Reflection after Two Months

Why share my works in progress?

First off, I want to thank my family and friends for supporting me in this new adventure. My audience may be small, but it helps to know that there are folks out there routing for me and looking forward to my posts.

After two months of posts, I think it’s reasonable to address the question of what I’m trying to accomplish here. Writing is lonely work. That’s true in my professional life as well. Sharing as I go provides an outlet for expression. More importantly, I already know that I’m too much of a perfectionist. On the one hand, that can drive me to write a lot but never share it, fearing that it’s never ready. On the other hand, it can be paralyzing, preventing me from making progress at all. Having a work-in-progress site with even a small audience forces me to confront both issues. I feel accountable to produce and compelled to post.

In a lot of this early writing, I’m still finding my voice. I’ve spent much time thinking about the universe of the System Compact and what humanity’s attempt at living in the Solar System might look like. I’ve thought about how existing technology and our understanding of physics might affect that way of life. And, of course, I’ve thought about social and political issues associated with that life. I’ve put humanity in a fragile state of affairs. There’s no techno-magic that lets them make whatever they want or fly off to wherever they want. Within this early adulthood of humanity, they have many hard decisions to make. I want to explore these hard decisions while getting to know the people who inhabit this universe. I often feel that I’m not doing them justice but I hope that I’m getting better at it with practice.

Here is a bit of free verse I wrote to motivate me during my writing sessions.

Now is a time
to be immersed
in the lives of people
whose stories are only known to you
when you have written them down.

Why “Chris Getchell” in particular?

Chris Getchell is my nom de plume. There are a few reasons I chose this pen name that I thought I’d share.

First, writing is just a hobby right now. In my professional life, I also publish, though in very different outlets. Having different bylines for different outlets seemed reasonable.

Second, this is the name I was born with. I’ve always had an attraction to using the name while having no desire to change my name legally. When I was younger, I would sign poems and stories with my birth surname and different first names. When I decided to register a website, I googled different combinations of these to see who already existed. I settled on my actual birth name as a good choice. (Thanks, Mom!)

Finally, there aren’t as many Getchells in the world. Sure, you always have to spell it out so people don’t get discouraged typing in alternate spellings. And that makes getting business cards that much more important. But in my professional life, I’m already one of hundreds with variations of my name across several disciplines. If I work really hard and write a novel and then get very lucky to have it published as a physical book, the last thing I want is to have to compete with the incomparable and immortal Octavia Butler.