I just discovered a couple months ago that a friend of mine that I've known for several years is a former magazine editor. This naturally led me to asking questions about her view from the other end. Since she was never a fiction editor, the conversation didn't really go that far. The thing is, it relit a pilot light I'd blown out over a decade ago. Suddenly, night after night, I was coming up with all kinds of really great story ideas. I kept trying to dismiss these daydreams and get my mind back to important things like work, car problems, kids homework, making "real" money, etc.
Next thing you know, I'm sneaking pen and paper into the bathroom (
) and writing stuff that I can't even read afterward. I procrastinated a couple more weeks pretending to seriously research various writing tools, plotting charts, and Standard Manuscript Format templates. Finally, I just sat down this morning and started typing and WOW, I got 500 words down in no time flat. It's the start of a SciFi detective story. What rafters in my head did that fall out of?
God help me, I'm writing again.
-->Lab Tinnion
Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today - but the core of science fiction, its essence has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.~~Isaac Asimov