need to know?

[adelaidesean]

Take a look at Robert J Sawyer's "Eight Things New Writers Need To Know".

Not a response to my ever-evolving 10.5 Commandments post, but a list of things I really wish I'd been told 17 years ago, when I first set out on this crazy adventure.

Every word is gold. It amazes me, for instance, how often people forget numbers 6 and 8. (No one here is guilty of it, I'm sure!)

Thanks to the gang at the Writers of the Future Contest for e-printing this great piece from the contest anthology, Volume XXII.

Comments

[murasaki-1966.livejournal.com]

I'm holding you to it. If I remember in April, of course. Great story isn't it?

[ladnews.livejournal.com]

It has certainly stuck in my mind, and that's a good sign from 15-odd years ago.

[murasaki-1966.livejournal.com]

The first Cordwainer Smith I ever read was at uni, in a anthology of short stories (I forget the title, something like Fantastic Beasts). It was called "The Game of Rat and Dragon", about the planoforming ships and the humans and cats who guard them from the Pyschic terrors of space. That 's one of things I love about his stories. Space is hugely dangerous on a psychic level (as well as a physical one) to humans. Severals stories are about this: "Count two, think blue", "Scanners live in vain", Game of Rat and Dragon" and "The Colonel came back from the-Nothing-At-All". And like LeGuin (who he influenced), the essential core of his work is the question of what exactly a human is.

[ladnews.livejournal.com]

the essential core of his work is the question of what exactly a human is

Well, that explains why a recent "Which SF Writer Are You?" quiz (see here (http://deborahb.livejournal.com/163021.html) for a link) said that I was most like Cordwainer Smith.

I retract my harsh words herewith and redouble my promise to read more. It does sound interesting.