Saturday, Apr. 16, 2011

Key to writing: don't stop

North Raleigh writer Mark Van Name has some advice for budding writers but they may not like it: "If you can possibly not write, don't. Just stop," he says. "The world doesn't need any more writers. There are plenty of writers out there."

Van Name had struggled to become a writer since he was in high school and sold his first piece of work, a UFO newsletter. Through the years, as he entered the world of computer science and ran various tech-related companies, he continued to write fiction. Every so often, he would quit, but he would always return to the written word. In 2005, when he turned 50, he had enough.

"I said, 'You know what? I don't need to torture myself anymore,'" he recalled.

But that night he couldn't sleep. Weeks later he picked up the craft again, forever.

On June 1, 2005, he started writing daily and has ever since, with the exception of a few days when he was recuperating from an injured back. He isn't always prodigious, but he always gets something accomplished.

"I've had days with 14 words, and I've had days with 5,000 words," he says.

Those words have added up to his four main published works available now through Baen Books. They are the Jon and Lobo series of novels, which he describes as: "The only nanotechnology enhanced human and the smartest machine in the universe slowly finding their destiny."

The latest book in the series, "Children No More," features the protagonists as they travel to an alien planet where they must rescue children forced to become soldiers. The proceeds of the book go to the charity Falling Whistles, a non-profit that rehabilitates children affected by war in the Congo.

The cause is one that strikes close for Van Name.

As a kid in Florida, he was physically and mentally abused as a member of Young Marines. That gave him something in common with Pittsboro-based sci-fi writer and Vietnam veteran David Drake. Drake met Van Name in the 1980s and the two hit it off.

"We've been places where we don't want to go again," Drake says. "And we don't have a lot of people locally to share that with."

A well-known name

Drake calls Van Name a natural leader and facilitator in North Carolina's sci-fi community.

"Not the flashy sort who got the profile, but the one who actually made it possible for things to happen," he says.

That was evident when Van Name helped create the Sycamore Hill Writer's Workshop in the '80s along with N.C. State University English Professor and science fiction writer John Kessel. It began in Van Name's North Raleigh house and took off from there.

Kessel said in an e-mail that it became a "nationwide focus for a lot of writers of our generation." It still continues in some form today, according to Van Name, though he is no longer involved with it.

Today, Van Name's novels give him increasing national attention from science fiction writers and publishers, Kessel said. While Van Name is enjoying that popularity, he still runs Principled Technologies, a consulting company he co-founded.

Walking into Van Name's house, his dual passions - technology and writing - are obvious. The walls are filled with books. And home-entertainment equipment is a prominent sight in some rooms.

In Van Name's upstairs office, his chair sits at the center of a desk that holds multiple computers. If one pauses, he can move to another and continue working. He's impatient, he says.

When he decided to start writing every day, Van Name knew he needed to set goals for himself. He decided not to aim for a certain number of words but rather a certain amount of time: 30 minutes. That's the minimum, though sometimes he blows past it. For writers who don't want to heed Van Name's initial advice to quit, a 30-minute schedule could be helpful, he said, though the time isn't as important as the discipline.

"If you just really have to write, and I believe I have to write," he says, "then my advice is: do it every day."

Alex Granados writes about people, places and traditions in North Raleigh and beyond.