Archive for the ‘Science Fiction’ Category
In conversations with other writers, I often find myself in disagreement regarding a particular aspect of the writing process. Many, perhaps most, dislike the work involved with revisions and editing, seeing it as a relentless, grinding chore designed to fuel self-doubt. You see countless memes in the social media expressing, in cartoonish grotesquerie, the fear and loathing often invoked by the process of editing. For me, the very opposite is true. The hardest part of the fiction-writing process is creating the basis of the plot and the characters to start with. I don’t outline, because fiction doesn’t come to me that way. I grope my way forward, figuring things out as I go. “Pantsing,” say some, as in writing by the seat of your pants. I prefer the phrase discovery writing. Whatever you choose to call it, this phase is always hard work, and rarely easy, but it’s work that must be done to get me where I want to be.
What I most look forward to is what comes after, that process of self-editing and revision that unfolds after that rough draft has developed a beginning, a middle, and an end. There’s some discovery writing still to come, but it grows from what’s already there. Part of the joy of writing comes in those bright epiphanies that occur as I begin to realize the true potential of the tale I’ve told.
Some books take longer than others to reach this point of revision. My current work in progress took a long damn time to get there. For a while, I feared it never would.
I expected the third book of the Children of Rost’aht tetralogy (Heir to Rost’aht) to be a challenge. The story takes place at the same time as Book Two (The Best Laid Plans), and I needed to make sure certain details lined up just so. News from elsewhere (events in Book Two) needed to reach the characters in Book Three with a degree of timing that made sense. I’ve never tried such a thing before, and although the concept sounds simple enough, it didn’t prove to be as straightforward as I’d hoped. And that’s an understatement. My usual discovery writing approach to a first draft proved poorly suited to the task. It felt at times as if I were riding a bicycle over rough pavement, while always looking behind instead of ahead. Time after time I was drawn up short by the realization that something had been revealed that the current characters could not know, not at that point. Just as often, I sailed past something that they really should have been aware of, if their actions were to make any sense.
And then there were the external distractions of this past year, coming into focus while I worked on Book Three. As mentioned in the previous entry, I was puzzled by a dramatic fall-off in book sales, infuriated by the theft of several titles by trainers of chatbots, and dismayed by a stark reminder that eBook piracy is alive and well. I was riding downhill quickly, looking backward, and hitting pot holes. It’s impossible to maintain balance riding a bicycle that way. It doesn’t work any better while writing a story. Needless to say, the discovery writing phase of this book did not proceed smoothly, or without a few spectacular crashes.
It took months longer than usual, and what I finally ended up with was a mess. At some point, the usual pattern of discovery simply unraveled, and some of the “chapters” I wrote were wildly out of sequence. I did not always think of necessary plot elements until well after I passed the point where they were needed. So I just wrote what occurred, when it occurred, with the vague notion of moving bits around to correct placement, after the fact. But my first attempt to do so dissolved into chaos.
At a writer’s group meeting, a few months after the time I would normally have sent the manuscript off to the editor, I shared my tale of woe. In the conversation that followed, someone made the point that an outline at the start might have kept any of this from happening. A moot point. Any time I’ve tried to do an outline for a work of fiction, it’s automatically become discovery writing, with a fully written first draft as the result. And I did, in fact, have a draft, albeit a really bad one. But what at first seemed an entirely pointless observation turned into a true lightbulb moment. Why not turn the mess into a collection of very short chapter summaries and reorganize them into a sort of outline, after the fact? Surely it would be easier that way to see the big picture, rather than taking on the entire thing at once? This idea emerged from the group conversation, and the consensus was that it might be worth a try.
I agreed and went forward with it. Each of the so-called chapters I’d devised was given a number and a short summary. I then spent a lot of time making copy and paste maneuvers, guided by those summaries, and eventually had everything lined up properly. Heir to Rost’aht existed – sort of – its plot ordered, and missing parts glaringly obvious. And then I did the same thing for Book Two, realizing only then that an after-the-fact outline of that book would provide a useful guide to the necessary order of events. No surprise – I found mistakes in the development of Book Three’s plot through this second outline.
