A Speaking Side Of Writing

It is happening again. Last year, I was a speaker at the Galaxy’s Edge Fan Expo, held in Oak Harbor, WA. They asked me to come back and do it again. Sure. Three days of hanging out with other science fiction writers, most of whom are associated with the Galaxy’s Edge series. They invited me because, well, I’ll let them assign their motivations themselves. But, my presence was partly based on writing my scifi novel, Firewatcher. And the fact that I was local and readily available. My main goal for going back is to thank the folks that inspired some work I did since then.

Writing can be only about writing. Besides the writer, no one else needs to be involved. Readers, however, are a very nice addition to the work. Readers are buyers. Readers can also be fans of writers, writing, or what’s been written. Some are not satisfied with reading what’s been written. They want to know more about the story, the process, the ideas, whatever. Why deny them?

Of course, denying readers is common. Many writers and authors are introverts. Naturally, the number of writers who are willing to speak publicly is smaller than the number of writers. Readers create a demand. Some subset of writers get to become the supply. Supply. Demand. Ah, a business.

Sure, I’ll probably sell a few books, but even if I don’t, I’ll still want to go.

One of this year’s goals is to publish the sequel to Firewatcher. When last anyone else saw the colonists, they were threatened with being overwhelmed by fire. Oops. Gotta resolve that.

The series is still open for other writers to write into, so I’ll continue spreading that idea and opportunity.

Last year, one of the attendees (not a writer!) told me how I could write and develop a family folkloric screenplay about a spoiled brat kicked out of his country at 14 years old in 1876, who found he was now going to be a cabin boy on a tall ship heading to Calcutta. He grows up. He proves he is a brat. He sees Imperial India with innocent eyes. He sees a murder and a suicide. He gets sneezed on by a whale. Within a few months, he is no longer who he was. Wrote that. Gotta thank the person who inspired my efforts.

Writing is an industry. Within that industry, there are sub-industries. Call them genres. The easiest split is fiction versus non-fiction. The next split fractures out into an overwhelming number of sub-genres. Science fiction doesn’t have a lot of neighbors, but the people who live there are passionate about their place. Within science fiction there’s soft, hard, and fantasy. Fantasy scifi assumes science will enable the story. Hard science fiction has a standard of at least some understanding of science. Soft scifi can be more cerebral, dealing with the societal, psychological, emotional, and spiritual aspects of civilizations that exist because of other approaches to science.

Or.

Soft: Star Wars. “Go into hyperspace!” whatever that is.
Hard: Star Trek. “Reverse the polarity!” with at least some explanation of what is polarized.
Societal: Bladerunner. “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” Philip K. Dick

And, of course, everything has a bit of everything in it.

Galaxy’s Edge, as I understand, prefers to identify as military scifi. As someone described last year, this is scifi where the storm troopers hit what they aim at. And some of the authors have lived in the real version of that world. They have stories to tell. Check your security clearance for more – I guess.

It is coming up quick. My recent move to Port Townsend means I missed signing up sooner. Maybe I’ll get to that later today.

If you’re a writer and unsure about such events, that’s understandable. But every writer at this conference or any other, was a new writer at one time. Some conferences are massive and overwhelming. Conferences devoted to regions, sub-genres, the vagaries of publishing and marketing can narrow the scope and make the experience more manageable.

You might like it. Your readers may, too. Who knows? Maybe someday the sub-genre will be you.

(Oh yeah. And that supply and demand thing means that sometimes you even get paid to be there. Bonus!)