Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello authors.
[00:00:01] Speaker B: I'm Joanne Morrell, children's and young adult fiction writer and author of short nonfiction for Authors. Thanks for joining me for the Hybrid Author Podcast, sharing interviews from industry professionals to help you forge a career as a hybrid author, both independently and traditionally publishing your books. You can get the show notes for each episode and sign up for your free Author pass over at the Hybrid Author website to discover your writing process, get tips on how to publish productively, and get comfortable promoting your books at www.
Let's crack on with the episode.
[00:00:42] Speaker A: Hello authors.
[00:00:45] Speaker B: I hope you're all keeping well in whatever part of the world you reside and listen to the podcast in Today's interview is with Julia Lawrenson on awards, substack and storytelling, a hybrid career and WeChat shortlisting for the 2025 WA Premier's Literary Awards blogging on substack and how this process differs from more traditional publishing or social media. How Julia's lengthy hybrid career writing for different audiences and in different forms have challenged and inspired her as a storyteller. Julia's sought after advice for writers navigating their own hybrid careers, balancing traditional recognition, digital platforms and personal creative goals.
So in my author venture this week, I do apologize for last week's episode. I was talking about WA Premier's literary awards and I thought it was last Friday. And then after interviewing Julia, it turns out it's this week.
[00:01:43] Speaker A: So yeah, yeah, lots of more exciting times to come for that.
[00:01:47] Speaker B: So there's nothing to share on that because I haven't attended it yet. And unfortunately I have another commitment that I'm hoping to be able to shuffle around to attend. So I've just been very busy this week following up on freelance article leads and caught up in what I deem admin tasks. But it's really a lot of things that I've got deadlines attached to it. There's a grant I'm applying for. My speaking gigs kick off on Saturday. So there's questions I need to do for the podcast, there's questions for an upcoming event. There's little things like that that I'm sort of pushing to the forefront over, say, sitting down to write the Vineyard novel. But it's really irking me a bit because, you know, especially in the upcoming interview with Julia, she shares her advice. And some of our top advice is, you know, remembering your why of why you got into writing in the first place or why you're doing this in the first place. And why I'm doing all of this in the first place is for writing. And yeah, I just don't feel like I'm doing as much as I would like to, as you probably hear that often from me. But unfortunately lots of personal issues happening again last week and I just have to roll with it. So anybody else listening out there? Same as me, trying to stick with a writing plan or something and it just keeps bombarding. Don't give up, just persevere and do what you can. So I just wanted to touch on an article that I read through Writer's Digest and it's written by Andrew Bridgman, who is a thriller author and it's called My First Ideas Aren't My Best and AI Only Makes Them Worse. So author Andrew Bridgman admits to taking ChatGPT for a test drive for his writing and the reasons why it will never work for writers. And I will link to the show notes if anybody wants to go back. And it's just a really good perspective for anybody who AI curious or worried about AI and what that means for your writing career. Yeah, so. So Andrew says. Recently I found myself in a circle of writers in New York City, all well known and successful. They were sharing their love of writing, the process, the craft, the joy of creation, and how they were born to do this. And without writing, their souls would starve from malnutrition. I nodded. I'm going to come clean. For me, writing is a grind and I'm pretty sure my soul wouldn't starve without it. I've always been the kind of person that spends far too many daylight hours inventing ways around doing hard things. And writing is so damned hard. And sometimes this is from me, sometimes.
[00:04:03] Speaker A: I do feel that way. Also.
[00:04:05] Speaker B: Sometimes writing can be hard. You know, when you hit a roadblock and there's, there's a joy to it, of course, but there is hard elements as well. And again, on the upcoming interview with Julia, she talks about how she loves the challenge of writing and it's a really, really good way to think about writing as a challenge. And I too like to be challenged. I don't like to live a boring life and I don't like not to.
[00:04:25] Speaker A: Be challenged these days, which is a.
