while practicing appropriate fire safety!).
• On another piece of paper, replace that story of shame with a neutral observation or positive affirmation, depending on what feels true for your journey right now.
• Keep that paper with your writing supplies or hang it somewhere you’ll see it regularly.
• Repeat as needed.

Ongoing Combat with Creative Shame

Becoming the Shame Detective and practicing rituals of release are two great tools for dealing with creative shame.

However, it’s a tenacious monster, and it will find a way to slink back into your writing practice now and again.

One of the most powerful ways you can continue to defeat creative shame is by finding a community of fellow writers.

Connecting with other people on the same path can serve as a useful reminder that you are not alone in facing a mindset challenge like creative shame — and community is a powerful antidote to shame-driven isolation.

Joining (or starting!) a writing group at your local library is an excellent strategy for making in-person connections.

You could also join a virtual writing group, sign up for a writing class, or hire a book coach to connect with mentors and peers who can help you on your journey.

Creative shame does not get to defeat you!

With some handy tools in your pocket and friends by your side, you’ll find the path back to a writing practice that feels magical and enjoyable once more.

***

About the Author

Dr. Bailey Lang is the Literary Witch, a book coach who helps visionary authors reclaim their creative magic and finish their books.

Bailey has a PhD in rhetoric and writing studies and they love geeking out about writing, language, and magic.

You can sign up for Bailey’s free newsletter, Ink + Alchemy, for monthly missives that will help you build a writing practice you love.

Website

Newsletter

The post Overcoming Creative Shame and Finishing Your First Draft by Bailey Lang appeared first on Writer's Fun Zone.

5 Upcoming Inspiring Interviews – How To Write the Future podcast, episode 201

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“Oh my goodness. Sue has so much to say about research and how to use research strategically about finding conflicts and problems and learning as much as you need to know to be able to move forward. So be sure to listen to our conversation. It was really fun talking with her. I so admire her.” – Beth Barany

In this How To Write the Future podcast episode, “5 Upcoming Inspiring Interviews“ host Beth Barany shares with listeners upcoming interviews for the podcast including with a fellow science fiction and fantasy author, hip hop organizer, novelist and Masters student, award-winning science fiction novelist, creative nonfiction author, and a long-time publishing professional. You’re also invited to be interviewed on the podcast which Beth explains how to do.

Platforms the podcast is available on: Apple Podcasts | Buzzsprout | Spotify| YouTube

RESOURCES

JOIN: For fiction writers! You’ve finished your first draft! Congrats! Now what?

Join the Future-Ready Writer membership and get premium weekly lessons and a monthly Q&A on Zoom. Subscribe: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2012061/subscribe

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SHOP**: Sci‑Fi & Fantasy 24 Writing Prompts:** https://ko-fi.com/s/4ac9160a74

Want to be interviewed on the podcast? => Email us!

FOR CREATIVE WRITING PROFESSIONALS – BUILD YOUR BUSINESS SERVING WRITERS

Sign up to be notified when our training opens and get a short Creative Business Style Quiz to help you create success.

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GET SOME FREE WRITING COACHING LIVE ON THE PODCAST

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GET SUPPORT FOR YOUR FICTION WRITING BY A NOVELIST AND WRITING TEACHER AND COACH

Schedule an exploratory call here and see if Beth can support you today: https://writersfunzone.com/blog/discovery-call/

About the How To Write the Future podcast 

The How To Write The Future podcast is for science fiction and fantasy writers who want to write positive futures and successfully bring those stories out into the marketplace. Hosted by Beth Barany, science fiction novelist and creativity coach for writers. We cover tips for fiction writers. This podcast is for readers too if you’re at all curious about the future of humanity.

This podcast is for you if you have questions like:

– How do I create a believable world for my science fiction story?

– How do I figure out what’s not working if my story feels flat?

– How do I make my story more interesting and alive?

This podcast is for readers, too, if you’re at all curious about the future of humanity.

Transcript for episode 201 – 5 Guests, 5 Big Ideas

200 Episodes Milestone

BETH BARANY: I have just passed my 200th episode. Huzzah. We are now in a new phase. 

