He was going to be a scientist. A paleontologist, in fact. Sure he loved to write, but everyone said you can’t support a family as a writer. Besides, Robert J. Sawyer had wanted to be a paleontologist since he could say the word. He’d been writing stories his whole life, but that interest would wane over time, no doubt.
But he also knew that he’d regret it if he didn’t try writing as a career.
Writing scripts for auto-safety films might not get him the Pulitzer, but it would let him write and let him make a living. It’s evident Sawyer made the right decision as he modestly mentions his six-figure salary and that it’s more difficult to get work as a paleontologist than as a writer in Canada.
Sawyer is a science-fiction writer, a career choice that often serves as the punch line in jokes. But he would rather read an Arthur C. Clarke book than watch a Star Trek marathon (although he fell in love with science fiction with the original Star Trek series).
After graduating high school with one short story already published in a university’s literary magazine, Sawyer went to Ryerson University in Toronto to study the radio and television arts. He knew it would be difficult to find work writing, but he assumed that his skills combined with his major would assure a future of employment. He found his plans thwarted this time by a recession and hiring freeze in 1982 – just when he was graduating. So his writing went from a daydream to his life’s work.
He worked as a free-lance print journalist for a computer newsletter. He found the freedom of free-lancing pleasant. Many years and 14 novels later,
Sawyer still works from his La-Z-Boy recliner with a keyboard resting in his lap and rock specimens, reproductions of ancient skulls and shelves of awards around him. His bosses are temporary, as he has a different contract for every book he’s to write, although he’s been with the same publisher, happily, since 1996.
Sawyer starts his days reading his e-mail messages, responding to fans and those with questions about his books. Then he reads. A lot. “It’s the best way to learn about your craft,” he says. Sawyer spends the rest of his day writing or revising on his own schedule. He works 40 hours a week, but since he can choose his own hours, he usually starts in the afternoon and works through the evening.
The negative sides of this seemingly ideal situation?
“You have to have discipline,” Sawyer warns. “Even without a boss there, you have to get your work done.” Sawyer adds that a free-lance writer must be comfortable with solitude. “There’s no hanging around the water cooler.”
Additionally, financial security can be scarce even for successful writers like Sawyer, because there is a long time between paychecks. And although writers often work alone, their final products are very public. “If you write a novel, you have to sit still for whatever reviews you get…and every now and then, one comes along that’s really nasty,” he says. “You just have to take it.”
The perks of the job more than make up for the hassles in Sawyer’s opinion. Like traveling at other people’s expense. (He’s been to Spain, Japan and the Yukon Territory in this past year.) Flexible hours are a great perk, too. After all, he got to see the afternoon premiere of the Harry Potter without fear of missing work. Sawyer has received more than 100 rejections for his short stories, which is not unusual; but he has never had a novel rejected, which is.
Sawyer predicts a decline in the field as fewer people read books, opting for movies, television, radios and computers instead. He has been forced to cater to a mainstream audience, but he has no regrets. He’s learned that more creativity is necessary for science fiction writers to succeed than they might expect, because of having to tone down science fiction elements to please critics. “Too many aliens can alienate,” he jokes.
Sawyer says students looking to be writers shouldn’t be discouraged, though he’d recommend they study something other than writing at university—not to have a back-up plan, but rather to have a starting point. The way John Grisham knows law and the way Michael Crichton knows medicine are perfect examples of how backgrounds other areas prove useful in writing.
Sawyer himself has returned to his paleontology interests with his novels Far-Seer, Fossil Hunter,
Foreigner and End of an Era, all of which are dinosaur-based stories. He says that researching science, philosophy and ethics is part of the thrill of his job. Sawyer intends to keep writing as long as possible, noting another benefit to a career in writing: no mandatory retirement age. “They’ll have to pull my keyboard from my hands as they lower me into the grave,” he jokes. Or maybe only half-jokes.
Rachel Moran, 17, is a senior at Pittsford Sutherland High School.
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Surf Sawyer’s own extensive Web site at www.sfwriter.com.
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Web site can be found at www.sfwa.org.
E-mail science-fiction writer Robert Sawyer at [email protected].