[00:04:27] Speaker B: Far cry from when I was younger, that's for sure. So Andrew says, I write fiction. Thrillers to be exact. I've written two I wasn't always thrilling to be around as I wrote them. Apologies again to my wife and dog. The literary vehicle carrying me to the end was a jalopy. It was a year long journey traversing unknown roads at midnight without headlights to guide me, I took a lot of frustrating detours, hit a lot of trees, and got my wheels buried in muddy fields. Those stories took a long time to find their way home. I'd been looking forward to jumping into my third book. I figured by now I knew what I was doing. How could I not have learned something from my previous mistakes? I would discover my Senshou theme early. I'd write a clean first draft instead of the meandering mess I usually produced. It was then I heard the siren song of AI. I waded in cautiously. If you haven't tipped a towan yet, let me tell you, it's remarkably simple to master. It impressed me immediately. It wasn't long before I used it as an assistant to help me build my website. It was a phenomenal researcher, and it's a pretty good collaborator for brainstorming. As long as you understand the suggestions it gives will never be an ENT entirely original. After all, the technology is based on pattern recognition. It's designed to be derivative. When I get the time, I'm going to let it tutor me in Italian. The more I interacted with AI the more I could see the possibilities, the promise of making my life more efficient. But could it write? Should it write? I can hear your teeth grinding from here. I know. Just toying with the idea made me feel a little guilty. Of course I shouldn't let it write. I'm the writer. That's my job. But on the other hand, it's just a tool, right? The ideas I give it are my ideas, coming from my unique understanding of the world. And there were already plenty of people on YouTube proudly letting AI write books for them. If it helped me write faster, my publisher would be pleased, my readers would be happy, and my bank account would be overjoyed. Mine was a slow, persistent creep toward the dark side. But in spite of all the rationalisations, it still felt like crossing a line. As my wife has come to make terms with. There's a rebellious, curious 13 year old living inside my 60 year old skin. So, as I often do, I crossed the line. I let ChatGPT take the writing wheel. Just a test drive. Here's how it worked. I gave it a sample of my writing and asked it to mimic my style. Then I gave it some backstory about my characters. I told it what needed to happen and seen.
The score was in my head. I directed while AI played the notes it created on the fly. It wrote paragraphs and pages at blistering pace. No writer's block, no trepidation. No second thoughts. In the time it took me to write a single paragraph, we had collaborated on several chapters and talk about a delightful partner. There was a small problem with the writing. It's possible that the fault was in the author. It was mimicking. But my test drive took me to literary equivalent of an oversplashed, assaulted strip mall on the generic side of town. But that was a small first draft kind of problem. I could clean up the text another day. It was fun. I left my office feeling, for the first time, prolific. Maybe AI could be the collaboration partner I needed. As long as I didn't tell anyone. That night, tucked in bed and staring into the darkness, something hit me. A realization. I wasn't thinking of my story. That's unusual for me. I always drift off thinking about what happened at the writing desk and the decisions that await me that night. Nothing. I had almost no connection to what I'd worked on that day. And make no mistake, I was an active creative partner. Every story idea was my own. Why the disconnect? Here's the problem with passing the pen over to artificial intelligence. Every writer knows where the battle takes place. Literary wars are won and lost at sentence level. That's where the brutality is, the hand to hand combat. It is in that place where my ideas generate and my creativity spark. It is where my muse will show up if she shows up. That day in the writing room, there had been no fight, no battle. I was using a joystick to control my story. Another problem. AI had praised all of my ideas. And I, so desperate to hear a compliment, momentarily believed that I was brilliant. But here's the thing. I know better. Life has shown me with great clarity that my first ideas are not my best ideas. And if I'm being honest, neither are my second, third, or fourth. In my excitement to see words and sentences filling up the page, I lost sight of how my process works. AI had removed me from the depth of my story. The victory that comes from battling at the cursor. Someone is likely reading this and thinking, I should have used a different LLM large language model. But the next generation of AI will run circles around what we can do today. And they are likely right. But it won't matter. My value. And your value isn't in producing more words per hour. It's in the specific way our minds work through problems. The unexpected connections we