Just Keep Going
Here’s a reprint of what I wrote in October 2011. Maybe just in the nick of time. 🙂
I’ve written previously about how times have been interesting for me. A great many things have happened quickly that I didn’t expect so soon, or at all.
However, as great as all that is, I can feel my body wearing down slowly due to dystonia. I wonder if I can keep writing books and blogging. I do these things, not only in order to make a living, but because I love doing them.
I try to pace myself and not take on too much. However, making a living at writing requires a level of productivity and sales that I may or may not be able to sustain over the long haul.
In business, as in life, there are no guarantees of success. The thing is, I won’t know if I can succeed unless I try. So I keep going. Nonetheless, I wonder, how long can I do this?
I recently came upon a chilling example of a writer who served as a reminder of how fortunes can go horribly awry. While posting a quotation by Joan Vinge (an unfamiliar name to me, at the time) on one of my blogs, I Googled her name and found this site. [Blogger’s note: This site has completely changed since I first published this. But it makes really interesting reading, from the perspective of an Internet historian.] Then, I clicked on the November 2008 letter to her readers. What I read there made my blood run freaking cold. It all looked a bit too familiar.
At this point, Vinge had made an indelible impression on me. I decided to look up her work on Amazon to see if she’s done anything recently. I was stunned to see that it was Vinge who wrote the book Cowboys & Aliens. I thought, Oh, my God! She’s still working. Awesome!
So then I looked up her Amazon bio. Here’s what I found out about Vinge (and I quote):
Joan D. Vinge (born 2 April 1948 in Baltimore, Maryland as Joan Carol Dennison) is an American science fiction author. She is known for such works as her Hugo Award-winning novel The Snow Queen and its sequels, her series about the telepath named Cat, and her Heaven’s Chronicles books.
Vinge studied art in college, but eventually changed to a major in anthropology, and received a B.A. degree from San Diego State University in 1971.
Vinge has been married twice: first to fellow SF author Vernor Vinge, and then to SF editor James Frenkel. Vinge and Frenkel have two children, and live in Madison, Wisconsin. She has taught at the Clarion Workshop several times, both East and West. Besides writing, Vinge also makes and sells dolls.
Robert A. Heinlein in part dedicated his 1982 novel Friday to Joan.
On March 2, 2002, Vinge was severely injured in a car accident that left her with “minor but debilitating” brain damage that, along with her fibromyalgia, left her unable to write. She recovered to the point of being able to resume writing around the beginning of 2007, and her first new book post-accident is the 2011 novelization of the movie Cowboys & Aliens.
Vinge’s first published story, “Tin Soldier”, a novelette, appeared in Orbit 14 in 1974. Stories have also appeared in Analog, Millennial Women , Asimov’s Science Fiction, Omni Magazine, and several “Best of the Year” anthologies.
Several of her stories have won major awards: Her novel The Snow Queen won the 1981 Hugo Award for Best science fiction Novel. “Eyes of Amber” won the 1977 Hugo Award for Best Novelette. She has also been nominated for several other Hugo and Nebula Awards, as well as for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Her novel Psion was named a Best Book for Young Adults by the American Library Association.
In March 2007, a new edition of her novel Psion was released, which includes a sequel novella, Psiren, together in one volume.
At the time of her accident in 2002, Vinge had been working on a new, independent novel called Ladysmith, set in Bronze Age Europe; she resumed writing Ladysmith once she was able to begin writing again in 2007.
Is this lady a rock or what?
Originally published at http://randomandsundrythings.wordpress.com on March 4, 2022.
