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Biography of a Writer: in three parts Part Two The genesis of JARAN can’t be understood without peeking into my file cabinet, which contains several file folders of material labeled ‘Rhui.’ My brother Karsten and I spent a lot of time in secondary school drawing maps of a planet called Rhui, writing mock correspondence between various fleet captains and administrators, and naming the other planets in the system as well as outlining a basic history of its colonization. JARAN grew in part out of this material and in part out of various books I was reading at the time (the last year of college and post-college), such as "And Quiet Flows the Don," by Russian author Mikhail Sholokhov, and--of all things--a western by Clair Huffacker called "The Cowboy and the Cossack." In fact, were you to read the latter book, you would discover one clear parallel, or borrowing, that I made from the latter book: when an experienced ‘hand’ shows a ‘greenhorn’ just how much the greenhorn doesn’t know by taking him scouting. As they sometimes say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I wrote the first draft of JARAN in 1981. It’s really pretty unreadable, and while the basic story is recognizable, the truth is that I needed ten years to turn that basic sound idea into a real, workable novel with depth and complexity. That’s what happened: over the next ten years, at various times and between working on other projects, I wrote seven drafts of JARAN. The seventh draft I sold to DAW Books in 1991, after which, at the direction of my editor, Sheila Gilbert, I revised the novel for an eighth time. In other words,
usually the ‘secret’ of success is simply hard work, and not giving up.
As I’ve said other places, together those two add up to persistence.
Meanwhile, frustrated by my inability to sell JARAN (and it was a good thing I didn’t publish any of those earlier drafts!), I worked on other novels. The summer after I finished JARAN, I wrote one of its sequels, then titled HIS OTHER SON. When, in 1992, I rewrote this sequel, giving it the title THE LAW OF BECOMING, I threw out that entire early manuscript and wrote the book over from scratch. It is a completely different novel (and a much better one). I tried to sell both WHEN WINTER COMES and JARAN in the early 80s, without success. In time, I decided to work on something completely different, a space opera with a lot of action. I specifically set myself goals with this new project: I wanted to write about a protagonist who wasn’t particularly introspective, who acted before she thought, and I wanted to work on pacing, the ability to make the story move forward quickly. I wrote what became the first Highroad novel, A PASSAGE OF STARS, and outlined a trilogy based on the anthropological concept of coming of age rituals in which a young person first leaves the group, then exists in a liminal phase (outside the boundaries of her world), before finally reentering her world as an ‘adult’ (that is, with a new role to play in her society). [If you want to read more about this process, try Victor Turner’s THE RITUAL PROCESS.] This idea of tackling an different element of craft in each new project has become part of my writing process. Like most writers, I have strengths and weaknesses as a writer. At the time of writing A PASSAGE OF STARS I consciously chose, as I have done ever since, to pick one element of writing, such as pacing, style, or dialogue, at which I wasn’t very good and focus on improving in that element for the project. In retrospect, I can’t always remember which precise element I worked on during any given project, but so far I do feel as if my craft has improved slowly but steadily over the course of my career. One lesson I learned is that criticism from readers with a sharp eye is priceless, no matter what stage of the writing process you’re in and no matter how ‘good’ you may or may not be. Equally, however, criticism from a reader who doesn’t respect the basic content or who persists in placing themselves into the writing process by telling you what you ought to be writing rather than where the text isn’t communicating to the reader is not of much use to a writer. It’s important to learn to tell the difference. Ironically, A PASSAGE OF STARS got me my first professional sale. I had managed to get an agent (easier back in the mid-80s than it is now, unfortunately), and in 1987 she sent A PASSAGE OF STARS to Betsy Mitchell at Baen Books. Mitchell didn’t want A PASSAGE OF STARS but she did buy an as-yet-unwritten fantasy novel on the basis of an outline. Thus, my ‘first published novel’ was actually--if one counts the sprawling and unfinished novel I wrote in high school--the sixth novel I wrote. Coming next: Twelve books and three kids in twelve years: Don’t try this at home! Last updated: February 2003 |