Alien POV

Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of reading. When I read the classics in my genre (or others), I can’t help admiring the skill of the writers. I also feel despair that I could ever duplicate the skill of those talented writers. But as any writer knows, learning the craft is a continual journey, and striving to reach the heights is part and parcel of this job that we love.

 

When I read Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger In A Strange Land I was deeply impressed by his ability to create the completely alien mindset of Mike, the human Martian. I realized suddenly that this was missing in my own science fiction novel, The Forgotten Planet. In my book, I have three different cultures colliding on one planet, yet I found that I had depicted all three as having very similar views of things. They all ended up seeing things in that middle ground that was my own author’s perspective. Heinlein’s ability to have two characters look at the same thing and interpret it completely differently astounds me, and is something that I would like to try to emulate.

 

Therefore, I will be revisiting and revising my novel to try to sharpen the delineation between cultures. I may even try an exercise where I have all three cultures viewing the same situation or object, and trying to understand how differently they see it. It will be a challenge, but that challenge is the fun part of writing. Making my cultures vivid and alien will step my novel closer to the level of writing I desire. I am eager for the experiment, and wonder where it will take me!

Meetings of the Minds

Whew! A very long day of writing-related meetings has left my head spinning, but my inspiration pumped! There is nothing quite so super-charging as sharing ideas with a group of writers who share your passion. Who else could understand your chagrin at searching for the word “just” in your manuscript and finding it several hundred times?

 

The first meeting was three hours of the Writer’s Coffeehouse at Saxby’s in Doylestown, PA. Led by Jonathan Maberry, there was a wide-ranging discussion about all things publishing, but mostly focusing on self-publishing and POD (print on demand). We discussed the differences between self-publishing and POD, as well as when using those services could enhance your career or harm it. There was speculation that POD especially will become more “legitimized” as previously-conventionally-published authors who have been dropped by their publishers use PODs as an outlet for their work.

 

Then onto another marathon workshop, this one in Warrington, PA, also with the ubiquitous Jonathan Maberry, called Revise & Sell. Today we focused more on the revision process, our writing process, where ideas come from, and how we get into the heads of characters who are completely different from ourselves. That is part of the fascination (and scariness!) of being a writer. I am not an alien despot who thinks it is perfectly okay to enslave humans, but there is one in the science fiction book I’m shopping (The Forgotten Planet), so…

 

Days like today are exhausting (it also includes almost 2 hours of driving for me), but electric, as well. I always leave these workshops fired up and ready to write!

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