Questions and Answers
What are you currently working on?
Oh, lots of things! At the moment I am editing book four of the Dark Staff series for Double Dragon Ebooks. It's in the final draft phase and I hope to have it done within the next three weeks. I'm also writing new material for a fantasy novel titled Emergent, and sneaking in a couple short stories and some non-fiction work, all of which is moving along very well.
Because of the way I write, I almost always have multiple projects going. I schedule my work and keep track on spread sheets that go back to 1998. I write every day and edit something else on most days as well.
Is writing your full time occupation, if not what is?
Writing is my full time occupation, but it is not a very well paying one at the moment. I write at least 1000 words a day, and last year I wrote well over 1,000,000 new words. That doesn't count words added in editing, or posts, emails, web journals and things like that. I wrote 8 novels, 5 novellas, 2 novelettes and 21 short stories in fiction -- and had 18 sales, so 2002 was a good year in that respect. This year is going just as well in the new word department, but less well in sales -- partly because much of my energy is focused on fulfilling contracts from last year.
I have a couple set-in-stone rules for myself, as far as writing goes. I must finish everything I start and do it within one year. This stops me from wasting time starting on half baked ideas and then throwing them out, and from giving up just because something gets a little difficult around the middle. Some people consider it too harsh, but it's worked very well for me.
I also do web sites for a little money -- mostly for fellow writers. I am the web person for Esther Friesner and for Rosemary Edghill (AKA eluki bes shahar), and I also sometimes do some web work for the city and county where I live.
How does your approach to the editing role differ from that of writing?
This is an interesting question for me. I've always been convinced that editing is just a regular part of a writer's life, and shouldn't be feared or loathed. It's a great way to bring the focus of your story closer to what you originally imagined. If you approach it with the feeling that you are going to enjoy the work, rather than dreading it, I've found it helps a lot.
I've always enjoyed editing to some degree, but since I became managing editor for Holly Lisle's Vision: A Resource for Writers (http://lazette.net/vision), I've found that I can work better on my own material. I've also learned to spot some of my weaknesses by looking at what other editors have changed in my work.
I rarely start editing something right after I finish a manuscript. I've found that the longer I can wait, the better the editing goes, since I am no longer intimately involved in the story line and I can see more of the problems.
Should I mention here that I'm prolific, or is that kind of obvious by now?
If you could give one piece of advice to a would-be author, what would it be?
Write the stories that call to you, and don't worry if that doesn't happen to be the most popular genre or sub-genre at the moment. Publishing is cyclical. What you love will come back into popularity, and you'll have some great material ready to go out ahead of the rest of the crowd.
Writing for the market can be done, but it is a tricky business, even in the short story field. If you read a rash of nanotech-wielding gray striped cat stories in Asimov's over the next couple months, you might be tempted to write one of your own. But the truth is that those stories were bought up to two years earlier, and the editor is already on to the next new phase. If you really have a great nanotech-wielding gray striped cat story you want to write, give it a try, of course -- but if you are just trying to write it to fit the market, it's unlikely to work. Be innovative rather than imitating.
With which of your works are you most/least satisfied and why?
I am always convinced that the latest thing I'm working on is absolutely the best I've ever written. I think that's an important, and maybe even needed, attitude for someone who will not quit in the middle of a piece. But really, I have had a couple recent novels that I think have shown definite improvements in my ability to write. One of them in a near future fantasy titled Glory. I finished it a few weeks ago, and now it's in the holding pattern before editing, and I'm anxious to get back to it. Another is a comedic mystery novel titled Muse. I don't often write outside of SF/fantasy, but that one called to me, and I really like the results.
In the published work, Silky, the entire Dark Staff Series -- which has been exciting and challenging to work on -- and shorter pieces like 'Seri Ember', 'Lucky', and -- of course -- 'Sub-Textual Evidence For The Existence Of Alien Life And The Extrapolation Of Internet Protocols'. Links for the stories can be found on my web site.
But if you ask me this question again in a couple months, I might answer with entirely different titles.
