Q&A with Mary Robinette Kowal discussion

I'm also the Vice President of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. If you are a member or thinking about joining, feel free to ask me questions about the organization.

What's the process for approving a particular market as a qualifying market for membership? Also, are there any membership levels for those who have sold books to small presses not on that list?

Mary: Are you more an "outline" writer or a "freewriter" sort of person? How are your outlines structured, if you do outline you stories and novels?

Mary: Another "craft" question. Is it more diffucult expanding ideas to fit a longer work when you move from writing short stories to novels? What do you do when a plot gets "stuck"?

Bryan wrote: "What's the process for approving a particular market as a qualifying market for membership? Also, are there any membership levels for those who have sold books to small presses not on that list?"

A new market can be brought to SFWA's attention by either an author or someone at the market. There's a full description on the SFWA website, but basically, the applicant fills out a form which says that the market meets SFWA's minimum criteria for payment, circulation and consistency. That application gets submitted to the membership committee, which is often made up of the board of directors.

Sometimes a market will require some investigation, other times the application is clear enough that it will be able to go straight to a vote. The process can take anywhere from a week to a year depending on how difficult it is to get the information we need to approve the market.

The SFWA qualifying market list was originally created as a tool to help facilitate the processing of member applications. Since many new writers also use it as a list for determining which markets to submit to, SFWA has an obligation to make sure that only those markets which follow best industry practices in treatment of authors are on the list.

Michael wrote: "Mary: Are you more an "outline" writer or a "freewriter" sort of person? How are your outlines structured, if you do outline you stories and novels?"

Honestly, both. I tend to be an outliner because I find that I'm more likely to write a coherent story in the first go than not, but there are times when I'll seat-of-the-pants it for a short story. Usually though, even there I have a loose idea of where I'm going.

Michael wrote: "Mary: Another "craft" question. Is it more diffucult expanding ideas to fit a longer work when you move from writing short stories to novels? What do you do when a plot gets "stuck"?"

Hm... tell you what. I've opened up a topic on general writing questions. Would you mind asking again over there?

http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/3...