make when we're building our sentences, when we're in the flow, and most importantly, when we're stuck having AI remove. My writing problem is my biggest problem with AI Speed. Will never be our competitive advantage. As storytellers, we're living through a peculiar moment in history. It's possible that AI is leading us to a post literate era where readers will be sate with creamed corn stories ladled out of huge dystopian silver tanks. But I'm not that pessimistic. I truly believe that the more technology we consume, the more we will yearn for authentically human stories written by authentic humans. My stories. Your stories. So what did I learn in this brief test drive? Sorry AI, but I'm not letting you near my sentences there. I will fight my own battles, writing slowly and inefficiently, because writing is hard, and if I'm going to produce my best work, I must always lean into the hard. Andrew says. My hope is that the literature of our tomorrows will not exist off a smooth, artificially paved highway, but arrive with tree branches in the bumper and mud on the tires and scratches and dents from smacking into all sorts of things in the night. So yeah, I just wanted to share the article because I read it and I felt really inspired and I thought it was just terrific and such a great perspective and it's something that's been playing on my mind a bit with with this type of thing and just different perspectives and humanization, authenticity and human voices in amongst all this AI stuff. So yeah, check out the article. It's good.
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[00:11:20] Speaker A: Julia Laurenson has published more than 15 books for children and young people, from a picture book to books for older teenagers, and in 2024 published a memoir called how to Avoid a Happy Life. Her books have been recognized in the Children's Book Council Awards, the WA Premiers Book Awards and the Queensland Literary Awards.
[00:11:40] Speaker B: And she is presented to schools across.
[00:11:42] Speaker A: Australia, in Singapore and in Bali. She is an enthusiastic adult learner of Indonesian yoga and the cello. Her favorite place on Earth is the DO Park. Wow. Welcome to the Hybrid Author podcast, Julia.
[00:11:55] Speaker C: Thank you very much for having me.
[00:11:57] Speaker A: Oh, we're thrilled and honored to have you. Thanks so much for joining us. We'll just pair right back before all of these absolutely amazing accolades of how you came to be a writer.
[00:12:07] Speaker C: I became a writer because I just always loved the written word. I was really, really shy as a child, which people find hard to believe now, but I was, like, really painfully shy.
But I loved being able to communicate through words, whether that was reading other people's words or writing poems or parodies of songs or diaries or whatever it was. I just loved everything about writing just really excited me from a young age. So it was just something I really burningly wanted to do for reasons I'm still not really sure of. But it's carried me this hope. I just have to accept it, I think.
[00:12:49] Speaker A: Yeah, that's amazing. And, yeah, you've been around for a long time and obviously written in different mediums and genres and things, but you've also. Also done so much other stuff, but the writing obviously will always remain.
[00:13:01] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I was always very resistant to being told that I should get a day job, but in fact, it is actually necessary to have a day job if you're a writer in Australia, apart from a few people, I think most of us have to be able to combine things.
[00:13:17] Speaker A: Yeah. Different things. That's it. Well, congratulations on being shortlisted for the 2025 WA Premiers Literary Award. How are you feeling about.
[00:13:29] Speaker C: Well, I. It's been amazing because this year they've taken a really different approach to the awards. So they've done, you know, they did a short listing author event and they've really promoted it and there's been a really long lead in. And so it's. Because the. The short list, I mean, you. You're aware of how many amazing books are published in Western Australia every single year.
And I mean, the short list is exceptional. Like, all the books in all the categories are am amazing.
And so it's been really nice for me because this is my first memoir, probably my last Memoir, I guess.
[00:14:10] Speaker A: Surely not.
[00:14:12] Speaker C: It's very different to publishing a children or young adult book. It's felt very much like my first book in some ways. And so one of the things that being shortlisted has done is introduced me to a whole pile of other writers that I didn't know before, even though we're all in Perth. But I think the kids writing scene is very tight and warm and you know, we do all know each other so it's been nice to meet other writers writing different things. So yeah, so that's been an amazing opportunity to be able to do that and it's, yeah, frankly just thrilling. The awards are next week as we're recording this and I kind of don't want the awards to happen. I just want to keep. Just be shortlisted.