Do you always know a stories ending when you begin writing?
Not always. Sometimes I write very detailed thirty-page outlines for my work and try, at least, to follow them. Other times I leap in and fly without a net. The shorter material tends to be 'net-less' and the novels usually have at least a few quick notes scrawled out somewhere.
Who or what has been a major influence on your writing and why?
Holly Lisle -- because she threatened to hit me over the head with my own manuscript if I didn't learn to recognize passive voice. Unfortunately, I still have a bit of a problem there, and she more recently threatened to remove the laters w*a*s from my keyboard.
Holly really has been a big influence. I met her through a Writers Digest class she taught at the time, and she not only helped me with the technical part of writing, but also with the confidence side. She was the first person who did not personally know me to say that I wrote well.
I created her first web site for her, and now I'm an assistant site host at Forward Motion, a very large writer's community that she has created. (http://www.hollylisle.com)
But other persons have influenced me as well, both in personal respects, and just because I love their work. Melisa Micheals of Embiid Publishing has been trying to teach me better writing for quite a while. Elizabeth Burton, by editing the first two Dark Staff books, showed me some really stupid and recurring things I'd been doing and not even noticed. I love the works of writers like C.J. Cherryh> and Kim Stanley Robinson, and though I could never hope to emulate them, I have learned what it takes to be a really great writer through their novels.
Are you for or against e-books?
I am very much for ebooks, and not just because I have had work published in electronic format.
The electronic publishing industry is not going to suddenly disappear -- not unless the entire Internet disappears, and the only way it is going away is the fall of civilization... so let's assume that epublishing is going to stay.
Right now we are in the pulp age of electronic publication. Some of it will be good, and some not. People are trying different venues and experimenting with presentation as well as content. Many who have very little idea of what it takes to be a professional publisher have leapt into the chasm between print publishers and writers, hoping that they will be one of the bridges by which readers flood to the new medium.
It's going to be a slow process, but even so the Association of American Publishers expect ebooks to equal ten percent of the market by 2005 -- which is about $1.6 billion in sales.
I believe that soon ebooks will be considered just another format: hardbound, trade paperback, mass market paperback, and ebooks. Not every book comes out in every format, and some will be ebook only, just as some books are (mass market) paperback now. The market is already showing signs of that change.
Writers should welcome a new medium for their material. The print book and fiction magazine markets have been dwindling for many years, and this promises to at least partially revitalize the marketplace for writers. Right now the pay is bad, but as the overall quality of ebooks improves, the more readers will be drawn to ebooks.
SF, Skiffy or Sci-Fi? What is the correct shortening of Science Fiction and does it matter?
Oh, this is one of my pet subjects....
Which term is used will not matter one way or another to most people. I really don't care what people call the books they read or write. However, as a writer of science fiction who is well aware of marketing, I do wince when I see something that is turning aside a strong segment of the readers.
Skiffy is the odd-term-out. It's cute, but I don't know anyone who uses it very seriously. That leaves SF and Sci-fi. Especially in the last decade, Sci-fi has come more and more to mean (in the publishing world) stories based on other media -- TV shows, movies, games. I think that's a valid distinction to make.
Sci-fi is not a denigrating term. It is a distinction between original material and material written to fit an already created universe. Of course some people are going to look down on 'sci-fi' stories -- but then, after several years working in book stores, I can tell you that no one could be as rude about sci-fi as people in general are about the entire science fiction and fantasy market.
So, here's my point. I know the difference between SF and sci-fi. I know many hard core sf readers who also look at these terms as a signs of distinction. When they see books listed as sci-fi when they are not, it is a sign that the publisher or seller is not as serious about the genre as they are, and it can often turn those readers away before they really look. People have limited time to read, and they are going to turn to places where they think they are most likely to find the material they're searching for.
So that's where the marketing comes in. I want my science fiction books listed as science fiction or sf. I want at least a chance at those readers because they are some of the people most dedicated to the genre you can find.
The term SF is not going to turn anyone away. The term sci fi will.
