Meet Lois McMaster Bujold
Science Fiction Writer
Becoming a Writer

Karen: Let's talk about your first sale as a writer -- how did you make that jump?

Lois: With difficulty but with help. I had at least two friends, mentors, also women, my friend Lillian Carl who had been writing. Matter of fact, she's why I started writing again after that long hiatus where I had quit and gotten married and started my family and sort of forgot I was going to be a writer.

Lillian had had her two children. There was something about finishing having children that was very liberating. It's like there's this big block out of the center of your life that you're sort of unconsciously saving energy for. And when that's behind you the possibilities open up in interesting ways. But Lillian began to write fan fiction again, sort of like what we had done back in high school. Then this transmuted into something with a more professional aim. Gradually she became more original. And she began to make her first short story sales.

I was at this time beached in Marion, Ohio, with two small children and no job. It occurred to me that we used to write together. I could do this too. So, I began writing again and I did a short story which was sort of for practice. It never sold until recently. Last Spring it appeared in the "Dreamweaver's Dilemma" anthology. Then I started on a novel that eventually became "Shards of Honor."

Karen: So, having friends and mentors helped inspire you to make that first sale.

Lois: Yes. My other mentor, who also continues to be one of my best friends, is Patricia C. Wrede. She is a writer from Minneapolis who Lillian met at the 1982 Worldcon [World Science Fiction Convention]. Lillian struck up a friendship and a correspondence with Patricia. So, when I had finished that first experimental short story back in 1982, I sent it off to Lillian for critique by mail and she sent it on to Pat who wrote me back a 14 page letter of critique on this thing.

Pat turns out to be a natural mentor and a great talker. And she has the marvelous ability of being as interested in your work as you are which is really unusual for a writer. So, she gave me this tremendous boost of encouragement. Pat and Lillian and I ended up in a sort of round-robin writer's workshop by mail. Pat had sold her first novel and was working on her second. Lillian was on the verge of making her first novel sale and had sold some short stories.

I hadn't sold anything so I was kind of the junior member of this thing. Pat and Lillian both had an agent by this time. As we each would finish chapters we would send copies off to the other two and eventually get back letters of critique in the mail. We sort of bootstrapped ourselves along through our respective novels.

Pat and Lillian were a great help. As I finished "Shards of Honor" in the summer of 1983, Lillian sent me an airplane ticket to come down to Dallas. We visited for a week and sort of massaged and worked on the final edit of the thing. I went home in August and was able to sit down and do, well it wasn't the final form but the first submission draft. I had no word processor at that time. So it all had to be typed with carbons in my kitchen, on my kitchen table with my little old college report typewriter. I remember it was 103 degrees that August. No air conditioning! But I got through.

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