The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers

How do you find and notice story ideas, and how do you turn those into short stories, novels, or as anecdotes for your non-fiction or memoir? Why is an author's note so important in an age of AI, and what might it contain? Joanna Penn shares her thoughts, and her short story, The Black Church, along with its author's note.

In the intro, Ebook Preorders on Smashwords; Two titles per week on Amazon KDP; AI-related Digital Publishing Awards at Frankfurt Book Fair [Publishing Perspectives]; AI webinars in November; JFPenn YouTube;

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

Joanna Penn is an award-winning New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of thrillers, dark fantasy, short stories and travel memoir under J.F. Penn and also writes non-fiction for authors and hosts The Creative Penn Podcast.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.

Show Notes

From story seeds to stories

Writing an author's note

The Black Church, a short story, available as a stand-alone or as part of The Buried and the Drowned collection.

Author's Note for The Black Church

You can find How to Write, Publish, and Market Short Stories on all platforms, in all formats: www.TheCreativePenn.com/shortstorybook

From story seeds to stories

One of the most common questions that writers get asked is ‘Where do you get your ideas?’ This is a strange question for many of us, since we are often so deluged with ideas that the difficulty is sifting out which ones to turn into a story.

The trick is to tune into your curiosity and start noticing what grabs your interest. As Elizabeth Gilbert writes in Big Magic,

“The universe buries strange jewels deep within us all, and then stands back to see if we can find them.”

What do you see that others don’t? What turns your head while others pass by? What do you want to learn more about? What questions come up for you? What obsessions do you keep returning to? Each of these may be a fragment, a word, or a few lines. I call these story seeds.

An idea, in its earliest form, is like a seed. It’s small, easy to miss, and nothing like the thing it might grow into. You literally can’t tell what it will look like when it’s grown, but there is potential in it.

A seed isn’t a plot, or a character, or a full setting. It might be a line in a book or a film, a headline in the news, something you see in a museum display, or a place that made you feel something. It might be a question that bubbles up, or a feeling that won’t let you go.

You just have to notice these seeds and, importantly, write them down!

Capturing your story seeds

Thoughts and ideas and story seeds will flit through your mind all the time if you let them, but they are fleeting, so you need a way to capture them before they leave once more. It doesn’t matter how you do this, but you need some kind of simple process.

I use the Things app on my iPhone, which syncs to my Mac so I can always access it. Other people use a note-taking app or a physical notebook. It doesn’t matter. You just have to get it down.

My story seeds are often one-liners, quotes, or links to articles I’ve seen that I want to investigate later. They might be passages from books I have underlined, or places I visit, or questions I have while out in the world.

Here are a few examples from my Fiction Ideas file that might even spark ideas for you:

United Arab Emirates plans world’s first underwater bullet train connecting Dubai to Mumbai

L’appel du vide. The call of the void. The compulsion to jump.

“Vengeance of the lost garden.” Ben Okri. A Fire in My Head

Noah’s Ark on the moon, like the Svalbard seed bank

The Wicked Bible. Printing error. Thou shalt commit adultery. 1631.

You can see that these are not fully formed ideas. They are just seeds. Most will lie dormant, but some will sprout, appearing in stories or books years later.

When I’m thinking about writing a new short story, I sometimes go to a cafe and sit with a coffee and scroll through my seed folder and notice patterns and see what strikes me as interesting. Sometimes I won’t even know an idea came from a seed I once found, but I look at my list later and discover I had thought about it once before. It’s a wonderful way to plant ideas and later find they have grown into something wild and curious.

If you haven’t already got a way to capture your story seeds, establish a simple process now. Don’t overthink it. Just start noticing and writing them down. They might not make sense at the moment, but they may flower later.

Searching for story seeds

Julia Cameron discusses the idea of an Artist’s Date in her book The Artist’s Way, and this practice has always been important to me. It involves taking time out on your own to go somewhere and fill your creative well, whatever that means to you. For me, it’s often travel to interesting places or visiting museum exhibitions that I know will have nuggets of fascination that may result in full blown story seeds.

On the morning of my fiftieth birthday, in March 2025, we woke up in Iceland next to the Black Church at Búðir on the Snæfellsnes Peninsula, a few hours’ drive northwest of Reykjavík. The small church and graveyard sit on a bed of ancient lava under the gaze of a glacier and there is a sense that time has stopped in this place. As we walked around the church that morning, the place itself became a story seed, and I later wrote The Black Church from that spark.

On the cheaper end of the inspiration spectrum, I often go to the British Museum in London seeking story seeds and over the years, it has provided much inspiration for fiction of different lengths.

An exhibition on religious relics inspired Crypt of Bone, a Viking collection appeared in Day of the Vikings, and one of the main characters in Desecration works as a researcher there. In terms of short stories, a sunken Egypt exhibition inspired The Dark Queen and I saw the actual Bronze Age wooden spars of Seahenge at an exhibition on the ancient world. If you follow your curious impulses, you will find story seeds everywhere.

From seed to story

Now that you have a load of story seeds, how do they become stories?

For me, it’s usually about a juxtaposition of multiple seeds that suddenly coalesce into something coherent.

With a Demon’s Eye came from my own experience of laser eye surgery, which was unsettling in so many ways, but a feeling is not enough for a story. Some months later, I read It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War by combat photographer Lynsey Addario, and I suddenly had a character, someone whose life was defined by their sight, and who might indeed choose a dangerous path to keep it.

Questions:

Where do you find your story seeds? How can you make time to tune into your curiosity and discover more of them?

How are you saving your story seeds?

Can you open up time to revisit your seeds and see what might take root as a story?

The Author's Note

As a reader, I love an author’s note, and as an author, I always include one in every story, of any length. I want to share the spark that started my thought process and I love to include my research trips and links to photos, as well as a bibliography if I’ve gone deeper into any subject.

In an age of AI, when whole stories can be generated with a single prompt, the author’s note is a way to double down on being human and include your fingerprints on your finished work.

What is an author’s note?

An author’s note is a separate chapter, long or short, at the beginning or end of a story. It’s from you as the writer addressed to the reader who might be interested in what inspired your fiction. As an example, you can find my author’s note for The Black Church below.

It can be simple, even just a few lines. At the end of Blood, Sweat, and Flame, I note that the story was inspired by watching the Netflix series Blown Away, a reality show where glassblowers compete in a hot shop filled with furnaces and molten art.

It can also be far more substantial.

My author’s note for Between Two Breaths is a mini essay on how I left London in 2000 to go travelling after the stress of working in the city in the ’90s and found peace diving beneath the waters of the Poor Knights Islands in New Zealand. Later, that led to diving alone and a moment where I made the choice to carefully ascend when everything in me wanted to stay down in the blue.

That author’s note also includes recommended books on free diving as well as a documentary, and links to a solo episode of my Books and Travel podcast where I talk more about why I loved scuba diving.

While the two notes differ greatly in length and emotional depth, and they shouldn’t affect whether the reader enjoys the story or not, I feel like they provide an element of humanity that adds to the experience.

So, what should you include in an author’s note?

Start with the seed

I love to include my story seeds, the initial impetus for how the story was born.

In my author’s note for Seahenge, I explain that Seahenge itself is real and did indeed emerge off the coast of Norfolk, but my own experience of it began in 2022 when I stood in the British Museum in front of the actual blackened Bronze Age timbers and imagined a sacrifice laid across that upturned trunk. Standing there, I knew that I’d write a story inspired by it someday, I just didn’t know what that would be at the time.

Then I talk about how the seed expanded after a rainy visit to Ely Cathedral two years later, as I considered rising seas and drowned land and how the ocean wants to take it all.

A curious reader can almost understand how the story came to be, and that may change how they regard it, and perhaps, how they think of you, the author.

Include your research and links to resources

One of the reasons I write is so that I can feed my books with the results of my endless curiosity. I love research, and many readers are also interested in the lines between fact and fiction.

In the author’s note for Soldiers of God, I include a link to the news report about the Vatican scanning project to digitise the secret archives and use AI to uncover hidden meanings, as well as a link to the twelfth-century papal bull Militia Dei (Latin for soldiers of God) that granted the Templars the right to be buried in their own cemeteries.

In A Thousand Fiendish Angels, I explain the elements from Dante’s Inferno that inspired various parts of the linked stories, like the Arctic location reflecting Dante’s icy hell, the terrifying city of Dis, and even the symbolism of the character names. These hidden layers in the stories can bring an element of surprise and delight which some readers love to explore further.

Include emotion and your personal story

Part of the idea of doubling down on being human is bringing your real experience and authenticity to the page. Sharing personal emotions in your author’s note can bring a sense of connection between you and the reader that no AI tool or human ghostwriter could ever mimic.

But of course, your note has to come from your honest experience of life, and there’s no need to fabricate anything to make a story seem deeper than it is. Your story may be inspired by something simple, like Blood, Sweat, and Flame stemming from my enjoyment of a TV show, or it can be a more emotionally resonant connection.

Beneath the Zoo opens at the gates of the derelict Bristol Zoo on the eve of its destruction, and the author’s note tells the reader why this real place had such a hold on me.

After my parents divorced when I was young, my dad would take my brother and me to Bristol Zoo for a couple of hours every month, all the time we really had with him for a period of years. It was difficult, but walking those paths and looking at the animals gave us precious hours together.

When the zoo finally closed, and the news reported that it would be turned into housing, I wondered what might be found beneath its Victorian structures. I entwined my imaginings about what might lie there with my own nostalgic grief.

Of course, these revelations might feel difficult to talk about and only you can choose what to share. Sometimes we write fiction to obscure the truth and bury our feelings beneath metaphor, but even sharing one true thing will help you connect with the reader.

My author’s notes in The Buried and the Drowned reveal aspects of me that even some close friends and family may not know. I reveal myself on the page, knowing that if a reader gets that far, I can trust them with these fragments of my life.

Bibliography and other resources

As Cormac McCarthy said,

“Books are made out of books,”

and I love to share further reading for those who are curious to investigate the truth behind the stories.

For De-Extinction of the Nephilim, I shared news articles about de-extinction as well as a podcast interview with the founder of Colossal, the company that inspired the story. And, of course, I shared more fiction recommendations, including Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton and Extinction by Douglas Preston, both inspired by the same technology.

For The Black Church, I include the history of the church itself as well as website links for the hotel next to it, and a link to my notes and photos from the Iceland trip, which you can read in appendix 4.

Including these kinds of multimedia links can take the story off the page and into the real world, and perhaps even encourage the reader to go on their own adventures.

If I’ve written on similar themes before, I may include links to those stories or books in the author’s note.

At the end of Between Two Breaths, I note that I’ve written about other memorable dives in some of my other fiction. In Stone of Fire, Morgan Sierra recalls a dive at the Moeraki Boulders in New Zealand while inside St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice. In Deviance, O’s memory of an encounter with an octopus plays an important part in the story and is based on my own experience, and The Dark Queen features a dive to a submerged Egyptian city.

You can also use your author’s note to say thank you, although sometimes acknowledgements, email list sign-ups, and other back matter are kept separate.

There are no rules

You don’t need an author’s note at all, and if you include one, there’s no need to follow any template. It’s up to you how much you share, especially if you are self-publishing your own work as only you control the word count.

If you submit to professional markets, author’s notes are often not included or are a few short lines, so you may have to be concise, but if you reprint later, or include your stories in a collection, I urge you to consider adding something about the story behind the story and bring yourself, the author, alive.

Questions:

As a reader, do you love an author’s note? What do you like them to include?

For whatever story you’re working on, what are the elements you could include in an author’s note?

If readers want to do further reading on the topics of your short story, do you have sources from your own research you could share?

How could you connect with readers on a personal level through your author’s note?

You can read The Black Church as a stand-alone here, or read or listen as part of my collection, The Buried and the Drowned.

The post From Story Seeds To Stories, And Writing An Author’s Note, With Joanna Penn first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can you keep writing when midlife brings grief, exhaustion, rage, and a creativity that seems to have dried up? How can you accelerate if midlife brings you more energy? And how can you market your books authentically when your energy and your interests have changed? Jordan Rosenfeld shares what she learned from writing through her own pause.

In the intro, how to write short stories [Novel Marketing Podcast]; Bestsellers: Excavating the Tools and Techniques of Successful Novels – Kristen Tate.

Plus, Hugh Howey: The AI Bubble Explained; NEO writing software; Will the AI Bubble Destroy our Retirement? By Mr Money Mustache; Future Vision X Prize winner, The Gifted; and my Cathedral Zero trailer; How to Market a Book Fourth Edition survey.

Today's show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with writing software, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 15% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn

Jordan Rosenfeld is the author of psychological suspense novels and books on writing craft, as well as an editor and writing coach. Her latest book is Writing Through the Pause: Mining Midlife for Powerful Writing.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.

Show Notes

What midlife is, and why so many changes seem to arrive at once

Disenfranchised grief, empty nest, perimenopause and the losses nobody talks about

A fallow period is a germinating period, not a dead one

Don't isolate, try something new, and learn to write as play

How to market your books in a way that reflects who you are at your core

Vulnerability, curation and how much of yourself to share online

You can find Jordan at JordanRosenfeld.net.

Transcript of the interview with Jordan Rosenfeld

Jo: Jordan Rosenfeld is the author of psychological suspense novels and books on writing craft, as well as an editor and writing coach. Her latest book is Writing Through the Pause: Mining Midlife for Powerful Writing. So welcome to the show, Jordan.

Jordan: Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here.

Jo: Yes, this is an excellent topic. First up—

Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing.

Jordan: Absolutely. I'm really one of those annoying writers who's been writing all my life since I was a little girl, and it was all I really wanted to be or do. I'm a Gen X-er, so of course we grew up before the internet, and I read for pleasure and escape.

So I was really dogged in figuring out how does one go about becoming a writer, because it was the only thing I wanted to do.

I remember going to the library and checking out—eventually, later in my 20s—this massive tome, I forget what it was called. Like the Writer's Guide to Publishing, one of those big old things that has all of the editors, agents and stuff.

It was really just figuring out how to do it and sending snail mail queries and going to writing conferences. So I think I was just dog on a bone with it, really, since I was young. Like anything, once you get your toe in, it's a little easier to keep publishing.

I laugh because the first traditionally published book of mine was actually a book on writing craft before I had published any of my novels. So that felt strange, but I wasn't complaining at the same time.

Jo: So when was that, and what has your career looked like so far?

Jordan: So I published Make a Scene: How to Craft—oh my gosh, I'm forgetting my own subtitle—Crafting Powerful Scenes in 2005, which means I pitched it in 2003. That was the beginning of my era as a writing craft teacher as well. I was right out of graduate school at that point.

Then eventually I published my first novel. When I say my first novel, I just mean the first one that hit the world. It wasn't my first one written, but Forged in Grace. Then I eventually started putting out a writing craft guide every couple of years, just thanks to the wonderful people at Writer's Digest.

I just found a niche early on. Sometimes that just happens. I also like to point out that I was pitching books at a time before this whole concept of platform was a big deal. So you could be just any old body without a big following, because we didn't really have social media.

I did write for the magazine, the Writer's Digest magazine, which I think gave me a leg up in the book part. So writing craft became my niche, and then I always have really found success with small press for my novels.

So my current publisher is called Sibylline Press, and they are a publisher of women 50 and over, actually. That's their whole thing.

Jo: Oh, okay. That's interesting. Well, we're going to come back to the book in a minute, but just in terms of that journey, it's quite interesting. You mentioned platform there, that changed, and Writer's Digest publishing themselves got into trouble, didn't they? They got bought by a different publisher.

Jordan: Yep.

Jo: So you've been through some changes. Well, we're going to be talking about change in general, but changes in the industry have also happened.

So how have you navigated all that change over time?

Obviously a lot of listeners to this show are independent authors as well, so thoughts on how things have changed in the industry.

