Career Options
Robert J. Sawyer: Creating imaginary worldsCreating imaginary worlds is a dream job for Canada's most award-winning science fiction author. ROSS FATTORI |
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 [ 2002-09-11 ] |
Award-winning science fictin writer Robert J. Sawyer
On a good day, Robert J. Sawyer finishes his work by noon and spends the rest of the day puttering around, going for walks and reading. Some days it takes him up to 14 hours to produce his daily quota of 2,000 words, but he doesn't complain.
That's because for Sawyer, 42, there is no such thing as a bad day of writing. "Each day I wake up excited about my job," Sawyer says. "Writing is a dream job, and I adore the work I'm doing."
Robert J. Sawyer is Canada's most award-winning science fiction author who has fans worldwide. His novels are translated into several languages and they are taught in universities. Since 1990, Sawyer has earned 25 major literary awards in the United States, Japan, France, Spain and Canada for science fiction writing, including the prestigious Nebula Award for his novel, The Terminal Experiment.
"Winning the Nebula was particularly gratifying for me because the award is voted on by my peers, who are members of the science and fantasy writers of America," Sawyer says. "It also changed my career overnight. My advances suddenly doubled and it generated many lucrative foreign contracts."
Sawyer says that writing fiction full time is the ideal job, but it wasn't his first career choice. While growing up in Ottawa, he dreamed of becoming a paleontologist and hoped for an academic career (both of his parents were university professors). He thought he would write science fiction as a
When he finished high school, Sawyer realized that only three people in Canada made their living as paleontologists, and that they weren't ready to retire or leave the profession just because Sawyer showed up on the scene. By contrast, there were hundreds of people around the world making a living writing science fiction.
He chose science fiction writing as the more practical of the two career options.
After graduating from Ryerson in 1982 with a degree in Radio and Television Arts, Sawyer wrote a series of radio documentaries about science fiction for the CBC's Ideas series. A year later, he became a full-time freelance writer, contributing articles on business and technology to Canadian and American publications.
Although freelance writing paid well, the work didn't challenge him creatively. By 1985, Sawyer realized that if he was ever going to make it as a science fiction writer, he had to commit himself exclusively to that goal.
With $100,000 in savings, and with the support of his wife, Carolyn Clink, Sawyer gave up his lucrative freelance career to try his hand at writing fiction full time.
His first major breakthrough came when Amazing Stories, the world's oldest science fiction magazine, purchased a novellete from him called Golden Fleece, which was later expanded into a novel of the same name. Golden Fleece (the novel) was published in 1990, which won the Aurora Award, Canada's top SF prize. From that point on, Sawyer's writing career took off and he has been writing novels full time ever since.
To date, Sawyer has sold 15 novels, including Calculating God, Frameshift, and Factoring Humanity. He is currently at work on a trilogy called The Neanderthal Parallax for Tor Books (the first in the series, Hominids, was published in May, 2002).
Making a living as a full-time fiction writer has its perks. "I get to travel for free all over the world and visit interesting places," Sawyer says. "Another great perk is the access I have to behind-the-scenes places. I was recently given a private tour of the Robotics labs at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, one of the leading robotics facilities in the world."
Are there any drawbacks to being a full-time fiction writer? "As a solo performer, you never know how your work will be perceived by others," Sawyer says. "Negative reviews can be hard to take. The other drawback about the job is cash flow. It's very irregular."
For aspiring authors, Sawyer has this advice: "Get a degree in a field where you'll gain an expertise," he says. "You'll bring a certain mindset to the subject. Write really well, and write the kinds of stories that you want to read."
(Ross Fattori is a Toronto based freelance writer who can be reached at rosswords@rogers.com.)
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