And with that in mind, I’m gonna share with you some upcoming interviews that are coming real soon here in How to Write the Future. 

So be sure to look for those. I’m gonna summarize them here for you so you have something to look forward to.

[00:27] David D. Levine Chat 

So I did an interview with David D. Levine, a science fiction and fantasy author. And we talked about the interesting blend of tech and imagination. We offered some tips for aspiring writers. We talked a lot about genre bending and the role of history in fiction, which I thought was really interesting.

[00:48] Alex Kingsley Multiform Storytelling 

Next up, I spoke with Alex Kingsley. 

Alex Kingsley is a science fiction writer and Master’s student in Chicago and works across multiple mediums, which I thought was really fun. I love this. So Alex works with novels, short stories, playwriting, standup comedy, improv, tabletop game design and is working on academic criticism.

So all of that fascinating. We talked about the power of imagination, the influence of these diverse mediums, and I loved Alex’s take on the future of storytelling. So stay tuned for that.

[01:29] Sue Burke Research And Worlds 

Next I’m going to showcase Sue Burke. Sue Burke is an award-winning science fiction author with a background in journalism. 

So we talked about how her journalism background influenced her sci-fi storytelling. She’s an award-winning novelist. She has a book called Semiosis, which talks about intelligent plants. So interesting. So we talked about crafting futuristic worlds as well as research.

Oh my goodness. Sue has so much to say about research and how to use research strategically about finding conflicts and problems and learning as much as you need to know to be able to move forward. So be sure to listen to our conversation. It was really fun talking with her. I so admire her.

[02:15] Khafre Jay Hip Hop And Gentrification 

Then I spoke with Khafre Jay, who is here in the San Francisco Bay Area as a local San Francisco Bay Area hip hop organizer.

And I actually met him on the street while he was bringing people into his organization, getting supporters. Oh my goodness. He really knows how to talk to people. And he comes into all the different neighborhoods that are very different from the one he grew up in San Francisco.

He talks about hip hop culture amid gentrification. So he’s not afraid to come into neighborhoods that have been gentrified and say, Hey, my black culture is being erased and in San Francisco and in the Bay Area. 

And he does it with humor and heart and he talks about how hip hop is a full culture beyond rap, and we talked about his weekly rap contests that are live in a wonderful community space here in Berkeley, just the neighboring town over. We talked about DJs and graffiti artists and break dancing as well as the power of art to uplift and the community actions that he is supporting.

Really interesting. And I’m doing all I can to lift his voice up and showcase what he’s doing. 

[03:26] Publishing and AI With Julie Trelstad 

And then, I spoke with a publishing professional, Julie Trelstad. And here we talked about AI and publishing and how authors can protect and promote their work in the digital age, including AI content licensing, as well as thinking about metadata for our books in the age of AI.

And we had a wide ranging, fascinating conversation. Learned some really key things that are coming down the pike. So be sure to stay tuned for that if you want to know what’s going on in the world of publishing and AI and things to watch out for. 

[04:03] Next Up Brownwell Landrum Magic 

And lastly, I spoke with Brownell Landrum about the art of cosmic wishing storytelling and how we can create futures through fiction. We talked about her epic trilogies, the science of wishing and her unique journey of bridging science fiction and real world science.

So stay tuned for that episode coming up soon. 

So those are some of my upcoming interviews that I’ll be sharing here on How To Write The Future. 

[04:36] How To Be A Guest on How To Write The Future 

I also want to talk to you about what do you do if you wanna be a guest on How To Write The Future. I’ve interviewed dozens of people. Dozens and dozens.

I, I should add it up, at least I had say 30 or 40 people over the last four years, for How To Write The Future podcast. And I am picky as we all are. So let me call up the press kit.

If you go to BethBarany.com / podcast presskit, you’ll be able to see everything you need to know about the podcast.

So number one, if you wanna be a guest on the podcast, you need to listen to the podcast. Make sure it is a good fit for you.You’re a good fit for our podcast if you are speaking to science fiction and fantasy writers.

