Robert Silverberg’s Reflections: April 2013
‘Where Silverberg goes today, the rest of science fiction will follow tomorrow’
Reflections is a regular column by multi-award-winning SFWA Grandmaster Robert Silverberg, in which he will offer his thoughts on science fiction, literature and the world at large.
This month: My Desk . . .
Writers are always being asked the same questions about their working habits. Where do you get your ideas? Do you work every day? What hours do you work? What sort of research do you do for your stories? Do you use a computer? What kind? How many drafts do you usually do? Do you show anyone your work before you send it to your publisher? And so on and so on, very little variation over the years. (Except that nobody would have asked you about your computer before the 1980s: typewriter vs. longhand would have been the more usual query.) Most writers, after the third or fourth interview, have the prefabricated answers ready even before the questions are asked.
The one question that I’ve never been asked is about the most basic part of the whole enterprise: the desk at which I write . . .
You can read the rest of the column here, and find Robert Silverberg’s eBooks here. Please note: each column will remain on the site for one month only.
