High Frontier: Design Notes #2

The key to any setting - no matter what genre you are working in - is plausibility. The universe has to at least have internal logic to it, even if that logic might not work in the real world. It has to feel real, as if it is something that could exist, or the suspension of disbelief required for a novel to work is almost impossible to take. With this setting, I face this problem in spades, but fortunately a lot of extremely smart people have been working on this for a long time. The key question is this: Why Conquer Space? Evidently science and the betterment of mankind isn’t a sufficient goal, or there would be men walking on Titan today. (Yes, we could have done it if we’d wanted to. The money is certainly there.) So - what’s out there, waiting for us, in the near-future - with no major scientific breakthroughs required.

The key here is realism. It would be all too easy for me to invent something to make it work, say the discovery of alien artefacts - something on the Moon that has samples of soil from Mars, Mercury, Titan, Pluto - giving us a reason to go looking and see what might be out there. That could be an interesting story, but I want to do ‘How the Solar System Was Won’, try and write stories set in the future that I think can happen, that I hope - with increasing optimism, oddly enough - will happen. No space elevators, no magic wiffle drive, nothing that isn’t on the drawing boards right now.

First of all, tourism. By the end of this decade, there will be at least three, possibly as many as five different ways of getting into space - Soyuz, Shenzhou, Dragon, almost certainly CST-100, a chance of an Indian capsule design. At least two of these - Soyuz and Dragon - will be available for private individuals, and that means space hotels at last. Yes, the cost is going to be high, but there are people willing to pay it, and the cost will come down rapidly. While there will be a lot of adventurers wanting the experience, far more, I suspect, will be researchers running experiment packages. Taking the price into the low tens of millions puts it in range of a lot of companies and small countries - and don’t rule out the prestige factor of having an astronaut. I can easily see countries such as Argentina, Malaysia, hell North Korea paying for one of their citizens to spend a few weeks in space.

That’s only going to get easier, not harder, and the cost will go down - because it now seems increasingly certain that there will be functioning spaceplanes again in a decade or so. The plethora of capsules are going to tide us over, and yes, I’m talking about Skylon. Whether Reaction Engines themselves pulls it off or not, the technology seems to be working, and that means someone will do it. Probably more than one - in twenty years you could easily see Airbus going up against Boeing in this new frontier, likely a Chinese variant as well. (Maybe even a Russian one. They built Buran, and all that research and development could eventually see some practical use.) The Skylon baseline can put thirty people into LEO...and that’s enough to kickstart space tourism. When it costs six figures, then it dips down into a much larger pool of people willing to pay for it, and you start getting some serious work here.

Then comes commerce. First of all, solar power satellites might at last get some traction. While I believe that fusion is coming up by the middle of the century - slowly and steadily, we’re getting there at long last - it’s still going to be expensive, and I can see someone getting rich building orbital power stations to supply Third World countries. Yes, you can build them on the ground. Theoretically. But in the middle of a war zone, or an area suffering disasters? What’s easier, building a huge solar away in an unpopulated desert crawling with militia or a microwave receiving station in a city under government control? Build one array in orbit, and you can use it anywhere you like on Earth.

Of greater import will be the refining of asteroids. Periodically, there are plenty that get close enough to Earth in terms of delta-v that getting there won’t be a problem. I’m uncertain that they could operate entirely remotely; I believe that man-tended mines will be the likely outcome. Head out to an asteroid, do a proper survey and set up the equipment, then come back in four or five years to collect your platinum, gold, silver. Keeping weight down will be key, so the actual processing will likely take place on the asteroid itself; easier to build a processing plant and ship it to the asteroid than hurl tens of thousands of tons of dead ore around, and I don’t think moving asteroids nearer Earth is going to be a popular thing to do.

