Tag: IWSG

IWSG: How Can You Write at a Time Like This?

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 11 Comments

Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writers’ Support Group, a blog hop created by Alex J. Cavanaugh and co-hosted this month by Rebecca Douglass, Ronel Janse van Vuuren, Cathrina Constantine, and Jacqui Murray. Are you a writer?  Do you feel insecure?  Well, then this is the support group for you!  Click here to learn more and to see a list of participating blogs.

Hello, friends!

Writing is good.  Writing helps people.  Writing adds a little magic and color to our otherwise greyscale world.  I know this, but sometimes I forget.

Last month, my significant other lost her job.  It was a sudden, unexpected thing.  This has caused us both a lot of stress and anxiety, disrupting our plans for the future, and also, incidentally, sidetracking me from writing all month long.

It’s not just that I was too busy, or too stressed, or too distracted to write.  Given the situation, writing felt like an indulgence.  I felt ashamed of myself for wanting to write (to have the fun of writing) when someone so close to me was in distress.  So I told myself that writing’s not important, that writing’s not useful or practical right now.  I put my pen and paper away and told myself that writing can wait.

Turns out that was the wrong thing to do.

Years back, I watched an interview with Stan Lee, of Marvel Comics fame.  He said he often felt embarrassed by his job, that he felt he wasn’t doing anything important with his life.  He felt guilty for having a “fun job” when so many people in the world were struggling.

But then it occurred to him that if he could give people a break from reality, just for a little while, isn’t that a good thing?  If he could help people forget their hardships, just for a little while, isn’t that a good thing?  If he could just entertain someone—get them to smile or laugh—get them to cheer for their favorite super hero—isn’t that a good thing?  It’s not silly or selfish to do that kind of work.  It’s not “just fun” to do that kind of work.  Creating stories for people to enjoy is a good thing.

My significant other had to remind me of all this.  She had to remind me that my writing means something to her, just as much as it means something to me.

The world out there can be uncaring and cruel.  There’s not much I can do to fix that.  There’s only so much I can do to help even the people immediately around me.  But I can write.  I can tell stories, and maybe someday, someone who needs a little magic and color in their world will find those things in something I write.

WANT TO LEARN MORE?

Here’s a video of Stan Lee talking about how he used to feel embarrassed about his job.  I don’t think this is the same interview I originally saw, but he makes the same basic point.

And if you want some sciency reasons to believe your writing helps people, here’s an article from Psychology Today on the cognitive benefits of reading fiction.

And lastly, I’ve recommended this book before, and today I’m recommending it again: We Need Your Art, by Amie McNee.  If you seriously doubt the value of your art (writing or otherwise), this book is the pep talk you need.

IWSG: BuT nOBoDy ReAds AnYmoRe!

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 23 Comments

Hello, friends!  Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writers’ Support Group, a blog hop created by Alex J. Cavanaugh and co-hosted this month by Victoria Marie Lees, Sarah Foster, Natalie Aguirre, and C. Lee McKenzie.  Are you a writer?  Do you feel insecure?  Well, then this is the support group for you!  Click here to learn more and to see a list of participating blogs.

People don’t read anymore.  People’s attention spans are too short due to social media, YouTube and TikTok, podcasts, A.I. generated slop content, yada yada, et cetera et cetera… I’m sure you’ve heard this before.  I’ve been hearing it a lot lately.  It’s almost enough to make me worry.  I mean, if it’s true that nobody reads anymore, what’s the point of me doing all this writing?

Except I don’t think it’s true.  Certainly, social media addiction is a thing.  Brainrot is a thing, and some people’s attention spans are being affected by that.  These are real problems, but I think self proclaimed experts-on-the-zeitgeist exaggerate how big and how universal these problems really are.  When I think about the people I know in real life, do some of them spend too much time online?  Sure.  But most of them don’t.