[00:14:57] Speaker A: Well, that's amazing. For anybody who's listening, who lives under a rock. Can you tell us about your memoir, you know, how to Avoid A Happy Life, which is the category that you're shortlisted for?
[00:15:06] Speaker C: Yeah. So it is a memoir and you can tell from the title that I'm. I'm taking my own life a bit tongue in cheek because so the title. And I'll hold it up for the benefit of the video. So I loved the image that Fremantle Press came up with.
[00:15:23] Speaker A: It's amazing.
[00:15:24] Speaker C: When I looked at it I said, oh, that's going down into a hole. And my publisher said, well you could be climbing out of it.
It's just about the odd collection of things that's happened to me over my life. It's also a bogans represent kind of story as well because there's not very many working class people who write.
[00:15:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:45] Speaker C: At all. And write memoirs. So I kind of wanted to show what life growing up in Kelmscott, Armdale and Goswell's is like and traverses everything from, you know, really difficult stuff to I guess more light hearted.
The more light hearted tried to do it in an entertaining way.
[00:16:05] Speaker A: Yeah, no, that's fantastic. And I mean you've obviously, you won awards with children's fiction and things in WA Premier's Book Awards and this being a non fiction, how does this recognition, how does it differ from like your children's fiction to this which is obviously writing is so personal and stuff. This memoir is extremely personal. So it's a bit of a difference.
[00:16:27] Speaker C: It is really different and it feels, I mean it was such a weird thing to write about your own life and then realizing because I, when I wrote it I wasn't really sure whether I was going to publish it or whether I was going to publish it in Australia or anything and so having it published with Fremantle Press and then having people read it and a friend of mine said, I feel like I've just rifled around in your undie draw.
Yeah, yeah, that's kind of what it felt like. But, but it is a very West Australian story and so being shortlisted for the premieres for such a personal book and for something that I threw everything at like I just did. I just wrote the best book I could possibly write and put everything into it. So to be short lived listed is just amazing.
[00:17:15] Speaker A: Yeah, no, that's great. And have you had people, have you had people reach out to you like who've read it and sort of connect with your experiences and life story?
[00:17:25] Speaker C: That has been the most amazing thing. And I think because like I said, I know this probably sounds weird but there's. But we're not very represented, you know, like people who come from tougher backgrounds or working class backgrounds and you know, growing up in Perth also doesn't really generally it wasn't the most exciting place on earth to grow up.
So I think a lot of people and, and not just people that are from Western Australia either, but people that have read it all around the country have really, it's really resonated with a lot of women in particular and also some men surprisingly as well. So yeah, it's been really nice and the fact that people have felt like they wanted to reach out has just been lovely.
[00:18:15] Speaker A: Yeah. Oh no, that's fantastic. Well, we've got our fingers crossed but we know that you're going to take it out so.
[00:18:22] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, I don't even want to think about.
[00:18:25] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just to avoid the night. So that's, that's fantastic. Well, you know, as being, as well as being an amazing author in your field, you're also embrace stack as a platform for blogging and you've got some great substack articles that come out and things. So what drew you to substack and.
[00:18:43] Speaker B: How did you hear about it first.
[00:18:44] Speaker A: And how have you found writing on.
[00:18:46] Speaker B: That compared to sort of just posting on social media and things?
[00:18:49] Speaker C: Yeah, it's. I, I'm really enjoying it actually. I know I've noticed a bit of a shift like some people going, oh, it's becoming a bit more, you know, I don't know, commercial or whatever but because I tried medium for a while which I quite liked except the bit about having to submit articles to other. To editors who are also amateur editors in some cases it was just kind Of. I didn't feel like I had control of my own work.