That will mean the construction of an orbital - and possibly, beyond orbital - infrastructure. Water’s going to be key, and that’s abundant enough in space. Sorry to disappoint the Lunar Colonists, but it’ll come from asteroids - or from the Martian moons. Hurled from deep space into Earth orbit to use as fuel. (And yes, that implies that before too long, there will be mining of near-Mars asteroids as well as near-Earth asteroids. Once you’ve built the fuel extraction plant on Phobos, you’re on the way.)

As for science, well, LEO gets you halfway to anywhere. I don’t really think that we’re going to properly colonize space in the 21st Century - though within the 2020s, there will be people living in LEO permanently. I can see billionaires buying modules of the space hotel and retiring up there to extend their lifespan. We’re talking fingers of one hand, though, at least for the first half of the century. That means no colonies on the Moon or Mars, but there will certainly be scientific bases, probably more than one, at least on the Moon. I can see the United States and China certainly operating their own outposts, heading up international consortia; Europe, Russia and Japan are also possibilities. Mars could be even more so, oddly enough. I don’t think Mars One will explore anything other than strange new worlds of litigation, but there will be private Mars efforts. Which will fail. I can’t see a Jamestown, but I can certainly see a Roanoke. My guess is an International Venus Station in orbit, and likely expeditions to Mercury, a few of the asteroids, and Callisto in the first half of the century.

It’s all about access, you see. We’re on the verge of it opening up, and there are companies right now working on this; Planetary Resources has the funding potential to do the job if they stick at it, and someone’s going to want to make billions exploiting asteroids. A new gold rush, and one that is a lot easier to operate from LEO. None of this requires any really new technology to pull off; VASMIR ships operated with Lockheed-Martin fusion reactors, anyone? Nuclear-Thermal Rockets, which we really could have had for decades already if we’d paid for them? I don’t need to make anything up to create an interesting setting in space. It’s all there already, waiting.

High Frontier: Design Notes #1

Yesterday, I finally managed to finish the draft on the next Alamo novel, ‘Take and Hold’, which is scheduled for release near the end of next month; editing and proofreading remain before it comes out. What this means is that it is now time for a new project, and I’ll say now that this was not the post I was expecting to write. The plan as it stood earlier was for a series of short historical novels, or for westerns, but over the last two weeks of writing Take and Hold something new has been creeping into my mind, and it’s at a stage where it needs to be written. Hence, the next project is the first in a new science-fiction series, currently under the working title ‘High Frontier’ - I know that the first book in the series is called ‘Anything Goes’ but the series title is still pending more thought.

I’ve been looking for a new science-fiction series for a long time, but until recently I haven’t been able to come up with a concept that really satisfied me. I probably could have put together a new military science-fiction series, and threw around a few ideas, but at the end of the day I’m already doing that with Alamo - so something different was on the cards. I spent a long time thinking about epic fantasy, but for a variety of reasons that failed to make the grade; at some point I’m going to do a big million-word fantasy series, I know that, but this is not the time at the moment, not until it is ready in my head. I went a long way with a ground-pounder SF series called ‘Fox Company’, about a US Special Forces unit engaged in peacekeeping missions in a wormhole-linked series of interstellar colonies in the 22nd century, something that had some scenes that I liked sufficiently that there is a good chance that the series will appear at some point.

Where did that leave me? Back to square one, perhaps, but perhaps not. I’ve had a setting in my head for a long time - shades of Alamo, here, and indeed it came from similar starting premises. I grew up expecting space stations and moon bases by the time I was an adult, and it was somewhat disappointing to see things proceeding far slower that, in my opinion, they needed to. However, I also think that all of this is about to change; the next thirty years are going to be really exciting in terms of space flight, and I stand by a prediction that the first man on Mars will take his steps by 2030. We’re closer than we think.

I’m digressing. The point is that I have a mental picture of what the Solar System will look like in around fifty years from now, but that until recently I haven’t known what sort of stories to tell in the setting. I do know that I want it to be a lot harder than Alamo, more my answer to the works of authors like Clarke and Heinlein, who wrote their settings to be as consistent as possible with the real universe. A common criticism of hard science fiction is that it tends to limit stories, but I think this is nonsense; if ‘reality’ was a restriction to storytelling then how would any police procedural work, for example. (Fine, some of them dance further away from reality than others, but the point I’m trying to make is that accuracy is no restriction to good storytelling. People are always going to be people.)

