NYT BEST-SELLING AUTHOR MURPHY COMES TO MHCC

The hard work of self-belief and the hard work of writing has established Julie Murphy as a New York Times best-selling author.

She described those parts of her journey to Mt. Hood students and others on Monday, March 11, in the latest Mouths of Others guest-speaker appearance on campus.

Murphy is originally from Connecticut, but now lives in Texas. Growing up, she never thought she would become a writer, she told the Visual Arts Theatre audience. She fell in love with reading and writing after her senior year of high school. (Ironically, her English class is what nearly held her back from graduating, she added.) She went to a community college in Texas and later transferred to a four-year university where she got her bachelor’s degree.

The “Twilight” book series was her initial inspiration to write her first book, Murphy said. 

She describes writing her first book, “Side Effects May Vary,” as very fun, and not stressful, since the stakes were low for her. 

This changed when Murphy was writing “Dumplin,’ ” now her most famous novel, recently turned into a movie on Netflix starring Jennifer Aniston and Danielle Macdonald. This novel was harder for her to write because she resonates closely with the main character, she said: She didn’t think she could succeed because she never saw other fat people succeed.

After lots of hard work and commitment she triumphed and created a beautiful novel that is appreciated by many, especially Aniston,  who was a prime influencer and one of the various producers of the movie. 

There were a few differences between the novel and the movie, Murphy said. Two characters were cut, and “the message was diluted, watered down because it needed to be palpable” for a variety of audiences for it to be successful, she said. The message was transformed into one of self love: “You’ll never fight for yourself if you don’t love yourself,” she stated to the Mt. Hood audience.

Murphy didn’t feel “success” with her art until she was able to support her family, and was writing full-time. It was not easy to come by, though: She sent her book to 100 different publishers and received 100 rejections, never giving up. Throughout her career, she describes one of her biggest lessons as finding comfort and acceptance in her failures, because without them, you can’t reach success, she said.

One of the most useful tools that Murphy uses to write is the online Pacemaker planning program. It plans out how many words must be written a day to reach a specific writing goal. She is now writing about 2,000 words a day since she plans to publish one book a year, but her comfort level is writing 1,000 words daily, she said. Her current writing process is very rigid and mandated, not as creative as she wishes.

In all, her recommendation to those who want a career as an author is to find other things that you are passionate about, as these can feed your writing and be used as inspiration – things that help fuel the determination and willingness to put in the work needed.