One of the great pleasures of attending Viable Paradise X was meeting the people — and one of my favorite experiences was meeting the powerfully talented and wickedly funny Mur Lafferty. We bonded almost immediately — “Oh, you like Lore Sjoberg’s Bjork Song? Hey I was just chatting with Lore a few hours ago!” — and perhaps because of this, Mur was kind enough to show me the complete draft of the novel she was workshopping, a piece about arrogant superheroes, manipulative villains, and the folks with “unwanted” powers that fall in between. Happily, that draft became the novel Playing for Keeps — first released as a free PDF and podcast, and now going on sale in printed form this summer from Swarm Press. Mur and I spoke recently about workshops, her novel, and writing in the superhero genre.

Evan: I’ll start with the question I’ve been meaning to ask for a while, about time management. I mean, okay, you’ve got your blog, your Suicide Girls column, podcasts, Twitter, interviews, conventions, the Pink Tornado… oh and then there’s this “writing thing.” I mean, at this point you’re basically Cory Doctorow with more and better hair. Seriously, how do you fit it all in?

Mur: Hah! None of those things, even the Pink Tornado, who’s in school or day camp during the day, has to be done ALL the time. My columns are once or twice a month. Podcasts take maybe 7 hours a week. conventions are maybe 15 days out of the year. So I prioritize and do what I can when I can.

Evan: You’re not one of those “Getting Things Done” / Zero Inbox nerds, are you?

Mur: Honestly, I feel like I procrastinate a lot, and wonder how productive I could be if I could focus more.

Evan: I bet Cory thinks that all the time.

Mur: And no, I couldn’t handle all the details with GTD. I do try to keep my emails down though.

Evan: Let’s talk about workshops. What do you think writers can realistically expect to get out of a workshop? And at what point in their career should a writer think about going?

Mur: What writers will get out of a workshop depends on how open they are to learning.

Evan: Do you feel that a lot of writers come to workshops not open to learning?

Mur: I think you need a certain balance in your confidence level to hit workshops — sure, you need talent, but it’s a personality thing as much as it’s a talent thing. First — yes, I haven’t been to many workshops, but I’ve read many anecdotes, and Wilhelm’s “Storyteller” that state that nearly every workshop will have an attendee who is there for validation, for someone to tell them that yes, indeed, they can write, well done, pat on the head. And when that doesn’t happen, they get discouraged or annoyed. So the happy medium in confidence level is you have to have enough confidence to think your work is good enough for critiquing, but you have to be humble enough to accept that you are there to learn what’s WRONG with your story so you can make it stronger. (And then again you have to have the confidence to believe that you can make it better after the workshop.)

Evan: Seems like a tall order. 🙂

Mur: Hah! Well yeah. I’m sure we all had ego blows at VP, regardless of the state of mind we arrived there with. I know I did. 🙂

Evan: Agreed — I was just astounded at how smart the people were, and how much they knew about all kinds of stuff where I was a total novice. I did want to get to Playing for Keeps, before you fall asleep. 🙂

Mur: Oh I’m with you. Go on. 🙂

Evan: About your villains — I think you did a great job showing them as attractive, but ultimately quite dangerous. In other words, you didn’t fall into the trap of showing them as faux “bad boys” — they were the real thing. Can you talk about how you constructed your villains?

Mur: Well, we’ve known for years in comic books (or any storytelling, really) that villains aren’t all: “LOOKIT ME, I’M EVIL” — and a good villain is someone who believes what they are doing is right, that they are the protags in their own story. And despite what side you fight on, good or evil, that may not change the fact that personally, you’re a charmer. Or a jackass. My villain Clever Jack is a charmer who, incidentally, was treated poorly. My hero, White Lightning, is a jackass who fights crime.

Evan: Exactly right. But I think your take was interesting, because yes, White Lightning is a huge jackass, and yes, Clever Jack is a charmer, but you didn’t take the easy way out. Clever Jack isn’t just a cool tough “bad” guy, he really does some bad things.

Mur: Ah, you mean I didn’t make him “misunderstood”?

Evan: Bingo! Yes. He is who he is.

Mur: Right. I will be playing with more concept of villains soon — people with powers that could be considered “bad” inherently, despite the personality behind them.

Evan: So… the guy who raises zombies from the dead … but wants to fight crime?

Mur: Hah! Something like that, yes. I had an argument with my husband once whether necromancy was inherently evil. There will be a third waver character introduced soon who nobody likes because his nickname is “The Earworm.”

Evan: One of the things that strikes me about the superhero genre is that if anything, it’s actually more self-aware and self-referential than plain old SF. Did you have any trepidation about writing a novel in this genre, and in particular, a novel that is really a commentary about the genre?

Mur: Oh yeah. I was terrified. I started then when there was ONE superhero novel (non-licensed) that I knew of: Nobody Gets The Girl by James Maxey. And it was James’ book that gave me the courage to try out this superhero story that was forming in my head and not stress about finding an artist to try writing comics. I mean, I thought I was writing for a genre that didn’t exist. But now that it’s coming out, there are countless books out. From The Notebooks of Dr. Brain by Minister Faust is a good one.

Evan: Perhaps at this point, there really is critical mass here — you’ve got the movies that are wildly successful, and so now there’s room for novel-style commentaries.

Mur: That’s what I’m hoping! 🙂

Evan: Last question about the construction of the book. What do you think were the largest changes you made in response to feedback from your peers and mentors? What made you go, “aha”?

Mur: Debra Doyle helped a lot — I had too many attacks from too many directions, so in rewrite I had the same number of attacks from fewer directions.

Evan: So, fight blocking.

Mur: Well, one villain brings in, shall we say, a new tool to use against the city. Doyle told me it was too much going on. So I had to change the tool, and bring in said tool much much later. And I think that worked.

Evan: “Too much going on” — I think that’s often the case in all the SFnal genres.

Mur: Yes! So that was a major structural change. Beyond that, it was a lot of surface stuff, one minor character changed sex, one changed race. Minor stuff like that.

Evan: Okay, I’ve got one last question for you. Hal Jordan, Guy Gardner, or Kyle Rayner?

Mur: John Stewart.

Evan: !!

Mur: I’ve totally lost you as a friend, haven’t I?

Evan: I’ll still post this interview. But I’m going to have to do some hard thinking.

Mur’s novel Playing for Keeps goes on sale August 25, 2008.