Literary Birthday – 2 March – Ann Leckie

Happy Birthday, Ann Leckie, born 2 March 1966.

Ann Leckie Quotes

1. I usually know where I want to end up, and I know several landmarks along the way. If I don’t know the landmarks, I panic, because I need to have those. The rest of my time is spent figuring out how I get from one landmark to another. I realize some people outline scene by scene, but I can’t even imagine doing that. (Clarkesworld Magazine)
2. I love NaNoWriMo. One of the things I learned was, even with that little voice in the back of my mind telling me that my ideas just weren’t worth it and nobody would want to read them, I could still write through that. I can continue. And when the month was done, I had a manuscript that was an important step in my beginning to feel confident as a writer. (Lightspeed Magazine)
3. One of the things that I really enjoy (and I think a lot of readers and writers enjoy) about science fiction and fantasy is the way that you can really delve into the setting and the anthropology or the history or the geography or whatever. (Lightspeed Magazine)
4. I didn’t set out to write a novel that was a political statement, but I also believe that we build stories — science fiction, far future, fabulous worlds — we build them out of our own world. (Lightspeed Magazine)
5. Every “rule” of writing is situational. That is, when a writer sits down to write, they have a particular set of aims for the work they’re doing. Some of the techniques available to our writer will be more or less appropriate to the project in hand. Some will be useless, or incredibly inappropriate. There is no one set of tools and techniques that will do the job right every time, not unless you’re knocking out more or less identical works every time. Which is fine, if that’s your thing, right? But it’s not the only way to do fiction (Ann Leckie’s Blog)
6. Write the thing that interests you. Don’t worry too much about warnings that “readers” don’t want anything but standard vanilla custard writing. You, yourself, are a reader, and if your project seems cool to you, likely it will seem cool to at least some other readers. Don’t worry about what some nebulous mass of “readers” might or might not want. Worry about doing your cool thing really well so that those readers like you will appreciate it. (Ann Leckie’s Blog)
7. You have my permission to stop taking advice from anyone who tells you that you can’t do anything interesting or difficult because “readers won’t like it.” (Or because editors won’t like it. Gods help us all, run don’t walk away from that advice.) (Ann Leckie’s Blog)
8. I did sit down to write a kind of story that I thought I’d enjoy reading. I threw in things that appealed to me–heck, I crowbarred them in. I was working the whole time with the assumption that it would never sell so I might as well please myself. I guess there are other people out there who like the same kinds of things I do! (Diabolical Plots)
9. Don’t give up. Be willing to take criticism, be willing to reconsider what you’re doing, but once you’ve decided on what you’re doing, do that. Don’t worry about what someone told you editors want or don’t want, don’t worry about whether your work is marketable, don’t worry about lists of “rules” that tell you not to use second person or never to use adverbs or whatever. Just do it, and do it as awesomely as you can at that particular time in your life, and trust the universe for the rest. (Diabolical Plots)

Ann Leckie is an award-winning American author of science fiction and fantasy. She is known for her mundane or hard science fiction. Her 2013 debut science fiction novel Ancillary Justice won the 2014 Hugo Award for Best Novel, as well as the Nebula Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and the BSFA Award. The sequels, Ancillary Sword and Ancillary Mercy, each won the Locus Award and were both nominated for the Nebula Award. Leckie’s first fantasy novel, The Raven Tower, was published in 2019. She has also published short stories in Subterranean Magazine, Strange Horizons, and Realms of Fantasy. Translation State, a stand alone novel was published in 2023. Her short story collection is Lake of Souls: The Collected Short Fiction. She served as the secretary of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America from 2012 to 2013.

Source for image: Author’s Website

by Amanda Patterson

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