It all worked out in the end. I was able to take the existing material and relocate or delete anything that rendered the dual timelines contradictory. I was also able to plug some gaping plot holes. In a sense, I rewrote the rough draft into a first draft, one finally suitable for revisions. Now I can dig in to the part that makes it all worthwhile, the revisions that put life and color into the plot and characters I’ve created. For me, this truly is not the greatest chore involved with writing fiction. What I did to reach this point was the hard part, and especially so in this unusual case.
There’s a moral to this story, best expressed by nature writer Ann Haymond Zwinger, in her book The Nearsighted Naturalist: “If anybody says writing is an easy task, don’t ever buy a used car from him.”
Downbelow Station by C.J. Cherryh, Winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel, 1982
There was a time when I made a point of reading Hugo Award winners as soon as a given year’s WorldCon results were announced. (Assuming I hadn’t already read that book – which was a rare thing.) That’s a habit I’ve lost over the past twenty or so years, and with a very few exceptions, I haven’t really been keeping up. But in the late 1970s, and all through the 1980s, I picked up copies of Hugo winners as soon as I could after the awards were made.
Award-winning novels did not, of course, make up the bulk of my sci-fi and fantasy reading. I was also, in that time period, beginning to pick up on authors I would follow through the years to come. This was facilitated by a relocation from a small town, with no bookstores in easy reach, to a major metropolitan area that held many such establishments. And so I was better able to indulge my appetite for fiction. Of the authors I discovered as a result of this easier access, few have provided me with as many enjoyable reads as C.J. Cherryh. I read Gate of Ivrel the year DAW Books published it, and in quick succession read Well of Shiuan, Fires of Azeroth, and The Faded Sun Trilogy. The author’s writing style and detailed depictions of exotic civilizations and their peoples had a very strong appeal, and so I was willing to take a chance on a new and longer work by this author when it became available. That’s how I came to read Downbelow Station before it won its Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1982.
Downbelow Station raised my interest in C.J. Cherryh’s work to a new level. The prologue that sets the stage reads like an excellent bit of narrative history – a genre of nonfiction that has always appealed to me. The story launches from those pages with an immediacy that drops the reader straight into the tension-filled plot while introducing the main characters as they each deal with a sudden, and then rapidly worsening, situation. The war between the Earth Company and the colonial worlds and stations of Union – which has raged for many decades – is coming to an end. The fleet of warships loyal to the Earth Company are too few in number to win, and Union is poised for victory. Star stations belonging to the Company are falling to Union, generating a flood of refugees for whom Pell Station (orbiting Pell’s World) is a final, if desperate, last stop. The station, overburdened by this sudden increase in population, is pushed to its limits. To make matters worse, the Company ship that led the refugees in warns of more to come. Each major character is introduced during this massive surge of refugees, their roles and respective subplots established, and the story expands from the event of arrival and the unrest it immediately creates.
The multiple subplots never lose sight of each other, and the pacing is carefully balanced between rapid action and introspection. The characters are believable, and their actions and reactions drive the braid of subplots that combine to create the overall tale. Complications increase as the overall plot pushes the characters into ever more dire situations, creating a conflict that appears irresolvable. And yet, there is a resolution, one that not only makes sense but lays the groundwork for the many novels that have since been set in the Alliance-Union universe for which this author is so well known.
More than most of the Hugo winners I’ve discussed here, rereading this book really took me back to that time when science fiction was more than just escapism for me. It was more of a way of life, and had become the keystone of my social life, associated as I was with fannish groups in the Phoenix metro area. I was even involved, in a small way, with the running of a local sci-fi convention. In 1981, I found myself volunteering to be overnight security for the dealer’s room of this “con.” This involved spending the night in the room housing the various tables and their wares, a task that appealed because I couldn’t afford a room at the hotel. I first read Downbelow Station – almost all of it in the two nights I was needed as a guardian – instead of sleeping on the row of chairs that I was instructed to put in a line just inside the door to block entry. It was assumed that I’d stretch out and sleep there, or at least doze. It was, as I recall, the only way in or out of the room, so any thief would need to fall over me to get in. Sleep? I wasn’t even comfortable enough to doze very often. So I left a light on and read. The book with me was Downbelow Station.
