Octavia Butler
Octavia Butler
Octavia Estelle Butlerwas an American science fiction writer. A multiple recipient of both the Hugo and Nebula awards, Butler was one of the best-known women in the field. In 1995, she became the first science fiction writer to receive the MacArthur Fellowship, nicknamed the "Genius Grant."...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth22 June 1947
CityPasadena, CA
CountryUnited States of America
writing fiction natural
No one was going to stop me from writing and no one had to really guide me towards science fiction. It was natural, really, that I would take that interest.
writing novel wanted
Well, writing was what I wanted to do, it was always what I wanted to do. I had novels to write so I wrote them.
reading writing fiction
I began reading science fiction before I was 12 and started writing science fiction around the same time.
writing trying fancy
I'm trying to speak--to write-the truth. I"m trying to be clear. I'm not interested in being fancy, or even original. Clarity and truth will be plenty, if I can only achieve them.
pain writing order
I wanted to write a novel that would make others feel the history: the pain and fear that black people have had to live through in order to endure.
writing character people
The only black people you found were occasional characters or characters who were so feeble-witted that they couldn't manage anything, anyway. I wrote myself in, since I'm me and I'm here and I'm writing.
writing worry people
Most of us don't have to worry about being shot of we poke our noses outside. So we are comfortable, but the people I'm writing about are definitely not comfortable, and being shot while they're still inside is a good possibility.
attitude writing people
Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself. Every story I write adds to me a little, changes me a little, forces me to reexamine an attitude or belief, causes me to research and learn, helps me to understand people and grow.
writing stories i-can
...I can write my own stories and I can write myself in.
stars war writing
Most of what I do is science fiction. Some of the things I do are fantasy. I don't like the labels, they're marketing tools, and I certainly don't worry about them when I'm writing. They are also inhibiting factors; you wind up not getting read by certain people, or not getting sold to certain people because they think they know what you write. You say science fiction and everybody thinks Star Wars or Star Trek.
writing rejection painful
Rejections are painful, but inevitable. They're every writer's rite of passage.
writing thinking eight
It's interesting how many science fiction writers get going when they are very young. I was on a program with Greg Bear and he mentioned that he had gotten started writing when he was eight. And I began writing when I was 10. I think we're influenced by the stuff, we find it and we love it and we're influenced by it....I know I collected my first rejection slip when I was 13, and I went on collecting them for a long time after that.
giving-up writing persistence
People who want to write either do it or they don't. At last I began to say that my most important talent - or habit - was persistence. Without it, I would have given up writing long before I finished my first novel. It's amazing what we can do if we simply refuse to give up.
fun writing research
Here I was into astronomy, and here into anthropology, and there I go into geology. It was much more fun to be able to research and write about whatever I wanted to.