Coffee With David

Those who know me personally know that I have been shuttling my mother to and from doctors a lot over the last two weeks. That combined with a crazy work load has put me behind on these blogs. I want to thank everyone for the comments left here as well as on other sites where these blogs are posted. In the process of all the juggling I have been doing, I have made a short term decision.

If you have visited my website before you may already have noticed the change. If not: I am a writer who can write stories in Science Fiction, Horror, Fantasy and Crime Drama as well as a poet and writing articles. Over the last year or more I have been feeling overwhelmed and split focused on what I am working on at any given moment. I have decided to take down the links to my crime drama and fantasy pages for now while I focus my efforts on Science Fiction and Horror.

I have also decided to focus on novels more than short story writing. I will continue to post about short story writing on my short story blog. There will be parts of my novels that can be used to spin off an unrelated short story, so I am not walking away from it. I just need to seriously focus on the writing I do best.
If this was not enough of a change, and if you have been paying attention to my Short Story blog, you will have also noticed that I am now branching my writing into the Space Western. I already have a novel idea and I am researching and plotting it as we speak. I also already have a unique angle on the story that I will share on a blog dedicated to that novel in the future. Watch for a new blog page titled Herne’s Law.

Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for information on the blogs, stories, poems, and articles I write.

After a month I have completed the first draft of The Guardians using the new writing method. I have talked about the method before and perhaps to ad nausea, but let me address one last thing. It is the building of an onion.

While I write genre fiction, I learned something from a literary class. While reading and taking notes on the stories we read, it became very clear that the stories—the plots and the characters were like onions. As you went into the story, you began to peel away the layers to show the deeper meaning and the deeper aspects to the characters.

What I am doing with this method is building the onion from the heart outward to the most outer skin. I am not saying I have it perfect or that the method will lead me to create a literary great—note again, I write genre fiction, so it will be looked down upon most literary circles anyway—but I do hope and feel that it will give the story a richer depth than I have been able to accomplish before.

Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for information on the blogs, stories, poems, and articles I write.

A few posts ago, I mentioned I was working on a new writing method. The new method I am employing is to write a story strictly as dialogue with very little description for the first draft. I record a little description or more direction as I go, but only enough to tell myself what is happening and what I need to fill in on a later draft. This goes against everything that I have learned about writing—but it is working. In classes and seminars, I have always been told “Write until done and then cut—cut—cut.” Here I am doing the opposite at first. I am writing, then going back and adding and adding until the piece is truly complete with all the description that is needed. THEN I am going to go after it with the editor’s “sword” and cut away the fat to get to the bone.

This method has continued to work well with The Guardians and I am going to begin applying it today to my short story writing as I tackle my ever changing schedule with my “bill paying job” (which includes a lot of State and Federal Government interference). I do not know if this method would work for everyone, nor would I tout it as the “wonder cure” for writing. However, it does give me the ability to work around my extremely hectic schedule and be productive in my writing. It also forces me to focus on one element of the story at a time and reediting the story each time I go through it.

Only one thing is certain about what I am doing—time will show if this truly worked or if it was fools’ gold.

Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for information on the blogs, stories, poems, and articles I write.

Over the last few weeks I have been working on the first draft of The Guardians and it is nearing completion. As I have been writing that and dealing with growing Federal Government involvement in my life outside of writing, I have found myself missing days when I would write and ride herd over 20 or 30 heads of horses. (No, I was not a Cowboy. I was a Wrangler. I do not nor have I ever known anything about beef except how to cook it.) Thinking back on those days I began to reflect on the Western and the future of man—assuming we ever do settle among the stars. All of this led to a desire to try my hand at a space western.
So, why title this “an argument”? As I began to research the genre I have learned that there are some in the science fiction genre who reject this type fiction. Some of the criticisms are:
“The Turkey City Lexicon, a document produced by the Turkey City science fiction writers' workshop, condemns the space Western as "The most pernicious suite of 'Used Furniture' [that is, use of a pre-established background instead of a freshly created world]."
Galaxy Science Fiction ran an advertisement on its back cover, "You'll never see it in Galaxy", which gave the beginnings of make-believe parallel Western and SF stories featuring a character named Bat Durston” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_western)
These are only a few examples. If you have read my blogs, my work, or know me personally you will know exactly how I would argue against this. I would turn back to history. Why? Mankind has a nasty habit of repeating history—the good, the bad and the ugly aspects of it. The idea of a space western is a story with Western themes set in the future. Let us look for a moment at many of today’s nations that have been built with the blood and sweat of what Americans call “Cowboys.” Obvious the United States is the first one to come to mind. Let’s move on: Canada, Mexico, actually—all the countries from North America to South America. However, that is not all. Let us, as the British say, jump the pond: Australia, New Zealand, and there are others. At one time, all of these lands were considered frontiers. On all of these lands, a people developed a “western” type of society. It was different by degrees in each land, but there was commonality of personality that existed.
If mankind continues to repeat history and if we go out to the stars, then yes, I expect to see some kind of frontiersman/cowboy. He may not be sitting on a horse. He may not engage in Hollywood style gunplay. However, the personality will still exist. The frontier will not be antiseptically clean or without the conditions that was seen in the old frontier—in fact I would be highly surprised if those conditions are not somehow magnified.
Maybe I am wrong, but the genre of Science Fiction is the exploration of what may be—what is possible—what if this or that. On that stage, in that universe of imagination, there is still room for a few space cowboys.
Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for updates to blogs, stories and poems I write.