And on social media, it just feels very ephemeral. And I know my social media is mostly for friends. I mean, there are. You know, I have lots of writing friends, obviously, but substack, I don't know it. I like that it gives you control.
It has really nice options. So, you know, so people who want us to subscribe and pay can do that, but there's also the free options. And I also like all the other content that's on there. I think it's a very.
It's a medium that writers really like, and so there's really good quality stuff on there. And it does encourage, you know, not super long articles, but just to go into a bit more depth about some things. So I'm still not great. I still am not sure about the notes and the other bits and pieces. So I've only just started doing that, so I don't feel like I quite know what I'm doing.
[00:20:15] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:20:16] Speaker C: But I like the interactions that I have and I like.
Yeah, I don't know, it just feels like a nice, warm community with some really interesting things going on there.
[00:20:25] Speaker A: Yeah, that's great. I haven't explored it too much myself, and I know that some people.
[00:20:30] Speaker B: There's podcasts and stuff on there as well, isn't there?
[00:20:32] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:20:33] Speaker A: It's really kind of becoming a. Like a sharing platform or something.
[00:20:38] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:20:39] Speaker A: It's.
It's not being overrun. Is it like, you know, how some things sort of start and then they take off and then it becomes absolutely massive? Is that becoming the case?
[00:20:49] Speaker C: I think some people are concerned that that's where it's going. Look, I don't feel that way about it at the moment, but also, I'm not a person who's going after. I think I've got 250 subscribers, you know, which is just a nice amount because. I don't know, I think it must feel weird if you've got, like, thousands of people you're inviting to. I'm not sure how I'd feel about that.
[00:21:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:10] Speaker C: So I don't know. For me, it works. And I guess it's just. And it's easy to use, I guess. And like I said, the main thing for me is feeling like I've got control over my material.
[00:21:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:20] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:21:21] Speaker B: Well, that's fantastic.
[00:21:22] Speaker A: So, you know, as we said, you've written for many different mediums and audiences and different forms. How have you found those shifts have challenged you or inspired you as a storyteller? You know, from your children's fiction to your sub stack to your nonfiction. Is there different aspects of your life that inspire your writing?
[00:21:42] Speaker C: I think I've always. For me, all of my books I think are very different and for me I want to try different things when I'm writing. I don't want to just keep doing the same thing over and over again. So that my latest book for middle grade readers is a novel in verse, which is not something I ever thought I'd do actually.
And it's a historical novel as well.
And the reason it ended up in verse is because it was originally in prose and there was just so much detail because about a flood that happened in 1907 at a gold mine and about a miner who got trapped underground for nine days.
And so there was incredible amounts of technical details and how the rescue almost didn't happen and it just got weighted down with that. Plus I did heaps of research into what schools were like and what the curriculum was to inform my 12 year old protagonist going to school there and it, I, you know, it was just this heavy mess and so I thought I'm just going to try and pare it down Y and I down and it became a verse novel which I just sent a couple of chapters to Kate Sutherland, the editor going what do you reckon? She was like, yeah, so yeah, it was an accidental verse novel but I, I like, you know, everybody. Every book's got its own audience and I've written from everything from. I've written a picture book now again probably last and it. I like the challenge of thinking what are kids gonna like? Or what's a 12 year old gonna like or what's, you know. And of course you never exactly know but you kind of have to have your idealized reader or readers in mind I think especially when you're writing for younger people. And I just love that challenge. But it's a challenge every single time.
It gets easier or clearer. I don't think there's any magic formula. Maybe some other people have one. But yeah, to me it's just about trying to challenge myself as a writer and to try and engage the audience. That's kind of it.
[00:24:03] Speaker A: Yeah. So any more adult novels coming your way or anything like that? Now you've done the memoir for older people, although that's. It's a different genre in itself.
[00:24:12] Speaker C: Yeah, it is. I look, not so far I'm working on a historical non fiction but it's early days and it's sort of not my. I'm the Writer on it, but it's not my project exactly.
So.
