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A bit about fiction
Sep. 3rd, 2009 07:54 amThough I'll be focusing on my reading of the Heath/O'Hair book on risk communication in coming weeks, I also want to provide some posts that will attract people who are less interested in the technical side of communication. After all, one of my missions in this blog is to talk about writing fiction.
One of the things I do less often than I like is to attend science fiction and fantasy conventions. Specifically, only the ones that focus on the writing. I understand that by implication, this suggests I have something against the TV- and movie-oriented kind of science fiction. That's true to the extent that I believe media SF/F is literary fiction's simple-minded cousin, with a few exceptions such as the recent Battlestar Galactica series, but the more important reason is that the writing is what really motivates me.
I enjoy attending these conventions because it's an opportunity to meet many of my favorite authors and chat with a bunch of really bright people, but also because it gets me thinking about a lot of writing-related issues, ranging from the technological to the social. I always come back turbocharged and wanting to write, which is one of the factors that contributed most strongly to my recent decision to unsubscribe from all my e-mail discussion groups. That felt almost like cutting off a hand, but I decided these groups were less important to me than having a chance to begin writing again. If I can achieve some kind of balance in my life that lets me write my own fiction once more, I may return to these groups.
I recently attended the World Science Fiction convention here in Montreal, and came back with 16 pages of scrawled notes. As time permits, I'll start summarizing those notes here and hoping they'll inspire you to think about writing fiction (and about other, more important things) as much as they inspired me. One example of the type of thing I'm hoping to do more of is my article Houses are people too: the structure of a literary device.
You can see from the publication date (2002) how long it's been since I found time to write about such topics. I'm hoping that now I'll have time to do more. Among other things, I have 7 years of older notes from other conventions that are worth revisiting and sharing.
One of the things I do less often than I like is to attend science fiction and fantasy conventions. Specifically, only the ones that focus on the writing. I understand that by implication, this suggests I have something against the TV- and movie-oriented kind of science fiction. That's true to the extent that I believe media SF/F is literary fiction's simple-minded cousin, with a few exceptions such as the recent Battlestar Galactica series, but the more important reason is that the writing is what really motivates me.
I enjoy attending these conventions because it's an opportunity to meet many of my favorite authors and chat with a bunch of really bright people, but also because it gets me thinking about a lot of writing-related issues, ranging from the technological to the social. I always come back turbocharged and wanting to write, which is one of the factors that contributed most strongly to my recent decision to unsubscribe from all my e-mail discussion groups. That felt almost like cutting off a hand, but I decided these groups were less important to me than having a chance to begin writing again. If I can achieve some kind of balance in my life that lets me write my own fiction once more, I may return to these groups.
I recently attended the World Science Fiction convention here in Montreal, and came back with 16 pages of scrawled notes. As time permits, I'll start summarizing those notes here and hoping they'll inspire you to think about writing fiction (and about other, more important things) as much as they inspired me. One example of the type of thing I'm hoping to do more of is my article Houses are people too: the structure of a literary device.
You can see from the publication date (2002) how long it's been since I found time to write about such topics. I'm hoping that now I'll have time to do more. Among other things, I have 7 years of older notes from other conventions that are worth revisiting and sharing.