Hello, friends! Welcome to April’s meeting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, a blog hop created by Alex J. Cavanaugh and co-hosted this month by Joylene Nowell Butler, Jemima Pett, Patricia Josephine, Louise – Fundy Blue, and Kim Lajevardi. If you’re a writer and if you feel in any way insecure about your writing life, click here to learn more about this amazingly supportive group!
So right now, I’m participating yet again in the A to Z Challenge, a month long blogging challenge where you have to write twenty-six posts (one for each letter of the alphabet) over the course of April. My theme for this year’s challenge is “Our Place in Space.” For this theme, I’ve been researching a lot and writing a lot about human space exploration in the distant future. And there’s something I’ve noticed, a lesson that’s relevant both to space exploration and to writing: every project takes longer than initially expected.
Already this month, I’ve covered proposed missions to send astronauts to the moons of Jupiter and robotic probes all the way out to the nearest star. In today’s A to Z post, we’re talking about building an elevator to space as a way to save money on rocket fuel. And in upcoming posts, we’ll visit a methane lake on Titan, build floating cities in the atmosphere of Venus, and go digging for fossils on Mars.
I always do my research for these posts, and I always get super excited about the things I learn. All these things are possible! We humans could really do all this stuff someday! But then I get to the part of whatever article I’m reading where it says “in the next fifteen to twenty years…” I always roll my eyes when I get to that part. Yes, we can do these things. Some of these things may even be within our reach using existing technologies. But space exploration is, and always will be, really hard work. We need to have realistic expectations for how long this stuff will take.
I understand that. And yet, when it comes to writing, I keep telling myself, “Oh yeah, that’ll be easy. I can write that in like an hour.” And then I’m always surprised when I spend all day writing that supposedly easy thing and still can’t finish it.
When will I learn?
Planet Pailly 
I know what you mean. I look back at things that we could have done fifteen or twenty years ago, and see the mess the politicians and fossil fuel companies have made in preventing those things happening.
But… they like space. It gives them an excuse to wreck our planet if they can get off it.
Good luck with your A to Z and thanks for fitting the IWSG in!
Jemima
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I really hate the whole “if we ruin Earth, we can just move to another planet” mentality. Spreading out across the Solar System would be a good thing for humanity, but our outposts on the Moon or Mars would still be very dependent on Earth. No matter what happens in the future, we can’t afford to mess up our home planet.
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Never! But you’ll keep writing anyway.
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True!!!
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I’d love to see us in space, but it will take time and a huge amount of money. ‘Til then, I’ll dream about and watch/read sci-fi. hehehe
Anna from elements of emaginette
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That’s my attitude, although the small steps we can take now are also really exciting.
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On time, the main thing is that you’re having fun while doing it.
For space and being realistic, for me, with an eye toward what made a difference in history, the issue is economics. If people see a real economic benefit to space, then it will all happen. But until then, I fear it will continue to be robotic missions (which are relatively cheap) and very slow progress for anything crewed. I’d love to be wrong on this.
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I generally agree. There does need to be an economic incentive. Asteroid mining seems like the best bet to me, though even that probably wouldn’t be profitable at this point. Not unless the cost of space travel drops significantly.
As for having fun, yes. That is the most important thing when it comes to writing.
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When will we learn indeed! I’d thought about doing the challenge on the life coaching site and then left it till the last minute to write the posts. I planned out the headings a few weeks before but other things got in the way of the actual writing. Even without additional research, the writing always takes more time than you think it could possibly. I’m annoyed with myself as this means the writing eats into my visiting and commenting time.
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I’m having the same troubles, especially with keeping up with what everyone else is doing. There were some distractions happening in my life toward the end of March. Nothing I could do about that, but still I really wish I’d gotten started on my posts sooner.
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I so know what you mean about things taking longer than expected. I don’t know how many times I’ve said, “Oh, it won’t take very long.” Three hours later… still not done. Good luck with A to Z! Your theme sounds fascinating. I wish I had more time. I had fun with A to Z the couple of times I did it.
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I’ve had a lot of fun with A to Z over the years, too, but it is a big challenge. I had to skip it last year because there was just too much other stuff going on in my life. But I’m really glad to be back at it again this year.
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