Of interest to younger selves everywhere…

From Matthew Cheney, on the blog of literary agent Colleen Lindsay, comes advice to young writers (and older writers still finding their groove), of the following flavour:

Actually, I might have been happier if I had been able to give myself permission to study something in college other than writing. But I was convinced the only way to become a good writer was to major in it. Not so. For many people, in fact, the best way to be a good writer is to spend some time doing things other than studying writing. My writing benefited more from my time working in a high school on Manhattan’s Lower East Side than it did from the classes I was taking when not at work.

That passage in particular rang true for me. I remain rather puzzled how I came to be ‘naturally’ a much better writer (or so I kid myself) by the time I started up again a year ago, despite having produced only a few thousand words of fiction in the previous decade. The magic is breadth and depth of experience, I suppose.

Read on, MacDuffs.

Michael Crichton, 1942-2008

Michael Crichton died yesterday, at the age of 66. He was almost without peer as an action/thriller writer who knew how to communicate aspects of the frontiers of current science. The rampant success of his work almost created the hard-science techno-thriller genre.

Ultimately, though, I think the flavour of most of Crichton’s science fiction was ‘faux-hard’. (This is not to denigrate his work; I loved it and clearly lots of other people did too.) He pushed boundaries of mainstream fiction by introducing contemporary hard science themes, but he was at his best when he was free to weave fiction together with fact without being beholden to the latter. For example, the chaos theory strand in Jurassic Park was at best a metaphor; if I’m not misremembering it, nothing in the actual plot really had anything to do with chaos theory. On the other hand, managing that kind of metaphor is an achievement in itself. With State of Fear he seemed to forget that — it was based on old science that was obsolete before the book was published, and he set himself up for a fall by presenting it as anything other than pure fiction.

An interesting thing about so many of his books was that all the action happened somewhere remote. This gave his stories an aura of plausibility — the idea that they could be going on right now, and we would never know. It was, I’m sure, a good part of his books’ appeal. The theme of science and technology as double-edged swords is also highlighted by this approach; unfettered research is the threat, and we’re lucky, the stories seem to say, that these crises can be averted with a little help from the maverick scientist-hero.

Know thy sleepy-time

Having just had a very long weekend, and feeling particularly overwhelmed with so much new stuff to keep a track of, I’m reminded how important it is to get enough sleep. With everything from the US elections to my new writing group happening right now and need my attention right now, there’s always a strong temptation to stay up late and just read that, do that, watch that, write that.

Note to self: go to bed!

(Well, not now, but at the appropriate time.)

Unfortunately, I often need reminding that getting enough sleep is critical. If I even hope to do what these days I try to do — perform more than just adequately at my day job while also becoming a writer — I have to wake up relatively fresh 9 mornings out of 10. Apart from the substantial negative effects on cognitive function of sleep deprivation, any creative activity requires some degree of alertness. Both my ‘normal’ work in science and fiction writing are creative industries, albeit of rather different sorts. Neither is achieved simply by sitting down and cranking out the hours (though that helps). Each is a process as much as a product, and I can’t just tread water in either if I want to achieve the kinds of things I want to achieve — publications and sales, grants and commissions, recognition and, well, recognition.

So sleep is one of the keystones of my lifestyle. If I stay up late, it’s actually something of a set-back, and that is doubly true if I stay up late doing something essentially useless, like reading blogs. (That’s not to say that reading blogs is always a waste of time, but I can almost guarantee that if I’ve got Google Reader in front of me after 10 PM, I should probably call it a night.)

The problem is, it’s always very tempting to stay up late doing useless things. This breaks down, for me, into two nefarious strands. First, it’s the Internet, man. There’s always something new, interesting, exciting, surprising, challenging, entertaining or just plain weird to see, even among the relatively few sites that I follow. I could probably sit at my computer 24 hours a day reading blog posts and news items and science sites and this and that and the other.

Second, there’s the spectre of tomorrow. No, this isn’t some dystopian vision that I’ve got stuck in my head like the music of a manufactured pop band. It’s the simple fact that tomorrow, there are Things to Do. These Things might not be particularly onerous, time-consuming or challenging, but nonetheless they must be Done. In my little subjective world, going to sleep brings them that much closer, so not going to sleep is a form of procrastination. In fact, I think it might be the most insidious and destructive form of procrastination that I know (and I consider myself something of an expert) because it makes it more difficult to ensure that the Things get Done. There’s also the vicious cycle in which staying up late makes it harder to resist the temptation to stay up late the next night.