When the event was over, the first thing I did was finish reading that book. Afterward, I recommended it so often I drove a few friends to distraction. (The tables were turned, a couple of years later, when one of these friends discovered Startide Rising by David Brin, and just would not stop talking about it.) Only a few months passed before I read it again, when in 1982, it won the Hugo Award for best novel. I was enormously pleased to see that a book that had hooked me so solidly took top honors that year.
In the decades since, the period during which I was so active as a fan has become a source of (mostly) pleasant memories. Except for participation as an author guest at local Tucson and Phoenix conventions, and a WesterCon held in Tempe a few years ago, I’ve left that part of my life behind. Rereading this particular Hugo Winner brought that time back to life for me, even as I enjoyed rediscovering the book that turned an interest in an author’s work into something more like admiration. Science fiction has seen few authors who have been as prolific, or produced such consistently fine work. And fewer still that I follow to the extent of buying and reading every book, as soon as it’s available. Downbelow Station found in me a reader, and turned me into a fan.
TusCon 50, November 10, 11, 12, 2023. Tucson, Arizona.
Friday, Nov. 10th
I will, indeed, be a participant in this year’s TusCon event. Below you will find my official schedule. In between these times, to quote the wizard, expect me when you see me.
No official functions on day one. I’ll be here and there, attending the odd panel discussion (the odder they are the more likely you’ll find me there). Also likely to be in the vicinity of the Dealer’s Room, where Mostly Books will have some of my books available for sale.
Unfortunately, the one thing I’m not doing this year is setting up a telescope. There’s apparently no place to do so at this location.
Saturday, Nov. 11th
Autograph Session #1
11:00 am to 12:00 pm at the designated Autograph Area, in the company of fellow participants Curt Booth, J.L. Doty, Mona Ventress, William Herr, and Robert Kurtzman. I’ll sign books, program guides, and the free stuff I’ll have with me. Almost anything that will take the ink from a ball point pen. I draw the line at body parts that require public disrobing. Don’t go there.
Kill your darlings. How do you keep character death meaningful?
In the Ballroom from 3:00 pm to 4:00 pm. “There are good ways to kill your characters. And there are bad ways to kill your characters. Come learn some of the best ways to kill your characters.” That’s how the program guide describes this one. So come and learn how writers kill, and why. In a fictional sense, I mean. Don’t be afraid, we won’t hurt anyone. Promise. Sharing this panel with Diana Terrill Clark, Marsheila Rockwell, Yvonne Navarro, Frankie Robertson, and Cynthia Ward.
Getting to Know your Characters.
In Panel Room #1 from 8:00 pm to 9:00 pm. From the program guide, “Who is your hero really? Does he vibe at all with the person you think he’s going to hook up with in the 3rd act? And why is he opposing your villain? And speaking of your villain…” Some insights into how we create the characters that populate our fiction. How we make these imaginary people seem real? And why do we need that resemblance is coincidental caveat at the beginnings of our books? In the company of Catherine Wells, Jay Smith, and William Herr.
Sunday, Nov. 12th
Thomas Watson Reading
In Panel Room #2 from 10:00 am to 11:00 am. No, you will not be sitting in a room watching me read. That would be weird. I’ll be reading something out loud. Something I wrote, of course. Could be almost anything, really. After more than ten years of writing and publishing fiction, there’s certainly plenty to choose from. And that’s a thought that makes this author smile.
In an effort to increase the availability of my books in eBook format, I have now made most of them available through Google Play. Because their website does not effectively segregate my work from another author of the same name – an English preacher who has been dead for 337 years – searching for my books by author name is an effort in futility. You can search by each title, but it would be more convenient to have all the links available in one place. So, if you’re in the habit of reading on your phone and buy books through Google Play, allow me relieve you of the need to search for mine at all. A list of links follows.