Jordan: Well, what's interesting is Writer's Digest actually went bankrupt. They got bought by another company who just mismanaged it, called F+W Media, and they went bankrupt. So a lot of us authors were terrified that all of our books were going to just revert.

I mean, it was fine to have the rights back, but we didn't want to republish ourselves at that time. So they did end up getting bought by Penguin Random House, which means our books are still alive in that traditional way.

So Forged in Grace, my first novel, I was in the process of querying agents, and then a friend of mine and I decided to start this thing. This was 2012, '13, this independent publishing collective. So we were going to act like a publisher but publish books. Basically it was people doing work trade.

We had someone who did cover design and someone who could do layout and marketing and all these things, and we came together. So I did publish my novel that way, and actually it was the time when Amazon was still quite favourable to indie authors. You could really make a decent amount of money.

Then my partner and I just… It didn't last. There were a lot of different reasons why we didn't, and it has nothing to do with the idea, which was totally working. I have really seen how the capitalist machine seems to continually come in and eat away at whatever profits there are for independent authors.

I've seen authors have to become marketers. We went from being people who could write, and then someone else would handle that, to having all of us have to do it ourselves, and now content creators. So I think a lot of us feel really exhausted, which actually is not unrelated to the book of mine that's coming out.

So I worry. Of course, we haven't even talked about AI, if we even want to, but I do worry a little bit about the future of publishing, but I'm not a pessimist in the sense that I don't think it's going away.

Jo: Oh, no, absolutely, I agree. Changes, I think, are what this is all about. Well, let's get into the book then. Let's start with a definition.

So what are you defining as midlife, and why is this such a change for many people?

Jordan: It's a very buzzword, midlife. So I will say it's a mental state as much as an age, because a lot of people start calling themselves or saying they're in midlife in their 30s, right? So it's not a hard age, even though you might say it's in your 40s or 50s.

For me, it's really the point at which I find people start to realise that they have less time ahead of them than behind. You might find yourself maybe a little past what I'm calling the striving stage of life, where you're focused on building career and identity and family, and all of that.

It also seems to coincide for people with multiple challenges at once. So maybe you're dealing with health issues or perimenopause or aging, and maybe you're helping your parents or your fledging teenage children, if you have children.

So there's a lot going on for people, it seems, at this stage of life, and I've interviewed 28 people for my book who range in age from 37 to 81. So there is definitely a wide range of age.

Jo: Yes, I think that's interesting. I almost wonder whether it is a realisation of changes. I mean, again, we'll just say menopause because I feel like for me, that's when it really kicked in, was there was a health hormonal shift, and I started feeling very different.

I started questioning a lot of things, and so much came up for me that I almost felt was out of my control. I think that was the biggest thing that happened for me, was realising, “This is out of my control,” and I don't particularly like that.

It felt like there was a lot of grief at midlife, and you mentioned there parents. Obviously some people's parents are dying, children are leaving.

Is grief a big part of this, do you think?

Jordan: Absolutely, and I like what you said about it often is a stage where people feel out of control of things, their bodies, their life circumstances. There's also a little bit of a, did I do everything I wanted? What will the next X years of my life look like, if they can get there?

Grief is a huge part of the transition, and I think grief is interesting. Right now, I'm in empty nest. I just fledged my son a month ago, and it did hit me harder than I thought it would, even preparing. So there's these kinds of grief we don't really give cultural credence to.

You can call them disenfranchised grief, where nobody died, and in fact, the things happening could be conceived as positive if you let them. But a child moving out of the house and you having to completely rearrange your identity, there's a grief involved in that. Or not seeing that child that you love so much.

Aging, dealing with aging parents in a healthcare system that doesn't offer supports, while you're trying to be a creative person.

Or the perimenopause thing is huge for a lot of people, because a lot of people were not told anything about this transition, and it can last 10 to 15 years for many people, and radically change your mind, your mental energy, your capacity, your executive functioning. It's huge.

So I definitely started writing this when that was happening to me, the perimenopause transition, but I also like it. As a creative person, I like the idea of a pause for anyone being a number of things that can happen in midlife.

Jo: Yes, and I think that's really important because, as women, that's one thing, but men go through different things, and people who identify in different ways go through different things. So we're not saying that it has to be specifically around menopause at midlife.

I think there are lots of different ways that this can show up, and of course, this is a show for writers. You're writing the book for writers.

So in talking about creativity, let's talk first about if people find that their creativity has just dried up, that it's almost died.

How can we learn to accept a fallow time, or perhaps accept and embrace a time of not plenty?

Jordan: That's a great question. First of all, I really looked into the idea of what fallow means, and you realise that a fallow period is not a dead period, it's a germinating period. It's necessary, right, for crops to come back. So I really love this metaphor of not seeing it as dead or gone, but as germinating.

I took a lot of relief and inspiration from this, it only exists as an audiobook, by Clarissa Pinkola Estés. She's the one who wrote Women Who Run With the Wolves, but she wrote a book called The Creative Fire, and she describes creativity as an infinite creative source that is never gone, but what happens is our access to it gets blocked.

So when I conceive of a fallow period as something in me is blocking access to my creativity, not that the creativity is gone, that was the first key for me. I also recommend that people work backwards and ask themselves, what life experiences, frustrations, disappointments, what burdens have you been dealing with?

There's usually a path back to what is preventing you from having access. And I really find the first thing is you need to apply gentleness and patience with yourself, and second, honestly, it sounds silly, but really reframing this idea that your creativity is not gone. It's not dead. It's germinating.

My therapist gave me the term rooting. She's like, “Oh, you're rooting,” like you're putting down roots, but you don't know what, if anything, is going to flower or bloom.

I was like, “Oh, I'm rooting. I'm not dead.” So I think it's a lot of reframing what we can do about it, rather than just conceive it.

Jo: Yes, I remember listening to that audiobook. I remember her voice saying la chispa. Do you remember? La chispa. I don't know if that means fire, but I remember it. I've listened to that, and you brought it up again. La chispa, yes.

I feel like that Women Who Run With the Wolves is just such an excellent book that we come back to at different points in our lives.

On other things, I feel like sometimes—you mentioned the word exhausted earlier—sometimes people are just exhausted. You are just tired. You're fatigued, and perhaps you just need a break. It doesn't need to be anything more than that, right?

You can just say, “I've got a lot going on. Maybe I just need to not do anything.”

Jordan: Absolutely. Actually, I find a lot of creative people are very driven in different ways, not necessarily ambition-wise, but driven to create or driven to express themselves. So sometimes that drive energy persists even when you don't have the energy for it.

So then we go into all this mental stuff about, “Well, something must be bad and wrong and broken,” rather than, “Oh, maybe I do need to be resting or conserving energy for myself right now.”

I think really it's having that confidence or trust that it's going to come back that is hard for a lot of us at midlife. We really think it's gone.

I do think that this is a stage of life where really getting support is necessary, whatever that looks like. I understand that things like therapy are not always accessible to everyone for cost reasons or time, so maybe it's your best friend or someone you see at the coffee shop or the gym or partner, anything.

Or it's two people who are both feeling creatively stuck and frustrated who say, “We're just going to get together once a week and see what happens,” talk, laugh, that kind of thing.

I just want to add that I really feel that if we're relying on our usual, typical, or former ways of doing things at midlife, they often fail us. It often requires a shift.

Jo: Yes, I also think that our mentors in books—I mean, you've mentioned there the Clarissa one, and of course your own book. I found when I needed to withdraw, I was reading a lot of books on the power of the older woman. Reclaiming the crone. I mean, I love this reclaiming language. The hag.

There's these words that we could reclaim around becoming older, and the cultures that respect elders, and what does it mean to move into that stage. I must have read 20 or 30 books in a period of a year of really trying to get to grips with things.

I feel like we can find therapy in these book mentors, as I like to call them.

Jordan: Yes. Absolutely. I don't know where I would be if I hadn't had book mentors most of my life. In fact, in a later chapter in the book, I quote Ursula K. Le Guin, who was obviously a science fiction writer, but notorious for really reclaiming older age.

She has a whole essay on the crone, and really the beauty of that stage of life, which is what I'm now aspiring to, because you've gone through the hardship of midlife, but you come through with more wisdom, more certainty.

Maybe just a little bit more, “Oh, yes, I've been through these ups and downs, and I know I can come out the other side.”

Jo: So I guess on the one hand it can be, at that time, a fallow, it can be that time of exhaustion. As we say, this isn't just a moment in time. This can go on for years.

Sometimes it can be a quickening. There can be a desire to accelerate even, and also sometimes we might need some tough love. I think that might also help.

So what are your recommendations for those who feel the need to shift up a gear, or who want to move forward?

Jordan: Yes. I mean, I think one thing is not trying to do it all yourself. Seek out other people who you can connect with. For me, what got me out of my fallow period was I joined someone. We do a silent write and then we talk shop afterwards. It was a fellow writer.

So I logged on at 8:00 in the morning and we all just got together and wrote, and then we talked. There was something about not isolating, I think, is key. So not isolating.

Then I'm really just a big fan of trying something new. It's that whole metaphor, right? If you're doing the same thing, expecting different results. So if something has changed for us at midlife and we don't feel the same and we can't access our creativity in the same way, then we have to do something different.

Another thing that I had to let go of was every time I sit down to write, it has to be purposeful. It's going to become a book. It's like, can you just play? What does it look like to write as play? That was a really new concept to me. Obviously I have joy in the writing process, but I was attaching it to a product.

So that's honestly one of my biggest pieces of advice drawn from my experience and others, is try something new. Be a little bit brave. Maybe it's not brave, but don't be afraid that everything is going to lead to something that'll be hard, that'll be scary.

Let's face it, nobody's going to do it for us. There's always that reminder. If you just sit around feeling bad and wonder when it's going to stop, it may not stop on its own unless we try something new.

Jo: Yes, reframing things. I think also as creative people, as writers, we do feel better if we are creating and writing. It may be that writing isn't the thing you need right now. It may be that you want to get into, I don't know, painting.

I've been doing different things, like I did some stone carving, and I'm doing really random things, and not in a serious way. So as you say—

Maybe writing for us is too serious, and so we need to just change it up a bit.

Jordan: I had a lot of my interview subjects do that. They are like, “Well, when I can't write, I paint. When I can't paint, I knit.” I was really impressed at how many people will just keep that creative energy going in another form.

I found that very inspiring, because while I don't consider myself deeply creative in any other medium, it did make me think, what else could I do that feels creative? For some people that's cooking food or, I don't know, organising closets. I really don't know, but there are ways to transmute that energy.

Jo: Yes, and I mean, you mentioned there about trying something new in our writing as well, and I did find that my interest shifted, and I did a lot of long distance walking and I wrote a pilgrimage memoir, which is quite out of character.

Then I also did a book on writing the shadow, that darker side of psychology. This did not fit with what people expected from me at all.

I feel like it is scary, but we are also making money out of this, and when things don't fit with what people expect of us, it can change things in terms of our business. So how do we deal with that?

How do we lean into change but also bring our audience along?

Or I guess just lose some of them.

Jordan: Well, it's interesting because I think that this relates to marketing ourselves, but I really think that authenticity is where it's at.

If you can present yourself as real, authentic, this is what I'm doing, this is what I'm interested in, that is very appealing to people, right? More than, well, this is the niche I've been in my whole career so I can't break free from it.

I love when a writer I've been following for years does something different, suddenly experiments and writes a new book. I actually find that very exciting as a reader.

So to me that's a lot of external pressures that say you have to stay, if you're known for being a crime writer you have to stay a crime writer. That's very much the publishing industry, the culture. That's not true to how people are in real life.

There's a writer that I mention in the book, she's Margaret Mead's daughter. Of course, this is midlife, names go out of my head. It'll come back to me before this is over.

She talks about how in her interviews with people—so she researches people in midlife and beyond—most people's real careers and creative lives are not a straight line. They don't follow the neat plot, the hero's journey, right? They actually are very meandering, particularly women's.

Women's tend to be more meandering, probably because, yes, they interrupt their careers to have children. They caregive, all of these things.

So I am really a big fan of let that meandering happen. Be open to that rather than, it has to be this way and only this way, because we don't grow. That's not a growing edge, right? If we just stay doing what we always did.

Jo: Yes, and as you say, some people will come along with you. Also, obviously we're a very similar age, and you tend to attract the people who are similar to you, and who are either going through similar things or recognise themselves in you. So I do agree with you. It is about being authentic.

The problems only come when you try to hide that change, perhaps. I mean, I laugh at, sometimes you see author photos that were taken 30 years ago. You're like, “I've met you. You just don't look like that anymore.”

Jordan: You don't look like that. I know. I'm a big fan of truth in advertising in that regard, too.

Oh, and the author, it's Mary Catherine Bateson, so she was anthropologist Margaret Mead's daughter.

Jo: Well, on that, let's just mention this, because I sent you written questions for this interview. Part of the reason I do that, one, obviously, I'm respecting the person I'm interviewing, and I want to show you how the interview's going to go, and I never mean to catch people out.

But also, as a woman in midlife, I forget things all the time. If we're having a conversation and I forget where we've gone—I take notes and everything, but I need to write things down more. If I am having an interview myself, I write down notes, even about my own books.

So this is something that's changed. I used to be able to remember things a lot better. So this is something that I've had to actively do, and presumably you have, too, in order to continue to be the professional we've always been.

It doesn't mean we're not allowed to forget things, but it's almost like I am shifting my practices in order to help my midlife self.

Jordan: Absolutely. That's a really great way to put it. I talk about it in the book as adapting. We adapt ourselves.

I use an example, one of my students who came to take my classes in his late 80s or early 90s, I kid you not, who was still treating himself as a student of writing. During the time he was in my class, he actually ended up having a stroke and had to relearn to speak in his 90s, and did, and write.

So he was constantly adapting new techniques to be able to come back to his creative self, and he really inspired me. That's a very extreme example, but I do the same thing. My desk is littered with Post-it Notes. My phone, I put anything you can possibly imagine as a reminder into my phone, with an alert.

I've also accepted output has changed. So this idea of I used to be able to be so prolific, I don't expect that of myself anymore. If I sit down to write, I meet myself where I am, and if I get some words out, great, I wrote.

It's a lot of that gentleness, just appreciating that I am different rather than trying to force my old modes upon myself, which doesn't work anyway. So I can try, but it will fail. Then I'd be frustrated with myself, which was part of my midlife transition, was trying to do everything the same way, failing, being mad at myself, that whole journey.

So I'm grateful to have moved beyond that and recognised that I have to move slower. I am less productive. I am narrowing the scope of my creative life, and that's not a bad thing.

Jo: Yes, and that's not a bad thing. That's the important statement there at the end. It's funny that I feel the need to emphasise that, because why do I have to emphasise that? Because we're just in this culture of obviously more must be better. So that's the thing.

I guess I've also felt a similar way in that I have a much better ability to say, “I don't want to do that, so I won't do that.”

Or, I asked you if we could reschedule this interview because my energy just wasn't there, and I know that I can't do an interview like this without some energy, and that's the way to serve the audience, and you were very graceful and said, “Of course.”

So I think this, “I don't want to do this, so I'm not going to,” rather than pushing into it. But then, of course, we have to sell books. We have to do marketing.

So how do we balance these things?

Jordan: That is the frustration. Well, first of all, you need to honour that feeling. I hate that it sounds cliché, but we have to honour that part of us that says, “I don't have the energy to do that anymore, or in this way,” because if you ignore that, you're going to end up sick or injured or frustrated or something.

So the way that I have been doing it… It's just a reality of marketing yourself as a writer that you must have a presence somewhere online, right? And you must put something out there to let people know where to find you. Unfortunately, there's too much noise, too many writers, too much competing for people's attention.