And as for the assertion that nobody reads anymore… again, when I think about the people I know in real life, I know a lot of people—people of all ages—who are avid readers.  Their taste in literature may be different than mine, but they’re still avid readers.  Granted, I also know some people who don’t read much.  Turns out some people enjoy reading and some don’t.  That’s nothing new.  That was true before, too.

It is a fact that some people are struggling with various flavors of Internet addiction.  It is also true that some people don’t like to read.  Extrapolating from those two data points that nobody reads anymore because everybody’s got brainrot?  That doesn’t add up.  And the people who keep saying things like that?  These same people tend to make a lot of broad generalizations about what’s going on in the zeitgeist these days.  I have no idea what their agendas are, but they’re wrong.  It’s time to stop listening to them and get back to writing.

IWSG: Insecure Astronauts Need Support, Too

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 14 Comments

Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writers’ Support Group, a blog hop created by Alex J. Cavanaugh and co-hosted this month by Jenni Enzor, Jemima Pett, Jamie of Uniquely Maladjusted but Fun, and Kim Lajevardi.  Are you a writer?  Do you feel insecure?  Well, then this is the support group for you!  Click here to learn more and to see a list of participating blogs.

Hello, friends!

As a writer, who are your heroes?  Who are your idols?  Probably other writers, right?  Most of my heroes are other writers, like Isaac Asimov or Arthur C. Clarke; but as I pursue my writing dreams, I also find inspiration from people outside of the writing world.  So today, I want to tell you a little about Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti.

You may know Cristoforetti as the first Italian woman in space.  You may also know her as the person who cosplayed as a Starfleet officer aboard the International Space Station.  A few years back, I read Cristoforetti’s autobiography, Diary of an Apprentice Astronaut, because I wanted to know more about the daily life of astronauts (important stuff to know if you want to write science fiction).  I did learn the stuff I wanted to learn, but Cristoforetti also wrote about the doubts, fears, and insecurities that sometimes held her back from her own dreams.

It’s been a while since I read Cristoforetti’s book, so I don’t remember all of her credentials or all of the details of her career.  What I do remember is that she speaks five or six different languages, has multiple degrees in science and engineering, and trained as a fighter pilot for the Italian Navy—and then, on top of all that, she went to space.  Twice.

Samantha Cristoforetti is just so gosh darn impressive.  And yet, as she confesses in her book, she still struggles with the same doubts and insecurities that I do—that all of us do.

What’s the lesson here?  I don’t know, but my take away is this: self-doubt is normal.  It’s natural.  It’s just another part of being human.  I feel it, you feel it, E.S.A. astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti feels it.  There’s no shame in doubting yourself.  The real problem—the real thing to avoid—is when self-doubt transforms into self-sabotage.

WANT TO LEARN MORE?

Here’s an article from Italy Magazine celebrating Cristoforetti’s accomplishments as the first Italian female astronaut.

And here’s an article from Space.com about her love for Star Trek and why she wore a Starfleet uniform aboard the I.S.S.

And if you want to read Cristoforetti’s book, here’s a link to her book on Amazon.

IWSG: Not Because It Is Easy, But Because It Is Hard

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 12 Comments

Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, a blog hop created by Alex J. Cavanaugh and co-hosted this month by Melissa Maygrove, Cathrina Constantine, Kate Larkinsdale, and Rebecca Douglass.  Are you a writer?  Do you feel insecure?  Well, then this is the support group for you!  Click here to learn more and to see a list of participating blogs.

Hello, friends!

Later today, if all goes according to plan, NASA’s Artemis II Mission will launch from Kennedy Space Center, carrying four astronauts on a ten-day voyage around the Moon and back again.  Artemis II will not land on the Moon, but this will still be the farthest any human has traveled away from Earth since the 1970’s.  I bring this up for today’s IWSG post because the space program has always been my favorite metaphor for writing.

