Tag: Writing

The Lunchtime Writer, Part Seven: Writing Other Things

The other day I had a question from a work friend who has been reading this series: “do you apply this to your academic writing too?”

Which was unexpectedly revealing. Because, on one level, I don’t. As part of my job, I have to write papers, course outlines, funding applications, and so forth. But I don’t tend to approach it thinking “I’ll do 500 words a day.”

And yet, on another level, I do. The way I get a project done, especially if it’s a big scary one like a monograph, is to tackle it in small chunks, every day. Not “I’ll write 500 words” necessarily, but “I’ll get down to the end of the page,” or “I’ll make notes on one article every day for the next week.” It’s also certainly true that I usually do at least a little academic writing every weekday, though I’ll only do it at weekends if I’m up against an unanticipated deadline.

Which is, however, where the first significant difference applies. When I’m writing fiction, the deadlines are usually self-imposed– or, if they’re imposed from outside, they’re at least ones I’ve got enough advance notice on that I can work towards them. In academic writing, I’m almost always writing to a deadline, and sometimes it’s the sort of deadline that requires more than 500 words a day to complete.

The other significant difference is that my work writing is often a collaboration with other people. This means you have to take other people’s schedules and writing styles into account, and that sometimes doesn’t work with a 500-word-a-day habit.

So I would say that, while the philosophy of Lunchtime Writing can help you write non-fiction or other types of work writing, one generally has to be flexible with its actual execution, and it may need a little more in the way of advance planning than regular Lunchtime Writing.

And I can definitely confirm that, if you’re struggling to begin a piece of work or find that you keep putting it off, that approaching it as if it were Lunchtime Writing is a good way to start and to see it through to completion.

The Starlost bonus “episode”: Ben Bova’s The Starcrossed

In the interests of completism, and possibly masochism, I decided it might be worth reading and reviewing Ben Bova’s novel The Starcrossed. This book always comes up when The Starlost is discussed because, as the title suggests, it’s based, albeit loosely, on Bova’s time as technical advisor on the series.

The novel is set at some unstated time in the relatively near future: there are rejuvenation techniques, 3D holographic televisions, and legal marijuana, although pollution and climate change are getting worse (in a near-the-knuckle satire, the city of Los Angeles has taken to dyeing the smog pretty colours and perfuming it to make it more attractive). A television company, hearing of a revolutionary new 3D production technique, decides to make use of it with a blockbuster space opera written by Ron Gabriel, a popular SF writer, which is a sort of mashup between the concept of The Starlost, and Romeo and Juliet (two lovers from feuding clans of space-faring merchants run away together, fleeing from planet to planet with their families in pursuit).

Hijinks inevitably ensue as the production is moved to Canada to save costs: the Canadian production team prove to be hopeless incompetents, a Neanderthal hockey star is cast as the male lead to improve local ratings, the scripts are sourced from a high-school writing competition (something which I’ve heard asserted about the actual Starlost, but I wonder if it isn’t something that Bova made up which bled out into popular perception). Eventually it becomes apparent that the production company is just using the production as a cover for embezzling investor funds, and it all goes, well, south. Bova does, however, give his series the happy ending that The Starlost never had, perhaps a bit of wish-fulfilment, and incidentally invents the deepfake in the process.

Reasonably accurate cover art– most editions are just generic spacescapes.

As a satire of 1970s TV production it’s, well, okay I guess. The portrayal of the Canadian TV industry as small-scale and incompetent seems a bit ironic in hindsight, but then, at the time of The Starlost, it was. The parade of evil Hollywood executives, profiteers, drug-addled directors, prurient censors and ageing stars is entertaining, though not terribly original, and the SF elements are fairly slight but used to good satirical effect.

It doesn’t really provide much insight into The Starlost, however, mostly reading like the author’s rant against television production more generally. Some of it’s plainly not true: For instance a scene where model designers are shown as having no understanding of design or physics, which is certainly not the case for The Starlost‘s actual model team. Although Robin Ward might not be the greatest actor in the world, he’s certainly not a belligerent thug along the lines of “Francois Dulac”, the hockey player in The Starlost, Gay Rowan isn’t an ageing star rejuvenating herself to stay current, and the series never recruited any brilliant but drug-addicted Hollywood directors. Ron Gabriel, the Harlan Ellison-alike character, rings true as an antagonistic figure, but Ellison walked out on the series much faster than his fictional equivalent did. Beyond that the Canadians of the early 1970s were small-scale operators with a lot of anti-American chauvinism, I can’t really see much of the actual production experience in it at all.

Generally, then, I’d say it’s an interesting coda, but not one which really explains much about what actually happened to turn The Starlost from a good idea into the mess it became.

Where to Buy Management Lessons From Game of Thrones

This is the management textbook you never knew you wanted, but now you know you have to have it. The hardback has a scary academic price tag, but the paperback has a nice friendly RRP of £20/$30 or equivalent.

Amazon UK link here

Amazon US link here

Buy direct from publisher here

Unfortunately Bookshop.org doesn’t seem to have it, so if you want to buy direct from your local bookshop (and please do) you’ll have to communicate with them directly: the ISBN is 978 1 83910 528 9.

Not sure if you want to buy it or not? Here’s a sample chapter to whet your appetite.

Not that sort of appetite.

I’m in Foundation again!

I’m deeply honoured to have an article comparing “Doctor Who: The Mutants” and Nigel Kneale’s “The Stone Tape” in the 50th anniversary issue of Foundation, the oldest science fiction studies journal! In due course it will be available online, but if you can’t wait (and/or want to support the Science Fiction Foundation’s activities), you can get your copy by joining here.

The Lunchtime Writer, Part 6: The Portable Lunch

This instalment, I’m going to talk about another advantage to Lunchtime Writing that I’ve only recently become aware of: it’s very portable.

Recently I’ve been traveling, going to conferences and conventions and film festivals (hooray! Travel is once again a thing!), and as such I’ve found myself more than once in a situation where I’ve got the time to write, and I’m in the mood to write, and I do have a copy of my work-in-progress saved to my cloud drive, but I don’t have my laptop or keyboard with me.

Solution? Open the document on my phone, type 500 words. No problem. Target hit, and even a Gen-Xer like me is capable of writing the equivalent of two lengthy tweets on a smartphone.

The one caveat is that this is really only good for writing a draft; I have not tried editing on a phone and I have a feeling it could be awkward, particularly with a longer work. Though your mileage, and your ability to work on a small screen, will vary of course. However, if you’ve got something in the adding-words-to-a-draft stage of writing, phone writing is very, very easy for a Lunchtime Writer.

“Management Lessons from Game of Thrones” goes to Worldcon!

I can now reveal that I’ll be presenting a paper on “Pathways to Female Leadership in Game of Thrones”, based on some of the work you can find on this blog, at ChiCon8, the 80th World SF Convention, in Chicago this September! I’ll be attending in person, so will also be turning up on various panels and roaming around promoting my new book as well.

You can read my blog series on Leadership in Game of Thrones here, and you can preorder my book on the subject.