Published Sci-Fi/Fantasy Authors: What's your motivation?

[John]

I thought it would be interesting for authors to share the motives about what drives you to write fiction, especially science fiction and fantasy. I would find it interesting, and I'm sure others would as well.

It can be a difficult road. It's hard work, often not very profitable, and it requires working in solitude. But I love it.

Shortly after the publication of my first novel, Elthea's Realm, I sent out a news release which summarized my motivation and desire to write. Here it is:

High Tech Professional Leaves Business World to become Fiction Author

What's your motivation to write?

John

[[deleted user]]

I began writing in grammar school, continued into college, and life intervened. After a stint as a technical writer on the Apollo Project, another as a research assistant and grant writer, and an unsuccessful foray into fiction, and the old-line publishing world, I settled into earning a living. Once I retired--does this sound familiar?--I took up fiction again, but with a few years of experiences behind me now.
I have a piece of paper that says I am a psychologist and another that says I am a medium. I talk with deceased people all the time. After years of seeing the dead portrayed in countless fatuous ways, I decided it was time for someone to show them in a manner some might consider more truthful. That is, life continues beyond the change we call death, the personality survives passing beyond the earthly life and moves on into other dimensions. I wanted to write something that challenged people's perception of death, life after death and the quest for truth.
So, with the help of some friends on both sides of the veil called death, I began writing science fiction. Fiction to be sure, but with a wider, more inclusive, spiritualist point of view about what just might be happening in this megaverse of ours. No preaching. Just good, entertaining fiction with a message. My first novel won several awards. I'm about to release a second. This one deals with sentient planets, a planetary savior, and freedom of choice.
So, John, that's what motivates me.

[Robert]

PRLog Press Release Distribution, that's an interesting site. Can anyone put out a press release for a new book they are publishing?

I find writing to be an entertaining as well as educational way of whiling away the time.

[Martin]

It is just fun for me. I drink coffee and make stuff up. The money is also good!

[Philip]

Both reading and writing fiction adds an extra dimension to what is called ordinary life. I have been writing verse and prose since I was twelve. It is the only gift I have. The pleasure of being inside the story that I am creating motivates me to want to write another when it is finished.

[John]

Robert, to answer your question about PRLog, it is a free distribution service for press releases. You can also pay for greater distribution. There's a handful of these free services. The problem with the free option is that the distribution is limited. When I was a corporate marketing manager, PR was part of my function, and I would use one of the major services like Business Wire, which is quite expensive. But even with the limited free option, I found that a couple of entertainment sites picked up the news. So for what it's worth, hope this is helpful.

[John]

Philip wrote: "Both reading and writing fiction adds an extra dimension to what is called ordinary life. I have been writing verse and prose since I was twelve. It is the only gift I have. The pleasure of being i..."

Hello, Martin. And I might add, you have a great blog.

[Ashe]

I've always been a creator and wanted to entertain and after several other avenues fell away, I jumped into writing with both feet. It keeps me sane, gives me purpose, and hopefully one day, a steady income.

[Dave]

Nobody else writes quite the stories I want to read most. So I do it myself.

[E.M.]

I love weaving words and telling stories. In particular stories about a possible far-flung future...

[Micah]

The hours are good.

[Allan]

I'm totally selfish. I write because I enjoy it. I like to create things and get a great deal of satisfaction out of completing something. I also like to learn and I find there is always something else to learn when you're an author, whether it be a writing skill, a new writer's tool or the latest marketing trick. It would be nice to make a living from it, but that's not why I do it.

[Rosemary]

It is my theory that we writers haven't got much choice in the matter--stories are born in our heads and we must get them out or we'll simply burst!

[Richard]

"Published" authors, eh? I guess that wasn't meant to include the likes of me, but I'll respond anyway. Like many in sci-fi, I'm interested in the future and what it could be like. I was speculating about that, building detailed simulations and calculations, for years before I realised that communicating the ideas would be more rewarding than just thinking about them. So here I am, an amateur writer.