So I realised the only way I can do it is when it reflects who I am at my core. Which means if I'm going to make videos, which I have been doing lately, they're going to be goofy like me, right? I can't do a serious, polished video. It's not in my nature.

If I am going to have to keep a Substack blog, which I do, and write content, it's going to have to be about issues that are of interest to me at this time in my life.

I also find the more that I can interweave my marketing with promoting other writers in some way, that feels really honest. So interviews, like you do, I do them on my Substack. That feels really good to me because then it's not all about me, right?

So I think that's really the key, is finding this fit, and I think that in a way that's actually what's made a lot of content creators somewhat, let's say, famous, is because they have found something that works for them.

It's comedy, it's serious, whatever it is, it reflects them and it feels true to people, whether or not it is is another story. So for me it's not so much truth, but afterwards, do I feel sick inside, or do I feel like, no, I was pretty much myself? Then I can do it, and then it's actually fun.

I also have to say, I've never been very tech handy or gifted, and I was like, “I'm goint to learn Canva. I'm going to learn edits on reels.” I'm just not going to be that person who says, “I'm too old to learn,” or, “I've done it this way for so long, I can't do it another way.”

That's actually been really fun and freeing. I didn't expect that.

Jo: Well, yes, you have to learn something new occasionally. I mean, even this podcast, which I've been doing since 2009, how I did it technically back then and how I do it technically now is completely different because the tools have changed.

It's still the same RSS feed, amazingly, even though people don't even talk about those anymore. So, yes, we do have to learn some things, but we don't have to learn everything, I guess. We don't have to do everything.

You talk there about being yourself and authentic, and you have a chapter in the book about unmasking the self and this vulnerability, which can lead to creative breakthroughs, but this can also be really difficult.

Certainly the hardest bit of the time I was going through the early perimenopause and the depressive end of things, before I found HRT, which I know doesn't work for everyone, but worked for me. I didn't talk about it then, and it took a couple of years before I was able to talk about these things.

So how can we embrace vulnerability but still protect ourselves from the world when we need protecting?

Jordan: It's interesting, because I've thought a lot about this. I think that we misconstrue vulnerability as only baring our soul, or baring our soft parts, where we're open to judgement and attack.

The more I think about it, I actually think that authenticity can be vulnerable, and also being more direct. Just being like, “This is what I will allow. This is what I won't allow. This is who I am. This is who I'm not,” is a form of vulnerability.

That might sound strange, but it's a way of saying, “This is what I'm allowing you to see of myself.” It's an honesty, I think.

I find with online stuff, a lot of people are getting to the realisation they have to protect, I think, more from a privacy standpoint. Not tell too much that leaves you open to attack, or leaves you open to having somebody actually come in and steal information from you.

So the way that I've conceived of it for myself now is vulnerability is to be honest and direct, but that doesn't mean giving everything away. I guess this word curation rolls around right now. I don't think curating is a bad thing. It's like, I'm going to tell you as much as I feel comfortable telling you.

In this book, I call it partially like a memoir, because I reveal personal things about myself, but I'm revealing them very carefully, let's put it that way. I'm also trying to protect other people's stories. My family, if I'm talking about them, I'm being very careful about how I talk about them.

I'm also like, I have to say something about me. I can't talk about this experience but not share my own process, right? So it is a line we walk.

I have a couple of interview subjects who found for them, the way they are vulnerable is to transform their personal truth into fiction. So they tell real truths, but they fictionalise it, because that way the truth is still coming through, but they don't have to do that whole soft belly open to the masses, if that makes sense.

Jo: Yes. I think for me, it was just time. When I read some of what I wrote then, and even what I put into my pilgrimage memoir, for example, I'm not that person anymore. There was a period of time when that happened, and I read it and I'm like, “Goodness me,” but the distance helps.

You can share what happened later on in a way that almost feels like fiction, even though it happened.

Jordan: I like that. I like the fact, too, so in memoir there's this concept of two voices. There's that voice of the moment, the lived experience, and then the voice of greater experience that comes later, the meaning maker.

So there's a nice tension that can exist when you look back at who you were, or writing that came from a different time, and you bring the version of you today.

I find I have a lot of compassion for my former self. I can see how hard I was working, or how hard I was trying to impress someone, or any of those things. I think if you can be compassionate towards your older self, meaning even a month ago, then that can come through, too. It's interesting.

Jo: Yes, and we've been all gentleness and kindness and lovely, but let's get into anger, because anger and rage is also part of grief as well. I was thinking about this, and I have a little mantra that I use on difficult days, which is, “Don't burn it all down.”

Literally sometimes I just say to myself, “Don't burn it all down.” That might be a day I don't do an interview, or that might be a day I don't go anywhere near the internet, and I don't go anywhere near social media. I just try and get away, go for a walk or something.

This is difficult, because sometimes you should burn it all down, and I do struggle with this, too.

When do we know that radical change is needed? And when should we go slow and not kill it all off?

Jordan: That's a good question. It's going to be individual, right? But what your question made me think about is that the people I've spoken to find that at this stage of life, I describe it as a heightened sense of either more or less.

Either there's a lack they can no longer sit on and it's causing frustration and anger, or there's a too muchness, like burnout or overwhelming responsibilities. So couple that with hormonal changes for a lot of people, and it's a fire keg.

I myself have gone through it. I will say in the early stages, when that kicks in on a hormonal level, a lot of people find that it almost has to take you by surprise, I think. You almost discover you're going through it by having a rage reaction. That's my experience.

Once you do, then it becomes our responsibility to not spew anger at everyone. So it is about finding ways to channel it that are healthy. Whether that's, “All right, I feel it coming on. I'm taking a walk. I'm going into nature where I can be my full self, or I can let it simmer down.”

I also find I'm more honest and more direct as a result of it, so I don't check all of it. But it's a good question, because I feel it too, and there have been times it literally felt like somebody flipped a switch in my back, and rage emerged, or frustration, whatever the feeling is. So I think it's really paying attention to yourself.

I hate the word triggers, but let's just use it here to understand what's triggering it. You've got this baseline, perhaps changed hormonally. You may be going through a lot at midlife. What in the moment triggers that urge? And see if you can either avoid it, or can you remove yourself from it somehow.

I'm just going to be honest, people in midlife are going to lash out, and sometimes the best thing other people can do is get out of the way. I am a big fan of saying it is our responsibility to not wield it inappropriately, I should say, but acknowledge that it's real.

Jo: Yes, I mean, maybe sometimes it is a good feeling. There's righteous anger for things that we should be angry about in the world. It's just sometimes it doesn't come up that way.

Sometimes it might not be so much, and I think for me, it's when do things come up over and over again? And are there ways that it could be changed?

This is not something that I get angry about, but this podcast, for example, regular listeners will know that for a long time, for, what, 15 years or something, it was on a Monday, and I got to this point where I thought, “I need to kill this podcast because I'm working every weekend,” because I often was, I need to record the introduction.

So my attitude was, “I just need to burn it all down, kill the podcast after all these years.” Then I took some time out to think about it and moved it to a Wednesday.

Jordan: Yes.

Jo: And it was like, “I'm sorry, how did I not figure this out ages ago, that all I needed to do was move it?” And so if you do feel, people listening, if you feel like, “Oh, I just have to destroy this whole thing because I need…”

Whatever it is that you need, sometimes there is another answer.

It might feel obvious later on, but perhaps you just couldn't see it at the time.

Jordan: Absolutely, and I'm trying to think how to put this, but there's a version of this process where we go through this change in our emotions that is a little bit out of our control, and we have to just go, “Wow, I'm changing, and in the process of that change I might behave in ways I don't prefer to continue behaving,” right?

It might happen, and then there's a reaction. I think we really just have to be aware and patient, and then learn to do things differently, like you're saying. We have to change in relationship to this change. We can't try to keep being the old version of ourselves who was nice and agreeable and didn't ever get angry.

I know so many women, and also non-binary and gender fluid folks, who are just like, “What? Who am I? Where did this come from?” You're like, “My operating system is actually different now,” which is fascinating.

Jo: It really is fascinating. Well, as we come towards the end, let's also reframe this whole narrative. I feel like we talked a bit about this, about reclaiming the crone and all of this, but how can we make this next phase incredible?

I'm 51. I think we're a similar age. I'm fully intending to march into at least my 90s. So we've got many years ahead of us. It is not all downhill from here. I lift weights, I do a lot of stuff, and I feel like this should be an upswing in a different way.

What can we put in place so this positive aspect becomes true?

Jordan: Well, I think the first thing is we need to not see it as midlife crisis. I hate the word crisis because it suggests something negative, and I like to think of it as a midlife transition.

It's really, I think, only crisis in that, first of all, we scare ourselves, but when we don't get the support, or we don't heed the call that our psyche is asking of us, or we buy other people's attitudes about what midlife should be.

I am a big fan of this great book by Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot called Third Chapters or Into the Third Chapter, and she writes about people who decide—and I think this is part of it, it's intentional.

You have to decide, this third chapter of my life is going to be something wonderful, and you decide, what is the thing I want to do? What am I going to focus on?

So I think, first of all, just making that mindset shift is really important, and it's all the things we've been talking about. It's trying something new. It's figuring out what makes you thrive and feel excited at this time of life.

It's acknowledging and honouring that you feel different, and mourning what you've lost, but also looking at what you may be gaining going forward. So I think just so much of it is about attitude. If you decide that you're in crisis and that it's all misery, it's harder to make those steps forward.

If you see yourself as germinating something new—and allow yourself to be surprised—and the only way to do that, in my opinion, is to try something new, to do things a little differently, and embrace all the wisdom you're about to gain.

Jo: Yes, and all the other people who are on that journey with you. I think your friendships shift as well. I was walking in Portugal last week and met a group of older women, and it was just such a laugh. It was just really fun.

Just recognising the different parts of life, and that the kind of laugh I would have had with women in my 30s would have been a very different kind of laughter.

Jordan: I love that. I love it. Keep company with people you want to be more of, or more like. I think that's really important, too.

Jo: Great.

So where can people find you and your books online?

Jordan: Anywhere books are sold, actually, but you can go to my website, JordanRosenfeld.net.

I like to promote, if you're going to online shop for books, I like bookshop.org, or go to your local indie bookstore. Or you can buy many of my books directly from SibyllinePress.com. All of my Writer's Digest books are available through anywhere.

I also like to draw people to my Substack, which is called Writing in the Pause, and that's JordanWriteLife.substack.com.

Jo: Fantastic. Well, thanks so much for your time, Jordan. That was great.

Jordan: Thank you. I really appreciate it. It was fun.

The post Writing And Creativity In Midlife With Jordan Rosenfeld first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can you design your year around seasons of work and rest instead of waiting for financial freedom? And how do you build the money confidence to take extended time off when you come from a scarcity mindset? Brian Herriot shares his ideas on time freedom after a career as a financial advisor and consultant.

In the intro, The end of the spectrum [Seth Godin, Akimbo]; List of money books; Lessons learned from 15 years as a full-time author entrepreneur; My author timeline since 2005; Producing AI-narrated audiobooks with Simon Patrick.

Plus, please do my short How to Market a Book survey (by 7 Oct); and here's my Cathedral Zero Trailer.

This podcast is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo eco-system. You can also subscribe to the Kobo Writing Life podcast for interviews with successful indie authors.

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn

Brian Herriot is a financial advisor, professional speaker, and the author of Time Freedom: Rethink Your Work and Money to Create a Life You Love Now. He's also the host of The Time Freedom Podcast.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.

Show Notes

Why writing, speaking and podcasting can build authority without social media

What time freedom is, and how it differs from work-life balance and financial freedom

How to design your year around seasons of work and rest

The three money personalities: minimiser, manager and maker

How to build flexibility into your work whether employed or self-employed

How a book that leaves nothing out can be the foundation of a business

You can find Brian at timefreedom.life.

Transcript of the interview with Brian Herriot

Jo: Brian Herriot is a financial advisor, professional speaker, and the author of Time Freedom: Rethink Your Work and Money to Create a Life You Love Now. He's also the host of The Time Freedom Podcast. So welcome to the show, Brian.

Brian: Thank you so much for having me.

Jo: Yes, this is a great topic. First up—

Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing.

Brian: I am a financial advisor, and now I am an author officially. I found writing just short of three years ago. I was actually doing some research on behalf of my wife, because she's always been an incredible writer, in the fiction side of the world.

So I was researching different writing programmes and things like that, and came across one that I thought, “Hmm, this is for nonfiction, and boy, it sounds very interesting. I think it's something maybe I need to do.”

The reason why I was looking at all, even for myself, is I was transitioning into a new line of work, and it was work where you needed to develop some authority and visibility. Everything everybody was telling me was that I needed to do a lot of social media, which I did not want to do.

I forget where I heard it, but they're like, “Or you could do the author speaking thing.” And I thought, “Ooh, that sounds a lot better.” So that's the path that I ended up on.

Jo: Interesting.

Can you tell us what that different path you were looking at was?

Brian: Well, a lot of what you see, at least online, if you're to develop a personal brand and try to attract business—in this case into my financial advisory firm—everyone says, “Well, you need to develop an online presence.”

In the business world from a long time ago, I had used LinkedIn, but not for anything like developing a personal brand.

So then all the advice started turning to, “Oh, well then you need to get onto Instagram and TikTok.” I don't know, I've always viewed all that scrolling as a waste of time, and I'd rather put my mind towards something more productive.

So I was just so apprehensive to try and get into that space, that I just kept putting it off and putting it off and putting it off until I heard a podcast. I've always listened to lots of podcasts, and I heard a podcast that said, “Well, instead of developing authority that way, the other path that you could take would be through writing.”

Because it's obviously longer form, you can put your thinking into it. Then that can lead to help getting into speaking as well.

Between those two you can develop some of the same authority that you could if you went the social media route. There was also the podcasting part, which I do love, and that's been one of the most fun things I've been doing lately.

So I do podcasting, writing and speaking instead of social media.

Jo: I love that, and I know a lot of people listening love that too. I don't think this is an age thing, I think this is an aptitude for short-form video thing. I'm the same as you. I'm not really into the short-form video. For people listening, this is an audio-only podcast partly because I don't want to do video.

Brian: And that's beautiful. That's the beauty of working on your terms, right? Which we'll talk a lot about.

Jo: Yes, exactly. So I love that from the beginning you were like, “No, I'm going to go the long-form route and reach people that way,” because you absolutely are. I personally would always rather read a book than watch a whole load of snippets or video online to learn about this kind of topic.

So let's get into the book. Let's start with that concept of time freedom.

What is time freedom, and how can we change our mindset to believe that it's even possible?

Because it feels like we're working harder than ever.

Brian: The way that I like to explain this is first by discussing what time freedom is not, because of how it fits. And I have this right up front in the book.

There's this whole concept of work-life balance, right? And work-life balance to me, at least, coming from the professional and the employed worlds, is that you're just stealing an hour during the day here to then make it up later in the night.

Sftentimes, at least when I was living with work-life balance, I was probably more busy than I even was if I would've just worked straight from 8:00 to 5:00. It's very week by week focused, day by day focused, and that is not time freedom.

On the other side is this idea of financial freedom, which time freedom also is not in my mind. Financial freedom is where, I mean, the simplest thing is you're either retired or you're independently wealthy or in some other way you do not have to work anymore.

So you've got this absolute freedom, which for me is boring, because I get a lot of joy from the work that I do. So in the middle is the idea, I think, of time freedom, where you do still have to work, but you're able to design work in a way that works for you. So you can do it on your terms.

There's a lot of choice. There's flexibility if you want it, and all of those things. I think that somebody that optimises for time freedom looks at their year and says, “This is how I want my year to go.” There's a seasonality to it.

In my personal experience, I do most of my work work, the work that I need to do to get paid and live, in what would be the equivalent of the school year, because my wife and I have a son. He's a sophomore in high school, and that's just the way that our life is lining up right now.