The Astronomy Memoirs
Mr. Olcott’s Skies: An Old Book and a Youthful Obsession
Tales of a Three-legged Newt: Essays and Anecdotes for Amateur Astronomers
War of the Second Iteration
The Luck of Han’anga
Founders’ Effect
The Plight of the Eli’ahtna
The Courage to Accept
Setha’im Prosh
Tales from the Second Iteration
Where A Demon Hides: War of the Second Iteration – Coda
All That Bedevils Us
The Chimera Multiverse
The Gryphon Stone
The Lesson of Almiraya Bay
Fantasy
Variation on a Theme
Winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel, 1981
History is a pageant of changes, recorded both in the events that create and drive those changes, and in the lives of the people caught up in them. Some of the changes are cyclic, and some are one and done; some of those can break the cycles. I’m a sometime student of history, and one of my favorite nonfiction genres is narrative history. A good narrative history details the events recorded and the changes that come in their wake, but goes further by depicting in detail the lives of those associated with the events. These are stories of people who are in equal measure caught up in and driving the events that we call history. I find such narratives compelling.
This interest in the cycles of history may explain why The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge held my attention as strongly as it did. A novel, and definitely not a future narrative history, it still detailed a story of changes, both cyclic and a one-off event destined to alter that cycle. Strongly character-driven, the tale is centered on the people coping with changes, some of them devastating, in a world as clearly realized as any depiction of our own world you might find in a narrative history. In much the same way as a well-told narrative history, I found this novel to be a compelling read. Of the Hugo Award winners I’ve read so far, this one really stands out.
Set on a world called Tiamat, a world with more ocean than land (the name is that of a sea goddess from Babylonian mythology), the story is of a cyclic change that occurs every century and a half. Other worlds have access to Tiamat through a stargate created by a black hole. When Tiamat’s star system is positioned just right, the gate works, and this access exists for 150 years. Following this period is one of equal length during which the world is lost to the rest of interstellar civilization. Two human cultures exist on Tiamat: the technology-dependent Winters, who control things when the planet is open to the off-world visitors who provide the technology, and the low-tech Summers, who according to tradition take over when access is cut off. To maintain control of Tiamat and its resources when that world is next open to them, the off-worlders have rigged the tech tools they provide to essentially self-destruct during the time the Summers rule. The change from Winter to Summer rule involves an ancient ritual, involving the sacrifice of the Winter queen to the sea when her Summer counterpart ascends.
The current queen intends to change this cycle, seeking a way to keep the technological tools running and herself on the throne – and among the living. That plan becomes ensnared in schemes involving interstellar smugglers, a belief system among Summers regarding their goddess, people called sybils who are flesh-and-blood data delivery systems, and a native species that is harvested for its blood. A drug is refined from the bodily fluids of these creatures that can extend a human’s life almost indefinitely. The drug is at the heart of all the character motivations, one way or another. Few things are as they seem, and if they are, they don’t stay that way for long. And just when you think things couldn’t get worse for the protagonists, they do. I was guessing at where this was all going down to the last handful of chapters, and when I had it figured out, I wasn’t quite right.
The Snow Queen is a wonderful example of what, in science fiction and fantasy writing, we call world building. As measured in terms of depth and detail, it’s right there with Frank Herbert’s Dune. There is a large cast of characters from a variety of cultures and backgrounds, with both characters and cultures clearly developed and believable. The ocean-dominated world of Tiamat, much like the world-encompassing deserts of Arrakis, is very much a character in its own right.
Like the world they inhabit, the characters in the story have depth and complexity that make them believable, however extraordinary their circumstances. There are no clear stereotypes. The heroes are ordinary mortals, flawed without always being actually dysfunctional. And the chief villain isn’t exactly a truly evil person, incapable of love or compassion, but someone caught between the contradictory motives of preserving her culture and saving her own life. The combination of pacing, world building, and character-driven plot makes this a story that deserves to be a classic of the genre. The ending satisfies, even if it puts a chill up your spine at times. And while there are enough questions unresolved at the end to justify the sequel Vinge wrote, I didn’t feel as if the ending dangled there, awaiting a true resolution.
It all adds up to a story that I will pick up and reread someday, after I’ve read its sequels. I’ve read Hugo winners that had me wondering “What were they thinking, voting for this one?” But not this time. Had I been given a vote to cast in 1981, I would quite likely have cast it for this book. I can say that in all honesty, having read the other nominees for that year. All were very good. The Snow Queen was extraordinary.
