The Diaries of an Aspiring Sci-Fi Writer: 2

Greetings my brethren,

Forgive my extended absence. The final months of 2025 were busy as I continued to incorporate the improvements suggested by the Gatekeeper at Temple Dark Books into my manuscript. As I have done so, I have again been repeatedly struck at the importance of having one’s work reviewed by an impartial and knowledgeable outsider. The cold slab of external scrutiny (and dare I say, criticism) is daunting.  We as writers inject so much of ourselves into our work that it can be hard not to take even the most valid criticism personally. And yet it is the literacy equivalent of a health check. The reviewer, who knows nothing of the hours, days and years expended on thought, doubt and frustration, asks only if the story is compelling. This is as it should be, for our primary role as writers of science fiction and fantasy is to distract and entertain. We must respect our reader and make our narrative easy to follow. Achieving this can be difficult and often requires multiple drafts. Someone once said that writing is rewriting, and this has certainly proved true in my case.

One of my mistakes has been to focus entirely on the narrative, without giving the technical aspects of writing the time and attention they demand. This maintenance has become an exercise of introspection. The demarcation between the common noun and proper noun is not the reason I started to write science fiction. A poet, speech writer or artist may experiment with words and colour, allowing cadence and flow to mesmerise and enchant. We as science fiction and fantasy writers are not given such latitude, and must adhere to discipline and structure. Once this is understood and accepted, the fun can start.

And it’s important to have fun. Another mistake I made in my early years was to agonise over facets that I had no understanding of. Take stellar travel for instance. We are all familiar with the notion of warp or light speed. As a child I adored the notion of humanity traversing the universe at velocities several times the speed of light in brave vessels such as the Enterprise or Millennium Falcon. When you realise that those speeds will scarcely get you out of your back yard, the enthusiasm wanes. Consider, our solar system is approximately 26,000 light years from the centre of our galaxy. Assuming we somehow managed to achieve light speed technology, it would take us 26,000 years to get there. Even by my glacial standards of productivity, that’s slow. And that is only to get us to the centre of the Milky Way. Its estimated that there are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe, so being able to move at light speed simply will not do, Mr Kirk.

The solution? Buggered if I know. But then I’m not a genius. I’m a balding middle aged oaf who has seen too many episodes of Star Trek. Once I accepted this, I stopped agonising and just got on with the story.

And perhaps that’s the whole point. The play is the thing, as someone smarter than me once put it. Human beings, regardless of culture, creed or values, adore stories, and we as writers have nominated ourselves to tell them. So that is what I will continue to do. From a progress perspective, I feel I have taken my first manuscript as far as it can go and have made a start on my second novel. Hopefully the lessons I have learned thus far will help me complete this second book a little more quickly than the first, but come what may, the story will go on, as will the diaries of an aspiring sci-fi author.

Until next time, my brethren, thank you so much for reading "The Diaries of an Aspiring Sci-Fi Writer". Keep the stories alive. Pierce Hederman, February 2026.

Post Script:

I wrote my last blog while visiting the beautiful city of Copenhagen. I have since continued my travels and recently spent a few days in magnificent Budapest. If you have not been, I urge you to go. The city is a monument to the human spirit and is brimming with history, feeling and stories. As I gazed at the superlative structures of stone and steel, it occurred to me that those buildings must have, at the time of their construction, seemed an impossible task. And yet it happened. Perhaps their builders had looked upon the mighty Danube as we now look to our Milky Way. If Budapest could be constructed from mere hammers, tackle and toil, perhaps we will someday unravel the secrets of our galaxy. It would make one heck of a story.

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