First off, we writers are always falling behind schedule, always scrambling to keep up with our deadlines, and frequently missing our deadlines despite our best efforts—much like the space program!  Artemis II, for example, was originally supposed to launch in 2024, but there were set-backs.  Unforeseen difficulties.  Stuff happened and got in the way.  It honestly doesn’t take much.  I remember a rocket launch being postponed due to something as simple as a cloud being in just the wrong place at just the wrong time.  I don’t know about you, but I’ve had plenty of writing days ruined by problems almost as simple.

Another thing we writers have in common with the space program: we can’t just do the same thing over and over again.  Every space mission has different objectives, faces exceptional challenges, and requires its own unique innovations in order to succeed.  The same can be said for each new story we writers write.  Sure, there are tried-and-true formulas we can turn to for guidance.  There may be certain methods and techniques that have been helpful before and may be helpful again.  But at some point along the way, we’re going to have to do something we’ve never done before.  That’s the scariest part of the journey.  Simultaneously, that’s the part that make the journey worth taking.

And lastly, both writers and the space program have to deal with naysayers and critics: people who don’t get it, people who don’t see the point.  Why waste so much time, effort, and money reaching for the stars when there are more pragmatic things we could be doing here on the ground?  I don’t think these people understand the difference between the cost of a thing and its value.  The space program is very expensive—I am not denying that—but its value to our species is far, far greater.  Similarly, I don’t believe the value of writing can be measured with money—not my writing, and not yours.

So, my fellow writers: keep writing, keep dreaming, keep reaching for the stars.  It won’t be easy.  Writing is never easy.  But as President Kennedy would remind us: we do these things “not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

IWSG: Why Aren’t You Doing Something Useful with Your Life?

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 8 Comments

Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, a blog hop created by Alex J. Cavanaugh and co-hosted this month by PJ Colando, Ronel Janse von Vuuren, and Natalie Aguirre.  Are you a writer?  Do you feel insecure?  Well, then this is the support group for you!  Click here to learn more and to see a list of participating blogs.

Hello, friends!

I’m not a scientist, I’m not an engineer, and I don’t work for NASA.  I’m just some guy on the Internet who loves space.  In my last few IWSG posts, I talked about how I sometimes worry that I’m not sciency enough to call myself a science communicator.  Today, I want to talk about the flip-side of that particular insecurity.

Every once in a while, somebody I know in real life will discover my blog.  They’ll see my spacey art, they’ll read my spacey writing, they’ll recognize my obsession with all things outer space, and they’ll compliment me for being so knowledgable about this topic.  Which then leads to an inevitable question: “But why haven’t you pursued a career in science?”

That question stings.  If you don’t understand why it stings, let me translate that question into something that I suspect every writer, every artist, every dancer, every actor, every musician—every creative person of every sort—has had to contend with at some point: “Your art/writing/whatever is good, but why aren’t you doing something more useful with your life?”

When I’m asked why I haven’t pursued a scientific career, typically, I just tell people I’m bad at math.  It’s an easy excuse.  However, if I really wanted a scientific career, if I really felt that that was my calling in life, I could learn how to do math.  Math isn’t that hard.  No, the real reason I’m a writer and an artist, rather than a scientist, is because the world needs beauty.  The world always needs beauty, and so in every generation, some number of people will be called upon by the Muse to make beautiful things.

I am one of the people the Muse has called upon (or at least I strongly believe this about myself).  I will trust others to do the math and the science and the engineering required to understand nature and explore the cosmos.  Meanwhile, I’m going to do my best to make good art and do good writing—the kind of art and writing that celebrates space and science and the future of humanity out there among the stars—because I want people to see those things as I see them.  I want people to see how beautiful it all is.

Art?  Writing?  Creative expression in general?  These things are useful.  More than that, these things are needed.  Don’t listen to anyone who questions that.

WANT TO LEARN MORE?

Today’s blog post was inspired by We Need Your Art: Stop Messing Around And Make Something, by Amie McNee.  If you’re feeling insecure about your writing (or any other form of creative expression), this book might be the pep talk you need.  Click here to see the book’s listing on Amazon.