Let’s get something clear right from the start. This thing they call Artificial Intelligence, currently being discussed and promoted in a big way? It’s a misapplication of the term. These systems are not conscious entities, certainly not in the HAL 9000 or SkyNet science fictional sense. To the best of my understanding these are machine learning algorithms, designed to respond to requests in ways that mimic human interactions. They search the vast online resources out there, do so in an astonishingly short amount of time, and come up with a response that meets the criteria set by the user. That response is given in a way that reads (or sounds) like something almost human. AI systems get better at this the more often they’re used, and in that sense, at least, they do learn.
They respond according to their programming which, to be honest, is almost mind-boggling in its sophistication and ability. But Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a term that has been appropriated by those who see “gold in them thar hills.” It serves them well as a marketing buzzword. These systems are not intelligent in the sense of being capable of independent thought, which would make it possible for them to be creative. (Not yet, anyway.) They don’t think. They don’t create. They harvest, organize, and present information in what seems a personable manner. They are computer tools to be used – or misused.
And misused they will be. Nothing special about AI as far as this goes. It’s a short list that contains only technologies that have never lent themselves to abuse. It always comes around to whether or not the risks inherent in deliberate misuse of technology outweigh the benefits. With AI this remains to be seen, although there certainly are signs of trouble ahead. One example, relevant to what I do, is the application of so-called AI to the world of writing.
While I believe that a time will come when true AI “wakes up” and develops its own sort of awareness and creativity, I don’t see it happening in the immediate future. The idea that a machine of any sort will be able to do what I do, and do it well enough to compete effectively with flesh-and-blood writers, while not entirely far-fetched, doesn’t worry me. These systems, when asked to start a story or write an essay, sift the virtual world and cobble together things found out there to fit the request. They create nothing new in the process. I don’t see the novelist or short story writer being replaced any time soon by such systems.
What I do see happening, with ever increasing frequency, is the use of so-called AI to “aid” the writing process. I’ve heard of writers who, for various reasons, have turned to these augmented search engines for story ideas, opening paragraphs (and even chapters), and for evaluation of stylistic elements in their writing. All of this is done to make the process easier or more efficient, or to save money by eliminating editorial expenses. Such use is frequently described as being on par with the employment of grammar programs. Some of those experimenting with AI seem to be looking for a way to jump-start a writing career that has faltered, for whom motivation has been undermined by a lack of success as defined by book sales. Such a measure of success is an expectation too many aspiring writers carry into their effort right from the beginning. Lack of fulfillment of this expectation is understandably frustrating, and that frustration can suppress the motivation to write.
For some, this use of AI might turn out to be just what they need to regain their motivation and start writing again. Having your personal well of inspiration cease to generate story ideas must be a horrible feeling. If AI helps someone to bounce back from such a dry spell, it could be considered an example of proper use of the technology, and it would be hard to hold that use against them. But to my mind, the current application of AI to get the actual work of writing done amounts to a steep and slippery slope. For no matter what “tools” you employ to make writing seem easier, the problem of finding and cultivating readers will not change. And it is this problem, more than anything else, that interferes with commercial success. Finding an “easier” way to write fiction will surely create a temptation in some to let the machine do ever more of the writer’s work, possibly increasing their productivity, but with a decline in quality. This is already happening; as a result, a few short fiction and poetry periodicals are now closed to unsolicited work because they are being inundated by lackluster, machine-generated material. If this trend continues, the independent book-publishing world risks being swamped as well, as increasing numbers of frustrated writers release books they have “written” using AI. Books that are, to an ever-increasing degree, the work of machine learning systems that become more adept at imitating human expression with each iteration – books with stories lacking the spark of true creativity that gives good fiction its emotional power.
Even if human readers of fiction recognize the soullessness of such material, there’s nothing to stop it from being published and promoted. The market is already seriously over-saturated as it is, and piling more – possibly substandard – books into the mix will help no one, writers or readers. This, more than the possibility that a machine might replace me, gives me nightmares.
For my own part, I won’t be using these so-called AI tools in my writing. This isn’t a purely ethical decision on my part. I won’t be tempted to try the AI writing tricks I see ever more people embracing because I don’t find them useful. Coming up with ideas or story starts? Seriously, I’ll die of old age before I run out of story ideas. As for reducing the “grunt work” involved with writing (whatever it is people really mean by the phrase), I enjoy the actual process of writing too much for that to have any appeal. And I don’t believe for a moment that AI can edit a book for me as effectively as a human being. So, when you read a story or a book by me (or even a weblog essay), you can be assured it was produced by 100% organic methods.
