Tag Archives: the writer’s life

The Return of AE: The Canadian Science Fiction Review

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AESciFi.ca suffered a major hacker attack in late 2016 that shelved the site and so I have not written for the magazine in three years. However, I did put as much time as I could spare, along with several other old and new friends of AE, to getting the operation up and running again.

The bulk of the time was put in last summer, when I was waiting to begin my master’s program and had time for a passion project. I prepped media materials, did some editing and writing, helped with some simple user-testing of the new site, and co-planned the relaunch with the core team.

Then for a time not a lot seemed to happen. In fact a lot of hard work was going on behind the scenes, from our tech guru setting up the back-end of the site to the slush pile team poring through hundreds and hundreds of story submissions. In late June of this year suddenly we were 99% ready for the return of the magazine and it was time for me to contribute again.

I was wrapping up the academic year at the school I work at, and beginning work on the literature review for my master’s thesis research, since I didn’t have any summer courses to take. Fortunately I had some time and flexibility in my schedule to contribute again. For two or three weeks we were marking off items on the pre-launch checklist and getting ready for liftoff, and then, on July 10, it happened.

I have an essay in the relaunch issue, about sports in science fiction. By all means, feel free to read it. But I’m frankly more proud of the issue itself and, indeed, the the fact we managed to launch it–from editing stories and non-fiction pieces, to sending out press releases and tweets and the email newsletter, and coordinating all of the above. It’s a great magazine, and I’m excited to have it back in operation, but it’s actually pretty special to have been a part of making it happen.

My discretionary time is very limited and will be for the next year or two, but even as I’m stepping back from most writing outside of my academic program, one of the few things I will reserve a bit of time for is the occasional fun essay or book review at AESciFi.

To close off, I was interviewed by a podcast on behalf of the magazine back in the late fall and it has now been published. The total interview is about 20 minutes but has been broken into three bite-sized parts:

Part 1: https://lancerkind.com/podcast/050-introducing-aescifi-magazine/

Part 2: https://lancerkind.com/podcast/051-joel-boyce-aescifi-feature-writer/

Part 3: https://lancerkind.com/podcast/052-ae-canadian-science-fiction-review/

Writing and Life in 2019

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Well, it’s time for that bienneial update post that is becoming tradition. In 2017 I noted that I had been busy with graduate studies, new parenthood, and a move from the classroom into school leadership. At the time I had recently finished my academic program, which was at the post-baccalaureate level, but now I am back in the academy, working on my master’s degree.

I have at least crested the steepest part of the learning curve in my role as an educational administrator, so while there will always be novel challenges and new goals to set, some portions of my job have become routine. If I were merely working, I would certainly be able to ramp up the amount of writing that I do, but the lion’s share of my mental and creative energy is devoted to my graduate studies for the time being.

By sheer coincidence, AE, a major outlet for some of the sorts of writing I most enjoy doing, experience an unplanned hiatus in September of 2016, which I will expand on in a separate post. More recently, Care2 has shut down its Causes blogging webzine, so that’s something else off my plate due to outside circumstances.

This happens. Sometimes publications fold or change focus, sometimes it’s the writer whose focus changes, and sometimes it’s both. I used to love writing for The Spectator Tribune, but a particularly hectic period saw me pass on one request after another until I hadn’t taken on a writing assignment for two years. I finally checked in to find the magazine gone defunct. Life is timing.

Likewise now, when a major former client in publishing asked me a few weeks ago if I planned to pick up any future projects or if they should take me out of the payroll system, I elected for the latter. Narrowing my focus is exactly what I need right now. I’m going to make it a purposeful decision rather than dragging it out or leaving anyone hanging.

Oh, I’ll still be writing. Academic papers, school assignments, and my own master’s thesis will make up the bulk of it, and if some of them are published, even if only in some niche research journal, I’ll share. Meanwhile, I expect I can still squeeze in the odd fun pop-culture essay or book review every two or three months, at the WFP or AE.

But if I’m going to get back to pitching to new markets and pushing myself creatively in my writing or simply getting my writing output back up to where it was at or near its peak (and that’s a big if), it will only be after I’ve graduated. It shouldn’t take too long, since I’m putting the necessary time into it.

What Have I Been Up To?

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I read an interesting study not that long ago on time management for school principals. One of the more interesting, if obvious results, is that you only have so much time in the day. If you’re fully booked and you try to cram in something new, something else will fall by the wayside. It won’t be planned and it won’t be by choice, but you cannot add to a full schedule without losing something, for all your intentions of working just a little bit harder and moving just a little bit faster, we all have our limits.

