Tell me about yourself and how you got started as a writer. My writing career wasn’t planned. I started when I was pregnant with my second child and my first was still a toddler. We lived way out in the country, had only one car, which my then husband had to take to work. There were no other women my age at home with children on our road. They were all older and had gone back to work. I was going nuts, so I started writing while the baby was napping, to have something intellectual to do. But I didn’t take my writing seriously for a very, very long time.

Photo by Nina Munteanu

How did you find a publisher? Did it take a long time; did you have an agent?

When I started I didn’t know much about publishing—in fact I knew nothing. I began writing short stories and they just happened to come out science fiction. I don’t know why. I’d read a lot of science fiction—but I’d always read a lot of everything. I started sending my stories off to the addresses I found in magazines, and they came back. And then I sent them out again, and they came back again. Eventually one sold, and a year later another sold, and then another year went by and a third one sold after that. When there were three, I decided I wanted to write a novel. So I wrote it, and then decided to look for an agent. But I still didn’t really understand how the process worked.

One of my favorite authors happened to be Ursula Le Guin. I happened to know who was her agent and I wrote her a letter. She wrote back to me, saying that she normally didn’t look at novels written by beginners, but since I’d published some short stories she would have her friend who was a librarian look at it. And if her friend liked it, then maybe she would read it as well. There were no promises, but her friend did like it and so did she. and that was how I got my agent and got started.

What time period are we talking about here?

I’ve been at this for … oh, my god … I guess it’s been 30 years, because I published my first short story in 1976. And after my agent took on my novel, it took her three more years to sell it, and another year and a half before it appeared in print. So, it was a slow process, even back then when science fiction was booming.

Do you think this slowness had anything to do with being a woman in a predominately male field?

No I don’t.  Twenty years earlier—maybe, but in the late '60s and '70s there was an enormous inrush of women writers into science fiction. Except for romance, I think science fiction has been the most welcoming to female writers of all the genres. And now, we make up over forty percent of the science fiction writers in America. I’ve never been aware of any prejudice. I guess if you can accept three-headed aliens, you can accept females. (laugh)

To pursue this thread a little further, do you think that women write and explore the genre differently than men?

I think the genre changed for both male and female writers as a result of the large influx of women into the genre. Prior to the '70s when the Women’s Movement really got going, female characters in SF consisted mostly of prizes to be won, the scientist's beautiful daughter, or slightly off-stage people. But when women writers started putting strong female characters and more relationships into their stories, I think it forced men to do the same. And now with only one or two exceptions, you find a lot of gender equality in the genre—both among the writers and their characters.

Do you think that’s true about science fiction, even more than the fantasy portion of the genre?

I don’t write fantasy any more, and I don’t read a lot of it. I honestly don’t know.

What is the creative process like for you?

I usually start with a character in my mind. But sometimes, if the story is a very “hard” science fiction story, I will do the research first, because I’m not trained as a scientist and so, with a topic such as mutated viruses, I have to work very hard to make the story seem credible—and I do work very hard to make it creditable. But usually I begin with a character, and I don’t always know where this character is going as the story progresses. She or he is in this situation, that is connected to my original idea, but I never know the ending of a novel, or even a short story ahead of time. I kind of feel my way through it while I’m working. 

To give you an analogy, it’s sort of like a person driving down a country road at night. The car’s headlights show me about a hundred feet ahead, not the whole road. When I’m writing I can see the next couple of scenes in the process, but until I get there and write them, I can’t see what’s coming next. And when I get there, I can see a little further into the plot. I just continue on like that till I get to the end.

Sometimes, of course, it doesn’t work. I write myself into corners and have to abandon the whole thing. I’ve thrown away as much as 400-page novels, because I don’t have the control over my creative process that many people do. I know authors who outline meticulously, having everything planned out ahead of time. For me, it comes or it doesn’t come. Which is a little frustrating for me at times, because I can’t count on it.

When you are writing, what is your day like?

I’m a morning person. So, if it doesn’t get written in the morning, it usually doesn’t get written. I get up about seven, have my coffee, read the paper, then get to work on my writing by eight or 8:30. Sometimes I don’t even get dressed—I just work in my old blue bathrobe. When I’m working, I try to do at least 2,000 words a day, that’s about eight pages. I’m pretty fast, so that’s not too much of a problem. That’s my goal—though I don’t always make it. After lunch if I go back to work, it will be doing research, reading galleys or student manuscripts, business letters and planning for conferences. I find that after three or four hours my brain is empty and I need to refurbish by doing these other tasks.

Do you go back through your work and rewrite and edit?

Oh yes, but I usually write the first draft to the end without changes, before I start going back through it. Since I don’t know where I’m going when I start, this usually means that the first draft is a mess. About halfway through the first draft, the story tends to come together for me so the first half is almost always thrown out by the time I get to writing the second draft. By that time I know where the story is going and my task becomes easier from that point on. The third draft is pretty much a clean up, and the fourth is the real tiny nit-pick kind of stuff. That goes fairly quickly. I do the same process for both novels and short stories.

