I've been 
for a long time now in the fiction world. Honestly, it's just starting to get a little old. My stuff is good. I know I'm a capable writer. But getting a foot in the door seems to be based about 95% on luck. And that is after you've written a good manuscript. Did the agent you happened to query eat a bad apple just as they were opening your email and run off to the bathroom to puke? And ever after that last idea they read was anathema? Did they just go on vacation and your email query will be one of three thousand they return to? That kind of crap.
It has been said that getting published in the non-fiction world is more... I'll say, reliable. Not necessarily easier, but perhaps more repeatable. Now this isn't necessarily a bad thing. I like to both read and to write non-fiction. But I don't know if I have the credentials to get a proposal pushed through. I don't do self-help, or Chicken Soup for Dummy's, or anything like that. I don't write cookbooks. What I am is an aerospace engineer with a Masters degree and 17 years in industry as a rocket scientist. I love education and teaching. And I have a prodigious knowledge of history - particularly 20th century military history. Build furniture - when I have time. Play soccer. In addition, I'm an armchair philosopher, constantly wrestling with the seeming inconsistencies of religion and the absolute inconsistencies of reality.
But am I really qualified to write about any of this stuff? I have ideas, but can I reasonably expect an agent or editor to look at my proposal seriously if I don't have a Ph.D. next to my name? Here are a few of the ideas I've been batting around for a couple of years while I've been writing fiction and apparently wasting my time.
-MM
for a long time now in the fiction world. Honestly, it's just starting to get a little old. My stuff is good. I know I'm a capable writer. But getting a foot in the door seems to be based about 95% on luck. And that is after you've written a good manuscript. Did the agent you happened to query eat a bad apple just as they were opening your email and run off to the bathroom to puke? And ever after that last idea they read was anathema? Did they just go on vacation and your email query will be one of three thousand they return to? That kind of crap.It has been said that getting published in the non-fiction world is more... I'll say, reliable. Not necessarily easier, but perhaps more repeatable. Now this isn't necessarily a bad thing. I like to both read and to write non-fiction. But I don't know if I have the credentials to get a proposal pushed through. I don't do self-help, or Chicken Soup for Dummy's, or anything like that. I don't write cookbooks. What I am is an aerospace engineer with a Masters degree and 17 years in industry as a rocket scientist. I love education and teaching. And I have a prodigious knowledge of history - particularly 20th century military history. Build furniture - when I have time. Play soccer. In addition, I'm an armchair philosopher, constantly wrestling with the seeming inconsistencies of religion and the absolute inconsistencies of reality.
But am I really qualified to write about any of this stuff? I have ideas, but can I reasonably expect an agent or editor to look at my proposal seriously if I don't have a Ph.D. next to my name? Here are a few of the ideas I've been batting around for a couple of years while I've been writing fiction and apparently wasting my time.
- A YA book using rocket science and video games to teach/discuss science and math.
- A historical treatise focusing on why we love World War II so much.
- A philosophical work on the 20th Century murder of God by Christians, from a Christian perspective.
-MM
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