Here I go again…
About 6 years ago I started a blog to document my journey to becoming a science fiction author. And then life got in the way and I took a 5 year hiatus. I posted once a year ago, and that was it. I needed to restart, and so here I am.
I have wanted to be a science fiction author for as long as I can really remember. My 7th and 8th grade English teacher encouraged us to write, often, regularly, regardless of genre. And as a 12 year old in 1984, I was influenced by Star Wars, Star Trek, and Battlestar Galactica, and I began writing my epic novel. I’m still working on it, 35 years later. I’ve refined it. I’ve written and rewritten parts of it, but I’ve never really sat down and committed to it. It is the one thing that I feel I need to do.
More recently, as an adult, I’ve dabbled in short stories. I currently have about 7 or 8 in various stages from rough idea to almost publishable. I submitted a single story in college but that magazine no longer even exists, and I never got a reply. I joined the science fiction and fantasy online writing workshop and have gotten some great advice and I enjoy reading and reviewing there. I took a 6-8 week writing workshop led by James Gunn, where I had 5 other aspiring writers critique my work.
In my real life, I am very busy as a professor. I teach writing (academic, not fiction) and have an independent career that takes a lot of time. I don’t read professionally nearly as much as I should, which leaves even less time for me to pursue my passion of science fiction. But I have drawn a line. I really need to do this for myself. Over the next 3 to 4 months I will be in a transitional period but beginning in January 2019 I hope to be writing one full day a week plus one hour every few days. It isn’t a lot, but its a whole lot more than I am doing now. And I owe it to myself. I will need to do research… which fortunately for me means reading more SF. And so here it begins. Again. I hope you enjoy the ride.