Then during the summer, we're fortunate enough to have this not so great cabin on a beautiful lake back where we both grew up. And in the last five years, we've designed our life so that we can go back there and live a different season during the summer.

I've always loved summer, and during that time, that's when we rest and relax, and we water-ski, and we fish, and we do all the fun things that you could do at a cabin.

Then also, there's this time when you're starting to think bigger or differently or make creative connections about things in the work that you do. I find it really rejuvenating, so that when I come back in the quote-unquote school year, then I can get back to work and do some really interesting things.

So the person who pursues time freedom is really optimising their life around this freedom and flexibility. Maybe they're working longer and later into life, but they're doing it in a way that works for them.

They're not necessarily optimising to steal that extra hour that day, or optimising for wealth, which would be the financial freedom path.

Jo: Yes, I find this very interesting. I like that it's not financial freedom because I'm an investor, as I mentioned to you, and many of us are. But that tends to take more time. So if you're aiming for financial freedom, especially if you start investing later in life, you're not going to get that at 45 or 50 or maybe even 60.

So defining this as separate is really good, because you're saying, “Well, you can start changing things now, and yes, you might have to work a bit longer, but if you love your work, it's not a problem.”

I want to come back to this idea of seasonality and planning your year around this seasonality idea. How does that work with the potential of other people's timelines or other people's possibilities, and serendipity?

I have some plans, but then, like this year, this thing came up. It was just a very intuitive thing and has changed the next few months in a completely different direction and blown all my plans out the water.

So how do you balance the planned seasonality with serendipity?

Brian: Well, first what I want to mention is, if you can figure out a way to organise your year so that you have these extended periods of time off, that's a wonderful thing, and it's not something that I think you can do with a snap of the fingers.

When I had this realisation that I even wanted to do this, of course it wasn't even me that came up with it, it was my wife. This was during a time when the stock market had crashed, and I was suggesting to her that we were not going to be financially free any time soon.

When she asked me what financial freedom looked like to me, I said that I still had wanted to work, just more flexibly, and she said, “Well, let's do it now,” right?

So back to my point, we couldn't do it now. We had to get the money confidence to be able to basically figure out how could you work for nine months and have that support 12 months of living.

So it's not immediate, but once you get there, the way that I have looked at it compared to serendipity is, if I can structure the work that I do, and again, it's so dependent on the type of work that your listener does do, right?

In my particular case, when I was able to do this, I was doing independent consulting projects. So I was able to line up projects that would never overlap in the summer.

Sometimes they would go into June because it had to, right? But I did the best that I could and tried to be as flexible as it was. Then when I had the time, then I was able to do whatever came up during that period of time.

Usually it started as just taking a break, resting and not doing so much work. But by the end of those three months, you really start to want to get back into things. I think you do have to just go with what your body's telling you and what your mind is telling you.

I don't know if that answers your specific question, but when you say something happens, right, and you want to take advantage of that opportunity, you've got to do it, right?

I think flexibility is probably the value that comes through the most in the book. Even when you think you've figured it out and you finally got that perfect seasonal year, well, something will come up and happen. I think part of what time freedom is, is being able to take advantage of the opportunity when it comes up.

Jo: Yes, being able to choose. That's the key point. I mean, I'm in a situation like you where I run an independent business, so I do get to choose.

It's just funny because I read this and I'm like, I do have time freedom, but I fill my time completely. I do have enough time, but I fill it with more and more creative projects, and I'm not very good at stopping. So while I do have flexibility, I also have a very full calendar.

Long-term listeners will know I've asked this of other people as well, and I was very interested that you took a transformative sabbatical in 2023. This is something I keep coming towards and then backing away from.

Can you tell us a bit more about that [sabbatical]? What was that, and how did you manage that?

Brian: My wife and I took a trip in, I think it was 2015 or so. We went to Italy for just two weeks. I mean, you could easily spend two years, I feel, in Italy and still feel like you missed out on things. But our vacation was so packed. It was very typical of the American vacation, I would say.

I remember coming back from that vacation going, “You know, I'm more exhausted now than I was when we left.” So we always wanted to figure out a way to do some slower travel.

The way that it worked out, after we had our revelation about how we wanted to design our lives, was that we were going to take what ended up being four weeks.

So I knew that I was going to have my first fully free summer off in 2023, and we decided to purposely go slow, and we travelled in and around Portugal for four weeks.

It's funny, on the flight back when we were going through customs, the gentleman asked how long we'd been in Portugal, and we said, “Four weeks.”

He's like, “What did you do for that?” Like, what did you do?

Jo: I love Portugal, by the way. It's great.

Brian: Lovely. “Why were you here for so long?” But the beauty of it was, if we had a day when we weren't feeling up to going to see something, we just didn't. It was wonderful. That was just a wonderful experience.

We were able to line it up so that we met other friends, so we almost had a vacation within a vacation. We had an au pair that we hadn't seen for years who flew over from France and met us.

It was just, I imagine, very not typical of the American work lifestyle that I'm familiar with. It was just anything but that, and it was just wonderful.

It really pulled our whole family out of the conventional way of thinking, and that was incredible for us, and really then triggered how we've spent the last few years of our lives.

We haven't had that same long trip yet. Part of it has to do with now our son's in high school and he needs to be here at home around his friends. But he'll be off to college soon and then we can go do it again.

Jo: Yes, it's so interesting, isn't it? Sometimes you have to really step away from your normal life and the grind of it in order to think differently. It's quite funny because as a Brit and a European myself—

I actually find coming over to America is a way to almost change my mindset. So it's often just going into a different culture, perhaps.

Brian: Yes, absolutely. I think part of this whole living with time freedom aspect for me is just leading a more interesting life.

I owe this really to my wife. I think I always, through schooling and coming out of college, I just almost had these blinders on, like, well, you're supposed to just get to work and do your work, and this is what you do.

She's the one who's always asked me, why are we doing this? Why could we not experience something a little bit different? And that's what makes for an interesting life.

Jo: Yes, and also from what you've said, you're not spending up big time. You don't sound like you're having extravagant times at the lake or when you're travelling.

So I often think that people feel like you have to have so much money in order to do something. I remember being in, oh, it must have been New York, and I was talking to someone and she said, “Oh, it's my dream to go to New Orleans,” and I'd recently been there.

I was like, “Well, why haven't you been? It's really easy. You're in America. You could just fly there.” I've even taken trains in America, which I know a lot of Americans haven't. But there are trains, and all of this.

I was like, “Well, why haven't you been?” It's like people have in their minds all these barriers.

Money is a big barrier, right? But you don't need as much as you think, perhaps.

Brian: It's true. There's all of the series of podcasts and blogs and everything about how, when you do this long travel or slow travel, I think is what they call it, you don't have to stay at hotels.

You could stay at an Airbnb and rent a place for two or three months, and it's far less per day than it costs.

The analysis that I've seen is how sometimes if you, say, maybe rented out your house back in America when you were going to Europe, and then you did your travelling, it's actually cheaper to go and take a long trip than just stay put. You actually make money on it. I mean, of course, it all depends, but it's eye-opening.

Jo: Yes, you mentioned Portugal. We're actually going to Portugal walking in a couple of weeks, and Portugal, for example, is much cheaper than Italy a lot of the time. So it also depends on where you go.

Coming back to the book, you mentioned a few minutes ago money confidence. In the book, you have these money personalities, and many of my listeners as creatives and authors, there's quite a lot of scarcity mindset in the author community, fear of financial things.

So maybe you could just talk about these money personalities and how we get to money confidence.

Brian: The track that I took in the book was, before I could just say, “Oh, go live time freedom and have inconsistent income and take these extended periods of time off,” I couldn't do it without addressing how I felt, which was like, “Well, can I afford this?”

So the money piece of it is extremely important. The money personalities is something that I feel like I learned far too late in life.

How I describe money personalities, and there are different ways of talking about this, but it's based on how you were raised and experiences that you've had with money from when you were a child, in your family, and then what happened in early life.

How has that impacted you behaviourally in terms of how you view money? So for example, growing up, we lived in a small rural part of the Midwest, and so we had money.

We didn't have a lot of money, but I can remember every Saturday morning my mom clipping coupons, right? Because that's how we bought our groceries.

So I do come from this, let's get the most value out of everything that I buy, and I'm going to restrain my spending because who knows if I'm going to have enough in the future. A constraints mentality.

Whereas I've met other people now that I've been an adult whose parents had their own business, and they had booms and busts, and so there were good times and bad times.

So when they get money, they spend it, so that they can enjoy it. I realise that people come with this—I don't want to say baggage because it's a bad thing—but people come with these experiences that influence how they think about what's possible as it relates to money.

I think that for one, people need to understand what that is for them and how that works. I also think that you can use it then to your advantage in figuring out how to gain the money confidence to step off into a life of time freedom.

So the three that I really highlight in the book are, the one that is called, what I call the money minimiser, which is the individual who doesn't like to think about money or would rather not think about money. Money is not a big part of their life, or they feel constrained by money.

I have elements of this in my background. And in this case, a lot of times you may not need as much money to live off of to be happy, which is actually a huge advantage, because if you don't need as much money to live on, then you don't have to go save up as much money, or you don't need to make as much money.

The other type is the money manager, and this is someone who's much more into saving and investing and understanding how all this works. This is the type of person that a financial advisor loves to address, because they have money to invest.

This is someone who's getting into their 401(k) right out of, in their first job immediately, and compounding their wealth over 40 years. It sounds like you have a little bit of this in you based on what you were saying. And there's some advantages to that, too.

Then there's someone like my son, who despite all of the saving and investing in our family, he wants nothing to do with it. He believes that if he wants more money, he'll just go figure out a way to make more money.

So this is the money maker. It's the entrepreneurial type, the person who's in sales, the person who can manifest money.

All of these different types of money personalities, I think if it is you, there's ways that you can leverage those to figure out how to make money work for you so that you can have time freedom.

Jo: That's really interesting. I think we have a money journey. I know some people don't like the word journey, but I like it. I come from a very scarce background, poor. Let's just say it. We were poor, for a while. Then, over time, things changed between various family members.

So I was a minimiser just by upbringing, and then I discovered the maker, and I manifested, and I worked my butt off and did all of that and understood that you can make money. You can earn it and make it in different ways. And then I learned about investing and then became more of that manager.

I absolutely was afraid of feeling stupid, so I wondered if you might address that, because this is what stopped me for a long time. I'm a pretty smart person, at least I think I am. I can learn things, but I just found the financial world just made me feel stupid.

So I minimised it because I was like, “Well, if I don't, I'm not going to understand it, therefore I'll just dismiss it.” That fear of feeling stupid, and other people might have fear of judgement or fear of all these different things.

So can you talk about that fear, and is the financial world really that difficult?

Brian: It's so unfortunate. The reason people feel stupid is because I think the financial industry wants you to feel that way, so that you then need their help to manage your money. It's full of acronyms and this and that and the other thing, and it is not that difficult.

I think there's a little bit of math involved, and numbers. I think if people lean more to the other side of their brain, there tends to be a little bit of fear there.

I believe that there are basic concepts that can be understood, like if you were to invest in something that covers a lot of stocks, it's called an index, right? And if you keep the costs low on it, you're going to earn much more money. I feel like there's 10 things that you could learn and it would get you 90% of the way there.

It's just that you need to find the right resources to explain it to you in a way that's understandable. I'll tell you, this book is the lifestyle/entrepreneurship/money book, which is a unique combination.

The money chapters are some of those that I had to revisit twice as much as the rest of them, because it was so important to me that there was not a lot of acronyms and difficulty getting through it.

I really wanted to break it down to the basics. Hopefully you felt that was the case when you read through those chapters, because it's so easy to make it sound complicated so that then people feel that they need the support of the person who's explaining it in the complicated manner.

Jo: Yes, exactly, and I totally agree with you. When I discovered the low fee index funds, I was like, sorry, what if I just put some money in that, that's a good way to start? And I was like, really? Okay, then. That's strange.

I think I had overcomplicated it in my mind, and as you say, the industry does that in a way, and the publishing industry does it too.

I mean, you've obviously been learning loads of stuff about publishing. In every single niche area, there's language that shuts out other people. And also I feel like, as a British person in the UK, obviously depending on the country you're in, there's different language as well, and yet so many of the books are American.

So for example, your Roth IRA is an ISA here, and your 401(k) is a SIPP. And then someone in Australia, it's something different. Someone in Canada, it's something different.

So that also makes it complicated, whereas once you can do some mapping and go, oh, okay, when in your book you say an IRA or a 401(k), this is what it is in my country, it simplifies it.

Brian: Yes, absolutely. I did take special care at the beginning of the book to say I'm coming at this from an American angle.

Jo: Yes. But then I would also say, I was saying this to my husband the other day, I'm very grateful, and I know this isn't true for every country, but I'm very grateful that I can invest in American indexes and stocks and all of that kind of thing.

I think you can invest globally as well as earn money globally, and I think that's really exciting. As an individual person, I can do that, and I've got investments in Australia because I lived there for a while, and that is actually a real privilege to be able to invest that way.

I don't know how many Americans invest outside of America. Is that something you talk about?

Brian: The only way that I've really seen it is through an American-based fund that invests in foreign companies in foreign countries. But no, not by buying something from the Australian market, for example.

You made me realise I need to create a little cheat sheet that just shows, okay, we're talking a company retirement account. What is it called in all of these countries? Wouldn't that be nice? Just a nice little cheat sheet for people. I'm going to do that.

Jo: Yes, because most of the time it's really a one-to-one, because as you said, it's not that complicated. When I was learning all about this, I was in Australia, and just so much of the information is from Americans, so you have to do this translation in your brain. So that'll be a super useful cheat sheet.

Okay. So in terms of other things, you've mentioned obviously enjoying your work, but you talk about different ways to build flexibility into your work so it's not all or nothing.

So what are some of the ways that people might build that flexibility?

Brian: I think this is one where you have to think, “Okay, am I employed or am I self-employed?” Because I think there is a big distinction there in terms of what you're able to do.

Again, shout-out for early readers of books, but the early readers of my book suggested that in addition to just saying, “Oh, live by a seasonal schedule and take three months off in the summer,” they said, “What are some other things that we can do to get toward that,” right? So that we can take incremental steps.

So some of these ideas can be done by anyone that's working in a more typical, employed position, and others might need to be if you're in an entrepreneurial scenario. I feel like a lot of it comes down to how you can structure the work.

So at least in America, more and more these days, there are more companies, and usually they're the smaller and the mid-sized ones, where you can find companies that are doing four by 10-hour schedules.

So you're working four days and having three days off, which then gives you a Friday every week to do something that you want to do, or start to build a skill that you could then turn into something that you could do independently, like starting as a side hustle and then moving into something different like that.

Other early strategies that I've seen people do, just to experience what it's like to take an extended period of time off, and especially in America this isn't done that much, is to take a two-week trip that you have over the holidays and put a week on the front of it and a week at the end of it and have a full four weeks off.

This could be during a time of year that's usually a little slower anyway. So it's a lot easier to perhaps have your manager approve that. These are just a couple of ideas.

On the self-employed side, I have seen more than a couple of people now work this schedule where they do three weeks on and one week off, and then three weeks on and one week off, and they've just figured out how to put the systems in place in their business to allow for that one week to be away.

I guess if you're just taking off for a week every three weeks or a week every month, you're never so far away from the work that needs to get done. It's just a different style.

What happens is, if you can do some of these different techniques and then you add them all up, it almost adds up to the amount of time of a full three months off.

So again, you just have to test and try it out and do these different strategies based on the type of work that you do and the place of employment that you have, to see what might work.

Jo: And also almost just plan it, like I said before about that person who wanted to go to New Orleans.

Choose a time next year, like six months' time or nine months' time, and—

Just book a flight. It doesn't have to be that hard, does it?