Also, if you have something to offer tips for write for science fiction and fantasy writers. And if you are a science fiction and fantasy writer yourself, come with a little bit about your book, but also anything that’s helpful to other writers. If you are doing something else in the realm of supporting authors, like a publishing consultant or do something with the visuals for books, illustrations, or book covers, again, come with something interesting about what you do as well as be able to talk about what you do, but also make it relevant to science fiction and fantasy authors. 

[05:57] Topics And Audience 

So if you wanna dig a little deeper, I cover topics like world building, craft mindset. The new technologies.

I also love to talk to futurists and foresight practitioners. People who are studying about future trends and how to handle things that are difficult to predict about how to handle. Also, I like talking to thought leaders, and by that people who care about the benefit of all and care about how we can make the world a better place.

And you like what I’m doing, you think it would be a good conversation and you think it would benefit writers.

I very much care about benefit about benefiting writers and benefiting creatives, and I also care about coming at it with a hopeful approach.

Alright. 

I also know that some of my listeners aren’t authors or writers, but they care about the future and they, they care about new ideas and they care about stories, and they care about the imagination and creativity. So those, you need to be able to speak to that audience as well.

[06:56] Press Kit And Wrap Up 

So be sure to check out the How To Write The Future press kit. It’s Beth Barany dot com slash podcast press kit and you’ll be able to take a look at that and I’ll be sure to put that link in the show notes. 

[07:09] Final Sign Off 

Be sure to stay tuned for these upcoming interviews. And if you would like to be a guest on How To Write The Future, be sure to query me appropriately telling me how you would be a good fit for this podcast.

Alright, that’s it for this week, everyone. Write long and prosper. ​ 

Loved this episode? Leave us a review and rating here: 

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Need instructions on how to leave a review? Go here.

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Support our work for creatives: leave a tip: https://ko-fi.com/bethbarany 

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ABOUT BETH BARANY 

Beth Barany teaches science fiction and fantasy novelists how to write, edit, and publish their books as a coach, teacher, consultant, and developmental editor. She’s an award-winning fantasy and science fiction novelist and runs the podcast, “How To Write The Future.”

Learn more about Beth Barany at these sites: 

Author site /  Coaching site / School of Fiction / Writer’s Fun Zone blog

CONNECT

Contact Beth: https://writersfunzone.com/blog/podcast/#tve-jump-185b4422580

Email: beth@bethbarany.com

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X: https://twitter.com/BethBarany

CREDITS

• EDITED WITH DESCRIPT: https://www.descript.com?lmref=_w1WCA (Refer-a-Friend link)
• MUSIC CREDITS : Music from Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/soundroll/fuzz-buzz License code: UMMKDRL02DFGKJ0L. “Fuzz buzz” by Soundroll. Commercial license: https://musicvine.com/track/soundroll/fuzz-buzz.
• DISTRIBUTED BY BUZZSPROUT: https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1994465 (Refer-a-Friend link)
• SHOW PRODUCTION BY Beth Barany
• SHOW CO-PRODUCTION + NOTES by Kerry-Ann McDade

c 2025 BETH BARANY

https://bethbarany.com/

For more “How To Write the Future” episodes, go here.

If you’d like to invite Beth onto your podcast, drop her a note here.

Like the work we do? Tip us! https://ko-fi.com/bethbarany 

The post 5 Upcoming Inspiring Interviews appeared first on Writer's Fun Zone.

***

Recently I had the pleasure of sitting down with Khafre Jay, an artist, educator, and community builder whose work keeps circling back to one core idea: creativity isn’t fluff. It’s a tool for survival, agency, and real-world change.

We covered a lot in 34 minutes (including music, business models, community spaces, and the messy realities of making culture sustainable). (I’ll be sharing another conversation we had back in February soon on the How To Write The Future podcast.)

What I want to share here — especially for my fellow creative writers — is what Khafre kept returning to: make what fits you, make it specific, and make it useful.

Who Khafre Jay is (and why writers should pay attention)

Khafre doesn’t talk about creativity as a vague “follow your dreams” slogan. He talks about it like a strategist.

