How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy (21 page)

Novelizations
can
be fine pieces of work, but in most cases very few readers and
no
critics will notice or care. There’s little joy in the work, it does nothing for your career, and whether the money is worth it to you is for you to answer. Some novelists whose agents get them a shot at novelizations regard them as a chance to learn their craft using someone else’s story-and that can be a good learning experience. But it is someone else’s story, and you have almost no chance of influencing it significantly. I’ve done one novelization under highly unusual circumstances (I worked

from finished film, not the screenplay; the director was committed to having an excellent novel; and the money was orders of magnitude better than normal) and I’m proud of the result. But I guarantee that you won’t match those circumstances very often, and even if you do, you’ll probably find as I did that you regret the books of your own that did not get written while you were working on the novelization.

6. Finances

Speculative fiction can pay decently now-but it’s only in recent years that more than a handful of sf writers have been able to live solely from their writing. For every writer who hits fast and hard there are a dozen whose careers build slowlyand far more whose careers consist of a few stories
and navels
spread out over many years, with never enough income to live

Don’t quit your job. In other words, when you get that contract for a first novel, don’t quit your job. Five thousand bucks can seem like a lot of money until you realize that to reach the national median income ($25,000 at the time of this writing) you have to write five books a year at that price.

Only you can’t be sure that you can actually produce five publishable books a year. And if you do, you run the risk of being perceived as a hack who turns out lots of books of middling quality. It’s rare for writers of that reputation to get advances large enough to free them to write one or two really fine books a year.

Even when you do earn enough money to live on, it comes erratically and undependably. Royalty checks are often late (though when you ask them, most publishers will forget that they have ever been a bit tardy with payments) and there are many ugly surprises (“I’m sorry, but we had to raise your reserve against returns, so there’s no money for you this time” ) . That’s assuming that your books ever earn out their advance and start paying royalties-it wasn’t until my ninth sf book that I ever received royalties beyond the original advance, and .I was generally perceived as having a pretty strong career from the start.

In America we live in a world financially organized around the lunar cycle; writers don’t fit too well in that world. Malting monthly payments means saving money so that you can keep paying rent and bills during the

six months between checks. That’s fine if you happen to have the money to save; it breaks down a bit when it happens to be eight months between checks this time instead of the normal six. In other words, if writing is your sole source of income, your credit rating can go down the toilet in a few months while your publishers work out their “cash flow” problems (meaning that they only have enough money to pay their printer, and too bad about you).

You may dream of getting free of your daily job so instead of writing your stories in stolen moments-at night, at lunch, on weekends-you can devote full time to your art. But how easy is it to produce deathless prose when you’re worried sick about money? When every phone call might be a creditor?

If I paint a dark picture of the financial side of a writer’s life, it’s because the picture is often very dark. Unless you are independently wealthy or have a spouse who’s willing to support your writing habit or relatives who can bail you out in troublous times, think very carefully before you quit your steady, secure job.

Besides, that job keeps you out in the world, in contact with other people-with potential stories and characters. Many who quit their jobs discover the hard way that they produce no more fiction than they did when they were writing only in stolen moments.

Handling the money.
If you examine your expenses and your writing income and determine that you can make it, then do it right. Nobody withholds taxes for you. The money passes through your hands; therefore it becomes tempting to spend it and take your taxes out of “the next check.” I speak from experience: This leads to disaster. Estimate your state and federal income tax on every single check you receive; put that tax in the bank immediately and never, never spend it except to file your quarterly estimated tax returns. There is no grief from agents or publishers or even critics that can compare with the grief that comes when you get behind on your taxes.

In addition to your tax account, maintain a cash reserve, and build it up to the point where you have a year’s income in the bank. Trust me: you’ll need it. The big payday that comes today doesn’t guarantee you’ll have anything like that next year. Back in 1980 I was flying high-I’d signed one contract for $75,000 and another for $30,000. I thought it would go on like that, a steady upward curve. Instead, during the recession

of the early eighties the publishers panicked, and I found myself listening to offers of $7500-or outright refusals to buy. I knew that accepting an advance like that would be a deadly step backward; I had to go back to work for about a year in order to keep my advance levels where they needed to be.

Writing is no different from movies or sports or any of the other high-risk professions. For a few, there’s wealth and fame; for most of us, there are shocking ups and downs. When you have an up, save for the next down. When you have a $50,000 year after five years at $15,000, don’t start living as though you were pulling down $50,000 every year-because next year you might make nothing at all.

Speculative fiction is wide open, and you can make a living at it with the right combination of talent, luck, drive-and financial self-discipline. Unfortunately, the very attributes that make you a wonderful storyteller may work against your being very good at managing money. If that’s the case with you, as it is with me, be honest enough to admit it to yourself and turn your money management over to somebody else. In my case, I had the good sense to marry a grown-up. Kristine handles the money; I don’t even carry a checkbook. Life works better for us that way. You figure out what will work well for you, and then stick with it.

7. joining the Club

Speculative fiction is a lively literary community, with strong participation from readers, writers, editors, and critics. You may already be aware of “fandom”-the conventions every weekend, the fanzines, the clubs. Or you may follow the professional and critical community-the professional organizations, the awards, the review columns, the critical journals. Or you may have caught only a glimpse of all that activity-the Hugo and Nebula awards, the best-of-the-year anthologies, the quotes from other authors on the covers of new books.

