Meet Lois McMaster Bujold
Science Fiction Writer
Challenges

Karen:What's the biggest challenge you've faced so far?

Lois:Oh gosh. I suppose not giving myself away to the point that there's nothing left. [Our world] has a socialization for women, as you know, which is necessary and desirable if our culture and society and civilization is to continue: you take care of everybody else first and yourself last.

And that's not what being a writer is all about. Being a writer is very self-centered. You're sort of listening to yourself think and believing that what you have to say is important enough to take somebody else's time and your own. It's being convinced enough, I guess, that I had something to say and following through on it. That was probably the biggest challenge.

And it came fairly naturally to me. But I can see that in my 20's it got eaten up somewhere. Yes, that [self-sacrificing] behavior is necessary and desirable but you have to strike some kind of a balance that values yourself as well.

Karen:Have you ever run into prejudice against women?

Lois:I've never had problems as a woman science fiction writer ever. They talk about the field being male dominated in the past, and yes it was, but I didn't notice. So, I've always felt that it was a fairly level playing field. My works go out on their own legs. Nothing about my personal life or physical appearance or race or gender or income-level has anything to do with the manuscript as it arrives in New York. There's a total separation between me and the work; the work is judged on its own merits.

This is why I don't include a large biography (with my books). If people read that, they'd have expectations -- some vision of what I am. That has some interesting side effects because people make up their idea of what the author is based on the books. The ideas they make up about me are very interesting. Sometimes I'll catch somebody who's just met me and they'll say, you're not what I expected.

One particular reader thought I was a guy. The name didn't ring a bell or something. I caught him real quick and asked okay, what did you picture? It was very revealing.

Karen:I've heard you mention that being a woman has brought a lot to your writing. Can you tell us a little more about that?

Lois: As a woman I've had all the usual trials and tribulations of a woman's life: getting married, having children, thinking that my husband's career or work development was more important than my own. It took me a while to realize that the standard program for a woman's life was wrong in some ways. But there are many, many wonderful rewards for following the women's path. I am a much better person and a better writer having had my children than I would be otherwise. I would have missed a whole aspect of the human experience that's tremendously fundamental to things like characterization.

A lot of writers write as if the hero sort of popped out of the box at age 22 fully formed. And one thing that raising children does is give you some sense of how human beings really are put together. So when you go to put together a character you can have a more realistic sense of where people really come from, why they really behave the way they do and what a tremendous amount of life and complexity lies behind every human being.

But I think you can get that from being a father too. I think it's something you can do by growing up and being observant even if you don't have children.

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