My advice to aspiring writers

Was it natural for me to become an author? Kind of, although it was a long, torturous road.

In high school, I and a couple of friends were thrown out of our English class for talking and disrupting the session. Our teacher, Mrs Revell, told us to sit in the corridor and write out lines. We were told to fill two pages with the line, “I must not talk in class.” My friends started dutifully doing what they were told. I couldn’t. Mindless repetition was abhorrent to me. But I had to write two pages of something. So, I wrote the screenplay for a story called The Persecution of a Humble Student. Needless to say, it was very silly and was written like a movie trailer…

In a world overrun by inept teachers, one student rises above the bleating of the sheep around him… Stephen Speilberg presents a 20th Century Fox film adapted from the best-selling autobiographical essay. Special effects by Light and Magic, the team that brought you Star Wars. A John Williams soundtrack…

…and on and on it went. The actual story was just our hero saying the line he was told to write once, and then the credits roll, with actors being set against characters, film locations listed, etc. Anyway, at the end of the class, my friends thought I was mad. They handed in their lines to the very grumpy Mrs Revell. She snatched my essay from me, started reading, went red in the face with anger, and then burst out laughing. I was expecting a detention after school. I got a kind smile instead. So that was my first foray into creative writing

I dabbled a little after that, but work and family life became the focus for a few decades. In my forties, I came to the shocking realization that my favourite science fiction author was actually an anti-science fiction writer. I’d read all of Michael Crichton’s works and saw a theme running through them that was odious. Science was not to be trusted. It was Pandora’s box. Opening it would only ever lead to tragedy. Whether it was Jurassic Park, Timeline, Prey or State of Fear, science was the bad guy. And what’s worse, his sentiments were echoed in society, with the public increasingly becoming distrustful of even basic science. Although I loved the movie, Jurassic Park, it contained the line, “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should,” which is a gross misrepresentation of the way science works. The novel is worse, with page after page of raving madness dumping on the supposed arrogance and inability of science to correct itself. 

In the words of Shakespeare, I’d say to Michael, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” Far from tearing down some supposedly corrupt edifice, Michael Crichton was exposing his own shortcomings. But being a cultural icon, his words carried tremendous weight and undermined serious science like Climate Change (his novel State of Fear is a right-wing fantasy dismissing the evidence). I told someone my thoughts on his writing, and they said, “Well if you think you can do better, why don’t you?” So I wrote Anomaly. I don’t think it’s better than any of Crichton’s works, but then, I don’t think vanilla ice cream is better than chocolate. They both have their own place. And since then I’ve tried to keep my stories science-positive and socially responsible. 

My advice to aspiring writers is to realize writing is a marathon, not a sprint. Don’t be lulled onto the rocks by the siren call of a debut breakout novel. Having written over forty books, I only now feel comfortable as a writer. I look back at my earlier works and can see how I’ve grown. With each book you write, you’ll learn more you can take into the next novel. Build a back catalog of stories people will love to read, but don’t fall for the myth of appearing in the New York Times. Write because you love to read and not for fame or acclaim. Write because you long to explore ideas that appear as mere shadows on the edge of your consciousness and need to be captured to be understood. 

A writer is a very slow reader, plodding through endless, blank, white pages, leaving a trail of words behind them.