Brian: No, that's right. And there's other things… Now, I was talking schedules, but there's other things that you can try to start to create work that's more flexible.

For example, something that often happens in America at least is, you're working in a corporate setting, somebody retires, but that person has so much skill and knowledge about the business that then they immediately turn around and are hired back as an independent consultant.

Early in my career, I just saw this happen all the time, and I remember thinking, “Why do they have to wait until they turn 65 and retire before they do that?”

Couldn't you just say, “Hey, I've decided to leave my corporate position, but I'm going to become an independent consultant because I have a valuable set of skills, and I'm going to turn around and just contract back to where I used to work initially,” as that first step. That's an interesting technique.

You had highlighted the idea of a hobbyist entrepreneur. This is usually the one that a lot of existing retirees will do right out of the bat. I met a friend of my wife's parents, who had a very successful corporate career, and as soon as he finished up, again, people that are productive, I think, struggle when they immediately retire.

So he's like, “I need to figure out something to do,” so he flexed his creative side. They lived in Northern Wisconsin, where fishing is a big thing. So he would craft these large fish mouths out of wood. He would make these wooden fish that were very creative and very cool.

They would have golf tees for teeth and stuff like that. So you could sell them to people that like golf. He created them for all of his friends, and then he ended up with some sort of Etsy store where he sold a bunch of these. Then after a while he's like, “Eh, now it's too much like a job, so I'm going to do something different.”

It's just little ways that you can make money here and there that allow you to work on some things that you are interested in.

Jo: Yes, and it's interesting because the other thing about the retire and live off your pension idea is that the assumption is you'll never earn any money ever again, and so you'll just be drawing down on that money.

Even as you say, like that guy with the wooden fish, if you can make even an extra 5,000 in a year or an extra 10,000 in a year, you don't have to draw that down from the pot of money that you've saved or invested, or your pension or whatever. So that actually means that it can last longer.

So I feel like people forget that even these smaller amounts of money, which you can make as an author as well, or a speaker as you say—

These are things that just mean your retirement can potentially be better financially as well.

Brian: It does, and another thing that it gives you is the ability, when maybe the market is down for two years, and it's hard to pull money out of your savings when it is negative, right?

In those months, or in those years, or whatever it happens to be, you say, “Oh, well maybe I'm going to do my little side gig twice as much this year, because that'll allow me to spend that money instead of having to pull it out of a down market.”

Jo: Exactly. So we do talk about the business of being an author on this show. And at the beginning you mentioned that writing this book was part of developing authority so that maybe you can also get speaking.

So how does this book fit into your business?

Is it purely business card authority, or is it designed as an income stream as well? And any advice for other people who want to do something similar?

Brian: Yes. It's so interesting you said the phrase, like a better business card concept. When I think of that, I think of some of the places that will teach you how to write a book in a weekend or a month or three months or something like that.

I was very wary of that. I really wanted to have a book that stood on its own. So I think of my book as more than a business card certainly, but something that's really the foundation of my business.

So here's how it flows for me. The ultimate product that I sell is I invest people's money for them at half the cost, because that's very important to me, and in a way that is commensurate with somebody that wants to live this type of lifestyle. So that's ultimately what my service offering is.

The way that people enter my world is, I have a quiz, a little nine-question quiz. That's my little lead product that I use. But that gets them interested in this idea of time freedom. If they come across time freedom or they are interested in financial freedom, and they're searching around for a book, the book is the main thing.

I'll tell you, I've left nothing out of the book. The book contains everything that I ever did, everything that I ever do for clients. It's all there. I learned that from somebody early in the process, which is, you don't want to hold anything back in a book, a business-related book. Because, I don't know, it's just not right.

The thing is, some people will go and run with it, which is great. But some people need accountability, or they need someone to hold their hand, which is fine. Or they in some way need to connect with you, and that is then where you offer the next level.

So somebody could read my book and do everything themselves, or I also, a few times a year, offer a group coaching programme where basically we go through the book. We prepare what I call a Time Freedom Plan, which is like a financial plan, with the individuals in the group. And again, it's crazy.

There's nothing that I'm helping with that's not already in the book. So we go through the concepts. We prepare our Time Freedom Formula. We use the Time Freedom Calculator that I have that's, again, available for free. Anyone can use it, but we work on all these things together to prepare a Time Freedom Plan.

A Time Freedom Plan is what ultimately gives you the money confidence to live this lifestyle.

So you project the money that you're going to earn and spend through the rest of your life to give you confidence that you're not going to run out, and then that allows you to step off into time freedom in a year or three years or 10 years or whatever it takes.

Then as part of that process, there are a certain number of people that will have some money that needs to be invested and managed in a way, and those people can turn into customers of mine on the investment management side. So that's how it flows.

So I have a huge goal to just get this book out to as many people as possible, because I want to help as many people as possible, of course, but then also some small percentage of the people that read the book will ultimately want to work with me.

Jo: No, that's great, and that is the textbook ladder that a nonfiction author does. I also love that you've put everything into the book. I think it's super useful. I really enjoyed it. I think it's got some good questions in.

Even if you are, I guess, someone who is already investing like me, it's good to think about the time freedom as well as the financial side.

So where can people find you and the book and everything you do online?

Brian: Well, people can find the book anywhere books are sold. I do have a podcast as well, but everything is linked to from my initial website, which is timefreedom.life. So you can find everything there.

Jo: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Brian. That was fantastic.

Brian: Thank you so much. This was a true pleasure.
The post Time Freedom: Rethink Your Work And Money With Brian Herriot first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can you teach yourself anything, even when it challenges the way you see the world? And how can you organise what you learn so it turns into books your readers will find? J. Daniel Sawyer shares his self-education toolkit after decades as a largely self-taught author.

In the intro, Spotify for Authors has expanded AI-assisted creation of audiobooks [Spotify]; Who is Narrating the Future? [Publishing Perspectives; 9 ways AI will disrupt authors and publishing from 2019]; Author Voice, Creativity, and Building a Career as an Intuitive Author-Entrepreneur [How Women Write]; A fallow season [Systems and Soul]; How to Write, Publish, and Market Short Stories – Joanna Penn.

Today's show is sponsored by Bookfunnel, the essential tool for your author business. Whether it’s delivering your reader magnet, sending out advanced copies of your book, handing out ebooks at a conference, or fulfilling your digital sales to readers, BookFunnel does it all. Check it out at bookfunnel.com/thecreativepenn

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn

J. Daniel Sawyer is the author of over 30 books across science fiction, fantasy, crime, short stories, and nonfiction, as well as being a podcaster and filmmaker. His latest book is Reclaiming Your Mind: An Autodidact's Bible.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.

Show Notes

What is an autodidact, and why school doesn't teach you how to learn

How to triage information in a world of way too much

How to recognise fear in your body and turn it into excitement for learning

Sandboxing dangerous ideas so you can learn without threatening your worldview

How to organise research and check quotes when writing nonfiction

Why you should never publish a book dead

You can find Dan at JDSawyer.net, and The Autodidact's Bible is out now on Kickstarter.

Transcript of the interview with J. Daniel Sawyer

Jo: J. Daniel Sawyer is the author of over 30 books across science fiction, fantasy, crime, short stories, and nonfiction, as well as being a podcaster and filmmaker. His latest book is Reclaiming Your Mind: An Autodidact's Bible.

So welcome back to the show, Dan.

Dan: Hello, Joanna. It's great to be back.

Jo: Yes, indeed. You were only on the show a few months ago, which is rare I have somebody twice in the same year, so that is quite exciting. We talked about voice mastery last time, very different to the topic of today. But because we did talk a bit more about your background last time, we're going to jump straight into the book.

So what is an autodidact, and why write a book on it?

Dan: Well, an autodidact is someone who teaches themselves things rather than taking a course. It's not incompatible with being taught by others, of course, but there's a set of skills for being able to pick up new information, new disciplines, new hobbies, whatnot, that's really useful to have.

I wrote the book because I was mentoring a friend's kid through high school. They weren't teaching her anything, and she was having a hell of a time figuring out how to get an education in a school that was just not interested in providing one.

The process of the conversations over the course of a year forced me to surface all of the tools that I had developed, starting as a child, that allow me to pick up all of those disciplines you were talking about before, plus blacksmithing and academics and other stuff like that.

While I have had access to a lot of amazing teachers in my life, I'm largely self-taught, and have become the world expert on a couple of topics as a result.

I realised that the tools that you need to teach yourself and the tools that you get in school no longer overlap very much, at least in the US.

The old style of classical education, and then the middling style of early school education, both gave you those tools so that when you left school, you were able to continue through the world growing. Nobody does that anymore, so I realised I needed to write a book about all this stuff while it was fresh in my mind, so I did.

Jo: I love that. I don't know if it always was like that for some people, too.

We all know now more about neurodivergence.

Back in the day, when you and I went to school, that wasn't really talked about. It was like if you couldn't learn stuff in the way that it was thrust at you, then you were just dumb, maybe.

Dan: Well, what you and I got in school was the very late end of the German model.

The German model of education is what arose in the industrial era, and its job is to create good, obedient workers, not necessarily to create independent citizens who can think for themselves and who can move through a world that's changing and learn things.

That kind of education came from an older tradition, but it wasn't well suited to pulling people out of the hinterlands and putting them in the factories in a way that they could understand what they were supposed to be doing.

So the Germans developed a regimented system that was built around memorisation exclusively, rather than processing. Memorisation and repetition.

Whereas a more classical approach would have you do memorisation as part of repetition, processing, evaluation, and creativity. So when you go to school, you get some of the toolkit you need, but not all of it.

Jo: Yes, and then I think some people were just so bashed over the head with stuff that they didn't enjoy the process of learning, and maybe just moved away from it now.

I want to come back on something you said there, that it didn't enable the independence, the thinking for yourself.

We're living in this really weird time now where we're almost in a splintered world where you can find information on anything you want, but a lot of people are finding information, say, on TikTok or in AI-generated books with no rigorous fact-checking.

So how can you think for yourself in a world where there's almost way too much now?

Dan: Well, one of the most foundational skills of thinking is information triage. The world has always been full of unreliable information, if for no other reason than the state of the art in any given field at any given time is guaranteed to be about 80% wrong.

So even if you're being very careful about only hewing to the most accepted body of facts, facts change over time, partly as we learn more and partly as the world changes underneath us.

Thinking is different than knowing. Thinking is the ability to evaluate the information you're coming into contact with and figure out what's likely to be useful, and then to check yourself based on what you are more inclined to believe because of the way that you're made up emotionally.

It's being able to curb your impulses with an error-checking layer so that you don't get sucked down into a very nasty rabbit hole, which everybody's prone to on one front or another.

So that explains the how and why, but the what is things like knowing your basic logic, knowing the informal logical fallacies that everybody's prone to, things like the bandwagon fallacy.

We're partly herd animals. We tend to want to join a group for protection and identity. So if we're in a group that believes a certain thing, we're likely to believe it out of fashion, which is great for group solidarity. It's not so great for actually knowing if what you think you know is correct.

I've got a whole section of the book devoted to the top 30 or 40 most common informal reasoning fallacies. Knowing how to do basic critical reasoning is one of the things you have to do if you're going to be learning in a way that's useful to you.

Then of course, there's another reasoning kit, which is the non-rational reasoning kit, which I also talk about. That's something that you and I as fiction authors use all the time.

Jo: Explain more about that [non-rational reasoning kit] then, because people might not know what that is.

Dan: All right. So rational reasoning involves logic. If X is true and Y is true, then Z must also be true. That's basic deduction. It basically lets you figure out what's implicit in the body of knowledge you already know.

Then subsidiary to that is induction, which is, if X is true and Y is true, what might also be true that could explain X and Y? That's the scientific method. It's less reliable than deduction, but it actually grows your knowledge rather than just revealing it.

Non-rational reasoning is things like reasoning through analogy, reasoning through metaphor, reasoning through intuition.

These are all reasoning modes that allow you to bring something foreign into your understanding, or to deepen your understanding of something you're already familiar with, in a way that incorporates not just logical propositions, but also emotional truth and relational truth and things like that.

Frequently it can generate things you can then subject to logical evaluation and pull new information about the world out of. A really good example of where this happens in science is in visionary experiences. The periodic table, for example, came out of someone's dream.

Now, the fact he dreamed it doesn't mean it's true, but what happened while he was dreaming is he had a non-rational reasoning chain that brought him this vision, which he then brought out into the real world and started doing experiments on to see if it would work, and it did.

Jo: In that case, yes, I can picture the periodic table, and I often see images of things that help me organise information. So that to me makes sense in terms of somebody who had certain amounts of knowledge, who had some kind of picture in their brain and then was able to prove that.

I wanted to circle back. You were talking about critical things, rational things. You mentioned logic, and you did briefly mention emotion and intuition.

Coming back to where we are at this point in history, so much emotion is being triggered through the media, whether that's social media or traditional media or whatever, that all of those logical, reasoned things can be almost triaged immediately by a big emotional response to something.

So how can we understand that that emotional response perhaps has to be part of the triage?

Dan: Well, simply by stating it outright. What you just said is exactly correct. I've got a model in the book where I talk about the difference between feelings and emotions.

Feelings, in this model, are your interpretive layer. That's, I feel angry or sad or excited or depressed or whatnot. Those are your feelings.

The emotions are the base physiological states that those feelings are laying over. So elevated heart rate, increased skin conductance, things like that are associated with any excitable state, like anger, sexual arousal, anticipation, fear, that kind of thing.

Then depressed heart rate and whatnot, those are associated with depression, relaxation, and a whole bunch of other things.

Learning to recognise the base physiological layer within yourself that's being stimulated allows you a certain amount of freedom about interpreting that base physiological state. That can help you separate your reaction to your own physiological state from your rational evaluation of what's going on around you.

One of the things that our world runs on right now is fear, and there's reasons for this. If you read Edward Bernays' Propaganda, he lays it all out.

Fear shifts your mind into a survival mode.

You're less likely to take time to think through things. You're more likely to be easily steered because, as far as your physiology knows, there's an active threat to you, and you've got to take care of that. You've got to get away from it.

If you stimulate fear in somebody, you can direct who they hate, who they love, who they trust. Very, very useful for anyone who wants to build a cult or sell a product or get elected.

If you learn to recognise in yourself that the physiological state associated with fear is the same one associated with excitement over something new, then you can train yourself, to a certain extent, and it's a learned skill, to do an end run around the fear part and concentrate on the excitement.

Then you can deal with whatever it is that's stimulating you in the way that you would a new piece of information, a new bit of learning, a new adventure. Instead of fear, which closes you down, adventure opens you up, and that's a much better state to engage in learning and exploration than fear is.

Jo: When you said, “That opens you up,” this is exactly what I look for, what is expansive for me. I often reflect on this. When do I feel expansive, and when do I feel like I'm being reduced? When do I feel like I'm hunkered down?

When I'm working with AI tools, I feel expansive, I feel more creative, I feel excited. I feel all these things where I just see so many possibilities, and the horizon is off out there in the distance.

Yet I know other people, some people listening, will feel that that crushes them, that even mentioning it just makes them reduce into themselves and shrink because of fear, I guess.

I also think that a lot of people are feeling those things because they haven't learnt enough perhaps. They are just responding to emotions.

So how can we change those things so we're more open to learning?

Dan: Well, one of the things you run into with creative types is we've all got something weird in our background that makes us do this. We're not just inclined to be creative, because you can meet welders and electricians who are very creative people. They just apply their creativity in a limited domain.

People who go into the arts tend to be either people who grew up in incredibly open conditions, or people who grew up in incredibly closed conditions and had to fight against them.

People who grow up in closed conditions and fight against them tend to be a little better at sticking around for the long haul of an arts career, which can be punishing financially and emotionally.