And, just to settle the point, I have written and sold sci fi in the form of game-related fiction that should be out... soon. I am not one of those who frown on sci-fi, and I'd love to write more of it -- but it is not the same as creating my own universe and characters.
Do you have a favourite place to write?
I have a lovely little office in the back of the house where I spend far too much time -- just me, my computer, a few hundred history books, and the prerequisite cats that every sf/fantasy writer is supposed to have. In fact, I think I have more than my share in that respect. It is helpful to have a place away from the rest of the house, so that my husband and I can both work to our own music, and without interrupting each other. He does a great deal of freelance nonfiction writing.
I also have a PDA with a keyboard, and it goes everywhere with me. There are times when I love to write out at the park, or in the car on a trip.
For me, writing is more about a state of mind than a place, but I still enjoy having my own office.
What book are you reading at the moment?
Oh, let's see.... As usual there is more than one. I'm researching a novel, so I have nonfiction books as well as fiction. The nonfiction one is Prehistoric Indians of the Southwest by H.M. Wormington -- really great book, easy to read and full of useful information for anyone writing about a book set in that area or that era.
I'm also reading The Ugly Princess by Elizabeth Burton -- a fantasy ebook that I recommend. It's actually kept me from writing so much that I had to put my PDA in another room so I couldn't just pick it up and start reading again.
Is there anything else that can be done with Alien Invasion, Time Travel or Robots? How about Wizards, Elves and Dragons?
Everything has been done... except for the story that a writer thinks of today and starts creating. It's not the objects or even the settings that are important, but rather the spin that the writer puts on those things. We all have our own tales to tell. Ten of us could sit down with the same outline and we wouldn't tell the same story.
That's the joy of writing, and that's why it continues to be a draw. There is no one perfect book, and there never will be. Some writers will tell better stories than others, but every one of them is a reflection of a unique mind.
So writers shouldn't worry so much about the tropes of their genre, or the supposed clichés. They should look to what they want to tell, and use the tools, tropes and clichés in ways that reflect their imagination. No one else will ever tell that tale except them.
Do you prefer writing about the near future or the far distant future?
I don't tend to go more than four or five hundred years into the future. I suppose for some that may seem like the far future, but I read a lot of history, and I know how little time that really is.
We live right now in an age with an incredible amount of change. If you take history in increments of a few hundred years, the farther back you go, the less change you find in a spread of years. We have accelerated change... but I'm rather betting that it's a unique glitch in the history of mankind where pressures and invention cascaded so quickly that we invented without thought of consequences. If we survive our own stupidity, we'll slow down again. I especially think this is true if we start spreading out to different worlds, which will lessen the speed of change just by spreading out the need for different things for different worlds.
I mostly write about humans or very human-like aliens. I think if you stray too far from now -- and the people of now -- then the harder it is for the reader to connect to them. Some people enjoy that type of story, but I am a character-orientated reader and writer. I want stories about people and motives that I can understand.
Short Story, Single Novel or Novel Series - which do you think is the best medium for Science Fiction or fantasy?
The best medium is the one that suits your story. Trying to fit a story into a length that it shouldn't be can ruin it. I write in all those lengths, and I've sold pieces at all lengths -- flash fiction, short story, novelette, novella, novel, and series. I've also edited longer pieces to fit into some place where the guidelines said it had to be shorter. Sometimes it works, but I think it's the last thing people need to worry about when they sit down to write is the number of words.
Plug away - what do you have coming out?
I have the rest of the eight book Dark Staff series coming out from DDP. I'm working hard on those, and they've taken most of my attention this year (2003). I also have Singer and St. Jude: The Lost Cause coming out from DDP later this year. That's an sf book set in the near future LA after several earthquakes have devastated the city.
I keep a list of all my currently available material at my web site
-- <Link Below>
With the speed at which some ezines accept and publish, there's no telling what could be coming out soon. (grin)
Many Thanks, Zette
Relevant LinksLazette Gifford Main Bibliography
Lazette Gifford's Website