In my case, I’ve been busy with a number of new roles in my life over the last couple of years:

1) Home renovator: This may not seem like much of an explanation, but I really have poured a metric tonne of time into making this old house as beautiful and functional as it is cozy, and I’ve done the work with great amateurish gusto. It started with tearing down and rebuilding a kitchen entirely from scratch two summers ago, and it just spread from room to room after that. Every vacation, save this past Christmas when my family went to El Salvador, has involved one major or several minor home projects. I pretty much stopped taking major writing contracts starting that summer of 2015, though I may get back on the horse, finally, in the new year.

2) Dad: My son’s impending birth actually provided a motivation as well as a deadline for the new kitchen, which somehow led to the several projects since. I’m on dad duty from the time I get home from work until my two-year-old is down for the night. All my writing has to be done after that, or during nap-time on weekends (if I’m not redoing the bathroom or something, of course).

3) School Principal: I got this job at almost exactly the same time I got the two previous jobs, that same eventful summer. I think I have finally become comfortable (not complacent) in the role, but it’s not a nine-to-five job oftentimes, no matter how much experience you get.

4) Student: This was actually related to role number three, as I took on graduate work in educational administration at night and just finished this past June.

So, after spending most of my time writing school budgets, board reports, research essays, curriculum, and workshop presentations, I am slowly starting to pick up the pace of my public writing again. It’s nice to be back at it.

I haven’t been entirely inactive on that front, and I’ll post some round-ups of my work from the last year or so in the upcoming weeks. But it won’t take long to catch up. I’ve written more academic papers and office emails, by a long shot, than literary reviews, essays, or editorials.  Hopefully there will be some quality where I lack quantity.

What’s Up and Such

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Recent readings: I finally got around to reading Robert J. Sawyer’s WWW trilogy, start to finish, which I’d had on my shelf for a few years already (pretty good). I’ve also been reading some Bradbury just over the last few weeks, specifically Something Wicked This Way Comes and his A Sound of Thunder collection, and I’ve come to appreciate how beautiful his use of language is, something I didn’t really pick up on when I read him as a teenager.

I’ve also been looking at some Asian-themed fiction of late, though no recent releases. It’s been years since I’ve read Shōgun and I’d been thinking I should finally read Tai-Pan this year (also by James Clavell), but of course it’s a bit of a door-stopper. So instead I started with the much shorter The Ronin (quite good), have just started dipping into the equally short Bridge of Birds, and have been thinking I might do Musashi after that before Tai Pan. Of course I’ll be jumping around a bit, not knocking these off one after the other without a break.

(And now that I think of it, there is one recent item on my radar in this “genre”: Murakami’s new novel just came out. I haven’t picked it up yet. I forgot about it until the last-minute and so wasn’t able to place a review and, thus, didn’t request an ARC.)

Obviously I’ve read several Heinlein books recently, for my coverage at Green Man Review and I do have one more to take care of soonish, though that’s a weekend read at most.

And there’s an eclectic mix of other stuff I’ve started or planned on starting over the last couple of months, including Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars series (looking for that third volume in the second-hand stores still) and a few non-fiction titles. I’ve got a nice little pile on my night table, but the difficulty is when something new pops up in the mailbox and jumps the queue, as it were. Raincoast, which distributes for Tor (and many others), is one of the worst offenders for sending me big boxes of wonderful ARCs, meant to tempt me from whatever I’m doing and into a good book and, often, the ensuing, unplanned review. Of course there are worse problems to have than a surplus of delicious boks.

But, yes, I have been reading at a pretty good clip of late, and I’m pleased about that. For nearly the first half of this year, I just couldn’t find the time. But I’m in a bit of a groove lately. I suppose I’ve cut back on the television a fair bit, since, brief vacation aside, my work hours haven’t dropped a whole lot (even with the aforementioned turning down of work). Not all of my writing work is downright exciting. Occasionally it can border on (or enter right into) tedium.

Literature is the great escape, even for, or perhaps especially for a working writer.

Booked Solid for Three Months

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I have a couple of book reviews coming up for the Free Press in the next several months (both are being filed very early since I received the ARCs equally nearly six months ahead of publication). I’ve also submitted a non-review draft to AE, which will likely run sooner than that. Other than that, what I’m sitting on is a really impressive “to-write” list.