At one point he described a workshop he created for college students who don’t see themselves reflected in the traditional pipeline:

“It basically centers on taking your identity, your culture, something that you’re passionate about, and trying to imagine that as a job, as a business, as a company… What would that look like…?”

Even if you’re not trying to build a nonprofit or run community programs, that mindset is gold for writers.

Because the same question applies to us:

• What do you care about enough to keep returning to it?
• What do you already do naturally (even when you’re tired)?
• How do you shape that into stories, offers, teaching, or services that actually fit your life?

Khafre’s advice for creatives: start with what you love

When I asked what he would say to a working novelist trying to translate skills into service, Khafre went straight to energy and alignment:

“First off, what skill are you the most excited about? What skill do you love the most? It has to be self-fulfilling.”

Then he added a twist I appreciate because it’s honest:

“I really disagree highly with [‘Do something you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.’]… I think if you find something you love, [you’ll] work your fingers to the bone if you’re not careful.”

That’s real. Loving something doesn’t magically remove effort. But it does change the emotional math—especially over the long haul.

For writers, this can be a relief. It means you don’t need permission to lean into what you genuinely love (themes, settings, obsessions, questions, subgenres). You can treat that love as data. A compass.

A practical framework writers can borrow

Khafre offered a concrete way to narrow the field when you have many interests:

“Pick the top five things that you like to do and imagine which one you think will be the easiest… take the least amount of input, effort, [and] will be the most rewarding… And do that one first… because really it’s just order of operations.”

Writers often get stuck because we have too many valid paths:

• Which book next?
• Which marketing strategy?
• Which platform?
• Should I teach? freelance? self-publish? query?

This “top five + easiest-rewarding-first” approach isn’t about shrinking your ambition. It’s about reducing friction so you can keep moving.

Niche isn’t a cage. It’s a power move.

Khafre’s examples were vivid (and delightfully weird in the best way). He talked about taking a passion and letting it shape both business and art:

“Some people think of just painting and how do I get out there… Some people think, ‘Hey, I’m going to make my own gallery.’ … It becomes fulfilling.”

And then he brought it directly into storytelling:

“If they like pottery, write a mystery novel about pottery… there’s shards of pottery with little cuneiform codes on it…”

Later he doubled down on the same idea with another example:

“If you’re a novelist and you like knitting… make a crime novel that has to do with yarn… Make a sci-fi space knitting…”

I’m sharing these not because you need to write “space knitting” (though honestly, if you do, please send me the link). I’m sharing them because Khafre’s point is bigger:

• Your specific interests are not distractions.
• They can be the very thing that differentiates your work.
• They can create a demand you didn’t realize existed.

Creativity as resilience (and why it matters right now)

Early in our conversation, Khafre said something that stuck with me:

“Creativity is the only thing that is going to get our minds out of this kind of sleepiness.”

If you’ve been writing (or trying to) in the middle of anxious times, you know what I mean. Sitting down to write can feel like an act of reclaiming.

Creativity doesn’t ignore reality. It gives us language, shape, and meaning-making. And for many of us, it’s one of the few places we can still choose our attention.

One more craft gem: voice through embodiment and repetition

As a writer and teacher, I’m always listening for process details—the “how do you actually do it?” part.

Khafre described a method he uses to write raps while driving: no paper, building line by line, repeating until it locks in. What struck me wasn’t just the memorization—it was how embodied it is. Rhythm, tone, melody, syllables. He said:

“You’re not just writing the words, you’re writing the tones… the syncopation.”

Writers can borrow this by experimenting with:

• Reading scenes out loud (yes, really)
• Repeating a paragraph until the cadence is right
• Letting voice emerge through sound, not just meaning

What I’m taking with me (and what I hope you take too)

Khafre’s overall message to writers is beautifully simple:

“I don’t think anything’s too crazy. [I] just think that we’re crazy to try things that don’t fit us perfectly. It’s a waste of time.”

So here’s your Writer’s Fun Zone invitation, straight from that spirit:

• Name what you love.
• Make your weirdness specific.
• Choose the next step with the best effort-to-reward ratio.
• Build stories (and a creative life) that actually fit you.