[Belinda]

Writing fiction is the creative problem solving which keeps my engineer's brain sparking. About five years ago, I began writing environmental essays. What a snore! It was like business writing I bored myself. I read On Writing by Stephen King which catalyzed a short story that was fun to write. I started writing four novels only to careen into the muddling middles and distract myself with writing short stories. No novel yet, but one book of short stories that I indie published. Now I return to novel writing confident I'll get past that middle hump considering all the advice I've gleaned. I think I now have the tools to bulldoze down that middle.

[A.C.]

Adam wrote: "Legacy. Even if you don’t make anything from writing, isn’t it an exceptional achievement to know that what you’ve written, ideas you’ve framed and humour that you’ve thought of will enter into the..."

Legacy isn't why I began writing, but it is a big part of why I continue writing. We all strive for a little bit of immortality. Like you, writing is mine. :)

[A.C.]

Richard wrote: ""Published" authors, eh? I guess that wasn't meant to include the likes of me, but I'll respond anyway. Like many in sci-fi, I'm interested in the future and what it could be like. I was speculatin..."

-laughs- Want to know the trigger that started me writing sci-fi? I was a passenger in a car, thinking about a better way of voting, of all things, and I suddenly realised I was imagining a world of the future. That was almost twenty years ago now. I like to think my stories are a wee bit more interesting these days. :D

[A.C.]

In reading through these comments, I realised that my reasons for writing seem to include a little bit of everything - legacy, writing stories I'd like to read, the fun of world building, of learning, etc. But mostly, I'm addicted to the freedom of /imagining/.

Sci-fi gives us the ability to put humans into the most extreme 'what-if' situations, just to see what they'd do. I can't imagine anything better than that.

[E.M.]

I am an entertainer.

I write because the stories are there to be told and I love telling them. I certainly don't write to make money and I don't write for a future that will most likely forget my works as we have forgotten so many who wrote in the past. I don't write to change minds or to explore philosophies and I don't believe my vision of the future is that unique or inspirational. I don't set out to educate or expect to inform.

But I do tell thundering good stories :)

[L.A.]

To write Scifi that doesn't take itself so seriously. Sort of like Douglas Adams. My mentor, a sci-fi writer himself, said that there are so many stories to be told in space, it doesn't just have to be battling aliens. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I just wanted something more fun and less serious. So I wrote it. :)

[Chrys]

My day job is in the business of hope (I'm a full time Christian minister). I feel my writing is an extension of that. There's so much misery in people's lives that my goal is to write something which gives them joy--and maybe a bit of hope.

[Ellis]

I write because I can't stop.

I write fantasy because that's what keeps coming out for the past 20 years or so. I have not tried to analyze it.

I write alternate historical fantasy because I came up with a good idea for a world about 15 years ago and I have yet to run out of stories for it.

[R.F.G.]

Hmmm, Indie here, Speculative Fiction, and not well-known. I write because I've spun / visualized stories since childhood, and as I got older some characters got pretty insistent about having their stories written down.

I certainly don't write for the money or because it's enjoyable. In my experience writing a book and completing it is a bit like hitting your hand with a hammer -- it's such a relief when you stop you have to do it again to recapture that sense of relief.

[Micah]

E.M. wrote: "I am an entertainer..."

I'm the opposite, I want to be entertained and I find writing entertaining: telling stories to myself.

Also I get bored of a lot of the stuff that's out there in the SF world. It's been a long time since I read anything that gave me the real buzz of something mind twistingly new. Writing fulfills that desire for me. Not that others would feel the same by reading my books but the creative process itself is full of puzzles and mystery and problem solving and conflict and surprise, and some satisfaction when things come together well.

I like the dialog that happens between me and the story as much or more than the experience I have reading other people's work. I felt the same way back when I was doing art and music.

The most valuable part of the creative experience is often what happens in the creator's mind during creation rather than what is actually created. I believe that true for all the arts. The experience of the consumers of art (the viewer, reader, listener, audience, etc.) is really a secondary byproduct of creation, not necessarily the primary goal of creation.