unpublished writers

A Writer by Any Other Name


I never liked my last name as I was growing up. It lent itself too readily to the bullies and the inevitable jokes about the pronunciation when I was in junior high and high school.

“Did you say your name was COCKS?”

And I would cringe and spell it for the idiot but the damage was done. Read Full Article

The Right Stuff


According to writer Nancy Kress, there are about six traits a person must possess in order to be a writer. So I thought it would be fun, or maybe just informative, to measure myself against them as I am in serious career direction consideration mode.

  • the ability to tolerate long periods of time alone (or surrounded by people who don’t actually exist)

I could fill rooms with the people I know who don’t actually exist outside the space between my ears. And being alone is an art form I perfected as a child.

  • the arrogance to believe that, however crappy your current work and however much rejected, you will get good enough for other people to want to read what you write

Well, apparently I am quite arrogant because not only do I believe I will be published someday, I believe that readers will buy the books I write.

  • the humility to understand the limits of your talent, and to learn from what editors, reviewers, and writing-group colleagues tell you about your work

Oh, I know a better writer than myself when I read one. And believe it or not, I take criticism to heart.

  • a love of reading and of stories (I have never met a writer who didn’t read fiction voraciously, at least while young, and who didn’t tell himself stories in which he was the hero)

I am not a voracious reader of fiction these days. I simply don’t have the time and I don’t run across authors who can really transport me or inspire me either. Is that a function of old age? Or am I just too much in writer mode to not pick at the work of others? I don’t know. I read books a week as a child and well beyond college. I was even still a better than average reader in the early days of my first marriage. Now it has to be a really great book to hold me still long enough to read.

Oh, and I am always a central figure in my own fiction though my hero tends to be Rob-like.

  • self-motivation, since one must work without a boss, an external work structure, or, often, a deadline

Blogging has helped me develop a work ethic. Group blogging is good for imposing outside structures and deadlines. Fiction efforts though are still scattered. A dilemma that may lead me away from the web soon, but I am still working things out.

  • for the SF writer, the peculiar cast of mind that finds a future world, an alien planet, or a magical realm fully as solid and believable as the chair he’s sitting on — at least for the length of the writing session

I have never had difficulty suspending my belief.

My Influences


I wasn’t allowed to see Close Encounters of the Third Kind when it was first out. I was going on 14 and had cleverly bypassed my Dad’s edict against sci-fi and fantasy movies for me with Star Wars the summer before by getting my cousin to take me while we were visiting. I had no such foil for Spielberg’s first alien movie. The first time I saw the whole thing, however, I was struck by the feeling I had seen it before. Chris Carter is so lucky that Spielberg didn’t sue his arse.

The reason I was forbidden to go to movies like this was because my parents felt I had an unhealthy interest in all things they considered to be weird and likely to make it hard for me to ever meet someone who might consider marrying me (they didn’t have to add -” because you are already unattractive so try not to be odd too” but it was there).

I loved Dr. Who.

Believed in ESP and ET’s. Read everything I could about both subjects.

Watched every lame sci-fi television show that made it to the airwaves back in the 70’s like Planet of the Apes, Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Six Million Dollar Man, Logan’s Run, The Tomorrow People, Kochak: The Night Stalker, Night Gallery.

Remember V? Awesome. Simply awesome idea though the movies themselves are beyond awful when viewed retrospectively.

Or Aeon Flux?

I devoured Frank Herbert and Tolkien.  Anne McCaffery’s Pern books line my shelves along with Stephen King and David Eddings.

I don’t know why the real world doesn’t interest me more. Perhaps it is too real? Or more likely I am a person who prefers being outside of the bounds that most people are most comfortable focusing on.