That’s not just craft advice. It’s creative strategy.

About Khafre Jay

Khafre Jay is a Bay Area hip-hop educator, organizer, and public health advocate who builds welcoming cultural spaces where people can get on the mic, be heard, and grow.

His work centers on turning creativity into a practical strategy for survival, community care, and leadership, especially for Black youth and other students who’ve been told they don’t “fit” inside traditional systems.

Khafre brings a deep love of rap craft (voice, rhythm, memory, performance) alongside a fierce commitment to making spaces that are rooted in peace, love, unity, and accountability — spaces where people can start, experiment, and get better without being shamed.

Khafre is focused on creating and sustaining Flow Lab: free, consistent, community-based open mic and rap-writing spaces that keep hip-hop culture alive and accessible, and that help artists build real momentum — and real income — over time.

He also hosts a Sunday radio show on KPOO (12-3pm PT) highlighting local Bay Area hip-hop artists, and partners with community organizations to bring hip-hop into public health and family-support spaces.

All the details about his hip-hop events at HipHopForTheFuture.com.

How to support Hip Hop for the Future: (Yes, I am a supporter.)

Hip Hop for the Future Events

FloLab (weekly in Berkeley)

FloLab is a weekly rap-writing contest and open mic cypher focused on building skills, courage, and community. The night begins with an open mic to warm up and encourage people to step up, and then moves into the contest — artists perform what they wrote to the beats and the crowd chooses who advances. The winner takes home a $300 cash prize. Flow Lab is designed to push back on the misconception that rap spaces are automatically harsh or humiliating; the vibe is rooted in support, growth, and cultural respect.

SF Pregnancy Village (monthly in San Francisco)

Khafre Jay partners with SF Pregnancy Village, a community event held on the second Saturday at the Bayview YMCA (Hunters Point, San Francisco). It’s a space for connection, community support, and collaboration with local organizations (including partners like Rafiki Coalition.)

Sunday radio show on KPOO (San Francisco)

Khafre hosts a Sunday hip-hop show on KPOO 89.5 FM (streaming online), featuring three hours of local Bay Area hip-hop artists. It’s a platform for community voices and a way to stay connected to what’s happening right now in the Bay’s music culture.

***

Article by Beth Barany (award-winning science fiction and fantasy novelist, creative entrepreneur, writing coach, creativity coach, writing teacher, and bookish business strategist)

*Note: This post was created with the assistance of Notion’s AI and Canva.

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The post Creativity as Strategy: Lessons from Khafre Jay appeared first on Writer's Fun Zone.

Uncertain Times: Five Creative Superpowers – How To Write the Future podcast, episode 200

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“What is creativity? Here’s the short of it. For me, creativity is about combining disparate elements, elements we might not even think of putting together. For us, for us as science fiction and fantasy writers, what might this look like? Well, this will be a fusion of tropes and genres and settings and your own personal spin.” – Beth Barany

In the latest How To Write the Future podcast episode titled “Uncertain Times: Five Creative Superpowers” host, Beth Barany shares what creativity means to her and what the five “superpowers” are that writers can use to enhance their writing.

Platforms the podcast is available on: Apple Podcasts | Buzzsprout | Spotify| YouTube

***

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About the How To Write the Future podcast 

The How To Write The Future podcast is for science fiction and fantasy writers who want to write positive futures and successfully bring those stories out into the marketplace. Hosted by Beth Barany, science fiction novelist and creativity coach for writers. We cover tips for fiction writers. This podcast is for readers too if you’re at all curious about the future of humanity.

This podcast is for you if you have questions like:

– How do I create a believable world for my science fiction story?

– How do I figure out what’s not working if my story feels flat?

– How do I make my story more interesting and alive?

This podcast is for readers, too, if you’re at all curious about the future of humanity.

Transcript for episode 200 – Uncertainty: Five Creative Superpowers

Uncertainty and Opportunity 

BETH BARANY: We are living in a deep age of uncertainty. Societal, economic, political. All the rules of the road are shifting fast and have been shifting fast for a while. And it’s all, it’s clear to everyone that we are in a age of uncertainty. 

