I began reading science fiction when I was four. I used to sit on my father’s lap as he read, and learned to read along with him. If he was reading E. E. (Doc) Smith or L. Ron Hubbard, he’d change books and we’d read Asimov or Arthur C. Clarke instead. I’m not sure if he considered the content of Smith’s and Hubbard’s books unsuitable for a four year old or if he thought the language was too difficult for me to read. It could have been something as simple as the size of the type.
 
Either way, science fiction was my first love and, while I read other things, I always return to it. It’s my comfort zone, my safe place.
 
I’m currently writing a science fiction novel as I do Year of the Novel through QWC. One of the questions I have to answer this month is what comparable books/writers there are to my story. If this was a romance story, I could easily find an answer because romance follows the same tropes. While there are differences with each story, there are always similarities too. Finding a comparable book would be a simple as finding another author with a similar voice or style. Science fiction isn’t that easy.
 
I don’t write hard science fiction. I don’t have the depth of science background to do it justice so I don’t even try. I also like fantasy stories so my SF, as well as being soft SF, often has fantasy elements. I love space operas, so I often write entire stories where most of the action is aboard ship, with planetary landings being rare and brief. When you add in the romance as well, it’s difficult to find something comparable.
 
I don’t know of anything similar to my new story, Memory for Loan, and couldn’t find any that combine similar SF features with romance. Some Steampunk novels touch on similar aspects of Victorian England culture and pollution as seen on Tolifax but Memory for Loan isn’t steampunk. I couldn’t find a romantic space opera that had similar elements although the writing of some hard SF authors (Greg Bear, Ralph Kern, Elizabeth Moon) resonates even though the majority of their writing (that I’ve read) is set on-planet.
 
The inspiration for Memory for Loan came from The Martian (Andy Weir), mixed with Victorian England slums, a concern over global warming and pollution and their affects on the environment, an interest in the idea of terraforming dead planets to make them habitable, melded with a personal background of Star Trek, Dr Who, Isaac Asimov, E. E. (Doc) Smith and Arthur C. Clarke.
 
The premise of the series is that the planet, Tolifax, has been used as a dump for centuries. The powers on Earth have dumped everything unwanted there, including human beings (especially hardened criminals). The communities on Tolifax are finally beginning to work together and revolt but how can that be successful when the people have no power and the ecology of the planet has been all but destroyed?  The rebels set up camp, stage left, taking chunks out of the Galactic Government, centre stage, which fights dirty and for keeps. Enter, stage right, the planet whisperers, and you have the set-up for Memory for Loan.

They say to write what you know. That will give your writing greater depth and believability. It’ll be real. But how far should an author go in the pursuit of authenticity? We can’t all experience every emotion, or every action. For the experiences we haven’t had personally, we can read newspapers, journal articles, research papers. We can talk to people; friends and strangers. One thing we shouldn’t do is groom vulnerable people, make them trust us, then betray them.

It takes a lot of courage for someone who has been hurt to trust again, and even more courage to speak openly about the pain they’ve suffered. For someone to come along and use that courage and vulnerability for their own ends, without permission, is reprehensible.

I don’t usually comment on these things, and certainly not in the heat of the moment. I wait until I calm down and understand clearly what I’m thinking and feeling. I haven’t calmed down with this one; not at all. I am outraged and filled with a deep, all-consuming sorrow.
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You don’t need to use and betray others to achieve a feeling of authenticity in your writing. You only need to have compassion and empathy. You only need to respect others and understand their lives are not yours. If you can’t do that, perhaps you’re writing in the wrong genre. If you can’t imagine it, perhaps you’re in the wrong business.

I use writing targets to keep me writing. There are days I struggle to write anything. Sometimes I don’t even open the file and look at it. Sometimes I open it, read the last paragraph and put it away again, with no idea how to move the story forward. These things happen often during the sections of the story that I haven’t visualised the way I have other scenes. Even though I have a basic plot outline, the details aren’t set in my head yet.

There are days I say to myself, I’m writing today, regardless. I set myself a 1000 word target for a writing session and try to write a minimum of 500 words. Sometimes it takes me an hour to write 120 words. Sometimes a half hour will net 500, so I keep going. 
 
I have three writing targets for each writing session:

1. I have a session writing target—usually 1000 words in an hour. That’s achievable if I write reasonably solidly. Sometimes I write 3000 words in an hour, sometimes 500 words.
2. I have a chapter writing target. This varies according to the book. The book I’m writing at the moment has chapter targets of 4000-6000 words. That’s an arbitrary figure chosen to fit the plotted chapters to the book target. Some of my chapters currently hover around the 3000 word mark but I’m not concerned. I’ve left a significant amount of emotion out of this first draft. Going through and putting that in will bump those words up significantly.
3. I also have a book target. My current book has a minimum target of 85000 words. While I’m writing, it’s just a number that shows me I’m making progress. I really have no idea how long the book is going to end up because my first drafts often miss huge chunks of necessary emotion and also often drop minor plot lines and never finish them. Putting all that in will probably increase the manuscript by about 10%. Then the editing will begin and the word count will drop again.

There are days—like today—where I need to watch each of those targets. These are the days that writing is a struggle so I look at the book target and see I need another 350 words to get to the next 1000. That’s achievable but a bit far away. I move onto the session target and see I’ve written 194 words; 800 shy of my 1000 word target. The chapter I’m writing is one I started a few days ago. It has a target of 4000 and I’m now at 3300, so only 700 short of my chapter target.

I dismiss the session target and the chapter target for now and focus on the book target. There are only 350 words to write to reach the next milestone. I can do that. It’s only a few hundred words. So I write.

Once I hit that target, I look at my session and chapter targets again. My chapter target is now only 350 words from the 4000 words. I can do that. It’s not much to write.

By the time I do that, I’m only 106 short of the session target. Anyone can write 100 words, right?

So that’s how I make it work when I don’t know what to write or don’t feel like writing.