One of the reasons they can stick around is that they had a lot of practice in sticking around through horrible situations when they were younger. So they're going to have a negative bias when they come up against things that they don't understand.

If you have a negative bias with something you don't understand and it turns out to be wrong, you're not going to lose very much. But if you have a negative bias when you come up against something you understand and it turns out to be right, you're going to survive that thing. Whereas a more open person might just walk into the jaws of the shark, right?

To change that and make your experience better, and give you access to all the advantages that the person who's got a more open temperament has, you've got to find a way to make it safe to experiment with the dangerous thing.

For every dangerous thing, and probably for everyone who's encountering it, it's going to be a little bit different.

With AI, people are worried about the market eroding to the point where nobody cares about human creativity anymore. In fact, my first publishable short story, which is called We Create Worlds, was actually about a novelist trying to outwrite the AI novels. It's become weird.

Jo: What year did you write that in?

Dan: That was in 1999.

Jo: Awesome.

Dan: It's still a great short story. I did do it in podcast form, which you can find on my website at jdsawyer.net, and it's also in ebook on Amazon, and it's part of the Sculpting God short story collection.

But the fear is that humanity gets crowded out of the market in the face of the relentless onslaught of the machines. It's not a ridiculous fear, especially if you look at the history of artisanship.

Everybody and their brother used to have an artisanal business, and now we've got machines that weave socks and make just about everything in our world.

So people like me, who spend half my day every day in a blacksmith's forge making hooks that you could just make by machines way cheaper, are kinda crazy. But there's a market for that. Humans like things that were touched by other humans, as long as they can afford them or justify making a luxury.

On the other hand, the people that adopt tools early and figure out how to make them work for them, those are usually the people that win at scale over the long haul.

So, AI is coming for our jobs, guys, but you know what? You can keep it out of your creativity and build agents that help you deal with your scheduling and your bookkeeping and your marketing, all the other stuff that takes up your time as an author.

Then instead of threatening your creativity, it gives you more space to be creative.

Jo: So it's reframing things a lot of the time.

Dan: A lot of the time, yes.

Jo: I think that's true of everything.

Reframing can help you learn.

Reframing things can give you a reason to learn, I guess, when in the past, maybe at school, you hated learning…

Dan: Yes.

Jo: Now by reframing it into a reason why.

Dan: That really helps, and it also helps the second big problem with learning, which is worldview threat. I think I open the book with an entire section on how worldviews work and how that limits us, and how we can't get away from them even though they limit us.

Your worldview is the matrix through which you experience everything around you, and it's not a window, it's like a lens. It distorts everything, it filters everything, because it's the reflexive layer that helps you make sense of the world, and it's built out of your experience and inflected by your personality and other things like that.

There are things you can learn, and for everyone it's going to be a little bit different, that threaten everything about your worldview.

That's a problem, because your mind experiences your worldview not as an interpretive matrix, but as a survival tool. As far as your deep mind goes, your worldview is perfectly okay because you're still alive. Its job is to keep you alive.

So if you learn something, or come close to learning something or thinking something that could unspool a big part of your worldview, you'll just emotionally go blank. You'll shut down. The information you're encountering will not register, or it will make you angry and you'll steer away from it.

This isn't very good if you're wanting to learn things or grow. So there's a set of metacognitive tools you can use to help you push past that and navigate the existential crises that can sometimes ensue without crushing you entirely.

I spend a section of the book talking about that as well, and detailing what some of those tools are.

Jo: Better give us a tool.

Give us one useful tool.

Dan: All right, so one of the basic tools is one that anyone who's a developer in the audience will be familiar with, and it's basically sandboxing.

You create a little playpen where it's okay to play with this dangerous idea, and you make yourself the promise that until you're really familiar with the dangerous idea, you're not going to connect it to anything else in your worldview.

Then you've got the option later on to decide whether to integrate it or not. But you've got to play with this scary tool.

For someone who comes out of a fundamentalist religious background like I do, one of the big ones here was textual criticism, where you learn about all the manuscript traditions that make up the New Testament especially, and the development of Christian scripture.

I had to know about this stuff because I had a paid writing gig that required me to know about it. But I was a biblical literalist and believed that it all came straight out of God's mouth, and I couldn't even go near it without going, “Ah,” because intuitively some part of me recognised this could be a threat to what you believe.

So I made myself a sandbox. I said, “This is a literary project. If I actually believe in the doctrines of my religion, then this can't be a threat, because even if the words themselves were changed all over the place, the Holy Spirit would have ensured that the important parts of the theology got through unscathed.”

So I had a sandbox. I didn't really have to think about it. I could just learn the topic, and I got through. It was a two-year project, I had a fabulous time, and I came out knowing more about textual criticism than anyone ever should need to.

I actually got to know someone, a friend of my father's, who actually makes the Greek New Testament from the surviving original sources. I learned all sorts of things about biblical translation and about classical literature. It was great stuff.

I sandboxed it until I understood it, and then I decided whether or not to integrate it, and I did integrate it. It didn't actually have anything to do with me ending up being an atheist now. That was because of my research into mythopoetics several years later.

When you sandbox something like that, you give yourself an imaginary play space. This is something you do any time that you go to a movie and you cheer for characters who are doing horrible things that you would never do or condone in real life.

It's a fantasy play space that allows you to explore other aspects of life that you can't touch in real life. When you're learning, you can use that same set of skills of fantasy play and fantasy role play for trying out and exploring topics that might threaten the way you see the world.

Jo: Well, that actually brings up a good reason to do this, and one of the reasons I love to learn new things is to turn them into books. You mentioned earlier your short story about AI, for example. That's a great way of sandboxing and playing with a dangerous idea.

I'm actually writing a lot of, I guess we would call them science fiction, in the science fiction genre. I've never written science fiction before, and suddenly…

Dan: Welcome to the party.

Jo: Yes, exactly. I'm now writing science fiction. I haven't published any of it yet, but it's possible that I'm moving into science fiction because I am weighing up a whole load of these things as I'm learning about it, and I'm like, “Okay, how would I play with that idea?”

So that is one way to use what we learn, or even, like we said, reframing it. One good reason to drive the learning in the first place, I guess. But in that way, I wanted to ask you, because your books are very detailed.

How are you structuring knowledge as you learn it, in a way that is useful for turning it into something else later?

Dan: Okay. Associatively. The way that the brain stores knowledge, it looks a bit like a spiderweb, or like a map of galaxies in the universe. That's probably too geeky. Let's stick with a spiderweb. Everyone's seen a spiderweb. You don't record discrete tabulated facts like a spreadsheet or a database.

You actually record associative memories, and everything you know is associated not just with other things that fact might be associated with in a library catalogue. It's associated with the smell that you were smelling when you learned that thing, and the emotional state you were in when you learned that thing.

The more associative connections you can make to any bit of knowledge, the easier it is to record. When I sat down and wrote The Autodidact's Bible, I literally wrote it front to back without an outline.

There have been some books I've done this with where I had to rearrange afterwards. With this one, I didn't have to, because this is one of the places I live, so I've just got a good structure for the information in my head.

I knew that if I wanted to convey this toolkit and all the things associated with it, I needed to start with what is knowledge and memory, and how does understanding work?

Then move into worldview and the way that emotions affect the way that we learn, and developmental psychology, which has to do with the way the human being is designed to learn from the get-go.

We start off with raw input. I call this in the book type zero learning. We get a fire hose of information we don't know how to make sense of, and our brain adapts itself to the inputs.

Then there's type one learning, where we play around with things and we experiment and we see what they do. It's the “what's this button do?” approach to learning. Then there's type two learning, which is someone else who knows something already tells us things or shows us things, and we pick that up.

All three of these systems are involved at every stage of the learning process. Actually, it's hierarchical. So you can do type zero learning without doing type one or type two.

If you're doing type two, which is what you're doing in school, or when you're learning from a mentor, or when you're listening to a podcast, then if the information is going to stick, you are also involved in type zero learning, which is just taking in a bunch of stuff, and type one learning, which is practising and doing trial and error.

Even if, as you're listening to this podcast, you're just reacting with things like, “Oh, now that's an interesting idea,” and you're having a little fantasy about, “What if I did this?”, that's a version of experiment and repeat, and that solidifies the learning in your knowledge web in your head.

Then the trick is figuring out how to go back and find those things.

Jo: Well, this is what I wanted to talk about. In the book, you do have stuff on memory and that kind of thing.

I have definitely found, and this has got worse with menopause, and this is a completely normal thing with menopause for women, the brain fog that means things don't seem to stick so well, and then the recall is also almost harder.

I'm often reaching for things, and I can't get them back. I've always been somebody who writes everything down anyway, but I now do it even more.

As you know, I sent written questions for this. I now rely on written stuff so much more. So when I'm writing a book, or like I've just been doing with this master's and a lot of research, I have to write everything down.

So I guess my question was more about, for people listening who want to learn things in order to write books from that—

What recommendations do you have for organising your research so that when you write the book, you can reference it in a good way?

Dan: Well, writing things down is great, because that is part of the repetition that helps it stick in your head, and then you've got an external place where, as long as you can remember where you put it, you know where to get it.

The more connections you can make to any piece of information, the easier it is to find. I do take notes, and I have a strictly hierarchical file tree where I know where to find manuscripts and files full of notes and whatnot.

What often happens with me is I will make notes on something, and then I'll forget I did it, and then a few years later I'll write the book and then discover the notes again afterwards, and the book basically matches the notes.

I think the reason that happens is that when I get an idea in my head and write it down, I just start subconsciously playing with the idea, and I play with it and play with it until it's well developed.

Every time you take an idea out, or a memory, and play with it, everything that you're thinking or feeling at that point in time gets reconnected to it. So you actually alter a bit of what you're remembering, but you're also multiplying the mental paths you can use to get to it.

So you've got a very strict external system to help you beat the brain fog. The analogy to do it without the external system is you create that kind of system in your head.

You practise actually walking the system like it's a library or a museum. If you're a very visual person, and this doesn't work if you have aphantasia, you can close your eyes and you can walk through the museum in your head, and you can turn to the left and see a room that's associated with everything you know about biology, and then you can start picking things up in that room.

I'm actually being semi-literal here. I sometimes actually do this like I'm working in virtual reality. Most of the time it's not that concrete, but if I'm trying to find something and I get stuck, I will actually close my eyes and go into the museum and find the room.

The other trick is you don't chase a particular bit of information too hard. All you're looking for is something that's in the neighbourhood. Because once you start working mentally in the neighbourhood, all of that knowledge map comes back to you as a side effect of being in that area.

Let's say you're in England, and you knew neighbourhoods in Nottingham really well, and you wanted to go visit a friend in Nottingham. When you get on the road to go, and you're not using a map, you don't have the whole map loaded into your head.

All you know is, I'm going to go that way on this road, and then you see the exit off the M1, or whatever it is, that you recognise. “Oh, this is the exit I take,” so you take that exit.

All the other information in between, you kinda know it, but you drop it. You don't really actively search for it. Then when you get into the general area of your friend's house, you start to recognise landmarks and you go there.

Memory of non-physical spaces works the same way, and you can actually develop the ability to engage it as if it's a physical space. The technique is called the mind palace. It was discovered in Ancient Greece, and it still works.

Jo: Yes, and I agree with that, and I still have that kind of experience in a way.

When we're writing nonfiction, and you have selected footnotes in this book, for example, although not to the extent of academic text, which is what I've been doing with my master's dissertation this week.

As an example, I knew that Stephen King had said something like, “Writing is a form of telepathy,” but could I remember where it was? No.

hTen I was like, okay, well, it's very likely it's in either one of his introductions or it's in On Writing, his memoir of the craft, because that is an iconic book. But in order to actually get the right quote, because if you're quoting people, obviously it has to be an exact quote as opposed to a made-up thought.

Then if you're doing a proper footnote, for example, it does need what book it is and what edition and what page number and all of that kind of thing.

So when you're writing the nonfiction books, are you doing the memory palace thing, writing the stuff, and then going back and finding where you got it from?

Dan: Yes, and anything that's vague, I just put hard brackets around it.

I don't remember all the people I quoted, but let's say I quoted Schopenhauer. If I was going to be quoting Schopenhauer and I could remember what he said, but I couldn't remember the words, I'd just put brackets around it and say, “Find the place where Schopenhauer said this,” and then put the quote here.

I don't use hard brackets anywhere else in my writing, so I can then just Control + F, find the hard bracket, and retroactively do the research.

Jo: Yes, exactly. I think that is the point I was trying to get to, which is it's all very well having the memory palace, but I can bet you that some of these quotes are not correct.

Dan: Yes, always check quotes. Now with AI, there's search engine techniques where you can actually start from a paraphrase and then refine the search stepwise until you can get the exact quote with a reference, and then you can check it against the manuscript online.

I use a lot of those when I don't have the book that I'm thinking of in my hands. Now of course with AI, I'm like, “Where did this author say this thing…”

Jo: Roughly?

Dan: Yes, roughly. The AI will come back with, “Well, he said this in these words in that book, and these words in that book.” And I'm like, “Oh, boy, I get to pick which one works better for what I'm writing.”

Jo: It's very good. Coming back to what you were writing, I think you have balanced footnotes and source material, but you haven't gone as far as the academic footnoting of every single sentence, which is where I am at the moment.

So for general nonfiction that is trying to reach a broader audience, where would you say the balance lies?

Because I just feel now that we don't do enough of this in the indie community. I read a lot of nonfiction books which need a heck of a lot more attributions.

Dan: First of all, I subscribe to the Terry Pratchett school of footnotes, which is that footnotes are places for long asides that need to be there, but that interrupt the flow of the text. I'm sure you noticed.

Also, for me, it's really important, wherever I can remember where I got an idea, to point it out so that the reader can follow that rabbit trail if they want to.

As a nonfiction writer, I feel like I'm in the business of providing value to the curious person. So anywhere I can point them where they might have fun exploring further is a value add.

That's something I try to do, but I don't always remember, because in the heat of composition, you don't really realise where the ideas are coming from all the time.

The second thing is, if I'm directly quoting or paraphrasing someone, there's always at least an attribution to the author, if not in the footnotes, then in the body text. You know, as Harlan Ellison used to say about being paid as a writer, or whatever.

The great glory, and this is at least partly an aesthetic thing in my head, the great glory of nonfiction is that it taps you into an entire universe of conversations that have been going on as long as there's been a written word.

To pretend that you're not participating in that conversation, okay, it might make you look cool to the novice reader, but you're really depriving your reader of even just the bare awareness that he's dipping his toe in a rich stream that he could follow forever.

Especially in our world where we live in a TikTok world, but before that, we lived in a soundbite world, and before that, we lived in the newspaper world. These are all formats that try to pretend that they exist outside of time and culture, even though they're the most temporally dependent and culturally fickle sorts of entertainment there are.

We've gotten used to the experience of encountering something that feels like it could just be from anywhere, and that's not the way it really works.

Every TikTok video comes out of someone's experience, which is embedded in a culture, which is embedded in a tradition that's full of controversies that goes back to the beginning.

It's not just full of controversies, but it's accompanied by stories, fictional stories, mythic stories, where those controversies get fought out and explored.

I think as a nonfiction author, if you want to be really selfish about it, it makes you look better if you're also pointing at the tradition that you're standing in than if you're pretending that it's all coming from you.

Jo: Yes.

It makes you look better if you are citing things.

I feel like that's such a good reframe. I was reading a book the other day, and I was like, all these ideas are coming from all these other people that I know about.

This person would look a lot better if they actually accredited those ideas to the people they came from. My opinion of that person went down because they were not attributing. So, yes, I think it's so important, and that's the fun bit. Let's circle back to the fun bit of learning.

Dan: Before you get onto that, I should point out that in my writing, I don't do this with academic rigour. I do it as it occurs to me.