Note to self: underline previous note to self, then go to bed!

If you’re reading this past 10 PM, I can tell you with some degree of certainty that the only way this won’t have been a waste of your time is if you close your browser, shut down the computer, and go to bed.

And don’t forget to brush your teeth!

Libertas in Silico: free fiction online, to 24 Oct.

'Maison tournante aérienne', Albert Robida, 1883

Welcome to the second Libertas in Silico. This series briefly reviews recent free online science fiction and fantasy stories. I’ve got a particular interest in overtly speculative pieces, but personal genre preferences aside, this week’s Top Pick stands as testament to my belief that great stories will out — even to partisans such as myself.

Got a dissenting view (or any view) of your own on these stories? Leave a comment; I’d love to hear from you.

After all, comment is free… and so are these stories.
 

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TOP PICK!

PodCastle: This week’s story, “Grand Guignol”, by Andy Duncan, is the macabre and utterly beautiful story of a actual 1920s Parisien theatre which specialised in realistic, gory productions with plots gleaned from the exploits of madmen. It was originally published in Weird Tales. This story is astonishingly good: to my mind, “Grand Guignol” is the one of the very best to emerge from either PodCastle or Escape Pod. I found a kind of sublimity in the experience of listening to this tale, not least thanks to the marvellous, numb-lipped timbre of the voice of narrator Frank Key.

This is not fantasy, horror, or even speculative fiction, but I was glad of it. I actually realised, part way through, that I was dreading the eventual fantastic twist. Thankfully, it never came. I listened a second, enraptured time to enjoy “Grand Guignol” in the absence of that anxiety. Whatever your fictional persuasions, listen to this story.
 

Libertas in Silico: free fiction online, to 20 Oct.

Astonishing, Margret Hofheinz-Döring, 1964 (© Peter Mauch / Galerie Brigitte Mauch Göppingen)

Welcome! This is the first of my new series of posts reviewing recent free online fiction. By review I mean “make brief comment upon”, and by recent I mean “in the last week or so”.

This series will have a name: Libertas in Silico, which is almost-Latin for “freedom within the silicon”. (The major error in the translation is a historical accident which I have little desire to oppose.)

So, without further ado…
 

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TOP PICK!

Clonepod: “Outside Chance”, by Matthew Johnson, read by Leslie Ann Moore. In an uncertain world, time-traveling “forecasters” scope out the wonders and terrors of the future, but it’s what they don’t bring back to “now” that makes all the difference. Professional-quality audio SF from a podcast run by kids? You betcha — it’s not just good (for their age), it’s good (period).
 

Free fiction online…

I’m working on a little plan to bring regular updates about free online fiction to this blog.

There are a host of venues providing all or some of their content for free on the web, in formats including traditional text, podcasted audio and multimedia, interactive websites. There’s a lot going around, of all shapes and sizes, and I want to keep track of it myself so why not here?

FiveThirtyEight.com: Wow.

I’m as enraptured by the US presidential lottery as the next red blooded European (yes, we’re watching, don’t stuff it up), but I reserve my most fevered adulation for FiveThirtyEight.com. It’s the election poll aggregation, analysis and discussion blog to end all election poll aggregation, analysis and discussion blogs.

Pushing boundaries

I’ve been making a major push these last few weeks to make the most of both my day job and the time I have for writing. I am just realizing today how much it is taking out of me.

The ‘Tube Strikes Back!

From xkcd, a pretty good idea. I often find it helpful to have my writing read back to me, and yes, I often conclude that I’m a moron.

OK, OK, I suppose it could be worse.

The Reverse St Anselm Manoeuvre

What's not to love?

Thanks to Tony Sidaway for pointing out Nobel Prize-winner Harry Kroto’s comment in the Guardian, in which he takes the opportunity to respond to the swinging pendulum of public opinion. The majority view now appears to be that Michael Reiss was unfairly (and even foolishly) pushed from his post as Director of Science Education at the Royal Society, a view with which Kroto takes issue. (I discussed my views on the original story previously: here, here and here.)

Kroto is defending, more or less, the statements he was quoted as making when the whole fiasco first broke; that is, that Michael Reiss was always an unsuitable choice for the Royal Society post, and that this issue must be vigourously defended as part of the struggle to save the Enlightenment from the forces of ignorance. I can’t see that he’s done much to further his cause.