Writing Process Blog Tour

Writing Process Blog Tour: June 3, 2014

After finally getting to summer vacation alive (marked by WisCon 38 and all its glory), Alyssa Wong, who has recently published her first short story, The Fisher Queen in F&SF (May/June 2014), has invited me to join the Writing Process Blog Tour.
I'm not one to turn down a pretty face, especially when she's holding a tiny bonesaw to my radial nerve. 

1. What am I working on?

Currently I have a few drafts that I'm juggling, one of which deals with an abstracted (i.e. a concrete) version of phylogenetic trees and some personal family history. Another is a robot detective story in which I'm dealing with capturing non-human, non-centralized thoughts on the page. My other short story draft currently in progress is a story about siblings, weaving, and gender that is currently undergoing another complete rewrite.

2. How does my work differ from others of its genre?

I do science for my day job, which is not terribly uncommon for SF writers, but I don't typically stick to just hard science fiction when I write. 

My fantasy--when it works--is tied to a concept I hold very closely. I like to take something with subtle power: the true relationship between two living things, the heavy reliance upon something both alien and intimate, or the idea that words can mean something. I like to take that concept and then give it power, something that you can hold and use to your advantage. Often with consequence. 

My science fiction tends to focus on traditional F&SF tropes (robots primarily), but by comparing both the actual limitations that we've encountered and the golden age science fiction concepts that we are striving towards (or away from). What I've seen work best for me is "quiet SF" where people wrestle with the future made today and what they expected it to be. I write loud SF sometimes, but it just doesn't seem to work for me all that often.

3. Why do I write what I do?

I grew up deeply loving the narrative of science and read speculative fiction voraciously, as many young children do. I love the heartbreak that can come from science, the optimism that permeates the atmosphere, and the seemingly bizarre and contradicting systems that develop from pursuing and cataloging it. Most of all, I love that even in the face of complex and unknowable systems, humans rationalize and dull even the most fascinating phenomena. We take a world of wonder and beauty and manage to distill it into Organic Chemistry 101 and Introduction to Calculus.

I write because I think that sometimes we need to fall in love with bizarre but earthly ideas. That we need to see the beauty of microfloral biofilms and the elegance of statistical analysis. Abstract but stable ideas that let us understand the world a little bit better.

4. How does your writing process work?

First, as I think most writers start, I need to find an idea. Usually it's something simple. Something I'm deeply afraid of works best, but things I worry about work too. Then I find a scientific concept that I think pairs with it. Something that is both affected by and influences the idea. I've tried writing one without the other, and it just doesn't seem to work for me.

Then I need driving time. It takes about 5 hours to drive to my parent's house two states away, and while most of that time is spent singing wildly to various playlists, a lot of that is plotting. I iterate scenes in my head and will create and destroy several character concepts. The fear and the concept fight and form interference patterns with each other in my head: parts they agree on, and parts where they do not. I usually have very little control over how exactly they decide to interact. On shorter trips (usually 1-2 hours) I can write down what I've thought of at the end, but longer trips need note-taking stops (as well as gas, coffee, and bathroom breaks).

After that I start writing. I usually have a solid scene order and character intentions at that point. Most of it is liable to shift and change, but those central concepts usually stick. Then it's just a point of fleshing it out. Then it's nailing it out and editing until my eyes bleed. I'm still figuring out what works best for me on that front.

Next on the tour are Thom Dunn and Will Kaufman! Be sure to read their blogs and look for their posts on June 10th! 

Thom Dunn is a Clarion UCSD graduate of 2013, lover of punk rock, and has had a love affair with footnotes that the rest of the population could only imagine. 

Will Kaufman is also a Clarion 2013 graduate, the "proud owner of 34 vertebrae," and the writer of stories so beautifully haunting that I've had to start burning sage when I read them.