Jul 21, 2026 · 1 hr 22 min · 9 segments
A book is so much more than just the spark of an idea. A ton of people have the spark of an idea—and now can plug it into a plagarism machine to spit out a story. But you become a writer in the…
Brianna LabuskesHost
Meredith HambrockHost
One is because I've had to listen to these podcasts back again to make sure all the sound and everything was okay.
And I kind of... had the reaction of like, well, what do you think about it? And I do think I have kind of explained some of it, but some of it just kind of lives in my brain, not on the page, as I always get notes about.
And then the second reason is because I think we're living in this fraught time, and this is going to be my AI trigger warning.
for anyone we won't talk about it that much but it was kind of an impetus for this um episode which is you know there used to be a time where you'd be like at a dinner party and someone would come up and say like here is my story idea i have a great idea for a book why don't you write it and you have to be like what no you write it and they're like i don't have time i'm the story idea guy um And so now that person can just kind of like type it into the plagiarism machine and like have it spit out a story.
But the writing, like when you become a writer is not the story ideas really.
It's the execution of those, getting the idea from the, you know, spark to the page.
And so I thought, what better way to highlight our creative process than kind of talking about how we move from the spark to the page.
And I'm not going to talk about like the entire book, but just kind of the thought process that we go through to develop stories.
I, for some reason, like mentally it was living in my head as birth a book and I had all these like weird, like, and I think part of it is the novel I'm working on is about like bodily autonomy and pregnancy.
And like, so I just maybe have been having like weird subconscious things in the back of my mind.
Um, but I totally, yeah, I think that it's a super valid thing to talk about.
I feel like something that happens often to me is like when you go, like if you do a little talk at like a, um, like a, for a launch event, a book launch event, or you're talking to like a writing group or something, um, they ask you like where you get your ideas, um, And getting ideas is never the problem for me as much as it is like choosing like what's the good idea.
And like that is something that has haunted me a little bit throughout my career.
But you have like thoughts of you like kind of like broke down like how you have built some of your books.
about it because i'm very curious about right you write historical fiction novels you write thrillers um and i feel like there's probably similarities and also differences so Yeah, go for it.
One is because I've had to listen to these podcasts back again to make sure all the sound and everything was okay.
And I kind of... had the reaction of like, well, what do you think about it? And I do think I have kind of explained some of it, but some of it just kind of lives in my brain, not on the page, as I always get notes about.
And then the second reason is because I think we're living in this fraught time, and this is going to be my AI trigger warning.
for anyone we won't talk about it that much but it was kind of an impetus for this um episode which is you know there used to be a time where you'd be like at a dinner party and someone would come up and say like here is my story idea i have a great idea for a book why don't you write it and you have to be like what no you write it and they're like i don't have time i'm the story idea guy um And so now that person can just kind of like type it into the plagiarism machine and like have it spit out a story.
But the writing, like when you become a writer is not the story ideas really.
It's the execution of those, getting the idea from the, you know, spark to the page.
And so I thought, what better way to highlight our creative process than kind of talking about how we move from the spark to the page.
And I'm not going to talk about like the entire book, but just kind of the thought process that we go through to develop stories.
I, for some reason, like mentally it was living in my head as birth a book and I had all these like weird, like, and I think part of it is the novel I'm working on is about like bodily autonomy and pregnancy.
And like, so I just maybe have been having like weird subconscious things in the back of my mind.
Um, but I totally, yeah, I think that it's a super valid thing to talk about.
I feel like something that happens often to me is like when you go, like if you do a little talk at like a, um, like a, for a launch event, a book launch event, or you're talking to like a writing group or something, um, they ask you like where you get your ideas, um, And getting ideas is never the problem for me as much as it is like choosing like what's the good idea.
And like that is something that has haunted me a little bit throughout my career.
But you have like thoughts of you like kind of like broke down like how you have built some of your books.
about it because i'm very curious about right you write historical fiction novels you write thrillers um and i feel like there's probably similarities and also differences so Yeah, go for it.
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