I write a weekly nonfiction article dealing with philosophy and history and arts and everything, and I don't always think, “Oh, the readers might not know where this comes from,” and stick it in there. But over the course of reading those articles, you get all the citations. They're just not always in every article.

Jo: Oh, no, I've read your stuff, Dan. You do a good job. Obviously not to the academic attribution detail, but I do think this book in particular, Reclaiming Your Mind: An Autodidact's Bible, has a lot of references so people can learn more.

So I do briefly, before we finish, because you and I could talk about this forever, but I do want to ask about Kickstarter. So you're using Kickstarter to launch this book. You've done a couple of campaigns, but not for a while.

So why use Kickstarter for this, and what are the pros and cons?

Dan: Well, as far as I've been able to work out, doing a Kickstarter is the one way you can make sure that you don't publish a book dead. Are you familiar with this term from old publishing?

Jo: You can expand on it.

Dan: Okay. So in traditional publishing, there's a term called publishing dead, which is where the publishing house buys a book, they go to the trouble of laying it out and printing it, and then they just kinda drop it on the market with an entry in the bookseller's catalogue.

There's no publicity, no fanfare, no attempt to get advance buzz going, and it just kinda sits there.

Occasionally someone who buys for a bookstore will get a couple of copies, and they'll sit on the shelves, and a customer will walk by and buy one. Books that are published dead tend to sell 500 copies over a 30-year lifetime. It's not much.

Jo: That's probably a lot of indie books as well.

Dan: That's how most indie books are done. The first 10 years of my career, I was doing fiction podcasting, so everything I was publishing got published live, and they did really well.

Then fiction podcasting kinda died at the same time that my life got really complicated, and so I decided just to let my podcast die with the wave. At just the same time, my personal fiction productivity went through the roof. I went from writing one, maybe two books a year to writing four or five.

I was dropping these four or five books on the world and nothing happened, and all the sales were drying up anyway from the older stuff that had been supported by the podcast. So I decided I wanted to find a way to stop publishing things dead.

I had done a Kickstarter for an audiobook years ago that I produced for Gail Carriger, and so when I was writing Secrets of the Heinlein Juvenile, I decided there's a lot of Heinlein fans out there, so even if I don't personally have the name recognition, this is something that I could launch pretty well on Kickstarter.

It did great, and I decided at that point that I was never going to publish another book dead. I was always going to have some kind of occasion to launch with, even if I had to manufacture it.

In the years since, I've published very little, because I've been trying to figure out how to do that. I've got a big stack of books that are coming out now that I've figured it out.

I realised that things like debuting in a book bundle, doing a Kickstarter, or finding a way to time a release with a news cycle, which is appropriate for some science fiction particularly, these are ways to publish a book without publishing it dead and then having to try to figure out why nobody's noticing it.

So that's why I'm doing the Kickstarter.

Jo: I also agree. What I like is doing the two-week campaign. I normally do two-week campaigns, because then I can just focus my energy before the campaign and then during those two weeks, and then I'm basically done, and then I put it up on all the platforms and everything.

I focus most of my energy into that couple of weeks beforehand and then the two weeks of the campaign. Like you, I mean—

We don't want to be spending all our time marketing, but to try and make it an occasion just helps us put a bit more effort into it, doesn't it?

Dan: It really does. And the other thing it does, and this took me a while to figure out, but I've come to understand that most people's relationship with their favourite writers isn't like my relationship with my favourite writers.

I've got about 70 writers I like, but I've got about 10 where I don't care what happens, I will buy and immediately read what they've done.

I realised that for most people, their relationship with most of the writers they like is more at arm's distance. They stumble across, “Oh, I didn't know this guy had something new. I'll pick it up,” rather than being like, “I love the way this person's mind works, and I want to see what it goes at next.”

So the bread and butter as an author has got to be in making sure that those people find you. It's not in serving the core base, the core 1,000 fans.

They're really important, and you want to do that, but if you want the career to sustain and build, you've got to find ways to help people in that second group, the arm's-length fans, stumble over what you're doing.

Because everybody's got more important things in life than your books. But if you've got excuses to be stumbled upon that don't involve standing right up and waving a sign saying, “Buy my book, buy my book,” then you're more likely to build momentum, because people talk about the book they just read and that they love.

If they don't talk to someone in the first few days after they read that book, then unless it was one of the books that changes their life, they're never going to talk about it again. So you want to get as many people talking about the cool book they read last week at the same time as possible, to build momentum.

Jo: Indeed. Right.

So where can people find your cool book, as well as all your other books, online?

Dan: Reclaiming Your Mind: An Autodidact's Bible is currently Kickstarting. You can find a link on the top post at my website at JDSawyer.net. You can find all my books at JDSawyer.net/book-list, and you can find my weekly articles on maker stuff, philosophy, creativity, and history at jdanielsawyer.substack.com.

Jo: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Dan. That was great.

Dan: It was a pleasure, as always.

The post Reclaiming Your Mind: How To Teach Yourself Anything With J. Daniel Sawyer first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can you use AI to research, edit and handle admin and marketing tasks while still writing every single word yourself? How can you double down on being human and reach readers on a personal level? Anna McPhee shares her perspective as a software engineer, author and creative technologist.

In the intro, How to Write, Publish, and Market Short Stories out now.

This show is supported by my Patrons. Join my Community and get articles, discounts, and extra audio and video tutorials on writing craft, author business, and AI tools, at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn

Anna McPhee is an author, software engineer, professional speaker, and creative technologist. Her latest book is What Machines Can't Replace: Why AI Makes Us More Human.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.

Show Notes

Why writing code is creative work, and what it shares with writing books

How AI changed Anna's job as a software engineer without taking her employment

The difference between AI assistance and generation

How to use custom skills for editing reports, research and repeatable tasks

Why the rise of AI makes us crave slow, imperfect, physical things

Responding to a negative review by showing up as a human

You can find Anna at Anna.kiwi and her new book at WhatMachinesCantReplace.com.

Transcript of the interview with Anna McPhee

Jo: Anna McPhee is an author, software engineer, professional speaker, and creative technologist. Her latest book is What Machines Can't Replace: Why AI Makes Us More Human. So welcome to the show, Anna.

Anna: Hi, Joanna. Thank you so much for having me.

Jo: Oh, this is going to be a fun conversation. First up—

Tell us a bit more about you and your background in technology, as well as how you got into writing.

Anna: I have been in all of these things my whole life, as long as I can remember. When I was just a little girl, writing was my favourite thing, writing stories. It was the whole reason I went to school, to be honest. I always pictured myself as a writer before anything else.

My dad was a lecturer in software development, so when I was little, he would teach me how to code. So I've always done both, for as long as I can remember, and my mum is an artist. That's been my upbringing, at the intersection of technology and art, and then writing is my own personal passion.

It's naturally flowed throughout my life. I've been in and out of some other careers and chased all the things that have made me feel interested and passionate, but writing has always been there in the background. It's something I do, whether it's been for a hobby or for a profession, so it's always been there.

Jo: But you work in software, right?

Anna: I do. I work in software, which came to me by chance. I set out as a digital nomad about 15 years ago now. I sold everything I owned and started travelling.

The way I thought I was going to fund this was through freelance writing, which I was very optimistic about. We all know now that's a very challenging way to make an income, especially when you don't have a background in it or a portfolio.

I did have this childhood background in software engineering and coding. So I set out to be a writer and travel the world as a writer, and actually what I ended up doing was building websites and writing software, because that's what people would pay me to do. So I fell into both at the same time through this chance I took.

Jo: I think sometimes people think that programming and software development and these more technical fields are not creative. My husband was a programmer for a long time, and essentially programming is a language.

Well, there are lots of languages, but you are creating in a language with computers, right? So is there that much difference?

How do you fix these two things in your mind separately, or are they the same thing?

Anna: They're so related. Many people might put writing into more of an art, and computer development and programming more into a maths or a science, but I just think there's so much creativity in writing code, in how you choose to structure things, in the language you select for something, the way you approach it.

It's very similar to writing a book, I think. I've found a lot of things that are very similar about it, to do with architecture even. When you look at the basics, some people might write a book with no idea where it's going and see where it ends.

It's the same with software. People might go into it and not have a plan. Most people will architect their software, or they'll architect their story in the same way. I think there's a lot of crossover between the two.

Jo: And there's editing, and doing the “does this do what I want it to do?” I think with software perhaps it's more obvious when something doesn't do what you want it to do than with a book.

Anna: Perhaps. Although with AI now, it's becoming a little more vague, because you can think your software's doing what you want it to, but it might not be. It might just look like it is. I think those lines are getting a bit blurrier as technology changes.

There's a lot of things in software development that are very similar to writing. We don't have an editor, but we will have unit tests or code reviews, and maybe the CI tests, and we've got all these structures in place that are very similar to writing.

Jo: I also think what's interesting, and this has been in the last maybe decade really, is that it used to be you would get a job in the old way, but—

Now it seems like your GitHub page, which is almost like your author platform, your programmer platform, can make a real difference in how people find you and your work.

So maybe talk a bit about that, because you have a GitHub page, don't you?

Anna: I do have a GitHub page, and I've spent a lot of time on it, because you can set up your README file and make it a bit like a website, and introduce all of your projects and what you're working on.

Just to combine it a little bit, actually, I use GitHub for my writing. I use it for version control so that I can go back and see the changes that I've made to the things that I'm writing.

Even with my book, I had a copy of it backed up in a private repository on GitHub where I could track changes and never lose a backup. I have so much faith in GitHub that it extends beyond the software I write and into everything I do. I keep a copy backed up in GitHub.

Jo: That's actually quite funny because, coming into AI in the author community, one of the things that's now talked about is how do you prove that your book is not a one-click generated book? And what you've actually got there is evidence of your process.

Anna: Exactly.

Jo: Which is kind of hilarious in many ways. Well, let's get into this, because there's so much fear and witch hunting right now and negativity in the author community.

As somebody who's grown up with both art and the software side, where do you think those attitudes come from, and how have they changed in different ways?

Anna: Oh, people are really afraid. I've got a very moderate perspective, and I think I sit in a very similar position to you.

A large number of people that I hear from are either incredibly pro-AI, let it do everything for them, everything, everything, do it for absolutely everything you can think of. Or they're completely terrified and very, very negative about it, and won't use it for anything at all.

I can only assume this is going to stabilise with time. There's been a huge amount of outrage against other technologies in the past, even calculators. All technology has come with scepticism and people scared that it's going to take their jobs.

I think there's a lot of misinformation out there as well, people who think that AI is trained on books, which it is, and that's a totally valid concern with the copyright and things.

I think there's a lot of misunderstanding around what training an AI model actually means in that regard. It's not taking someone's prose and reusing it. It's looking at the underlying mathematical probability of, if you have this word, what is the probability of the next word being this? It's broken down into numbers.

I'm not 100 percent sure, but from my perspective of seeing it, the witch hunt comes from a place of fear.

I saw an author in a group I'm in recently who said, “Oh, I've written so many novels, and I've run out of ideas for names for my characters. I've used every person I've ever met, I've used their name. That's how many books I've written. How do I get more names?”

Someone suggested, “Well, why don't you ask AI for some other names?” “Oh, no, no, no. I could never let AI take over my work like that.” And it was just over the idea of using it to ask a question.

So I think there's a feeling that if you let it do one thing, next thing it's going to be doing everything, and it's going to erase you, and your ideas, and your way of doing things.

Jo: Just on that, it is interesting, though, isn't it? Because I am trying to use it, like I use Claude Code, and I'm trying to use it for more, and more, and more.

I started off using ChatGPT the day it came out in 2022, and have increasingly tried to give the AI tools all the things that will free me up to do the things I love to do. Making lists of names is not on my list of things I love to do.

Anna: Yes, exactly. I feel the same way.

Jo: So that's the thing, isn't it? The fear is really interesting because we all have fear.

One very visceral time I remember feeling very scared was in the pandemic, in those early days when there wasn't a vaccine. That's really the only reference I think I have for it, because like you, I feel like I've grown up with technology, and so I've never felt it that way.

I'm hoping that as with COVID, as with things developing over time, and obviously again, misinformation is rampant, but—

I guess we got used to it. Is that the best we can hope for with AI?

Anna: I hope it's better than that. I hope we can hope for better, that people can learn how to use it in a way that supports them.

As people become less fearful, like with COVID, they experiment a little bit here or there and start to see that there are ways to not let it take over.

In general, people are really bad at identifying AI-generated content. There are so many studies done on it, and it's 50/50 at best. Good AI now produces stuff that a lot of people don't recognise. So it's more about the idea than the reality of it.

There's this whole idea around it that AI will take our jobs, and I get asked all the time, “Well, when do you think AI's going to take your job? You work on a computer.”

Well, it can take my job, and it has. I used to write code all the time, and now I write almost no code. I work for a very large software company, and we use a lot of AI in our development protocols, and I don't write any code now, more or less, and a few years ago I did all day.

So my job has changed completely, and AI has taken my job, but it hasn't taken my employment. I found a new way of being, which is I'm more of a project manager. I review code. I make sure nothing bad gets put out into the world. My role has changed, but it hasn't been taken away.

I hope that as people start to see that this new technology is not taking their jobs, it's taking the parts of their jobs off them that are so repeatable, and giving them more room to do more with the things that they are uniquely good at.

Jo: Absolutely. So let's get into that, because you did just say there that you're not writing any code, which is different to your writing for books. In your book, What Machines Can't Replace, you talk about how you used AI assistance and how you did things in different ways.

I've been explicit about being AI-assisted since May 2023, so I absolutely am on board with the difference between what is assistance and what is generation. One-click generation of a complete book, while some people might choose to do that, that's not what you and I are talking about. So tell us—

How did you use AI tools and these assisted processes for this book?

Anna: Right. So I used AI extensively for this book. However, I wrote every single word. I don't want AI to take over my voice, and that is one area where it differs from writing code in a big way.

One-click generation, maybe one day AI will actually be very good at it, and we won't be able to tell the difference. But currently, I definitely can. If I start reading something that is one-click generated, it becomes very obvious to me very quickly.

I use AI extensively in my day. I use a Claude plan which is the Max 20x, the biggest allowance plan, and I run out of limit every week. So I spend a lot of time seeing how it forms sentences and the kind of thing it says, so I think I'm quite sensitive to when I see it.

So for now, it's not good for that, and I don't think I ever want it to be. When I put something out in the world that is software, the thing that's uniquely me is the concepts behind it or the way it functions. It's not the code itself.

When I put writing out there, when I put a book out there, the words are the thing that's me. They're my signature, they're my style.

So I used AI assistance for everything else. I used it to help me research, but then I would verify the sources myself, but it was so good at finding things.

I used it to transcribe my words. I would go out for long walks, and my ideas come to me when I'm out walking, like so many people.

So I'd just pick up my phone and voice record, “Oh, hey, I was thinking, years ago I heard about this study, and I think that would be really interesting, but I don't really know the details of it. Can you make a note of this?”

Then my AI could go and research it, come back and say, “Oh, I think you're talking about this research paper, and here's a link to it.” It could add it into my notes, and I could still verify it and read it, but it saved me hours of manual trawling through Google Scholar looking for things.

So as a first step I used it for research, but I also used it all the way through the writing process. I've set up a lot of custom skills for all the different editor types. I've got a developmental editor, a line editor, a copy editor.

None of them are allowed to make any changes. They are only allowed to create reports of what they find. So I could check for consistency, or did I reference the right thing for this chapter? Does this flow okay? I could ask it questions about my work without it actually touching the words.

Another way I used it is I'd make more voice recordings, and then it would transcribe them and suggest where in my book they would fit best, and then copy and paste my exact words, word for word, into the right spot, and then I could edit it in.

So I used it for almost everything except the actual words, which remain mine, and the design as well. I value designers a lot, so I paid a cover designer to design my cover.

Jo: Yes, and all those things you were talking about, I also do.

