My goal is to be a pulp writer, that's just how it is. I will not be satisfied until I am writing continuously at least eight hours a day, five days a week. But what does it mean to be a pulp writer, eh?
It just means you write a lot, and that you write professionally. Presumably you have some sort of university education, but you almost certainly don't have a MFA. I can't afford that, and don't like to sit in a classroom in any case, but I could afford proven workshops from other more advanced pulp writers. The main point is that you just write, then you get paid, then you write. The cycle of pulp is never complete, which is good, because the Internet demands a sacrifice and is willing to pay for it.
Here's when I feel the most like a pulp writer: I have an image flash, I open up q10 and just type until the story is over. As of this writing, the longest complete story I've writ all at one sitting has been a 12,500 word Hard SF "novelette" called Mike and the Beanstalk. It's part of the Moon Base cycle I'm working on, and the way I did it was I crammed a load of research into my brain over the course of two hours of speed-reading, then spilled it all over the page while I was telling the interwoven story of the characters. It just happened, and that's the point.
Once I can do that regularly, I'll buy the pulp writer hat and wear it constantly, even at parties. The hat I have now is a professional foreigner hat and not near so classy. If you can even imagine that.
It just means you write a lot, and that you write professionally. Presumably you have some sort of university education, but you almost certainly don't have a MFA. I can't afford that, and don't like to sit in a classroom in any case, but I could afford proven workshops from other more advanced pulp writers. The main point is that you just write, then you get paid, then you write. The cycle of pulp is never complete, which is good, because the Internet demands a sacrifice and is willing to pay for it.
Here's when I feel the most like a pulp writer: I have an image flash, I open up q10 and just type until the story is over. As of this writing, the longest complete story I've writ all at one sitting has been a 12,500 word Hard SF "novelette" called Mike and the Beanstalk. It's part of the Moon Base cycle I'm working on, and the way I did it was I crammed a load of research into my brain over the course of two hours of speed-reading, then spilled it all over the page while I was telling the interwoven story of the characters. It just happened, and that's the point.
Once I can do that regularly, I'll buy the pulp writer hat and wear it constantly, even at parties. The hat I have now is a professional foreigner hat and not near so classy. If you can even imagine that.
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It's not real, none of it is. It's just a passing fancy of a scale model enthusiast who plays with us as figures in his train set. We aren't even the most important parts of the train set, we're just background noise so that the train has a populated town to stop at in its endless pointless circles. Nobody even notices us. They just notice the tunnel.
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250 words? Yes
Book "Lived Too Long to Die"
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Reading - ?
*130
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