I’ll take a closer look at the setting in later posts, but to sum up, I postulate a series of scientific bases on Luna, Mars and orbiting Venus, as well as commercial development of LEO, Phobos and near-Earth asteroids - potentially, the first exploitation of asteroids out in the Main Belt. Mercury and Callisto visited at least once by human expeditions, and the first ship bound for Saturn under construction. Commercial development implies stories, obviously; whilst a well-run space outpost might be perceived as too ‘boring’ to work, the more interests and groups get involved, the more potential for fun.

Where does the story come in, then? Our old friend, the space freighter. All of these stations and outposts are going to need consistent resupply, and that’s going to mean commercial efforts, at least primarily. NASA will contract out resupply of Sagan Base on Mars to a private company, just as companies such as SpaceX are supplying the International Space Station right now, and I can’t see that changing. While you can expect a high degree of automation, simple distance means that there will be people out there managing the systems. Time-delay causes no end of problems, only getting worse the further out you get.

Space tourism? To LEO, definitely, and likely Luna as well - and even if the cost of a ticket is in the millions, certainly there will be a market for taking people to Mars at least, though probably riding in the same conditions as a passenger on a bulk freighter out on the Pacific. Which does not mean people won’t do it, I just don’t necessarily see a hotel/liner infrastructure for a long time. Hell, from a story point of view, that only makes things more interesting. And there will certainly be personnel transfers and the like between the outer stations, so passengers will be a must.

That means human crews, for a host of reasons. Obviously they’ll be kept to the minimum, but I can’t see Lloyds’ providing insurance on something without a human backup. They won’t be flying the ship, but they’ll be fixing it - and fixing dinner at the same time. Say a six-man crew, something on the order of the Nautilus-X design that someone at NASA came up with a few years ago - an interplanetary spaceship with a $3.5 billion price tag. Figure it will drop when you build more than one, so $2 billion is probably better.

That’s a lot of money. Not that it will necessarily cost that much. Say NASA buys three of them for $9 billion in 2030, to support its Mars mission plans. When they are over, these are now surplus, and are sold at auction - with part of the deal a commitment to resupply Mars Base and the new Venus Station. Well, they won’t make $9 billion. More like half that - so $4.5 billion for three. That sounds a bit better. Pan Galactic gets going, but face competition from their rivals in Cosmoflot, and after a few years, go out of business. Their assets are sold at auction. Again. This is now, say, 2042.

The auction will not include any contracts; NASA is buying services from Cosmoflot, but the companies working near-Earth asteroids want cargo ships to bring platinum back to LEO, as well as exchange crews, and enough people know that to provide some interest. Now the ships go to three different owners, at $500 million each. See how this works? By the time they’ve been in service for a while, the last owner might have only paid $100 million, and that’s about the cost of a supertanker today. The second-hand spaceship market. Naturally, there will be newer, flasher ships with better drive units - but these are still perfectly good for the job, and economical to boot. Will private companies build spaceships? Probably not, but they’ll buy them used from governments, who will make it clear that this is a good ‘pro-business’ strategy. Heck, there was an abortive attempt to buy a Space Shuttle as its operations were winding down. It doesn’t take much imagination to see this working.

So what we have here is a series of companies fighting for survival and dominance in a tough market, but one that is opening up and building year on year as dependence on space resources increases. Reliance on government contracts to support bases on Luna and Mars helps kickstart this, but there are private operations as well to add extra fun. Lots of little trading corporations trying to make a living by pushing out their competitors. That sounds like a pretty interesting universe for stories to me; I think I can get a nice number of novels out of the setting.

Great Days Ahead...