IWSG: An Insecure Science Communicator

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 21 Comments

Hello, friends!  Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writers’ Support Group, a blog hop created by Alex J. Cavanaugh and cohosted this month by J Lenni Dorner, Victoria Marie Lees, and Sandra Cox.  Are you a writer?  Do you feel insecure?  Well, then this is the support group for you!  Click here to learn more and to see a list of participating blogs.

Each month, IWSG asks members a question.  The question is optional.  I usually skip it, but this month’s question stirred up some deep feelings and some deep insecurities, so I thought I’d better address that.  The question is:

Many writers have written about the experience of rereading their work years later.  Have you reread any of your early works?  What was that experience like for you?

I’ve mentioned before in these IWSG posts that I feel insecure about my role as a science communicator, given that I don’t have any formal scientific training or experience.  So it’s a little jarring, when I’m looking for information about a specific space/science topic, to see my own blog posts pop up in search results.  I sometimes forget, when I’m looking for information about a specific topic, that I’ve already covered that topic before.

Reading those old blog posts of mine—those blog posts I forgot I wrote—is not fun.  They’re pretty cringy.  The art (in my judgment) is bad, the writing is worse, and the jokes aren’t funny.  However, setting aside these issues of style, the substance of my old blog posts is surprisingly decent.  The important thing is this: I came looking for information about a specific space/science topic.  Sometimes it’s a super niche topic that nobody on the Internet would think to write about (except me, apparently).  And whatever information current me is looking for, past me provided it.  Past me also did a good job citing his sources, usually, so if I want to learn more, I can learn more.

I still feel insecure about my place as a science blogger on the Internet.  My writing could be better.  My art could be better, too, and my jokes need work.  But after rereading some of my old blog posts, I can feel reassured about this: I stick to the facts and communicate information well.  I’m at least doing that part of the job right.

IWSG: Answering My Inner Critic

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 14 Comments

Hello, friends!  Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writers’ Support Group, a blog hop created by Alex J. Cavanaugh and co-hosted this month by Shannon Lawrence, Olga Godim, Jean Davis, and Jacqui Murray.  Are you a writer?  Do you feel insecure?  Well, then this is the support group for you!  Click here to learn more and to see a list of participating blogs.

Each month, IWSG asks members a question.  Answering the monthly question is not required.  It’s totally optional, which is good news for me, because there’s a different question plaguing my thoughts today.  A different question that keeps getting in the way of writing.  It’s a question that my inner critic keeps asking in snide, Smeagol-like whispers:

You’re no scientist.  You don’t work for NASA.  What gives you the right to blog about space exploration?

And I admit, my inner critic has a point.  I’m a huge fan of space exploration, and I probably do know more about space than the average person.  But still, I’m a long way away from being a true expert.  Plenty of others can speak with greater authority about space than I can.  Some of my readers know more about space than I do.

However, when my inner critic asks these sort of questions—questions like “What right do you have to blog about space?”—I think my inner critic misses the whole point of my blog.  I love space.  I’ve committed myself to learning as much as I can about space, and I believe that learning is a three step process:

  • Passive learning, which is the passive consumption of information from books, online lectures, etc.
  • Active learning, which means (among other things) reexplaining the information you’ve learned in your own words.
  • Receiving feedback, which involves people correcting your mistakes, asking interesting questions, suggesting topics for future research, etc.

From time to time, my inner critic reminds me that I’m not an astrobiologist, not a planetary scientist, not an aerospace engineer, and shames me into not writing.  But that doesn’t just shut down writing.  It shuts down my whole learning process.  If I don’t do my blogging, how will I learn?

Is that answer enough to silence my inner critic?  Actually, it is.  Inner critics are cowards.  They don’t know what to do when you talk back to them, they don’t know what to say when you stand up for yourself.  Much of what I said in today’s post is specific to my own writing and my own issues with my own inner critic.  But if your inner critic has been asking snide questions and shaming you into not writing, then I hope you’ll start talking back like I did.  It really works.

IWSG: Is Writing by Hand Better?

