1995 and All That

Or Why I’m Not Charlie Stross

It is 2005 and I have just attended my first Worldcon.  On my return, this evening, I was thumbing through a pile of Fanzines which Lillian Edwards insisted I take from the Fan Room during the Dead Dog Party.  A decade ago, the period, bizarrely, captured by the ‘zines I carried home, there was another Worldcon. 

I didn’t go.

It did, however, get me thinking about the last decade and the direction my life has taken.  Reading the lives of Fen past, and some of the comments, it made me think of Points of Departure and the Con I could have been having this year, rather than the Con which I did have.

There was a Con Report in an elderly _Lagoon_ – a Mexicon (of which much was discussed at Interaction) and a throw away line about Hugo winner and nominee Charlie Stross, it went something like; “…I met Charlie Stross, he was carrying the inevitable manuscript, ‘at least they want to read them now!’ said Charlie…”  Charlie has worked hard at his craft, but, in another Universe, in 1995, so was I.

Not many people in Fandom know that I used to write.  Ian Sorenson would quip that not many people in Fandom know me at all.  That’s probably a fair point, but I can’t help that.  I’m in a weird position that in the last couple of years, Seattle Fandom has probably seen more of me than British Fandom and the reasons for that have a lot to do with the reasons why I’m not Charlie.

            Cue: Wobbly lines time travel retrospective SFX

It’s 1995.  I have been married a year, and have attended one convention, the 1994 Eastercon. 

I liked it a lot, but not enough to sign up for the Worldcon.  I had been writing since I was 17.  I wrote an 80,000 word novel during my A levels.  There was a longish break while I did University, and first jobs and so forth.  But, by 1995/96, I was working on another novel – this was a massive, large scale, space opera set long after a Singularity (I finished that one too). Between 1995 and 1997, I was really starting to crank up the output.

I produced a half dozen short stories and got really interested in TV work, submitting a number of story outlines and eventually writing some sample scripts during the early part of 1997.  A friend, a TV writer, helped me with the structure and work; he claimed to be impressed with the finished results.  It had a profound effect on me.  I went through a period where watching TV was hard work because once you’ve studied some TV writing style guides and tried doing it; you start to seriously see the cracks in the narrative structure and the “tricks” of the trade.  Other, sometimes painfully frank, friends were giving me constructive advice on the stories I shared with them.

I sold a couple of shorts to a local ultra-small press and started sending stories to Interzone (among others).  I was still getting rejections, but the rejections themselves were starting to change.  Rather than the standard form letter, there’d be a hand written note; some suggestions of things to do, encouraging words asking me to send through more.  I attended a couple of pro focused cons, met some editors who agreed to look at my work when I next submitted.  I was getting writing guides, trying to make contacts with publishers and producers for TV. Things were starting to gain some inertia.

That was early in 1997.

In April 1997, I moved to London, moving from a dead-end recruitment job in Manchester to work for an Aerospace Consulting company; many things happened, pretty much within weeks.  My wife left me, I found myself broke and in London, and working for a company which would, on a whim send me off to France for months, my father died quite unexpectedly and I went from living in my own home to a shared house in SW London. 

The writing took a back seat to Internet chat and the other things that helped me through the hell of that year.  I did more Fannish things but mostly orbiting on the periphery of fandom, a rather elliptical orbit, which I still maintain.

Over the next few years my career, as they say, took off.

I got re-married, involved in a dot com, managed to buy and then sell it on, that got me sent to California for a while, when the company we sold to got into trouble, I came home and ran my own consultancy before finally ending up working for another IT Consultancy.

I work long days and weeks and travel a fairly insane amount – I’m in Seattle at least once every six weeks and have trips to other more exotic parts of the world, but I still haven’t really started writing again.

So, we’re back here in the present.  It’s 2005. 

Writing is strange.  I find the actual process of blasting something out to be quite easy, what is hard is finishing it and keeping the narrative tight.  If you stop writing for a while, the writing “muscles” weaken, the prose becomes loose, it is harder to get strong descriptions and endings together.  Weaknesses in plots or shorts that once you’d spot early on, become a story killers a few thousand words in.

I’ve not stopped writing, but I have slowed down a hell of a lot.  In the last 5 years, I’ve only written a couple of short stories, a sit-com episode draft script, and the first 25,000 words of a novel.  It’s not been very structured and in that time I’ve submitted just one piece of work and that wasn’t SF.

Heinlein said that you had to write, finish what you write, submit what you write and keep writing.  I’ve failed on all of those counts.  Charlie, and other successful authors, on the other hand, have worked damn hard at this, honing the writing and getting better known and publishing.  Good on him and them and more power to their elbows.

I’ve still got a high pressure job which leaves me little time, however, I realised at the Con that I miss writing.  I miss the story, I miss creating stuff that I want to read.  I miss going back to stuff I’ve written after a short break and thinking, “bloody hell, did I do that?”

So, I’m going to try and get back in the saddle. 

I’m open to suggestions about this.  I’ve a half dozen or so short stories I’ve written over the years, I’ve a novel too (for the strong willed or would that be stomached?) [the other novel is now the draft of the third book of a trilogy], input is welcome.  I’m going to start by putting some of my older stuff linked up from my Live Journal (daveon) and my Blog (www.atomicrazor.blogs.com).  I started another short story on the plane down from Glasgow. 

Who knows, I might even write some fan stuff. 

Anybody want this? ;)

Ten years is a long time, and I do wonder what would have happened if I’d kept pushing at it.  But please, don’t think that I am all that upset. 

Since 1997, I’ve travelled all over the world, flown completely around it once (in just over a week); lived in the USA; done business in America, Korea and Taiwan, flown on Concorde; started a couple of businesses; sold a business; raised a million quid from venture capitalists and done deals with a certain Seattle based software company, including successful negotiations with their corporate lawyers. 

Would I trade all that for my name on a book jacket in Waterstones?

For a small silver rocket ship?

Hmmm…  tricky.

Ask me at the next British Worldcon ;)

Comments

[Paul]

Yes, a lot of water has gone under the bridge for both of us in the last ten years. I was offered a job at DERA on 11 August, so as at this Worldcon, I went to the last one knowing that I had gainful employment to go to. Which is always a significant burden lifted. I have managed to establish a reasonably successful professional career trajectory over the past decade.

But writing has taken much more of a backburner than it should have. I wrote my sf novel ~1993 and although in recent years there has been the City Lit, the "Soul Sellers" script, Skyros, Arvon and, of course, Atomic Razor (as well as my PhD), I've not been able to *finish* anything really substantial. Well, that has got to change. I've got to complete two novels (including the all-new "Slaves of Noho") and November is "National Novel Writing Month" (http://www.nanowrimo.org/). A 50,000 word sf novel must, be on the cards, I feel.

Well, ten years is a long time. Plenty of water will go under the bridge. Let's hope that the words (and ideas) flow along too.

[Celestial Weasel]

So, Mr. B - how does November fit in with your schedule? I am a little vague as to when the MBA finishes and the job starts.

[Paul]

Dissertations (there is a group one and an individual one) are to be handed in on 12 September and I start work on 1`9 September (seemingly with some kind of induction in Cambridge), so November should be fine for NaNoMo (nearly 1700 words per day!)