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Where writers share how they feel about writing or the writing life. |
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| If you wish to share your thoughts here please your email piece to Karen Daniels. Include your birth year. Karen reserves the right to choose which submissions are used and to edit as needed. Rights remain with the submitting authors. Click on the name below to read that writer’s thoughts on writing. Click here to go back to the writer’s reference page. |
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| Frances Curtis Bond | Karen Daniels | Cheryl Dawson |
| Candace “Candy” S. Lowe | Gerald “G. David” Nordley | Robert A. Sloan |
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Karen Daniels, born January 1957, published novelist About Publication |
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| To write is to be human; to publish, divine. Or is it the other way around? My first novel, Dancing Suns, came out in July 2000. And for me the long-time-in-coming leap from pre-published novelist to published, is a mixed bag. I love the solitude of quietly having my morning coffee on the patio, thinking about what I’ll write on today, and then going to my office, a little casita outside the house, and having unlimited hours spreading out before me which I fill in the way I choose. Publishing changes that. Now, suddenly, I have to smile, shake hands, make polite conversation and try not to let it show that I’m thinking, “Buy my book, buy my book.” I recently survived my first signing with the support of my family and friends, and yes, parts of it were giddy fun. No denying it’s a great moment. Yet even as I had the satisfaction of seeing my book, my story, actually paid for, part of me hungered for the solitude of before. Now, I have to begin a schedule of sorts, make time for marketing and talks and sales. Don’t mistake me, I want this and already look toward the next step, when some people outside those who already know me actually recognize the name Karen Daniels and know she’s the author of the series, The Zaddack Tales, and other works I have yet to create. Yet always, there will be this part of me, sitting alone in the early morning sun on the patio watching the hummingbirds, where my only thought is about what words I will put down today. Back to the top |
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Cheryl Dawson, born October 1950, published novelist About Writing — The Hot And Cold Of It |
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| Never give up! My mother used to say anything worth having was worth working for. So, here I am ten years after starting this writing quest, having been rejected by everyone except Virginia Kidd and Algis Budrys (oh, and family and friends who’ll support you no matter what — thank God for family and friends) publishing my first novel. Well, Alien Stalker is novel number seven but the first one that’s going into print August 1, 2000. Writing is… “a place to be.” You’re submerged in the characters, the plot, the action until you come up for air and a bite to eat. Then it’s right back in to see where the story and the people you’re spinning will lead you. Writing is… the best of times and the worst of times. You’re never alone and always alone. You sit at your computer in a room away from other people — all day — every day. But you’re with your creations in a way no one else ever could be. And you’re inventing — a world — a time — people. For five to ten hours a day you’re creating… the great escape. (For more information about Cheryl and her books go to http://www3.telus.net/dawsonbooks/) Back to the top |
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Frances Curtis Bond, born 1909, writer and retired editor About Writing |
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| The years pass — a day at a time — and yet now, 68 years later, after getting a degree in journalism, I am still attached to my first and final love, WRITING. It has taken so many forms — prose, poetry, jingles, biography, letters to the editor, genealogy, news articles, you name it. Little did I think as I was growing up that the ABCs could come to mean so much to me and become such an integral part of me throughout my entire life. But so it is. And now, it is a great joy to me that after I am gone, another member of my family, my great niece, Karen Daniels, published novelist, will be carrying on in her heart the same impulses that drove me to write endlessly, year after year, throughout my life. More power, I say, to those writers still to come. May they keep coming as the past becomes a part of the endless future. Back to the top |
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Candace “Candy” S. Lowe, born September 1947 (First Place SF short story contest winner New England SciFi Assoc.) About Writing — Time Slicing |
