Meet Lois McMaster Bujold
Science Fiction Writer
My Toolbox

Karen: What kind of tools do you have in your toolbox as a writer?

Lois: My perception of them has changed over the years. Certainly, a visual imagination, you know. I see things in my head. I run that television program in the back of my brain. I had a very boring job working on a pharmaceutical packaging line for a while and I could sit there all day and make up scenarios. Or I would think up the story while I was driving back and forth to work. So, there's that.

One sucks in an enormous amount of story in our culture. Our culture is amazingly story saturated compared to any that has gone before. This was less so when I was a kid I think. But, certainly, everything you've read, everything you've seen, movies, television, books, history, the non-fiction, other kinds of books that you read and model on. All that goes into the bag.

Relatives, family experiences, everybody seems to be writing something out of their family experiences when you trace down their characters and relationships. I can see where my relatives turn up in my books in very oblique and obscure ways. Sometimes less oblique and less obscure.

Karen: Are you a journal keeper -- somebody who keeps a book with them and checks out ideas?

Lois: Not at all. Life kind of goes into my brain, and I've always assumed it will stay in and be there when I need it. Although now that I'm pushing 50, I think my short term memory is starting to go, which is why my most recent book is titled "Memory". (That's a joke. Sort of.) I don't take information and experience into my mind in that organized a fashion, but when I want to bring it out, somehow it's there. You write what you know because-- like there's another choice? The trick is to try and know as much as possible.

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