Sorry about that, HAL.
You’ve decided to try your hand at writing fiction, and have committed words to paper – or to a computer file. But after weeks or months of work, you’re getting absolutely nowhere. The material you’ve produced doesn’t inspire confidence, and as a result, it’s hard to stay motivated. What’s going on here? Why isn’t it working? It certainly didn’t look this hard, to judge from the books you’ve read.
You seek advice from other writers, such as the ideas I presented here. None of it works, and your frustration grows while the story sits there, untouched. Writing a story sounded like a thing worth doing, and you do know how to write, but it just isn’t working according to expectations. Why?
Maybe it’s time to examine what motivated you to write that novel or short story. What made this seem a good idea in the first place?
When I ask this question of people I meet, in and out of the virtual realm, the answers fall into two general categories: a love of reading fiction inspired the idea of telling a tale; or it sounded like an easy side hustle – definitely better than driving for Uber or Lyft. Whichever I hear, there’s a common mistaken assumption, that writing fiction is a relatively easy thing to do. That it might be anything but easy comes as a shock to many would-be writers.
Although telling stories is a thing that comes naturally to most people, no one is born a writer. We all tell stories of one kind or another. You spend a day at work, or at school, and then come home to tell your family about the events of your day. You share memories of past events with friends. That’s basic storytelling. For some of us, however, the itch to be creative wakes up the imagination, and stories come into being that are not of day-to-day events in real life. Fiction, in other words. That creative impulse can amplify this very human thing called storytelling (I’m tempted to say hijack it), and with enough such amplification, the urge to tell that story takes hold. And there you sit, a literate human being who has done plenty of reading, deciding to write this one down and see how it flies.
That bit about writing it down is the hard part. Writing readable fiction takes time and practice. For most of us, it takes a lot of time and practice. There are exceptions to this rule, but it’s those exceptions that define the rule, after all. That exceptions exist is no guarantee you will be one of them. And so it’s more than likely that the first attempt feels awkward, or just outright botched. When you find yourself floundering, you have two choices. You can keep at it, and practice the art until you are good enough to publish your work with some confidence. If you can accept the reality that the only way to become adept at writing fiction is to first write some lousy fiction, there’s hope for you. Go on and give it another try.
The second choice is, of course, to quit. You can give it up and be content with reading fiction. I’ll come back to that choice a little later.
But what about those seeking a side hustle?
To be blunt, if you started stringing words together because you thought it might be an easy way to make money, you’ve embarked upon a fool’s errand. The chances of making even a modest living by writing are very slim. The fact that a few people do so, and in fewer cases make a lot of money, comes back to exceptions defining the rule. And the rule is that making a living as a writer is incredibly difficult. I’ve never managed it, and I’m doing better than many indie authors. In my case, the sales of my existing books easily cover the expenses involved with the publication of new books: editing, cover art, promotion, etc. I consider this a success – but it’s a success more than a decade in the making. I’m comfortable with this. I’m a storyteller, not an entrepreneur wannabe. But if I had to pay the bills from that income, well…
So, if you’re into this for the money, make sure you have a day job that provides a good financial fallback. Unless you turn out to be one of those rare exceptions (best of luck with that) you’re probably going to need it.
However, it does seem to me that most people who try their hand at writing fiction these days are those who have always wondered if they could make it work. They’ve been inspired by the fiction they love to read. “I wonder if I can?” is a good reason to give anything an honest attempt. But perhaps your inability to finish that story is the answer to the question. It just may be that you can’t. That you are not, by your nature, creative in the literary sense. You are a reader and not a writer, not a teller of fanciful tales after all. It may not be a desirable answer, but it may be the truth.
How can you be sure, one way or the other? One way to make that call involves answering the question with another question. Can you stop? Now that you’ve had at least a little experience in trying to write fiction, and have let your imagination come out to play, can you give that up? If you realize you haven’t at least tried to get any writing done for a month or more, and you shrug this off without a qualm, it may be time to reconsider the idea of writing. If letting it go turns out to be easier said than done, if you find yourself being distracted by thoughts of that unfinished tale – or by new ideas for stories – you need to keep trying. There’s a good chance you really are a writer. So do a little each day, even if all you manage is an idea scribbled down or a new paragraph that helps a story inch forward. Keep at it. It will all add up, in the end, even if the increments are small.