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| Last week I took a day off from my job to write on the novel. Believe it or not, I left my computer at home and went to the library. Rules can be good: thirty minutes were allowed for each web session. I spent a glorious day at furious researching, punctuated by a productive hour of writing in between each session. What a rush! My life has been full of snippets of writing time. When I was a deputy sheriff in Arizona, I would dictate into my personal recorder all the scenery I saw out on the prairie. My glimpses became the background for some “speculative” stories. Later I worked for an airline based in Albuquerque flying prisoners across the country. Flying is full of hurry hurry, surrounded by hours of boredom, or in my case writing. And then, there is a one day every once in a while when I put all the pieces together and watch the story unfurl itself into an entity. In addition to writing, I’m also a photographer, a singer and a performance artist with my composer-husband, Ron Alford. Recent multi-media pieces include “Neon Nights,” “Dunes” and “Bobelen” which utilize photography and movement. Our most recent performance, Image: the Pop Can, was performed in Denmark. The current novel, a collaboration with G. David Nordley, is hard SF set 300 years into the future in deep space. Back to the top |
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Gerald “G. David” Nordley, born May 1947 (Four-time Analog “Anlab” reader’s award winner) Why Write? |
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| I feel it’s important to have something to write about, something to care about. Writing should be considered a transitive verb; as in “you wrote what?” In any art, omphaloskepticism (bellybutton watching) can take over; people become so concerned about form, style, process, etc., that they lose sight of content and meaning. I think readers (and editors) can often tell if you’re just writing to write and don’t really have anything to say. And, of course, having something to say helps you to make yourself finish the manuscript! The last is my main piece of writing advice: Finish the project! Send it off! Else you’ve done nothing. What I care about is where humanity is going; I’m inspired by writers like Verne and Clarke who fired imaginations with credible futures. Often, the best science fiction is not just vision, it’s vision that’s self-fulfilling (or self-unfulfilling, as in Orwell’s 1984). I try to treat science in science fiction as law in mysteries, or history in historical fiction. This does not mean writing a science text, but rather building a character’s story from events that might have some chance of actually happening, and so do the kind of thought experiments about the future that first gave the genre some relevance and respect. It’s a small corner of the speculative fiction market these days, but that’s where my heart is. Now I need to get busy and do more :-). Back to the top |
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Robert A. Sloan, born 1954, 46 going on 17, author of Raven Dance How I feel about where I am as a writer |
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| It wasn’t anything like what I expected to feel about where I am today as a writer. I live in the present moment. At age 4 I did a nice derivative sequel-rhyme after reading Cat in the Hat and decided to do this for a living with the kind of singleminded obsessiveness that’s usually found in pro athletes and I had two reactions from people — they loved it or hated it. I had more rejections than encyclopedia salesmen. I had a very weird life with long periods of writer’s block in it and my self esteem was entirely tied in with whether or not I could write well. Eventually at about 39 I was finally able to write well enough to satisfy my worst critic — Robert A. Sloan — and finish a full-size novel (after putting my toe in the water with a short comedy fantasy that will come out when I’m done rewriting it, Wizard’s Whoops!). That monster took more rewriting than anything I’ve ever done before or since. After I finished it all my later books took only one light cleanup pass for editing, but I had the idea at 16 and didn’t have the skills to execute it. In the meantime I’d made a meager living on and off as an artist, artisan, craftsman, street vendor and tarot reader — art in several venues ranging from media fandom to New Orleans galleries and street portraits. Now it’s finished. I did so many other things along the way that I’d lived and the book gained depth. I’ve been self-employed in so many other marginally small ways that the feeling that surprised me wasn’t the sky-high elation of a Bradbury writer-character running up and down the streets laughing and waving an acceptance letter and telling his friends, but the deep quiet satisfaction I felt at finally finishing up the elaborate Elizabethan style crewel pillow that I started in high school and picked at on and off for 30 years. It’s done and I don’t have to do one more lick of work on that. It’s done and now I know how to do it. I’ve done a masterpiece. My other later books are just as good, some of them gradually a little better since I try to make everything a little better than the last one, but it was a turning point of quiet confidence to know that I could do it again anytime I’ve got the time to settle down with a good opener and keep going till I get it done. Dreams became goals and now, today, are a reality and a milestone I’m going forward from. Now it means that I love my craft and I’m good at it. Getting into the Guild (SFWA) will come when it does because I won’t stop ’til I’m dead (and might try afterward through mediums.) I enjoy the process of writing and I like running my own business, those are the two sides of my life. Back to the top |
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Resources & Links |
Copyright 2006 by Karen Daniels and the authors