Here’s the good news. I think that creative people, especially fiction writers, we can bring our creative skill sets into real life for decision making in this time of uncertainty.

And of course, we can really lean into those skills for our writing. 

[00:37] What Creativity Means 

First off, I wanna talk about what is creativity and also welcome you. Welcome to How to Write the Future Podcast. I’m Beth Barany, your host, award-winning science fiction and fantasy writer, podcaster, filmmaker, and writing teacher and creativity trainer.

So what is creativity? Here’s the short of it. For me, creativity is about combining disparate elements. Elements we might not even think of putting together. For us as science fiction and fantasy writers, what might this look like? This will be a fusion of tropes and genres and settings and your own personal spin.

For example, I’ve been writing science fiction mysteries where I’m blending detective tropes using cultural and sociocultural, anthropological look at different groups, and of course, themes of justice. Or I know a writer who’s taking fairytales and using those as inspiration into writing modern day novels with thriller elements.

Those are just a few examples.

Now, today I wanna talk about what are our superpowers or skills that we can use to enhance in our own writing, but also transfer into our daily lives if we want to, to help us handle this age of uncertainty. And today I’m gonna talk about five skills or superpowers.

Five. ’cause we like five. Five is a, five’s a good number. 

[01:59] Skill One: Flow State 

Number one. Core creative skill number one is our ability to flow or to channel. No matter the stage you’re in, whether you’re drafting, editing, or planning your story, there is an element of listening. Listening to something we don’t even know what, and then capturing that on the page. That listening, that being in the flow, being connected to the ideas and putting them on the page, that is an amazing skill.

So how can you use that in your daily life to make decisions? Are you listening to what is coming in? Just like the way you listen when you are writing your stories.

[02:38] Skill Two Many Options 

Core creative skill number two. This is about knowing how to generate lots of possibilities and then choosing the one we’re gonna use. And this shows up at any stage of the creative process, whether you are designing your story, planning it, plotting it, you are choosing amongst many ideas and you’re putting that down. Whether it’s editing, picking the best word, or maybe changing a scene a little bit and deciding what your characters are gonna say, or maybe even changing the motivation for your character, or maybe even changing the setting or adding more details or changing the telling detail.

We are making a choice at every moment when we’re creating stories. This is an amazing muscle that we have built, maybe without even realizing it. And then when you are choosing this word or that, this plot point or that plot point, this story structure or that story structure. Where to end a scene, where to start a scene. What lets you know that you are making the right decision?

[03:37] Somatic Compass and Titles 

I have a personal somatic compass. Somatic meaning the body. I feel it in my body a certain way, a certain zing, a certain kind of energy that goes through me. Or sometimes it’s a relaxation, a way I take a deep breath when I’ve settled on an idea that just feels right. So what is your somatic compass? How do you know that your decision, out of all the possibilities, feels right?

And here’s a, an example that actually happened to me for one of my books in my Janey McCallister mystery series Book two. It’s called Lured by Light, but it took over 60 brainstorming options with my book concept designer to figure out which was the best one. 

We had some parameters. It needed to have a color. It needed to be two or three words. It needed to feel in alignment with the other three titles that had already been chosen. And we both needed to be excited about it. And Ezra, my husband, was there and he was listening to us as we were brainstorming, and he was responding also to all these titles that we were coming up with. And he too had a really positive response to the one we finally landed on, which is Lured By Light because picking a title, it’s a marketing tool. It needs to convey emotion, it needs to have intrigue, and it needs to feel in alignment with your genre. This was a process. It took us maybe an hour, I don’t even remember.

This was an example of generating lots of ideas and then choosing and using our bodies, and not just mine, but my cover design concept artist and my husband, who’s also a writer together, we are figuring this out. Titles are really a group exercise because it’s for the reader. It’s for many readers.

All right, so that’s core creative skill number two. Being able to generate a lot of possibilities and then choosing which is the best one. 