Very quietly, very subtly, we have reached the brink of what will likely be known as the Second Space Age. I would make the argument that the First Space Age ended with the last Shuttle flight, as good a marker as any to herald the turning point between government and corporate primary in space exploitation. In the 20th century, it was as much a matter of prestige and defence interests as anything else - most of the technological advancements that have transformed our lives were spin-offs from military research, everything from comsats to advancements in meteorology that have made the weather forecast something more than a joke.

We’re in an interregnum, and it has lasted for a very long time. Let me first say that I loved Shuttle, loved the look and the feel of it, but in my opinion it was a colossal misstep that set mankind’s exploration of space back decades. It dominated NASA, but compromises right at the start of its design meant that it could never be what it needed to be - a cheap way of accessing space. Preserving the Apollo/Saturn setup would have given so many more options, allowed so much more, that it seems absurd that it was given up, the key decisions made before man even landed on the Moon. Look at Russia - Soyuz is approaching its sixth decade in service, and allowed them to maintain manned space stations since the 1980s, with only a fraction of the NASA budget.

Nevertheless, things are beginning at last to open up. By the end of this decade, there will be commercial manned space flight - I have every confidence that SpaceX will fulfill its mandate, and Boeing also. Three roads into space instead of one. In all probability, commercial space stations will also exist, and that really does begin to open up a world of possibilities that simply have not been possible at the moment. The cost of everything falling, and rapidly - and there will be takers, those willing to spend the money. They’ll come to manufacture new products, to promote their national prestige, or simply for the glorious view, but they will come, and they will stay. (Side bet. By the end of the 2020s, at least one octogenarian billionaire will be living in space in a bid to extend his lifespan. Anyone want to take me up on that?)

Don’t forget Skylon, something that Britain can actually be proud of in the field of space exploration. The spaceplane was always going to be what would truly open up space, but it is a creature of the 21st century, not the 20th. Never mind; it is coming anyway, and soon. By the end of that 2020s we’ll be flying spaceplanes into orbit, and the dream of low-cost space access will at last be hoving into view. And remember - when you are in Low Earth Orbit, you are halfway to anywhere.

Which means the Moon. The cost of putting a man on the Moon is still going to be high, but instead of being Manhattan Project high, it’ll be Lex Luthor high. Someone will do it. If he was thirty years younger, I’d bet on Richard Branson; as it is, there are plenty of candidate billionaires with the interest and passion for such a flight. And if you are doing the mission from a LEO space station, you’ve managed to set up the infrastructure that Von Braun wanted, all those decades ago. Because here’s the trick - spend the money once, and make sure that you don’t have to spend it again. A transfer station from LEO to the Moon...and there is still a lot of good science to be done there, not to mention the potential Helium-3 assets. China and India have both expressed interests, and they’re going to need the power. Though I doubt we’ll actually see extensive Lunar colonies; I have a horrible feeling that Luna City will remain a phantom. It’s too easy a commute from Earth. Think oil rigs or Antarctic research stations.

Go further, and it becomes a different story. We’re going to get to Mars, and I’ll throw down right now and say that we’ll do it by 2030. NASA won’t; it’ll be a commercial consortium most likely, but don’t bet against the Russians giving another October surprise. They’ve got the know-how and the desire - their space enthusiasts have been aiming at the Red Planet for more than a century. Someone will go, though. A matured LEO infrastructure will give all the tools to do it. As for technology...frankly, we could have done this any time in the last two decades. It’s just a question of spending the money now. There’s a great piece on Atomic Rockets called ‘Cape Fear’; that should give you a good idea of where interplanetary colonization will go. Mars is far enough away that it isn’t a commute, and there it does make sense to plan longer-term settlement. Bye bye Luna City, hello Port Lowell.

If you can get to Mars, you can get to Venus. Someone will, though I doubt to stay unless someone finds something interesting in the atmosphere. Perhaps an international consortium will put a research station in orbit to service manned or unmanned airships exploring the planet, but we’re back in the Antarctic again here. Mars will happen first for the simple reason that you can take that big first step, but Venus will happen soon afterward in a ship that looks essentially the same, but without the lander. Another great adventure.