If, before spring, I actually get around to writing all the things I plan on writing — scratch that, if I actually manage to pitch all the things I’m thinking of writing, and perhaps end up writing even a couple of them during that time frame, I’ll be satisfied.

The thing is, I have so much commissioned work already, trying to sell additional stuff, even were it pure gold (and only an editor can make that determination), probably shouldn’t be my main focus. I’m so focused on trying to get “caught up”, I think I’ve missed an obvious but important point. The whole point of pitching, querying, pounding the virtual pavement, as it were, is to get work. If I have enough writing work, my focus should really be on turning it in in a timely manner.

As a fairly employable teacher in a, nevertheless, fairly rough hiring environment over the last five years, I’ve gotten used to applying to new jobs on a daily basis. When I finally ended up with a fairly stable position, I had to consciously break the habit of checking the want ads, anticipating unemployment. “You’re not on a short-term contract,” I told myself. “They want to keep you. Relax.”

Likewise with my writing. I’m working on, not one, but three concurrent projects, related to content and curricular development for private companies, each one of which will likely stretch from two to five months. And of course, I do still have that pesky day job.

All of which means, this is enough. If I have any spare time at all, I’d like to fit in a few articles for Care2, since it’s been months since I’ve contributed, and I don’t want them to forget about me. But I certainly don’t need to start any new working relationships or make any new commitments at this point.

As a side-note, it’s worth noting that much of my present contract writing work is at least partially related to either my educational or science backgrounds. As a writer, you need to use every working relationship and connection, draw on every talent and experience you have to get work. Spent some time as a wedding planner? Parlay that into a gig writing for a wedding magazine. Worked at a Radio Shack? Write for a technology website.

Every new item on your résumé, every new sample in your portfolio, every new connection on LinkedIn increases your chances of getting work. It’s an exponential process — well, sigmoidal, only because of the human inconvenience of sleep.

Another Literary Year in Review

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The Winnipeg Free Press has another favourite books of the year list, which includes my own pick: A Tale for the Time Being by American/Canadian writer, Ruth Ozeki.

It really is quite excellent and deserves to be on a year’s favourites list (my editor was careful to explain that this is not a “year’s best” list; we’re not jurying a prize, here and having made an exhaustive survey). Along with his caveat, I’ll add two of my own: not every book I’ve read is for FP review, and not every book I read is for review, period. Many of the books I read are not even recent releases.

So if I expand the list to include anything and everything I’ve read this year, what was my absolute favourite?

I dunno. The older I get the harder it is to pick favourites. Let’s just say it was a good reading year and leave it at that.

On To-Do Lists

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Lately I’ve been all about lists. My day job, the still new experience of “owning” a home (the quotes are a nod to the mortgage which owns me), my decision to take on a second job, and of course, the writing, which I’ve been pretty good about not getting complacent about — all of these make for some time management challenges.

In the last month or two, it’s gotten to be just a bit much to the point where I simply ran out of time to do all the things I planned on doing, and had to start triaging. That meant one or two committed writing assignments made the cut along with all the urgent life stuff and ongoing (but piling up) requirements of my day job. So I’ve had very little output since March.

But for even longer than that, I’ve realized I’m turning into a list person. I’ve never been the dayplanner type, before. I just remember my appointments, my plans for the day, et cetera. But lately it’s been more of a challenge, and sitting down and writing down my tasks for the day, week, or month on a Post-It note has become more of a necessity.

This isn’t a bad thing, in my view. There’s a certain satisfaction in crossing items off that list. It’s helped me manage a busy schedule while ensuring that nothing gets put off indefinitely. It’s great for the day-to-day realities of work and life.

But I also have a particular long-term list of writing tasks, goals for the year, really, which is a little more aspirational and a little less straightforward to work through. It’s not on a Post-It but it’s short enough that I can keep it in the back of my mind. Sell a piece to such-and-such. Break into market X. This is important, too, and I don’t want to get too focused on the day-to-day that I ever stop moving forward with an aspect of my life.

So it’s important, I think, to have that big yearly goals list, that bullet-pointed five-year plan, even the bucket list. I want to be crossing items off all of those, as well.

On Getting Published

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Recently I found myself in the role of guest consultant at an upcoming conference for high-achieving, entrepreneurial high school students. As the representative freelance writer, I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect, but I thought I might find myself sharing some of my acquired wisdom for the words and letter types in attendance. And I wanted to come up with practical, real-life advice that wasn’t a cliché.

