Literary Birthday – 1 September – Martha Wells

Happy Birthday, Martha Wells, born on 1 September 1964.

Martha Wells Quotes

1. I plot a little bit in advance, but I’m mostly a pantser. I try to write daily, but it’s not always possible, particularly when I’m having trouble figuring out the plot.
2. Some come together pretty quickly, and I move from first draft to revision without any problem. Others I end up rewriting and rewriting, rearranging chapters, and discarding chunks of plot for new chunks that end up getting replaced later. I don’t have any specific way to deal with it except to keep working on the story.
3. I’ve been writing action-adventure for about twenty-seven years, not counting all the stories and fanfic I wrote before I sold my first book, so I’ve been working on pacing for a long time. I also like to use a very tight point of view, and I think that helps me with the tension and action.
4. I think it’s impossible to separate the social and political commentary from the story. If you’re a person living in a society, your existence is social and political, and whatever you write is going to reflect that, whether you understand it or not.
5. I try to write in the morning, that’s usually the best time for me. Before the pandemic started, my goal was usually about 1000 words a day. Now, basically because of all the stress, it’s about 500-700 words a day. After I get as much writing done as I can, I answer email and other admin tasks, and then take care of housework and errands in the afternoon.
6. I don’t think you necessarily need to identify with a character to make them great, but you have to be able to understand their point of view to a certain extent, even if you don’t agree with it or like it at all.
7. I love the worldbuilding. I love secondary world fantasy and far future space opera, the less like our world the better.
8. Learn as much as you can about how publishing works. There are a lot of scams out there aimed at new or aspiring writers. Learn how the business works.
9. As a kid, I had a lot of issues with feeling isolated, feeling like an observer and not a participant in life, feeling like no one was listening to me. Making up imaginary worlds and people to entertain myself made me feel better.
10. When I work with people who are first beginning to write, one of the most common mistakes I see is when they make a character too passive. Usually this comes from the writer trying to figure out how the character would react to different situations, and instead of asking what the character would do, they ask what they would do instead.
11. I try to do is write worlds and characters that I’m really excited about. I try to come up with worlds that feel like they have infinite possibilities, where you don’t know what might be around the next corner or in the next valley. And I try to think of interesting ways for my characters to explore those worlds.

Source for quotes 1-4: Clarkes World and 5-8: The Fantasy Reviews and 9-11: Terrible Minds

Martha Wells is an American writer of speculative fiction. She has written science fiction and fantasy novels, young adult books, short stories, media tie-ins, and essays about science fiction and fantasy. Wells published her first fantasy novel in 1993 and has since created several popular series. Her her work includes The Books of the Raksura series, the Ile-Rien series, and the award-winning Murderbot Diaries. Her recent novels include Witch King and Queen Demon. She has also written tie-in fiction for Star Wars, Stargate: Atlantis, and Magic: The Gathering. Her work has won four Hugo Awards, two Nebula Awards, and three Locus Awards, with many of her books translated into other languages.

Source for photograph: Author’s Website

by Amanda Patterson
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