The Asteroids? Certainly. Probably not glorious Ceres and Vesta, though, not if the plan is commercial exploitation. (Someone will likely tick them off, though; after Mars and Venus, they’ll be a new prestige race to do it. Anything that the public know about which can be reached with the same flight set-up will get visited, probably within ten-fifteen years of landing on Mars. It’s different this time; the infrastructure will be a lot more reusable than it was before.) There are near-Earth asteroids to look at, and there again are possibilities for commercial exploitation. Not for use on Earth directly, but to start feeding orbital factories; no-one’s going to be sending millions of tons of iron ingots down to Woomera, but hundreds of tons of refined products are another matter entirely. Mars is a key here again; it already has two ‘asteroids’ orbiting it.

If you want to do better, though, head out to Saturn. Sixty-two moons, most of them small enough to count as asteroids, all the water you could want, and the biggest prize of all. Titan. Whatever happens with renewable energy, we’re going to need petrochemicals for all sorts of industrial reasons, and they are right there, waiting. Enough to last us for thousands, tens of thousands of years. By the 2060s, someone will have gone out that far, even if it is a two-year flight, and there will be plans to start exploiting that resource. The Yukon of the 21st century; petrochemical exploitation from Titan, and mineral extraction from the smaller moons.

Where does this put us, then? As usual, there will be a race on, a race for exploitation and development. Throw in another factor; Earth’s going to be visibly suffering the effects of climate change by then, and that’s going to lead to a lot of people wanting out, and wanting their families out as well. An exodus of millionaires? Not impossible, and that might be the one thing that finally gets L-5 colonies off the drawing board, though again, they’ll be built not from lunar resources, but Martian and NEO. Hell, probably easier to move an asteroid into position rather than build a station. Or just colonize Mars instead.

So, the Solar System fifty years from now. Thousands of people in LEO, working in transfer stations, space industry, or servicing the satellite constellations. (Another prediction for you. By then, space junk will not be a problem; we’re not going to be able to allow the Hofmann Effect to happen. Likely the original Clarke concept of a few large stations that do all the jobs will finally come to pass; it would have made a lot more sense to do it that way in the first place.) The first L-5 colonies under construction, retreats from the increasing problems on Earth - though again, by then we will be working on fixing them, from simple necessity.

Beyond, a small population on the Moon, likely in the hundreds, mining Helium-3 and scared about what is happening out at Saturn; because it is present there in even greater quantities. A larger population on Mars, in the thousands, on one of the moons and on the surface - mining on the moons, and later perhaps on the Mars Trojans. A twenty-year-old space station orbiting Venus, constantly on the verge of being taken out of service due to cost. Astronauts out at Titan, building the first stations and outposts and testing equipment for the planned exploitation, and slow freighters being built to carry the fruits of their labor back to Earth. (Yes, the Nostromo is going to be a reality by this point, or at least abuilding.) Humans have been to Callisto, and the first Triton expedition is on the drawing boards, an excuse to showcase new propulsion technologies and a patriotic exercise for one of the Great Powers - China, the United States, India, Europe. Toss a coin.

It’s going to happen, one way or another. The dream didn’t die after Apollo...it just got postponed a little.

Little Mini-Update...

Thus far, this year, I have written a hair over an eighth of a million words - therefore, I am well on my way to the target. That comprises ‘Ghost Ship’ released at the end of last month, and the bulk of ‘Take and Hold’, which is now about twenty thousand words from completion. However...for the last four days, I have only managed the rather poor count of 1,268 words. A succession of hectic days took a rather severe toll on my time, and I woke up yesterday with what I am pretty sure is the flu...actually, I rather suspect I’ve had it for a while, but getting up with no time-sensitive things to do gave my body a chance to realize that.

