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CHILDREN'S AUTHORS INTERVIEWS

We are excited to announce our first interview with a children's author. We are working hard to bring you more interviews in the future. Please bookmark our site and visit again soon!

Interview with Marianne Dyson

Marianne Dyson is an award winning children's author and a former Flight Activities Officer at NASA. Marianne who is also known as the "space lady" won the Golden Kite Award for her book Space Station Science. You can visit her website at www.mariannedyson.com.

1. What was your job at NASA?

I was a Flight Activities Officer in Mission Control during the early Space Shuttle program. The FAO is responsible for scheduling the astronauts’ daily activities and providing procedures to carry them out. To make sure that activities are properly scheduled, an FAO must understand the operation of all space shuttle systems, crew health and safety constraints, mission goals and priorities, orbital trajectory, and payload requirements. Between flights, I participated in training exercises, developed timelines and procedures for the next flight, and also wrote procedures for what to do if the flight was cut short, extended, or a major shuttle system failed.

2. What was your most exciting experience while working at NASA?

I consider myself extremely lucky to have participated in the planning and monitoring of the first five space shuttle flights. Each flight had its harrowing moments. The first flight was an historic event full of anticipation and anxiety that thankfully was a tremendous success. (My experience is summarized on my website at http://www.mariannedyson.com/writespace2001.htm.) The second flight experienced a major failure during ascent. The flight was cut to two days as a result, and we had our hands full shuffling every activity on the timeline and preparing new procedures for entry. The third flight could not land on time because of bad weather, and had to be extended several days. The fourth flight was classified, and all I can say is that it was a unique experience to work with the military to solve issues that developed during that flight.

Perhaps the most exciting mission for me personally was the fifth one. During one of my shifts, there was a fire in Mission Control that shut down everything except emergency lights. We were locked in and not allowed to leave our consoles for security reasons. Not only were we in danger (there were no exits from the building that did not go through the fire on the first floor), but if power were not restored within a few hours, the shuttle would have had to do an emergency landing in a foreign country. It was a little TOO exciting, especially considering that the week before, I had discovered that I was expecting my first child. Thankfully, this story had a happy ending! Power was restored in the nick of time, the shuttle continued its flight, and by the time the shift ended, the smoke had cleared away.

3. Why did you decide to write for children?

I know firsthand that an interest in a future space career motivates children to read and work harder in their math and science classes. By writing science and science fiction stories and books, I hope to encourage more children to stay in school and explore future careers in space and astronomy.

4. What is the hardest thing about writing?

The hardest part of being a writer is living with the financial uncertainty. Because I am a slow writer and only finish about one book every other year, even a successful book does not provide much income. It is difficult to market myself and attract enough school visits and freelance consulting to fill the income gap between books. If my husband did not have a steady job, I could not be a full-time writer!

The hardest thing about the writing itself is staying focused on composition instead of research. While writing nonfiction, I often interrupt my work to check a fact or something in a diagram and end up reading whole chapters of several reference books and sometimes working equations to prove the result. When writing science fiction, I look up definitions and descriptions of new space discoveries and end up reading journal articles and ordering books. I often spend hours writing emails and calling experts to ask questions and arrange interviews to get the depth of knowledge I crave on these subjects so that my stories will be scientifically plausible. I cannot count the number of hours I’ve spent reading and talking to people when I should be writing!

5. What is your favorite part of writing?

I am the happiest when I finish a book or story and know that it is as good as I can make it. This usually happens after I’ve rewritten it twenty times, decided it is the worst thing anyone has every written, put it away for weeks or months, gotten it out again for another ten rewrites, had another writer (one of my critique buddies) tell me it is actually quite good, fixed a few small things, and realized that if I don’t send something out soon, I may as well give up writing and get a job!

6. Where do you get your ideas?

From reading! I read books, magazines, the newspaper, and online stories and articles. I also get a few ideas from attending conferences and community events and the occasional dream. The ideas usually grow into stories when I ask a question that has an incomplete or surprising answer.

7. What are you working on now?

I always have a patchwork of near-term assignments, consulting work to pay the bills, volunteer activities to promote space and writing, and long-term book projects. In the assignments category, I’m doing an article for a space journal that’s due in a few weeks. In the consulting category, I am doing the writing, layout, and design for the Rotary National Award for Space Achievement souvenir program book, maintaining their website (www.rnasa.org), running the website for the Houston chapter of SCBWI (www.scbwi-houston.org), and working as the science advisor for a series for Enslow publishing. In the promotional category, I’m doing a book signing at a conference in February, reviewing books for my website (www.mdyson.com), chairing the National Space Society’s (NSS) space books committee (www.nss.org/resources/books), and serving on the NSS policy committee. As for book projects, I just finished the final markups to Space and Astronomy: Decade by Decade that will be out from Facts on File in May, and am rewriting a science fiction book that I hope will make me the next J.K. Rowling (hey, why not dream big?!).

8. How do you approach writing? What is your process?

I only write about subjects that interest me enough that if the product (article, story, poem, book) does not sell or make much money, I will still feel that the time I spent researching and writing it was worthwhile. Research for nonfiction usually begins with Internet searches for the most recent publications, press releases, and quotes from experts in the field. I put this information and list of sources into “notes” files on my computer. I then prepare a list of experts, and after reading up on them, contact them for interviews (and photos). Once I have all the questions answered about the topic that I think my target audience might ask, I write the first draft. This is usually two to three times longer than it needs to be. I then pull out some information into sidebars and trim the rest until it only includes the most important (and interesting!) information.

My fiction does not follow any set process, but develops more like a star forms from a nebula—the ingredients of plot and character and setting gravitate together until they reach a critical mass. Then BOOM fiction fusion begins, and out comes a shining new story. Once the draft is done, I go back and “intensify” it by cutting any unnecessary “data dumps” and enriching the language to include as many sensory details as possible.

9. What advice do you have for kids who want to write?

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Read. But specifically, read about something that interest you enough that you don’t mind reading about it again, knowing that when you do, you will learn a little more or understand it even better. Ask a specific question about the subject and read more to find the answer. Then ask family and friends what they think the answer is. Write down their answers. This will help you find out what most people already know and what information you can leave out or need to explain in your story. It will also give you practice at doing interviews—a necessary skill for nonfiction writing, and a good way to learn how to write realistic dialog in fiction. Practice writing descriptions of the people you interview using all five senses. For fiction, write a description of your interview as if you were a pet or an alien, ghost, or cyborg with a “sixth” sense. By reading for background knowledge, asking questions, looking for answers, getting quotes from people, and writing descriptions using all your senses, you will have all the raw ingredients to mix up lots of stories.

10. Would you change anything in your books if you could?

My main complaint about my books is that I cannot include more illustrations. Artwork is expensive, and photos take up room (and can also be expensive), so I am always limited on the number of illustrations. But I do realize that these limits have caused me to come up with new and creative ways to explain difficult science concepts.

11. Have you been on the vomit comet? What was it like?

Yes. I wrote a very detailed article about my experience for Analog Science Fiction magazine. My description of what it is like to be weightless is way too long to include here!

12. Would you like to go up in space?

Yes, but I’m more interested in visiting the Moon.

13. Do you have pets?

Yes. I have a fish I call “The One” who attacked and killed all the other fish (to absorb their “powers” like in the movie), and a cat that terrifies The One just by watching him. The fish reminds me that no matter how successful I am in my little world, there are larger forces that can kill me in a second; and yet those larger forces can also bring new challenges and joy.

14. What do you like writing best: fiction or nonfiction?

Fiction. But nonfiction is more in demand and pays better.

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