As I said, core creative skill number one is about flow channeling, really listening to the idea and then capturing it.

[05:36] Skill Three: What If 

So let’s move on to core creative skill number three. This is your ability to say what if. Writers, we are using what if all the time to build our story ideas, to build our scenarios. I don’t know about you, but I come up with lots of what ifs before I land on a story idea that I really love. One of my stories was inspired by two different images on the wall.

One was an image of a street scene of Paris, and one was an image of a dragon, a beautiful drawing, like out of a fantasy novel. So I asked myself, what if there was a dragon in Paris? And that was one of my stories. And I knew immediately it would be perfect for the series that I was writing at the time, which was paranormal and set in different parts of France.

Now, how does this apply to you in the real world? In, in the real world. IRL, in your walking around world, when you’re not writing?

You could even use it to help yourself come up with different ideas to challenges that you’ve never seen before.

Because yeah, with all this uncertainty, that means we’re gonna be presented with scenarios we have never seen before.

So we could ask ourselves, well, what if I did this instead of that? Or, what if this could happen? Or what if that could happen in the different areas of our life, be it about work or money or lifestyle or relationships.

So remember your what if tool as a story writer and practice it in your daily life. 

[07:00] Skill Four Commit Anyway 

Here is the fourth core creative skill. And this is about commitment, despite incomplete information. When we’re writing a story, whether you’re planning it, writing it, or editing it, I don’t know about you, but it always feels like I could be making it better.

Or if I just did a little bit more research, it would be whizzbang way more interesting. But at some point I have to stop and I have to let the story go. So I just trust in myself and I am committed to the process. And I know that even though I don’t know everything, the story is doing its job. I know enough. I don’t know if you would consider this a superpower, but I do because when we show up to write every day and work on our stories or on a regular basis, however you show up, we are operating off of incomplete information. And yet we are still committed to writing our stories.

How does this apply to you in daily life?

There’s a lot of times we are faced with decisions, needing to make a decision, and we don’t have all the information, but we need to commit and make a choice and move on.

So think about how you already are committed to your creative work and how that kind of commitment and trust in going forward and taking step after step can show up in your daily life.

[08:16] Skill Five: Evoke Empathy 

And lastly, number five. Our core creative skill number five is about evoking emotion. Novelists, our job in fiction is to evoke emotion. And by the way, all art, I believe that’s their job, is to evoke emotion. Well, when we evoke emotion in our audience, that emotion leads to empathy because our job is to help our readers step into another person’s life and experience it through their eyes. And have an emotional roller coaster and do it in a way that feels seamless and organic and really earned. And it’s very powerful when done well.

So I believe that us as creative writers, writing science fiction and fantasy and all genres, actually, our job is to really enhance human’s ability to feel for other kinds of people who are different than them. And when we write in a different point of view from our own, we also build empathy in our own, in ourself, and we expand what is possible for ourselves.

So writing fiction really builds empathy for the reader and for the writer. Now there’s a lot of things we can do with this skillset. We can put complicated ideas into our stories and let the readers feel and learn about the different angles and come to their own choice. We can show compassion for people and times that aren’t, maybe in the mainstream or even aren’t considered normalized in today’s culture, and we can expand people’s hearts through our art. 

[09:50] Five Skills Recap 

So those are my five skills or super powers. These five core creative skills. 

Number one, this ability to flow, listen to our creative idea and write it down. 

Number two is to generate lots and lots of possibilities, and then choose the one that feels right using your somatic compass, your body.

Number three is using the What If scenario building of course in our stories, but also in our real life to open up the possibilities, give us more choices. 

Number four is about commitment, follow through. The step-by-step work we do to write, especially write long form, write novels and still trust that this is turning into something.

And number five is really this, writing, building empathy. We are building empathy through our stories for ourselves and for others.

All right, those are my five points on your creative superpowers. 

[10:44] Final Encouragement 

In this age of uncertainty, I believe in you. The world needs your stories. All right. That’s it for this week, everyone.

Write long and prosper. 

Loved this episode? Leave us a review and rating here: 

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2012061 

Need instructions on how to leave a review? Go here.