Being only twenty thousand words from the finishing line - eight chapters, seven of which are action-intensive - the plan is to try for four five-thousand word chapters to get the book finished. I’m always the same when I get this close to the ending; my natural tendency is to put my head down and storm for the finish line, and my average word count usually races up. After setting everything up, I’m as anxious as anyone to see how it all works out - I never know all the details until I actually sit down to write, one of the benefits of discovery writing.

Once this is finally finished - and for once, I should have the draft completed more than a month ahead of schedule, which is the plan henceforth to give me more lead time - I can start work on my next project. I’d originally planned to do this in April and May, but for various reasons, it looks like I’ll be doing it in March and half of April instead, both because I want to give Alamo 12 time to brew in my brain before I commit it to paper, but also because, frankly, I’m anxious to get started. I won’t give you any details now, but I will show you what my recreational reading for those final four days is, and you can perhaps make any guesses based on that...


The People's Star Wars

I’m willing to bet that everyone reading this blog has, at some point, watched one of the Star Wars movies, probably read some of the Star Wars novels. Watching the Episode VII trailer (and no, I don’t get that weird lightsaber either, unless it is actually designed to cut off the user’s thumbs) has brought me to the realisation that everyone has their own Star Wars. Despite the attempts of George Lucas to harmonize everyone to his continually evolving vision of a film that he had finished cutting in the late 1970s, all of us take something different from the movie. For many, the story of Luke Skywalker is compelling, or the Han/Leia romance, or the fight against the Galactic Empire…

Not for me. Yes, becoming a Jedi is cool enough, but it was never the story of the Rebel Alliance that compelled me, it was the seedy underworld surrounding it - frankly, it was Han Solo and Lando Calrissian. They’re the interesting characters in the movie, the smuggler and the gambler, and it was those I always wanted to see more of. I had Doc Smith and Star Trek for my big epic space heroes, after all. Whenever people talk about a Star Wars TV show and the high-budget huge space battles, I usually shake my head and wonder why they don’t just do the Han/Lando/Chewie show. Hell, in canon (what’s left of it, anyway) there was a time when all three of them were flying around on the Millenium Falcon having adventures. Show that!

It’s probably no coincidence that the first novel spin-offs for the series - well, not counting Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, I guess - were trilogies based around Han Solo and Lando Calrissian, written by Brian Daley and L. Neil Smith respectively. Both of these were written before the initial trilogy had been completed - hell, the Han Solo one started before Empire was released if I remember correctly - but they worked perfectly, and did what you would expect them to do. Han Solo broke out political prisoners for an old flame, dug up ancient artefacts (pre-Indy, I point out), and smuggled weapons, while Lando gambled his way across the galaxy while a hacked-off evil Force user chased him around.

The setting was still in its infancy, so both of them managed to put their own creations in; Daley put most of his trilogy in the ‘Corporate Sector’, an area run and exploited by Imperial Megacorporations, and Smith used the ‘Centrality’, which always struck me as East Germany to the Empire’s Soviet Union, which actually struck me as a rather cool idea. Hmm…, that gives me an idea. But that’s for another time. Most of this setting material didn’t really stick, and that’s a great pity, because it would have been a far richer arena than the novel-verse eventually ended up using.

Ask anyone about the Star Wars novels, and Timothy Zahn’s name will come up first, and in my opinion, the Thrawn Trilogy is both great and a curse at the same time. It’s a great trilogy and ‘gets’ the setting very well, producing new stories with old characters, but it also led to a hell of a lot of imitators, and began the idea that the novels had to continue the stories of the original characters no matter what. The Han Solo and Lando Calrissian novels were never really repeated as ideas, which is frankly a damn shame. Instead we got the...shudder...Yuuzhan Vong, and all that went with them.

