Category: Writing Culture
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The Many Americas of ’90s Sci-Fi: Babylon 5 as SF of the Present
I recently re-watched Babylon 5 as a precursor to diving back into SF&F story-writing (after taking a month off to work on humanist essays and podcast prep for a project launching in November). The following is a reflection on what our SF legacies can teach us not just about the genre and its histories, but…
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A Little More Conversation: Why We Need More Literary Discourse Like Ray Nayler’s New Interview Series
If the individual was melancholic, then the whole world was melancholic as well, the Baroque understanding of melancholia declared, but the reverse was also true: if the world was melancholic, then every single person had to be melancholic. … Corresponding to the mixing of the four humors, four kinds of melancholia could arise, [Robert] Burton…
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Lessons from Lessing: In Search of My Golden Notebook
I can’t remember who recommended Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook (1962) to me as a teen, but I read it during a period when I was glutting myself on mid-20th-century British authors (Iris Murdoch and Margaret Drabble being two other stand-outs; Beryl Bainbridge, I’d meet only in my late 20s). The Golden Notebook is most…
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Fumigative Futures: A Companion Piece for “Mercy and the Mollusc”
I was in-transit from Medellín to Bello, rushing from one appointment to the next, when I noticed the launch-announcement for my latest novelette at Clarkesworld, “Mercy and the Mollusc”: a meditative space western involving a man and a giant… well, mollusc. Amusingly, too, the announcement arrived within minutes of receiving a rejection for “Fumigative Futures”,…
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11 Considerations When Writing Characters from Other Demographics
Hi folks! Today I’m going to be talking writing craft one-on-one with a few writers, and one of the day’s key topics will involve the question of how best to write people from other demographics. My answer to this, on the surface, is pretty simple: Write people! But in practice, writing is an emotional exercise,…
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Please Be Honest vs. If You Loved It: On the Weird World of Reviews
I’m an odd duck of a writer in many ways. I love receiving feedback once a story’s published — whether it’s good, middling, or negative — but I cannot stand the idle critiques of careless readers when a work is in progress. (I’m thankful, then, to have found one beta reader who understands my aims,…
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The Debts We Owe & The Thanks We Give
I was never big into fan culture — never keen to get someone’s autograph, or be in the same room as a famous creator. I still cringe on the rare occasion when people suggest that might be something I look forward to myself — having a “fan club”. Oof. No. Can’t we all just be…
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Playing Around with Narrative Tropes
A few years back, a dear friend told me that he and his girlfriend had spent a night in a cabin with limited entertainment: VHS copies of Road House, and Ghost. “Awesome, so you watched Road House?” “No, she chose Ghost.” Ah. Of course. I’ve always leaned toward the action flicks, myself, and although my…
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Science Fiction Mysteries (a.k.a. Genre is a Construct)
It’s been said that “all stories are mystery stories” — a charming idea, for reasons I’ll discuss today, but also too prescriptive, so let’s modify it from the outset: “all stories can be mystery stories”. There’s a lot to love about looking at literature this way, both as a reader and as a writer. Stories…
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What Is Self-Publishing “Good For”?
What does medieval writing culture have in common with self-publishing in today’s digital world? Less than it could, and maybe should!
Sí, Hay Futuros Ediciones 