***

Support our work for creatives: leave a tip: https://ko-fi.com/bethbarany 

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ABOUT BETH BARANY 

Beth Barany teaches science fiction and fantasy novelists how to write, edit, and publish their books as a coach, teacher, consultant, and developmental editor. She’s an award-winning fantasy and science fiction novelist and runs the podcast, “How To Write The Future.”

Learn more about Beth Barany at these sites: 

Author site /  Coaching site / School of Fiction / Writer’s Fun Zone blog

CONNECT

Contact Beth: https://writersfunzone.com/blog/podcast/#tve-jump-185b4422580

Email: beth@bethbarany.com

LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/bethbarany/

IG: https://www.instagram.com/bethbarany/

TT: https://www.tiktok.com/@bethbarany/

FB: https://www.facebook.com/bethbarany

X: https://twitter.com/BethBarany

CREDITS

• EDITED WITH DESCRIPT: https://www.descript.com?lmref=_w1WCA (Refer-a-Friend link)
• MUSIC CREDITS : Music from Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/soundroll/fuzz-buzz License code: UMMKDRL02DFGKJ0L. “Fuzz buzz” by Soundroll. Commercial license: https://musicvine.com/track/soundroll/fuzz-buzz.
• DISTRIBUTED BY BUZZSPROUT: https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1994465 (Refer-a-Friend link)
• SHOW PRODUCTION BY Beth Barany
• SHOW CO-PRODUCTION + NOTES by Kerry-Ann McDade

c 2025 BETH BARANY

https://bethbarany.com/

For more “How To Write the Future” episodes, go here.

If you’d like to invite Beth onto your podcast, drop her a note here.

Like the work we do? Tip us! https://ko-fi.com/bethbarany 

The post Uncertain Times: Five Creative Superpowers appeared first on Writer's Fun Zone.

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Copyright Ownership When You Work Alone

Copyright ownership is easy when you work alone:

You’re the sole author, so you have 100% ownership of everything you create.

But what if you decide to collaborate with someone?

What if you hire a ghostwriter?

What if you contribute to a collection of works? 

Who owns the copyright then?

Co-Authoring and Joint Ownership

Let’s examine each of these scenarios to find out who owns the copyright:

If you want to create something with someone (e.g., co-author a book), you are considered joint owners.

Both of you share copyright ownership equally.

If there are more than two authors, everyone still has an equal share.

But an interesting point about co-ownership: 

You only need your co-author’s permission to grant an exclusive license to your work.

If you want to give a nonexclusive license (i.e., multiple people can have rights to the work), the permission of all authors is not required.

That said, you still must account to your co-authors for any money made from these nonexclusive licenses, and you should really think about how this will impact your relationship before you move on this.

Hiring Someone to Create Work (Work for Hire)

Hiring someone to make something for you is a different story.

This would fall under the “work for hire” doctrine, which states that the copyright belongs to the person who commissioned the work, not to the employee who actually performed it.

But if the person is not a literal employee, then there is a question of whether the work-for-hire doctrine applies.

To be safe, you should always have a written agreement stating who is the author and who owns the copyright (you’d think those are the same thing, but they’re actually not.)

Contributing to a Compilation

Contributing to a compilation (e.g., a collection of essays or short stories being published together) raises some questions.

Generally, you own the copyright to your contribution, and you’re granting a license to the editor or publisher, but there are some scenarios where this is considered work for hire.

When in doubt, look at the contract. (Hint: if you don’t see a formal contract, look at the terms for submission.)

Questions About Copyright Ownership

If you have questions about who owns the copyright after a collaboration, hire situation, or another scenario not mentioned here, feel free to contact me at kaway@kawaylaw.com.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kelley Way was born and raised in Walnut Creek, California. She graduated from UC Davis with a B.A. in English, followed by a Juris Doctorate. Kelley is a member of the California Bar, and an aspiring writer of young adult fantasy novels. More information at kawaylaw.com.

The post Who Owns the Copyright? What Happens When You Collaborate or Hire Out by Kelley Way appeared first on Writer's Fun Zone.