How do you explain skills? Because I have like 100 skills now.

I do skills for everything. I'm struggling to explain what that is to people who don't really understand.

Anna: Yes, skills are amazing, and it is difficult to explain. It's like a little package, and it can contain prompts, it can contain scripts, it can contain information, and it can be called only when needed.

So if I created, for example, my developmental editor skill, it might be a folder that's consumed by Claude and Claude Code, and only when it's asked for, then it uses all of the stuff in its context and follows a set of instructions.

They're just more powerful than a prompt because they're reusable, and they live there, and it can be clever and know when to use ones without you invoking them directly as well.

I have another skill that's just me, about me, and I keep it up to date with information about what I'm working on and who I am. If I'm doing something, I can say, “Well, don't forget, check the About Me before you answer this.”

Or, “I'm working on this project I haven't worked on in a while, but I created a skill to reference it. Before we start work on this, can you go and check in with the skill?” Kind of like a library.

Jo: It's interesting, you're talking about quite expansive skills, and I do have some of those, but a lot of my skills are really quite specific. Like, do a Shopify product in the way that we did Shopify products last time.

Or, this is how Joanna Penn wants the sales description for Amazon, so write the Amazon sales description for this. And then, say, on ChatGPT it'll be like, right, do A+ content for this book. That kind of thing.

So it can be really, really specific, almost like a little program, right?

Then it can be, as you say, with memory and all this different stuff. Anything you want to do more than once, I think.

Anna: That's a really good way to describe it. Also, because of my technical background, I trust code a lot more than I trust AI at the moment.

I really love AI, but the results vary, and you can run the same thing five times and get five different results, whereas if you run a code function five times, you will always get the same result if it's a well-written function.

So for anything like that, I add code into my skills so that I can say, “When this is called, run this script,” and I know it's always run the same way. You can get quite complex with skills and build some real programs inside them, or it can be just a few lines. Do this, this way.

I've got one I really enjoy at the moment I created called Research Me. I have so many ideas, always hundreds of ideas. So many of them are terrible. Some of them are good, and some of them are already done.

I just type Research Me, and then I just put my thought. It might be a word. It might be a line. It might be more than that.

Then it goes away and looks it up and sees if someone's done this thing, and if it's valid to me, and then creates a report and saves it in my knowledge base for me to look at another time.

Jo: I guess it's not really a skill, but it's more like part of the memory. I just say, put that in the backlog and bring it back in a month.

Anna: Oh, that's so nice, too, being able to set schedules and reminders. Like, right now is not a good time, but I don't want to let this idea go, so can you bring it back to me at this time? And it will. It's wonderful for that.

Jo: It is good. Oh, and we should also say, you don't have to write a skill. If you do something with Claude or ChatGPT or whatever, you can then say, “Create a skill for this,” and it will write it, and you can have a look at it, but you don't have to sit there typing out how to do stuff.

I think often people think that you have to drive it a lot more, where it's just so much of a conversation now, isn't it?

Anna: Yes, it can be done completely with conversation. You don't need to write out any instructions or any code, anything at all.

You could have a really positive experience doing something with Claude Cowork and then get to the end of that process and think, “Oh, that was wonderful. I definitely think I'll do that again.”

So you just say, “Oh, that was great. Can you make that a skill so we can do it again the same way next time?” And it'll create it, and you just click a button, say Add the Skill once it's done, and that's it.

Jo: There are so many things. Now, just coming back to your book, you do have at the end of each chapter some prompts, although I don't like the word prompt anymore, because I feel like prompt is from the old way, when you would type in a certain prompt and then something would come back and that would be done.

Whereas now it's much more of a conversation. So a prompt is almost a starting point. So you've used questions, I guess.

What are your recommendations for authors who want to get more into this but are still apprehensive and are worried about getting it wrong somehow?

Anna: Okay. Yes, I agree with you on prompting. That was a real buzzword for a while there. Everyone was going to be a prompt engineer, and the future of AI was prompting, prompt design. The systems are so much more capable now that it's not what it was. It is definitely more of a conversation.

I think that is the good place to start, to just have a conversation with the AI about your work. It doesn't have to touch your work. You could just ask for its opinion on something.

If you don't want it to consume your whole book, there are privacy settings, and you can stop it from training on your material if that's the concern, or you could use a local model. You could give it some of your writing and ask its opinion and start a conversation.

One thing about AI is that people forget you can just say to it, “What's the best way to use you? Hi, I'm new here. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm a writer. How can you help me?” And it will tell you.

Jo: I think one of the other ways, if people don't even want to use it for creative stuff… This morning, as we record this, I've been delving into the back end of my YouTube channel, which I've just ignored for years, actually, and Google Search Console, and there are all these errors everywhere.

I'm like, “I don't understand that message.” Or I had an error on one of my files on Draft2Digital, and I was like, “Okay, ugh.” So now I just put those errors into Claude and say, “Right, how do I fix this?” Or, “Maybe you could fix this.”

That helps so much, because as author publishers or self-published authors, we do have a lot of technical things to do. Sometimes, well, all the time now, I think, getting help with it rather than ignoring it can be great.

Anna: Absolutely. It's so good for that administrative stuff as well, especially with the addition of being able to use Claude, and a lot of the other ones as well, in your web browser now. So it can do things for you. It can fill out forms. There's a lot of repetition in publishing a book.

You have to enter your ISBN in five million places, and you want to make sure that your information is aligned and that you have the same data in numerous different places, and you can ask it to check.

You can ask it to check your metadata on your website and say, “Does the author information for me align with what you're seeing on Goodreads, or what you're seeing on StoryGraph, or in Wikidata? Do you see any gaps that I need to address?” It's really good at that stuff.

Or you can open a form and say, “Can you fill it out for me? I'm sick of typing.” And it will. It's so good for the admin. Just amazing.

Jo: So good for admin, exactly. This is the thing, this whole “AI's going to take my job.” Yes, please take 95% of my job and leave me with the bit I want to do.

Let's get back into the book, because—

You also say in the book, “The more I worked with AI, the more I wanted the slow, imperfect physical things.” So tell us about that.

Anna: Yes. So AI swept me up. I've been, also like you, an early adopter, and absolutely obsessed with it right from day one. I just started to notice I needed more and more breaks, and I was valuing different things than I used to, and I was consuming and purchasing different things than I used to.

I started to see this changing, and I would spend more and more time out in the garden. I love my garden anyway, I'm a gardener.

I was just starting to recognise this feeling, and at first I couldn't really put a name to it. What is this? Why am I searching out these things? Why do I want to create more than I did even before with my hands?

So I started looking into it, and it was very much a global phenomenon. Everyone seems to be doing this.

There's been a really strong link between the introduction of AI into the world and things like record sales or sourdough baking, although that one also came during COVID, so that one's a bit tricky to measure. But lots of other things are just getting more and more popular as the market gets saturated with AI-generated content.

People want to see things that a human has touched. The harder it becomes to actually see that in AI-generated content, the more people want other signs. If you can't just read a piece of writing and know 100 percent sure a human wrote it or an AI wrote it, you start looking for other ways to tell.

So I really felt that in myself, and it was a very unsettling feeling, as someone who's been very, very technology-forward all my life, to start valuing more and more things that weren't technology.

Jo: Yes, I absolutely get this, and I think there's also another aspect, which I feel you must feel too.

There are some days, if I use AI a lot, I almost feel like a hangover.

Because the speed at which I can now work means that my human wetware brain is overloaded. That feeling is both exhilarating and amazing, but also totally exhausting.

Anna: Yes. There's a huge comedown from it. To me, in the beginning, it started feeling like eating a lot of sugar. Really, really great eating all these lollies. “Oh, this is amazing. These are so good.” And then afterwards, “Oh, I still feel hungry. I don't feel fulfilled. I'm surrounded by lolly wrappers. What is this?”

It felt a lot like that to me, where it's just creating all this stuff, and it felt like I was the master of the universe. Wow, I can create anything and everything, and let me do this and that and this and that.

Then I'm like, well, but all of the stuff I've created isn't that great, because it doesn't feel that good, and I didn't really make it. I just pushed buttons and said yes. It's a weird disconnect kind of hangover feeling if you spend too much time and create too much that way.

Jo: It makes me think of the BCI, the brain-computer interface. With Neuralink now, there are people who are paraplegic for whom it is absolutely amazing, but the thought of plugging something into my brain that would try and make my brain go even faster, I'm like, I don't think that our human brains are designed to go this fast. I just can't.

Anna: That's fair.

Jo: I can't see that happening.

Anna: It's a tough one. Personally, I have ADHD, so already the distractions are something I have to rein in, and then with this ability to create so many things all at once, it's hard to have some self-control.

I think with time that, for me, has gotten much easier, but in the early days it was a lot. It was very overstimulating to have so many things happening so quickly, all at the same time.

Jo: Yes, and actually I'm quite grateful for the usage limits. I primarily use Claude Fable, which I just love, but I keep an eye on my usage limits, and then I almost use that as a way to stop myself from using it too much at once, and that is actually very freeing.

The other thing, I mean, you mentioned it there, creating all the things and then realising, you said, they're not that good. I think that they are becoming incredibly excellent, but for me it was like, okay, well, now, for example, I could do TikTok.

I could get AI to do loads of TikTok videos and pump them out every day, but I don't want to do that. So why would I?

Anna: Yes. I really want things that go out to feel like me, and I feel when I generate anything, whether it's content, whether it's pictures, or software as well, that AI will very quickly get me 80 to 90% of the way there, and very well these days. But the last 10 to 20%, I really put so much of myself into, and that's a really active choice.

So I end up with all these other things that I've gotten to that 80% very quickly and then thought, “I don't know if I really want to invest myself in this and what I need to get it to a place where I would put it into the world.”

So I end up with a sort of graveyard of these mostly finished projects that I'm not quite happy enough with to put out there, but I don't really want to put in the work myself, because I have limited time, and you choose your things. No human can really polish up 100 things. You have to prioritise what you want to.

Jo: That is exactly it, and this is what I want people to understand. Everything you're saying and everything I'm saying, we are talking about feeling a lot. We're excited on the one hand and we're doing stuff, and then there are other things we're not excited about.

You can feel the difference in your body, in your mind, when what you are working on excites you, and I think we just have to trust that.

So people listening, what excites you to do with these tools, and what doesn't excite you?

Just trust that feeling and put things in the world where you're like, “Wow, this is fantastic,” or, “I love that it's helping me with that.” I mean, you can just tell the difference in our conversation, right?

Anna: Right, and you don't have to put everything out there as well. Just because you build something with AI, or you use it to help you in something, it's an experiment. Treat it as an experiment.

If you get to 80%, 90% and think, “I don't want to put my name to this,” then don't. Move on. It was an experiment, and you learned something from it.

Jo: So I guess on that then, if we do put things out in the world, like we've talked about, we're happily AI-assisted, and the things we do put out we're really proud of—

How can we communicate these aspects of imperfection, the story behind the object, this real person with a real history, so that people know our humanity, basically?

Anna: I really encourage people to share their humanness behind everything they're creating. If you're writing a book, you can share the process on socials, for example. It's becoming very desired to see the not-polished, everyday videos of someone's creative process. That's just one really small way.

I think just by nature, by creating it, by not letting AI do the creation work for you, you will show through in the work that you're doing. You can use AI to support you and to do the admin and to take away all the stuff that's boring or repetitive, but if you are doing the work, it is going to be visible to people.

I know we're not very good as humans right now at necessarily distinguishing AI-generated content against not, but you can tell when someone is writing about a human experience. AI has not had a human experience. It has not had a body. It doesn't have this embodiment that leads to so much of human creativity and ideas.

It is a very clever predictive text tool, and it is very, very good at it, but it does lack true human creativity.

So I think what all creatives can keep in mind is that if they're putting themselves into it and creating new things and following their passions and their interests and their art in what they're putting out there, it will show through.

Jo: Also, I think just on the marketing side, you mentioned your garden, for example. Now, I know you're a mum, but anyone can share pictures of their garden without privacy issues for their children or their family or anything.

So I think sharing human, even like your hand in the dirt with some flowers or something, is still a very human image.

So people can share more human elements around their life.

I mean, I almost have in my Instagram a sort of proof of humanity at this point.

Anna: Yes, I think that's becoming more and more important. A few weeks ago, I got a horrible review on my book, and I know everyone has to face this, but it was someone who clearly hadn't read my book.

They just said it was all AI-generated crap, pretty much. It was a waste of time, and it should've come with a warning that it was entirely AI-generated, which is so far from the truth. I put so much time into that book that I was really quite hurt by it.

My first thought was, “I need to get rid of this. I need this review to go away. I need to complain. I need to report this review because it is false.” And once I recovered from those feelings, instead what I did was I emailed my mailing list and said, “Hey, this person reviewed this, and this is why it hurt me, because I'm a person.”

I got a really nice response. I got a lot of people writing to me like, “That person is an idiot. You're great. Your book's wonderful.” And it was so nice.

It was quite challenging to be vulnerable, and instead of trying to sweep this thing under the rug, I just showed up with my humanness to my list and said, “Hey, this is me, and this hurts because I'm a person.” It was really validating in the end to just put some humanness out there.

Jo: This is what I really hate about all this witch hunting, is that people seem to have forgotten that there are actual humans behind this, and I know how you feel. I remember, in fact, it was 2023, I was in New Zealand. We should have said, you're in Australia, if people are wondering about your accent.

Anna: I am. I'm from New Zealand originally. I'm a New Zealander, but I'm living in Australia.

Jo: But I remember walking along the waterfront from the Viaduct. I still remember it, because I was being absolutely hammered on social media and comments and all this, and I said to my husband, “I think I have to leave the internet.”

I felt like people just don't understand this, and I was getting so much hate. But as you say, it was about communicating that with my community, who are listening, and basically changing my Patreon to put a lot of it behind the Patreon paywall.

I also topped doing a lot of interviews like this because of the negativity. Now, I'm hoping that we've moved on enough that people can be more open. Doing this interview, for example, is a way of showing people your humanity and mine.

I'm just so determined that people understand the difference between assistance and generation.

As you said at the beginning, it seems to be all or nothing, but that's just not true.

Anna: Right, and there's a huge spectrum of what AI support is. A huge, huge spectrum, and I don't think they're understanding. I think it will get there, but right now people say, “Well, that was AI-generated,” or it wasn't. That's just not how it is.

Maybe it was partially AI-generated. Maybe it was fully AI-assisted, but not at all AI-generated. Maybe you decide to use AI to make your book cover, but you just make components with AI, and then you assemble it using Adobe Illustrator into a cover.

Is that AI-generated? It's a very grey area. No, it's definitely assisted. Pieces of it might be AI-generated, but it as a whole conceptually fully came from your creativity and from your mind.

It's the same with writing. If you use Grammarly to autocorrect any spelling errors in your book, it would now get flagged as AI-assisted content. But some people see that as AI-generated, and they're two very, very different things.

Jo: Well, I think your book is great. It gives some very grounded advice on things, but also you do share, like you mentioned, a lot about being a mum, about being a gardener, about life, about the human aspect. So I highly recommend What Machines Can't Replace: Why AI Makes Us More Human.

Where can people find you and the book online?

Anna: Thank you so much. My book should be just about everywhere books are sold online, and if not, WhatMachinesCantReplace.com is the website for my book.

My personal website is Anna.kiwi, A-N-N-A dot kiwi, because I'm a Kiwi, and I am very happy with that domain. I have a blog and general contact information there.

I'm also all around the internet on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, everywhere. So I'm really happy to chat to anyone anytime about all things engineering, software, AI, books, toddlers, gardens, everything.

Jo: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Anna. That was great.

Anna: Thank you so much.

The post What Machines Can’t Replace: Why AI Makes Us More Human With Anna McPhee first appeared on The Creative Penn.