Charles Stross
Charles Stross
Charles David George "Charlie" Strossis an award-winning British writer of science fiction, Lovecraftian horror and fantasy...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth18 October 1964
reading writing style
Speech recognition is utterly crap for writing fiction. If you try reading a novel aloud you'll soon figure out why - written prose style is utterly unlike the spoken word.
writing years long
If I write too much of anything for too long, I burn out on it. So it helps to vary my output from year to year.
war believe writing
There's a long-standing (50 year old) flame war within the field over whether it's "sci-fi" or "SF".SF has traditionally been looked down on by the literary establishment because, to be honest, much early SF was execrably badly written - but these days the significance of the pigeon hole is fading; we have serious mainstream authors writing stuff that is I-can't-believe-it's-not-SF, and SF authors breaking into the mainstream. If you view them as tags that point to shelves in bricks-and-mortar bookshops, how long are these genre categories going to survive in the age of the internet?
book writing firsts
Publishing is the final step in making a book; if I was afraid to publish one, I wouldn't write it in the first place.
book reading writing
While writing a novel I almost completely stop reading books in the same sub-genre for the duration.
writing hints facts
If I wanted to be in movies, I'd have gone into scriptwriting: the fact that I write novels should be a big hint about what I prefer to do!
writing ideas stories
Writing your own story around the same ideas is not plagiarism; at worst, it's being unoriginal.
book writing thinking
The one thing that does happen, every time, though, is that I never get to write a book until I've already been thinking about it for a period of months to years.
writing typewriters keys
I write exclusively using computers. Pens and typewriters can fsck right off - I wrote my first half million words in my teens on a manual typewriter (had to trade it for a new one due to keys snapping from metal fatigue) so I am not a pen or typewriter fetishist.
book writing space
When I do get to chow down on a book, I try to read ones that are nothing like what I'm writing. So, as I'm currently working on a space opera (of sorts) I'm mostly indulging in urban fantasy.
book writing years
I reckon I can count on 30 more writing years, averaging a book a year (I can't keep up the 2-2.5 a year I used to do these days). And these days I've gotten round to wondering, for each new idea, "do I want to be remembered for this?" before I get to the point of spending a year on it.
writing ideas care
If an idea is compelling enough it'll stick in my head until I am forced to write it. If it's forgettable, who cares?
book writing two
No two books come out the same way. Some I write by the seat of my pants; others are planned in minute detail.
war writing spy
I like lassic British spy thrillers. Seriously. If the cold war was still on, that's something I'd be writing.