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The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience

How Hugo Award Winning Sci-Fi Author John Scalzi Writes: Part One

38 min • 11 april 2017

The Hugo winner and multiple New York Times bestselling science fiction author, John Scalzi, took a break from his whirlwind new book tour to chat with me about The Collapsing Empire, the timely importance of great storytelling, and what makes a writer truly great.

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Start getting more from your site today!His wildly popular debut novel, Old Man’s War, began as a serialized blog before attracting attention from an agent. Its 2006 publication earned him a Hugo nomination and multiple awards.

Since then he’s written dozens of novels including New York Times bestsellers The Last Colony, Fuzzy Nation, Redshirts (2013’s Hugo winner for Best Novel), and Lock In. His work has been translated into over 20 languages and multiple projects have been optioned for film and TV.

It’s no surprise that the prolific author has been a professional writer since the early ’90s. In addition to his award-winning blog, “Whatever,” John has written: freelance journalism, novellas, short stories, a wide-range of non-fiction, video games, been a Creative Consultant for a hit TV series, and remains a Critic at Large for the LA Times.

In 2015 the author signed a multi-million dollar deal with Tor Books for 13 titles over 10 years, and the first of those is The Collapsing Empire, a bestselling interstellar space opera that’s been described as “Game of Thrones meets Dune.”

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In Part One of this file John Scalzi and I discuss:

  • How publishing is like giving birth
  • The secret behind most overnight successes
  • How a prolific sci-fi writer researches ideas
  • On beating laziness, and the author’s daily ritual
  • The writer’s greatest challenge


The Show Notes:

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