And I'm not sure whether that's going to be aimed at high school or general readership or how that's going to go yet. So it's still very early days, but yeah, something completely different.
Yeah.
[00:24:39] Speaker A: That's amazing. Yeah. Oh, no, that's great. Well, for our writers who are listening, who are navigating their own hybrid careers, you know, balancing traditional recognition, digital platforms, you know, other genres, personal creative goals, do you have any advice you would like to offer them from your own author adventure? Whether it's from publishing or writing for different age groups, or just anything in general.
[00:25:02] Speaker C: I love your term author adventure. I think that framework.
[00:25:05] Speaker A: I just hate the word journey. It does my nothing well.
[00:25:08] Speaker C: Yeah, but journey.
I like an adventure, but, you know, sometimes it just feels like a, you know, a roller coaster with all of that.
[00:25:16] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
Pack a sick bag.
[00:25:22] Speaker C: Really.
Look, I think I would just suggest to people that they go back to why they write in the first place. What is it that made them want to do this crazy thing called writing and just to focus on that. Because so much about writing and the industry you have no control over. I mean, probably hybrid authors have a bit more control than others, but even still, you can't control how people are going to respond. You can't control your reviews. You can't, you know, you can't do any of those things. But what you can do is just know why you're doing it and having that as your main focus. I've had a few. I don't know what the writing equivalent of a, you know, nervous breakdown is, but I've had a few dark tea times.
[00:26:15] Speaker A: Another adventure.
[00:26:19] Speaker C: You know, why? Why, why, why do I. Why do I do this to myself?
To me, that's always been the thing. Just coming back to the why? Why am I doing it?
What. What is it that I want to do or achieve with this book, with this writing life, with whatever it is, and just try and meet whatever happens with grace.
[00:26:41] Speaker A: Yeah, No, I love that. And that's absolutely spot on because you can, you can just get absolutely all caught up in everything, can't you? And it can just be too much and people forget why they started it in the first place. But it is refreshing to hear someone of your caliber still has a few freak outs as well.
[00:27:01] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:27:01] Speaker A: And you can still make it.
[00:27:04] Speaker C: Yeah, it's. It's just, it's a. Look, it's a tough industry. If people want an easy life, being a writer is not. It's not the thing to pursue. Honestly, I could think of many other things that are just.
[00:27:19] Speaker A: Absolutely, well, huge congrats on all your success to date and especially for, you know, the Premier's lit awards with the memoir. It's been absolutely fantastic chatting to you. Can you tell our audience where they can discover, you know, everything you do on an offline?
[00:27:33] Speaker C: So I've got a website, so if you just Google Julia Lawrence and it should come up and my substack is called what were you thinking.
[00:27:44] Speaker A: When you decided to be a writer?
[00:27:47] Speaker C: Yeah. And you know, and I'm on Instagram probably not so often. I think my substacks are my most regular kind of posting platform.
[00:27:56] Speaker A: Oh, well, that's amazing. Thank you so much, Julia, for coming on.
[00:27:59] Speaker C: Thanks for having me.
[00:28:08] Speaker B: So there you have it, folks, the marvelously talented Julia Laurenson. Next time on the Hybrid Author Podcast, we have finding lady family resilience and weaving narratives with Mila Maxwell. Mila Maxwell is an author from Clare, Nova Scotia, Canada, with a deep rooted passion for storytelling and a love of the outdoors. A proud French Acadian, Mila draws inspiration from both her cultural heritage and her adventurous lifestyle, which includes being a volunteer firefighter. She lives in Sussex, New Brunswick, Canada, with her husband, Jeremy, son Bennett, and two French bulldogs. When not writing, you can find Mila out in nature, at the gym or helping others through her work in the community. That's coming up. I wish you well in your author adventure this week. That's it from me. Bye for now. That's the end for now. Authors, I hope you are further forward in your author adventure after listening, and I hope you'll listen next time. Remember to head on over to the Hybrid Author website at www.hybridauthor.com to get your free author pass. It's bye for now.
