Biggles Wrote:I only write non-fiction (although opposing counsel might argue otherwise).
Hey, at-sa good one, boss! This might give you a laff, Biggles. When I lived in Brockport, I studied fiction writing with sf author Nancy Kress. We got tight because I was the only sf hombre in the class. Somehow, she'd never learned how to type, and hired souls to put her stories in shape to submit to ASIMOV'S. I typed one for her, "Against a Crooked Stile." The
day it =had= to be mailed, she came over to my degenerate digs at 8AM. "Michael--is it ready? I =have= to mail it today!" "No fear, Nancy, it's ready to go...but I, uh, had to make a change..." Her eyes narrowed. "Oh?" "Yeah, see, you used the English system and the metric system in the same sentence. So I put the guy's height into centimeters instead of feet and inches, to make it consistant." "I don't know how I did that, but thank you, Michael!" "No problemo, Nancy, but since I contributed to the story in such a big way, how about we put it out as "by Nancy Kress and Mike Lindner?" Nancy has such a merry laugh. "It doesn't work that way, Michael!" Ah, well...I've got my memories of helping the Hugo and Nebula winner get her act together... (Later on, I took a writing class with Nancy and Gene Wolfe. That is another, grimmer, story.)