Mike Resnick - The Science Fiction Professional: Expanded and Updated

Book Description

Mike Resnick wrote 59 Ask Bwana columns for the multiple Hugo nominee Speculations in the 1990s. He has expanded and updated his answers in this new column, as well as including a few brand-new Ask Bwana columns he recently ran on his website. The field has changed enormously, especially in the area of electronic publishing, and this new version addresses problems that didnt even exist the first time around.

Digital Edition 2016

WordFire Press

wordfirepress.com

ISBN: 978-1-61475-497-8

Copyright 2016 Mike Resnick

Originally published by Alexander Books 2002

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the copyright holder, except where permitted by law.

The authors and publisher have strived to be as accurate and complete as possible in creating the Million Dollar Writing series. We dont believe in magical outcomes from our advice. We do believe in hard work and helping others. The advice in our Million Dollar Writing series is intended to offer new tools and approaches to writing. We make no guarantees about any individuals ability to get results or earn money with our ideas, information, tools or strategies. We do want to help by giving great content, direction and strategies to move writers forward faster. Nothing in this book is a promise or guarantee of future book sales or earnings. Any numbers referenced in this series are estimates or projections, and should not be considered exact, actual or as a promise of potential earnings. All numbers are for the purpose of illustration. The sole purpose of these materials is to educate and entertain. Any perceived slights to specific organizations or individuals are unintentional. The publisher and authors are not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, financial, or other professional services. If legal or expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

Cover design by Janet McDonald

Cover artwork images by Adobe Stock

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Kevin J. Anderson & Rebecca Moesta, Publishers

Published by
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Contents

Dedication

To Carol, as always

And to the talented group of twenty or more no-longer-beginners that Maureen McHugh has dubbed Mikes Writer Children, and that I refer to as The Ones Who Paid Attention.

Introduction

It began back in 1994, when Kent Brewster decided to create a publication that was aimed at beginning science fiction writers. There had been similar in the past, but they all had pretty anemic circulations and short life spans. Not Kents Speculations, which lasted for well over a decade and became a fixture on the Hugo ballot.

Along the way Kent asked me if Id be willing to write a column for the magazine. I couldnt think of any single writerly topic I could address six times a year, so I agreed if it could be a question-and-answer columnnot about how to Rite Gud, which I am still convinced cant be taught that way, but rather about how the business works, and answering the kinds of questions that beginners and newly-sold writers tend to ask.

Even before entering science fiction I was both an editor and a mass market publisherand within the field of science fiction I had negotiated and sold dozens of books and hundreds of stories, had sold to more than 30 countries, had edited anthologies (and have more recently edited a couple of prozines and a line of paperbacks), so there wasnt much about the writing businessand especially the science fiction and fantasy writing businessthat I couldnt speak about with some authority.

Kent agreed, and named the columnI assure you it was not my choiceAsk Bwana, because after half a dozen trips to Africa that was my (unsought) handle on a few computer networks.

Ask Bwana became a very popular feature and ran for a dozen years. The first seven years were collected in a book titled The Science Fiction Professional. Then, more than a decade later, I re-ran all 59 original columns on my web page (mikeresnick.com for the curious), updated every answer that needed it (and since most of the columns pre-dated the Nook and the Kindle a lot of them did indeed need updating), and then solicited new questions, and got four more columns out of it. And while preparing this book, I have updated some answers yet again.

Since the Ask Bwana columns got established, I have added to my bona fides with three more books about how to go about having a career in science fiction: Putting it Together (Wildside Press, 2000), I Have This Nifty Idea (Wildside Press, 2001), and The Business of Science Fiction with Barry N. Malzberg (McFarland & Co., 2010). All three were Hugo nominees, and all three were, I think, demonstrably useful books for the hopeful science fiction writer, but only the two volumes of the updated and expanded The Science Fiction Professional contain scoresmake that hundredsof questions and answers.

I hope you enjoy reading the Ask Bwana columns as much as I enjoyed writing them. And more to the point, I hope you find them useful.

Mike Resnick

Ask Bwana #1

This article first appeared in
Speculations #1, January 1995

I suppose, this being the first of a projected series of columns, I ought to explain both the intent and the title.

The latter first. Either because of my numerous trips to Africa or my various books and stories about it, Ive picked up the nickname of Bwana on the computer networks. And, since all the questions, at least for the first issue or two, are coming via modem, your Speculations editors saw fit to give the column its title.

As for the column itself: Ive been buying stories from beginners and trying to educate them via the networks for years, and this is simply an extension of what I do in the wee small hours when Im hiding from my manuscript. (It never thinks to look for me at the keyboard.)

Now, Im not in control of what questions show up herebut based on the first batch, I have to point out that two-thirds of them ask me about my work habits and tastes, which should prove absolutely useless to anyone not named Resnick. However, all I can do is answer whats been asked, so here goes:

QUESTION: Do you write every day? How many hours?

ANSWER: Not if I can help it. You need to get away from time to time to refresh what Poirot calls, the little grey cells. Or, at least, I do. When Im working on a novel, I tend to write maybe six nights a week, from about 10:00 PM to 5:00 AM, when no one is around to disturb me. I try to do a chapter at a sitting, a short story at a sitting, a novelette at two sittings, a novella in a week. I must, at this juncture, point out that Im one of the fastest writers around, second in speed only perhaps to Barry Malzberg or the youthful Robert Silverberg, and that you should in no way feel youre working too slowly if you cant knock off 15 or 20 saleable pages a day. (I could always produce pages; making them saleable took a little longer.)