The learning curve can be steep, but the view from the top is worth the climb. Work it bit-by-bit, if necessary, until you’ve finally told a tale to the end. Don’t worry along the way about whether or not it’s good enough to publish. It probably won’t be – yet. That’s what the revision process is all about. That rough draft might take some time, and your first efforts may be flat-out embarrassing. (Mine certainly were.) Be patient with yourself; you can only learn to write fiction by writing fiction. You may be stuck fast today, but if you persist, where might you be tomorrow?
“Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don’t we consider it his duty to escape? If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we’re partisans of liberty, then it’s our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!”
– J.R.R. Tolkien
I was often criticized, as a youngster, for my reading habits. This was especially true when I was in my early to mid-teens. The truth is, outside of assigned reading for classes, about all I read was escapist fiction, science fiction in particular. I read some nonfiction on my own, of course, on matters to do with natural history and astronomy, but when you think about it, those interests – which were anything but mainstream in my small home town – were a sort of escape in their way. But when it came to reading fiction, science fiction (available fantasy having been limited to Tolkien’s work at that time) was literally all I read. And reread – books of my own being hard to come by, lacking any real income of my own. The town library was hardly well endowed with such fiction, and one of the librarians was among those who expressed “concerns” over my steady diet of escapism.
Pick a dearly held habit by any teenager, and a rationalization for it will be supplied – by that teenager. Or by the person that teenager grew up to be. It won’t always be simply self-serving, much less flat-out wrong. I had mine, being in general a misfit. Those less-than-mainstream interests cited above were shared by very few of my classmates (in the case of astronomy, by none at all), and in a small, conservative town, my corresponding lack of interest in sports and automobiles was viewed with suspicion. The things that interested me set me apart. Lacking much of a social life, as a result, I read books. The stories offered an escape from the often painful awkwardness of not fitting in, and at first, that was all that I needed. But they also fired my imagination, and awareness of the power of storytelling slowly grew. Looking back, it now seem inevitable that I would try to tell stories of my own.
And in the fullness of time, I did. It took a lot of time and practice (and life experience) to take me to the point of telling tales with any degree of ability, but I got there. And with the advent of modern self-publishing, I now have something of a readership. I still read a fair amount of fiction, mostly science fiction and fantasy, but without the feeling that I need to dive undercover and pull the lid over the top. (The recent exception to this being the so-called “Pandemic Year” of 2020, when I indulged heavily in “comfort reads.”) But where I most often find an escape from the real world these days is in the writing I do.
It’s every bit as possible to escape into an imaginary world of your own creation as a storyteller, as it is to become so involved with the tales of others that the real world fades away. To nonwriters, this sort of escape may seem to verge on the pathological, but if you’re a writer of fiction, you know to leave a trail of breadcrumbs to lead you back home. (And hope there are no mice following behind, of course.) I often get so wrapped up in my work that I lose track of time, and frequently walk around the house thinking out loud on some aspect of a current work in progress. When the work is done and published, it then has the potential to become an escape for anyone who comes along and reads what I’ve created. That’s an interesting feeling, and a pleasant one, to think that I might be giving some stressed-out soul, somewhere out there, a few hours of respite from whatever troubles them. It’s a motive to keep writing, all by itself. And why not? We’re all in this together. Every now and then we should get away from it all, and do so in good company.
Where A Demon Hides: War of the Second Iteration – Coda
The war is over and Humanity has prevailed, but victory came at a terrible price. The weapon used to bring down the enemy killed or injured as many people as it saved. One of the unintended casualties, Alicia MacGregor, has existed in a medically induced coma for two years while her neurological injuries were repaired.
At last, to the relief of family and friends, the time has come for her to awaken and rejoin the world. She is healed physically, but the trauma she endured in that final battle left deep scars in her heart and mind. As she copes with the burden of horror and grief left by the war, Alicia discovers that she is haunted by something far worse than bad memories. Something that first threatens her sanity, and then her life.