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 21 Comments

Hello, friends!  Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writers’ Support Group, a blog hop created by Alex J. Cavanaugh and co-hosted this month by Tara Tyler, Ronel Janse van Vuuren, Pat Garcia, Liza, and Natalie Aguirre.  Are you a writer?  Do you feel insecure?  Well, then this is the support group for you!  Click here to learn more and to see a list of participating blogs.

As you know, I love space, and I love science.  It may surprise you to learn, though, that I do not love technology.  I’ve never felt comfortable sitting in front of a computer, especially when I’m trying to do something creative.  I do all of my writing by hand, with pen and paper, then mindlessly transcribe whatever I’ve written into the computer when I’m done.  Some people call me old-school for that, or they say I’m a Luddite, or they tell me to get with the times and stop wasting paper.

But recently, I saw a popular science video on YouTube that said writing by hand increases connectivity in the brain, promotes creativity, and improves your overall neurological health.  The YouTuber in this video said all writers should do basically what I do: limit your time on the computer and do as much writing by hand as possible.  I was excited to share that video with you today.  I was excited to write a whole blog post based on that video, saying: “See?  My way of writing is better than yours!”

However, I don’t share things on the Internet without fact checking them first.  So I read the research paper that that YouTube video was referencing (the paper in the links below), and I found that it did not say what that YouTuber said it says.  What it says is that writing by hand activates different parts of the brain than typing on a keyboard or touchscreen.  It also says that the brain is more active when you’re writing by hand compared to using a keyboard or touchscreen.  But that doesn’t necessarily mean writing by hand is better.

In fact, I think the correct interpretation of that research paper is that we all should do a little of both.  According to the paper, writing by hand slows down the writing process, which promotes problem solving and “fosters deeper thought and creativity.”  So if you’re someone who writes exclusively on the computer, writing by hand might help you problem solve your way out of writer’s block.  Meanwhile, writing on a computer or tablet “may favour brainstorming and fast generation of ideas […].”

Personally, I’m going to keep doing most of my writing by hand, because that’s what I’m used to and it’s what I enjoy most.  However, as of right now, I’m at the very beginning of a brand new writing project (think Harry Potter, but on the Moon, with magical spaceships and magical extraterrestrials).  I have a lot of stuff I need to figure out for this new project.  As someone who does all his writing by hand, maybe a few brainstorming sessions on the computer would do me some good right now.

WANT TO LEARN MORE?

Here’s a link to the paper I read.  It’s titled “The Neuroscience Behind Writing: Handwriting vs. Typing—Who Wins the Battle?”  I didn’t cover everything that that paper says in this blog post, so it is worth your while to check it out.

If you’re not up for reading a neuroscience paper, here’s a popular science article that (in my judgment) covers a lot of the same material well.

As for the original YouTube video that inspired this post, I debated whether or not I should include a link, and ended up deciding not to.  That video is spreading misinformation, and I don’t want it getting any more views than it already got.

IWSG: I Promise I Won’t Spread Misinformation

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 20 Comments

Hello, friends!  Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writers’ Support Group, a blog hop created by Alex J. Cavanaugh and co-hosted this month by Jennifer Lane, Jenni Enzor, Renee Scattergood, Rebecca Douglas, Lynn Bradshaw, and Melissa Maygrove.  Are you a writer?  Do you feel insecure?  Well, then this is the support group for you!  Click here to learn more and to see a list of participating blogs.

I have a problem.  I write a blog about space (or rather, I’m supposed to be writing a blog about space).  That requires a lot of research, and I do most of my research here on the Internet.  But it turns out that people tell lies on the Internet, or if they don’t lie outright, they tell half-truths, or quarter-truths, or one-eighth of the truth, or they offer alternative truths, or they misremember things they learned were true in grade school, or they dumb down the truth so much that it no longer resembles the truth.