As props, I gathered up some of the usual trappings of a writer’s life. A successful pitch email that led to coffee with a senior editor. A fruitful email exchange between one of my regular publishers and myself, which saw an article morph into something completely different from where it started. A side-by-side comparison of a first and final draft.

These artifacts give a small sense of the day-to-day reality of a freelance career, but don’t necessarily explain how to get one in the first place. I don’t want to give a lot of writing tips here; to a certain extent, the writing takes care of itself, simply through practice. The bigger challenge is, having achieved a level of competence, how do you get your work out there? More than a few great writers were unknown during their lifetimes. I’d have any budding aspirant avoid that fate.

1) Do improve your writing: Yes, yes, I just a moment ago said I didn’t want to give writing tips, and I’m not going to get into the nitty-gritty details. But moving from the amateurs to the minors to the majors only works if you’re actually increasing in skill. So a note on attitude: take some pride in your work.

Strive for a polished, well-realized piece of writing. Take an assignment that you can get away with knocking out in an hour and obsess over it for three, because it needs to be just so. Be the best writer at your school newspaper, community newsletter, or, heck, even your personal blog. Get people wondering why someone with your talent isn’t writing somewhere higher up the food chain.

I used to worry I was spending too much time polishing pieces that were already serviceable, but I don’t worry about that anymore. It’s the old adage about dressing for the job you want instead of the job you’ve got. Moving forward means pushing the boundaries instead of churning it out.

Those overwritten pieces you publish that really make you proud? Those are your samples to get that new gig.

2) Realize it’s time to move on: As a university student contributing to my school paper, I had a casual acquaintance mention that my writing might be good enough for a certain literary review webzine with a sizable audience and a strong reputation, though it didn’t pay anything beyond the books themselves. I sent in a sample and got on board. Almost eight years went by, and my writing tightened up significantly, but I was still stuck at the same rung without even realizing there was a ladder.

It came as a sudden realization that there was a next step even for something as simple as book reviewing, and I was overdue to take it. I sent off a couple of samples to the largest regional newspaper in the area and was on the phone with the books editor the same day. I’ve already learnt a lot in this position and plan to make it a long-term relationship, but less than a year in, my sights were already set on going national. And guess what? It’s happening.

If you can be writing somewhere more prestigious, better-paying, or with better exposure, you need to make it happen. No editor is going to tell their best writer they can do better. You have to find that better gig.

3) Make new friends, but keep (some of) the old: Not every outlet for your work fits so easily into a simple hierarchy. There can be value in maintaining relationships with lower-paying venues if they offer something your other outlets aren’t offering you. As an extreme example, a beginning writer might make more money churning out material for a content milll than writing “for the love”, but it’s the latter that is more likely to lead to you eventually getting paid for writing something you care about. I’ve done my time with content creation, but it was a paycheque, not a stepping-stone.

Likewise, you might take lower-paying jobs when branching into different types of markets. I took a pay-cut with a gig covering environmental news. But it was only a pay-cut relative to what I was getting paid as a technical writer, which I was rapidly losing interest in. This was something I was interested in doing, and nobody else was offering to pay me to do it. Over the course of a year, I significantly broadened my portfolio, became comfortable in a new format, and, with the growth of the magazine, my modest pay grade actually surpassed that of my previous, mind-numbing writing job.

This only took eight months. It’s amazing how fast your writing life can change when you take a chance.

4) You can write anything for anyone: Writers are versatile; writers are always learning and experimenting. Nothing is keeping you from the New York Times but you. If you’re enjoying a news site, print magazine, community paper — whatever — and really digging it, finding its content and style to be totally up your alley, then maybe you should be contributing. You’re into science fiction, and read io9 every day? Then you should be querying them, sending them samples, whatever the listed procedure is.

Learn to find contact sections, FAQs, submission pages, general info, parent companies for subsidiary sites. Writers seek these out, but they’re meant to be invisible to the average reader. Check the very backs or very fronts of magazines, scroll down to the small links near the bottom pages of websites.

And now query. Query, query, query. And dig through everything you’ve ever written for the most relevant and polished work you have out there. You might be the best thing to happen to them, but you’re going to have to convince them you’re a writer worth your salt. They can’t take your word for it.

In conclusion: I know you’re a great writer. You’re getting better all the time. But writing isn’t enough. You have to do something with that writing. This is a business; an industry. Learn the ins and outs so you can put your stamp on it.

Posthumous publication is for the dogs.