Currently available in ebook format from Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo.
“Inventing a universe is tough work. Jehovah took a sabbatical. Vishnu takes naps. Science fiction universes are only tiny bits of word-worlds, but even so they take some thinking, and rather than think out a new universe for every story, a writer may keep coming back and using the same universe, sometimes till it gets a bit worn at the seams, softens up, feels natural, like an old shirt.” Ursula K. LeGuin, The Birthday of the World and Other Stories.
***
In addition to my rather low-keyed involvement with a couple of Facebook writing groups, I often peruse postings on a reader-oriented group, one relevant to my preferred genre, both as a reader and a writer. I speak of the Science Fiction Book Club – and if sci-fi in its many forms is your thing, I strongly suggest looking it up. (Fair warning to fellow indie authors: self-promotion is not permitted in the group, a policy I fully endorse. Also a warning to readers: prepare to see your To Be Read list explode.)
As you would expect from a group of any sort on the internet, on or off Facebook, opinions abound. These opinions – and here we’re talking about opinions regarding authors and their books – are often expressed without the caveat that these are, after all, just opinions and not facts. They are stated in ways that clearly lead to the impression that objective characterizations of quality are being offered to the masses. I’m talking about statements to the effect that a book’s pacing is too slow, or that the characters are two-dimensional, or the sequel wasn’t as strong as the original, etc. An often encountered judgment is that a series started out strong, then lost steam. The author didn’t know when to quit.
When a series is mentioned in any context (but especially when not knowing when to quit is invoked) rest assured that someone will join the discussion by declaring that they won’t read a series. For such readers a series is generally seen as both a failure of creativity and a money grab by an author or publisher, an example of milking a literary cash cow. They’re particularly harsh when discussing someone on the indie side of things, such as yours truly. (And no, such a complaint didn’t prompt this essay. I’m sure there are readers out there who won’t touch War of the Second Iteration just because it’s five books long, but I have not yet seen such a comment aimed at my work. Watch this space.) For any author, especially one working on an incomplete series, writing a series is also often viewed as a sign of laziness. Indie or traditional, they say the author obviously can’t be bothered to develop truly new material. And this idea is usually expressed with a sort of off-hand contempt that insinuates that the author is in some way a failure.
It apparently doesn’t register on these self-appointed critics that some of the biggest names in this (or any) genre have written or are working on a series of books. Anyone out there really think Ursula K. LeGuin is a failure? Or how about C.J. Cherryh? Readers are still buying each new installment in Cherryh’s Foreigner series. Whether you care for their work or not (just your opinion, after all), any writer who can write so many successful stories in one imaginary universe can’t by any honest definition of the concept be considered a failure. And the authors cited as examples are anything but exceptions to the rule.
Contrary to what critics of multi-volume stories believe, producing such work is hardly a sign of laziness, much less a failure of imagination. When a writer creates an imaginary universe it’s only natural to explore its depths. The endeavor doesn’t become more or less creative because you don’t start from scratch every single time. It’s possible that you’ll only pull a story or two out of what you’ve built. However, if you go to any trouble at all to create cultures, ecologies, technologies, and histories to support one tale, you have, by default, laid the foundation for more. If you are gifted with sufficient imagination, there may be many more stories in there, waiting to be told. While there’s no obligation to build on that foundation, if there’s room for more stories, or for one story to go on beyond a single book, why not? A universe, real or imagined, is by its nature boundless. For a teller of tales this means possibilities. More stories. Chances for existing characters to grow and change. Writing a series does not show a lack of creativity; quite the opposite. A writer who continues to explore new stories in a universe of their own making is displaying an awareness of potential, and a willingness to explore it.
As for the bit about milking a cash cow, what of it? If series didn’t sell, there would be far fewer of them. Last time I checked this was not the case – not by a long shot. Seems to me that those who turn their noses up at a series, and snub the authors of such, know very little about the publishing world. They’re also no more than a vocal minority in the world of book readers. When I read such commentary, I can’t help wondering if I’m being trolled. The way such views are aired, it often feels like little more than an attempt to stir the proverbial ant hill.
But that, of course, is just my opinion.
Under Desert Stars 