Misinformation is everywhere.  Misinformation about space, science, and technology?  Check, check, and check.  Early in my blogging journey, I made a promise to myself: I promised that, to the very best of my abilities, I would not make the spread of misinformation worse.  I’m only one blogger, so there’s only so much I can do, but I promised I would not make this problem worse.  Not on my blog, not if I could help it!  So before I’d share a space fact on my blog or on social media, I’d stop and fact check it, and if I came across any space news that sounded super juicy, extra awesome, and extremely clickbait-worthy… I’d fact check that even harder.

But the sea of misinformation is growing deep, and wading through it is becoming increasingly arduous.  Fake research papers are getting harder for me to spot, and sources of information that I used to trust I now find questionable.  I succumbed briefly to the temptation of A.I., until I realized how it was slowly and subtly leading me astray.  I’m at the point now where I’m scared to post anything on my blog, because I’m not sure if my fact checking is enough, and I still don’t want to break my promise.  I still do not want to contribute to the further spread of misinformation.

So what am I going to do?  Fact check everything even harder than ever, I guess.  Do less research online and try to rely, instead, on books, science magazines, and peer-reviewed journals.  If I still have doubts about the topics I write about, I can talk about those doubts, and if I find out later that I made a mistake, I can always correct that mistake—but also, I can call more attention to my own mistakes, to make sure that you, dear reader, get the updated and corrected information.

I still love space.  Despite all the headaches my research process has caused me lately, I still love space, and I still want to share my love of space with others.  I do not want to spread misinformation.  That would be unacceptable.  But to stop writing about space, to stop blogging about space all together, out of fear that I might miss something?  Out of fear that I might make a mistake?  That would be unacceptable, too.

IWSG: Where Do You Get Your Ideas?

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 15 Comments

Hello, friends!  Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writers’ Support Group, a blog hop created by Alex J. Cavanaugh and co-hosted this month by Beth Camp, Crystal Collier, and Cathrina Constantine.  Are you a writer?  Do you feel insecure?  Well, then this is the support group for you!  Click here to learn more and to see a list of participating blogs.

One of the most annoying questions you can ask a writer is “Where do your ideas come from?”  Ideas just happen, and most of them aren’t any good.  However, day after day, week after week, year after year, the average writer has so many ideas that it becomes a statistical impossibility for all of those ideas to be bad.  But if somebody insists on asking me this question—if they insist on asking “Where do you get your ideas?”—I have an easy answer, cocked and loaded.  I write science fiction.  I get my ideas from science.

Does that seem self-evident?  That should seem self-evident.  The tradition of Sci-Fi writers getting story ideas from science dates back to Mary Shelley, the woman widely regarded as the very first science fiction author.  In 1780, Italian biologist Luigi Galvani discovered that applying an electric current to a severed frog leg would cause that leg to twitch.  It was almost as if electricity could imbue life into non-living organic matter.  When Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, she’d heard about Galvani’s work.  She may not have known all the details, but she knew enough to jolt her creative brain into action.

Just recently, I learned that you can save computer files to birds.  Step one: convert computer data into music.  Step two: have a bird listen to the music until the bird memorizes the data-encoded music.  You can now retrieve your data from the resulting birdsong.  Does this give me a story idea?  Of course!  Is it a good idea?  Eh… we’ll see.  I also recently learned that Earth once had Saturn-like rings, that mosquitos can smell which viruses are in your blood, and that woolly mammoths still existed when the Pyramids of Giza were built.  Oh, and then there’s the latest news from Mars.  That’s obviously giving me ideas, too.

Having ideas is the easy part of writing.  That’s why we writers get annoyed by the “Where do you get your ideas?” question.  It’s like asking if we know how to chew our own food or tie our own shoes.  Me?  I get most of my ideas from reading and learning about science.  Are they good ideas?  No, they usually aren’t, but the more science facts I’m exposed to day after day, week after week, year after year,  the more Sci-Fi ideas I’m going to have.  Eventually, one of those ideas will be good.  It’s a statistical inevitability.

WANT TO LEARN MORE?

I threw a bunch of science facts at you today.  If any of those science facts gave you a story idea, check out the links below to learn more.