Is there a difference between writing novels and short fiction?

Oh yes, an immense one. I much prefer writing short fiction. All my awards save one were for writing short fiction. It’s my favorite form, because you can pack a lot more punch into a story when you have only one plot-line. If I could get away with it, I’d write nothing but short fiction. But you can’t make a living that way. I find novels much more difficult, because they have to have multiple plot-lines and I can easily get lost. But the novella, which is a long short story, is my favorite form of all.

How did you get into teaching people to write books as well as writing them yourself?

I was trained as a teacher. After I graduated from college I had a degree in elementary education. I taught fourth grade for four years. Then I got married and had my children. When I wanted to go back to teaching fourth grade, there were no jobs. So then I went back to school, got more degrees, and taught college for a while. Along the way I had started to publish. So, in addition to the usual freshmen classes I was required to teach, I was asked to teach a creative writing class. I found I liked it.

I don’t teach undergrads any more, but I found I really enjoy teaching serious adults. I teach at art centres and in the summer at several writing festivals. Adults—unlike undergrads—have plopped down their own money, and truly want to be there and learn. They work; they’re motivated, and care. It’s much better than teaching a course where a student says, “Well, I need three more credits, this isn’t at eight in the morning, and it doesn’t have a long book list, so I guess I’ll take it.” That kind of attitude can be very frustrating.

What are some of the most common mistakes you see in a new author’s work?

Especially in science fiction and fantasy, the up-front info-dump is a big one. New authors seem to be compelled to describe their new world, their future or magic kingdom in great detail before bringing their actual characters on stage. I also see a lot of stories in which the stakes aren’t high enough. By this I mean that the character goes through a series of events and ends up exactly the same as he was at the beginning of the story. Well, if these story events haven’t affected the main character, why should they affect me? So, I am always telling my students, “Make the stakes higher. Go deeper, this character has to care more about the event-situation to make the reader care.”

Another mistake I see is the too-inconclusive ending. Literary fiction can get away with an inconclusive ending, but genre fiction almost never does. The reader wants to know what happened. The author can’t just leave things hanging. They have to be wrapped up. And finally, in the writing itself, I see a lack of specific detail. Students not reaching for that nice, telling, concrete description that really brings a scene home—or the situation home. It’s what William Gibson calls, “The eyeball kick.” Instead, these writers settle for a generic description that can kill their prose. This doesn’t make the prose bad, just bland. Those I guess are the most common mistakes I see.

Critique groups are recommended even for the pros. What should a good critique group  include? What are some of the pitfalls to avoid?

First of all, a good critique group should have people who can critique. That sounds like a tautology, but it isn’t. The people in the group should be committed to finding ways to improve each other’s fiction, and skilled enough to do so. Often times, beginners simply aren’t far enough advanced to do a good job at critiquing. If there are a few seasoned writers among the less experienced, the group will work much better.

The pitfalls of such groups are two: one, that everybody will be too nice, and two, that everybody will be too mean. People want to be nice, because they don’t want to hurt your feelings. Unfortunately, that kind of critique won’t help a writer grow. And sometimes when people are mean, it’s because they are more interested in scoring points and showing off their knowledge of the writing process than helping others. 

A good critique group has people who read the stories ahead of time. The stories should be Xeroxed and taken home for people to read before coming to the next meeting, so they have time to think about the story and their comments. There has to be a great deal of commitment to the process. It can involve a lot of reading and making thoughtful and constructive comments about what they read. People in the group have to also be able to appreciate different kinds of fiction. Just because I don’t particularly care for military SF doesn’t mean that I can’t make insightful and constructive responses to what I’ve read. It isn’t my place to tell my students who do write in that genre what to write.

How have you seen the industry change over your long career?

I think that science fiction has changed in that fantasy is a much larger portion of the genre than it was when I began writing. But overall the publishing industry has changed, because not as many young people read as they once did. The people in the past who might have been reading SF are now playing video games. Not all of them, of course, or Harry Potter wouldn’t be so popular. And science fiction is also losing rack space to media tie ends. Star Trek, Star Wars, there’s more and more of that stuff every year. But I think this is a problem for all kinds of fiction, because people have so many other entertainment choices now.

Do you think that many of the books that are published today use cliché plots that the publisher thinks will sell, rather than taking a risk with more unknown and maybe controversial authors and their fiction?

I think book quality is all over the map. I’ve seen some Star Trek novels that are surprisingly good, where the author has taken the time to really think through the characters they’ve been given to work with and given them some depth. And then I also see a lot of schlock. But that’s always been true. I think we are seeing a decline, because people aren’t reading—except for romance. According to Publishers Weekly 60 percent of all the fiction sold in the US are romances.

Can you describe the relationship between editor and author? What are the responsibilities of both? Has the partnership changed, become more one-sided?