The fact is that even before you become a published author of speculative fiction you can be actively involved at almost every level of this community of people drawn together by wonderful stories in strange worlds.

Conventions

Most major cities in America have at least one convention a year. Some conventions have different emphases: Some focus on film and television

sf, some are primarily for people who like to dress up in elaborate costumes from fiction and film, some are for people who like to play sf games, and some are for serious critical and literary discussion. Most, though, include a little bit of everything. There are almost always a couple of famous guests and quite a few notso-famous ones.

The biggest convention is the World Science Fiction Convention, whose location changes from year to year (in recent years: Los Angeles; Atlanta; Brighton, England; New Orleans; Boston) Put on entirely by amateurs, WorldCon is a remarkable event and practically everybody is there. For a nearly complete listing of upcoming conventions, check Locus or most issues of
Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. You’ll
probably find a convention near you.

Once you’ve started selling stories, if you let your local convention know about it, they will gladly put you on some panels and give you a chance to talk about the things you care about. Let me give you a few hints about how to do this successfully:

Be modest. Even though they’re dressed up in costumes and often include people who don’t dress for success, the audiences at sf convention panels and events are generally a good deal brighter than the population at large, and they can smell a phony from fifty yards away. They are not googly-eyed at the sight of a Real Writer like you-most of them have had discussions with Harlan Ellison or Isaac Asimov or Carolyn Cherryh or Larry Niven at conventions like these, and they’re not going to treat you with much deference or respect.

So don’t spend all your time talking about your latest book- they probably don’t care, and if you push yourself too strongly, there’s almost certainly someone in the audience who
did
read your book and didn’t like it and won’t be shy about telling you and the rest of the audience why. But if you talk about ideas and do so with intelligence and passion-even if you aren’t a terrific public speaker-the audience will warm to you and help you.
Real
people are well treated by fandom; phonies get chewed up and spat out.

Don’t let it take over your life. There is a convention every weekend of the year somewhere in the U.S. As your work begins to catch on, people will take more notice of you. You’ll get invited to a lot of these conventions. Some may even offer to help pay your way or give you a free room; most will give a free membership to professional writers (i.e., people who’ve published something). If you’re a frustrated actor like me, you’ll thrive on

the chance to perform; if you’re just plain lonely, you’ll grasp at the chance to be with people who care about fiction.

Furthermore, at the bigger conventions you meet a lot of writers and editors. You talk shop. You get taken to dinner in fancy places. It’s easy to convince yourself that you
have
to go to Convention X -it’s part of the business. And it is part of the business, now and then.

It’s possible, though, to get too caught up in the convention life. It’s professionally good to be visible; it’s personally and artistically debilitating to be ubiquitous. Some writers seem to live in the bar at conventions. one wonders when they’re sober enough to touch type. Other writers simply stop writing for long stretches-their time is all taken up with fandom. If you find that conventions and fandom interfere with your writing, make sure that the writing takes precedence. The conventions will go just fine without you for a while.

Professional Organizations

The Science Fiction Writers of America has a misleading name-many of the members are from the United Kingdom and Canada, with a few from places like the Soviet Union, Japan, Germany, and France; many of the members write fantasy, never science fiction; and there are some members who have never written a story in their lives. Be that as it may, the SFWA is one of the most powerful-and quarrelsomeprofessional organizations in the arts.

SFWA is not a union-you won’t ever be asked to go on strike. It isn’t cheap, either-the dues are stiff. But SFWA has, over the years, under strong leadership and through great solidarity, managed to perform some miracles. They have audited the books of publishers accused of dishonesty or carelessness, and arranged payments to members; they have convinced several publishers to withdraw or revise obnoxious contracts; and, through their hardworking grievance committees, they have done much to help individual members in their struggles with publishers, editors, and agents.

Also, the SFWA nominates and votes on the annual Nebula Awards, the “academy awards” of science fiction. Whether you think the award actually goes to the “best” work of the year is relatively unimportantwhat matters is that the members care deeply and passionately about what constitutes good science fiction and fantasy, and those concerns are brought to the fore during the annual nominating and voting. And when the results are announced and published, the message to the reading public

is clear: The writers of speculative fiction are concerned about recognizing excellence in their field; this is an art, not just a business.

It’s good to remember these accomplishments when you see all the bickering and sniping at SFWA meetings and in the pages of SFWA’s freefor-all magazine, the Forum. Part of being a literary community means that there’s some friction, and since we’re all skilled rhetoricians, the language can sometimes be quite colorful. Most SFWA members, however, are kindly, well-mannered souls who shudder at the behavior of a few compatriots. And even the “livelier” types can turn out to be your friends or mentors in times of need. If the level of friction-and heat-troubles you, look into the history of any young literature and you’ll find the same sort of thing. To date SFWA seems to have had far fewer cases of bodily assault than, say, the eighteenth-century English literary crowd, so perhaps we’re not so bad.

The membership requirements are simple: a few publications in professional magazines or a single published novel will bring you full membership; for associate membership, dues are lower and requirements are even easier. The current address of SFWA’s executive secretary, Peter Pautz, is: