Ripples in Speculative Fiction

Speculative fiction is a broad term, an umbrella used to lump science fiction, fantasy and all of their sub-genres (steampunk, dystopian, cyberpunk, etc.) under one term.  Telling a person you’re a speculative fiction writer lets them know what country in the literature world you’re a citizen of, but doesn’t tell them the city or the town or any of the specifics.

So, more specifically, I write hard science fiction and dabble from time to time in fantasy.

Up to the point when I began writing science fiction, I had read only fantasy.  So while I wrote science fiction, I had never read it.  And while I read only fantasy, I couldn’t write it.  For a while this little paradox didn’t trouble me at all, and I continued on my merry way writing science fiction tales.  But after writing some stories I identified why I couldn’t seem to grasp fantasy: I’m a scientist.  This manifests in my writing as a need to understand magic on the most basic level.

It’s not enough to say these three components and chanting these words and because of these rules it will produce this result.  My response is always the same: Okay, but why?  If there’s an explanation  at that level, my response is then the same: Okay, but why?  Like a four-year-old whose curiosity cannot be quenched, there’s a never ending game of Why  and down the rabbit hole I go, when trying to write magic.  Sometimes I can step back and be successful, but generally I don’t write magic.

I’m much more comfortable in science fiction where I’ve found a wonderful second life for my college textbooks.  In addition to learning new things (or relearning as the case may be), I get to calculate things like terminal velocity of a body rising in water or the impact force of a body in free-fall hitting the ground to help work out time lines in a story—and that’s just plain fun.

Therefore, when pressed I say I write hard science fiction, but really I just like to write whatever seems fun to me at the time.  Sometimes that’s science fiction and other times it’s fantasy or steampunk.  So for the moment, I more comfortable with the nebulous and comfortably vague term: speculative fiction writer.

At first it was furious typing, expelling out a story at breakneck speed with no idea of where it was going or when it was going to end.  I only knew I had to keep going.  The story was drawn heavily from my life, and the process leeched out a toxicity that had been building for years.  I felt invigorated.

Naturally, as I finished that story and searched for more to write, I chose to write in the same genre–mainstream fiction.  Which is not be confused with literary fiction.  I never even approached that, but do confess to thinking I did at the time out of ignorance.  No, I left my life behind and wrote stories about everyday people set in the modern world with the conflict centered on some type of dissonance between the way they viewed themselves and reality.

I did this for about a year and a half.  Until one day I sat out on my porch (my preferred writing spot) and realized the problem with the current story I was working on: I was bored, not only reading it, but writing it.  This wasn’t a one day funk to work through; boredom pervaded this piece from beginning to end.  I diligently finished the piece and half-heartedly sent it out (if I was bored writing it, who would be excited reading it?).

The idea of not writing anymore never even entered my consideration.  Instead, I thought about the stories that I’ve read and were fun to read and what made them awesome.  My mind naturally went back to all of the fantasy I consumed as a kid: to the epic battles of good and evil, to magic systems, to floating castles and underwater cities, to all of the things that make fantasy awesome.  Soon, I had an idea.  Two weeks later I had a story.  I felt invigorated again, and I knew exactly what kind of writer I wanted to be.

I am a speculative fiction writer, and I haven’t been bored since.

So here I am, as directed, launching a website and blogging about becoming a writer.  The landscape of publishing is changing in strange ways.  Writing, normally, attracted by those types that prefer quiet and solitude (myself included) are now told they must have an online presence.  They must build a following and do their own marketing.  This used to be the role of the traditional publishers, but now they’re doing less and farming more onto the beginner writer.

The introvert writer that needs that daily quiet time writing to stay sane, is now thrust in front of a faceless horde that could number anywhere from hundreds to thousands to millions.  The first one might not sound so bad, but have you ever spoken in front a crowd numbering in the hundreds?  And then do it on regular basis?  But from publishers to authors, both large and small, they all seem to agree that an online presence is necessary in this new age of publishing.

Despite this, I am determined to become a professional writer.  I write daily, study markets, attend workshops; I submit, get rejected, and submit again, and again, and again.

And now I blog about it.

I am nothing if not a consummate rule follower.