As to the relationship between author and editor, I think it depends on the editor. I have worked with six or seven book editors and maybe a dozen magazine editors in the course of my career and the relationship is always different. Some of them simply want you to turn in the book on time, and that’s fine. Others want to be more involved in the editorial process, and they will suggest changes. And of those who suggest changes, some will negotiate and talk to you about the work they want done, while others insist on their way and only their way. Some are timely about getting out contracts and review copies, and some aren’t. I’ve worked with editors I admire and others whom I feel could be doing a better job. Like everything else, it’s all over the map.

Can you speak about the trade-versus-mass market controversy and what is happening in the publishing industry?

Well, to be honest I don’t keep up with the business end of writing as much as maybe I should. I let my agent do that. But I will say that in science fiction, trade-size paperbacks are seen as more prestigious than mass-market paperbacks. Hardcovers, of course, are the most prestigious. And if you have a hardcover, you are more likely to have a mass-market follow-up, rather than a trade follow-up. But often if a book is reissued it will come out in trade, as happened to my book Beggars in Spain that was recently reissued in a  trade paperback. Trades are more likely to go into libraries and be reviewed, because of that prestigious edge. 

But with Amazon.com holding 13 percent of the market sales and rising, issues like where to shelve a trade-size book in the store become meaningless. As people buy more and more of their books online we may see a bigger change in the publishing industry. It is so easy. I buy most of my books online myself. It’s so seductive. You make one click and the book shows up at your door a few days later. I sometimes feel bad that I’m not supporting independent bookstores, but I do it all the same.

Do you have a preference for which genre you like to write?

Well, obviously I write science fiction, but over the years my SF has gotten harder. By that I mean not more difficult to write, but more hard SF. Genetic engineering and what is actually possible, physics and what is actually possible, interest me more and more. So much of my fiction these days has come to revolve around near-future scenarios and their possibilities. Except for a few scientists, we don’t really experience science directly until it affects our lives. Some of us are interested in the pure product, but unless we are scientists it doesn’t really change much about the way we think and behave. Einstein’s discoveries didn’t affect the lives of very many people until his theories were translated into nuclear power. But that has a great effect on our world. Most of us have to wait until pure science is translated into technology before it can have an effect on our lives. So yes, I still write SF from a sociological point of view, but I want to get the science right as well.

Tell me a little about your current writing project.

Actually, I have three books coming out by 2008. One is a short story collection, a reprint of some of my short stories that have come out since my last collection of stories was anthologized. Another is a science fiction novel from Tor. I have just turned that in and I am awaiting my editor’s comments. And the third is an odd little book coming out from a very small press, that is sort of a medical thriller, although it still has a mutated plague in it. I also just finished several short stories for Asimov’s and other magazines.

But right now I am in a kind of fallow period, where I’m resting. I’m teaching, reading students’ work and reading other fiction. Until the end of the summer, I won’t be doing any writing of my own. I find that every couple years, these fallow periods are good for me.

Do you have anything else you would like to say?

I often get asked why I write science fiction. The honest answer is that I don’t know but I do know when I fell in love with the genre and that’s why I continue to write it. When I was 14 I had my first serious boyfriend. He was studying to be a concert pianist. I would go to his house every day after school and he would practice. And my job as a teenaged girl was to hang adoringly over the piano while he practiced. Well, if you are tone-deaf you can’t hang adoringly for long. So after about 10 minutes I would edge away and explore his father’s bookshelves. Before that I’d never seen any science fiction. 

The first SF book I pulled off the shelves and started to leaf through was Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End. I’d never read anything like it before. Here was a really large canvas, the evolution of where the entire human race was going, not just some story about two people having a difficult marriage. It was the whole race he was writing about. By the time I finished that book I was in love—and not with the piano player. From reading that book I got intensely interested in SF, and have loved it ever since. Science fiction is large enough in scope to take in an entire galaxy, and try to answer big questions like: Where are we going and why are we here? These are the kind of questions religion once tried to answer.  And though it sounds blasphemous to say that, for a time, science took the place of religion in my life. I don’t always admit that, but it’s true, because it did. And that’s why I write SF rather than some other genre.

Do you have a favorite SF author?

Ursula K. Le Guin. I think she walks on water. The Dispossessed is one of the best novels ever written. Gene Wolfe is astonishing, in the depth of the societies he creates. I like Bruce Sterling for his unflinching look at the near future. I love to read Connie Willis; I find her characters interesting and funny. Karen Joy Fowler has a wonderful sense of style. I think we have a lot of really good writers in the genre, which is why it upsets me when someone from outside the genre like Margaret Atwood writes a book like The Handmaid’s Tale—which was very good. But then the press falls all over itself to praise it, saying how the book couldn’t possibly be SF because it’s too good. The press even called Doris Lessing’s fiction “space fiction” because they didn’t want to tar her work with the idea of SF. I don’t quite understand that. Why has the genre itself come to be known by our worst writers rather than our best?

But this is changing. Today you are finding more and more English departments at universities that have courses in science fiction. And more and more are allowing students to do theses on science fiction authors. And that’s my rant for the day.

Thank you very much Nancy. It has been a pleasure meeting you and doing this interview today.