The trilogy - the original trilogy - was always meant to stand on its own two feet. That doesn’t mean that the setting can’t be used for other things, but it is that big a surprise that games like Knights of the Old Republic proved to be the ones that are remembered? Ones that use the setting to tell a different story, which does not get in the way of the original. Let’s face it, in two films the major characters wipe out the Galactic Empire and bring Freedom to the Galaxy. Top that, if you can. And the problem is that you otherwise end up bringing Freedom to the Galaxy...again. And again. And again. Until everyone has been freed to death. (Anyone here remember William Tenn’s Liberation of Earth? I bet Coruscant feels like that after a while.)

One of my plans for this year is another science-fiction series, and though I don’t have any concrete ideas as yet, certainly nothing that I am willing to commit to print at the moment, I think I’ll be going back to these novels for my inspiration. Somehow, I don’t think there can be too many rogues and renegades flying about the Galaxy, do you?

January 2015 - Progress Report

Well, here we are at the end of the month, and the first stage of my attempt to write a million words this year. If anything, I’m actually ahead of schedule; I set myself a target of three thousand words a day, and I’m considerably over that at the moment, at 106,484 words written this month. At that rate, I’d have more than two months in hand at the end of the year, which would be a rather nice place to be! In any case, I now have confidence that what I’ve set out to do is actually achievable, which I wasn’t sure of at the start of the year.

In terms of what I have actually done, I’ve written one complete Alamo novel, ‘Ghost Ship’, and am almost halfway through the next, ‘Take and Hold’, at about 34,000 words; I think this is going to run to about 75,000, so I hope to have it completed in mid-February, though the plan remains to release it in end-March. As soon as ‘Take and Hold’ is finished, I’ll be starting work on ‘Traitor’s Duty’, with the goal of having that finished by the end of March as well. I seem to have been racing just to keep on schedule for the last year, and the idea of actually building up a bit of a buffer is extremely tempting.

At this point, it is probably a good idea to talk about word rates. Last year, I wrote more per day but took breaks in between books, and that proved to be a problem. I’d lose momentum, slow down, and ultimately it ended up costing me when it came time to start writing again at pace. The answer, I think, is to write at a steadier, more even pace. (My record is still somewhere just north of ten thousand words, but I did that for a specific reason.) I set out to write three thousand words on average, that average being taken for the month.

Note the average quantifier there. I’m not planning on writing three thousand words a day, every day; what I have basically decided to do is write a chapter a day of whatever I’m working on, and my chapter lengths average around three thousand words anyway. That means that sometimes I’ll be a little under, sometimes a little over. Sometimes a lot each way; in January my low point was 1,291 words, and my high point was 5,843; there were no days when I actually did no writing at all, and that’s the point of all this.

Writing - not in terms of story constriction or character design, just in terms of the physical act of entering words on a page - is a skill, just like any other. One of the most vital tools in an author’s inventory, if not the most vital. Like any skill, it takes practice, and such practice takes speed. I was fortunate enough - though perhaps it didn’t feel like it as much at the time - to spend my twenties working at a job where I had to write quickly and accurately for extended periods. There was no time to check what we did, no time for revisions except in special cases - it was simply a case of pound out the words and hope for the best - and yet, accuracy was critical.

Environments such as that are excellent training grounds, and that is exactly how I consider it now. I am - just - able to go at a hundred words a minute, though I don’t consistently write novels at anything like that speed, of course, but it is nice to have the ability to pound out a few paragraphs if the spirit is really with me. The point I’m trying - and taking forever - to make is that getting up to the fast writing speeds requires good typing skills. Not perfect, not amazing, but good and solid. Which means practice.

It also requires, frankly, getting your head down and doing it, distraction-free. My goal has been to get those three thousand words written before noon, to allow me to spend the rest of the day doing other things - commissioning art, editing, research, planning, et triple cetera. Sometimes I’ve managed it, sometimes I’ve failed, but it is still something to try for. If one is writing while working another job, it’s even more critical, but I would - looking back - recommend trying to make a little time each day, rather than binging during weekends or holidays, as I tried to do. Better to grab an hour, or even half an hour, a day. Make steady progress and you will be less likely to second-guess yourself. At least, that was how it was with me.