A conversation with Cidney Swanson, sci-fi author and recipient of the 2020 Good Story Grant.
A conversation with Cidney Swanson, sci-fi author and recipient of the 2020 Good Story Grant.
Website: https://cidneyswanson.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/cidneyswanson
Good Story Grant: https://www.goodstorycompany.com/grant
Good Story Company: If you have a story in your head, we’re here to help you get it out into the world. We help writers of all skill sets, all genres, and all categories, at all stages of the writing process. Need a hand with brainstorming? Want to find a critique partner? Looking for an editor to help polish up your pitch, your idea, or your entire manuscript? We have all of it and more in our community. If you’re ready to take the next step (or the first step) on your writing journey, we’re here to help you.
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Mary: Hello, this is Mary Kole and the "Good Story Podcast," helping writers craft a good story. With me, you will hear from thought leaders related to writing, and sometimes not, about topics important to writers of all categories and ability levels. Here is to telling a good story.
Thank you, everyone, for joining me. This is Mary Kole with "Good Story Podcast" and today I have Cidney Swanson, young adult author and first-ever recipient of the Good Story Grant which is what we'll be talking among other things today. Cidney, would you love to introduce yourself?
Cidney: Thanks, Mary. I'm Cidney. I have been writing since I was 7 years old and now I'm living the dream. I write full-time. It's my employment, it's my passion, and I couldn't be more excited to talk about writing, and the grant, and all those good things with you today.
Mary: Amazing. I think a lot of people listening who are mostly writers who are learning the craft or practicing the craft want to be sitting exactly where you are one day able to say what you just said.
So you are the first recipient of the Good Story Grant which is going live again. All of January, we will be accepting applications for the grant. This year, it's a little bit different. We are awarding one grant to anybody and one grant specifically reserved for writers who identify as writers of color, so that's a exciting addition that we're able to make.
So you had a really interesting proposal for the grant and things did not exactly go as planned. So, can you tell me... Because 2020, right?
Cidney: Right.
Mary: But can you tell me what the proposal was as planned ideally, and how you saw it fitting into your projects, your writing, and what you needed out of the grant?
Cidney: Sure. I think one of the things that just really spoke to me right away when I read what you were doing was, "Oh, I could use this for anything," and I'd had a something in mind for quite a while that I really hadn't seen any existing grants for.
I've been in love with the planet Mars since I was 3 years old. No matter what stories I tell, I seemed to at least every couple years come back to another story about Mars. And because of this and because I'm married to a physicist... The guy I married has a PhD in physics.
Mary: Oh, I did not know that.
Cidney: Yeah, yeah. Not at all in... You know, nothing astronomy-related, although, you know, there's plenty of things he can jump in and pinch it for me, but there's always that understanding between us that... He's my first reader, and I always feel like I've had a responsibility to be as accurate as possible in my science alongside, you know, reporting the human experience as I might imagine it in the future.
So there's been a conference going on. I want to say I think it's been 10 years now, a Humans To Mars Summit, that is put on by a organization called Explore Mars. And they bring together voices from around the world who are top scientists and artists as well. They also try to keep an arts focus for part of the conference.
But they'll be talking about things like, "What are we going to eat on Mars? How are we going to get people safely there? Should we be sending people? Should we be sending only robots?" all these kinds of things. And in the middle of all of that, there's a lot of nitty-gritty which is for me, as a writer, it's essential stuff. If I don't have the language to talk about something, then I can't be a very efficient storyteller.
So, you know, I've read up as much as I could. I've got stacks of books on the shelf right behind me here all about Mars, but you still run into things where, you know, you want to... I think, you know, for better or for worse, as fiction writers, so much of what we do is throw our characters into peril. So I'm always wanting to know what could go wrong and then what could go wrong next.
And that means that I end up having to... It means that I'm interested in the technical language to help my readers understand what's happening, you know, and I want to pitch it at a level that's good for both the novice who has never had any interest in Mars or space travel as well as the person who's been gobbling up science fiction, you know, since they could first read a book. So to do that, again, I'm always relying on language, how can I communicate things well.
And it has helped me a lot, I think, to be a non-science person who's nonetheless very interested. I'll ask my husband to tell me, you know, "Now, what is it that makes the sky blue here exactly? Why is the sky in Mars going to be yellow?" And he'll explain it. And, you know, about half the time, I'll have to say, "Okay, wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Those are words I don't understand. Let's unpack."
Mary: Right. You're making some sounds here but they're not connecting.
Cidney: Totally. So that process of having him describe things for me in language that I am familiar with, it's good for him, too. I contend. But it helps me then to figure out, you know, how am I going to pitch things. But I've been running into this problem for the 10 now, I think, years that I've been writing about the planet Mars and I do write about it as we know it in our actual world. So I have not got alien civilizations there. I don't have different kinds of physics or, you know, different rules operational on Mars. It's all what we know.
Mary: Hence your desire to get as familiar as possible with what is actually happening in our quest to get to Mars to...
Cidney: Exactly, yeah.
Mary: Because this is really... So you're sort of on the cutting edge right now. Hence we were so attracted to your proposal because this really is very future-facing but within human reach, right, or at least that's the premise right now. And I think it's amazing and fascinating that this kind of conference even exists and it's real to your point, not science fiction. It's real that maybe in our lifetimes we will put a human on Mars and hopefully it'll go a little bit better than it did for Matt Damon.
Cidney: Yeah, a little better would be good.
Mary: In "The Martian," speaking of things going wrong and things going wrong again, but this is actual science, not science fiction, at this point. And so it becomes even more important to learn about where the science is right now, where hypothetically and not so hypothetically we'll be going in the next X, Y, Z years and which is why we wanted to sort of put you at that conference so you could get the terms that you needed, get the research that you needed, get sort of the science perspective that you needed to weave it into the fiction.
Cidney: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah, that was my goal. It was a conference I had never felt able to afford to go to, you know, clear across the country, very expensive hotels in D.C., crazy airfare, and the whole nine yards. And so this opportunity gave me what I needed.
Mary: Sure, but I'll ask you. What is airfare? What's a hotel? Now that we've had a whole year away from it, it's just like, "Oh..."
Cidney: Yeah, yeah. Gosh, it's been a crazy year. And, yeah, if you do want to segue into what I was planning versus what really happened.
Mary: Totally. And then you had to make a surprising pivot. So you wanted to go to this conference. It was out of reach. And just to put a pin in the conversation for a second and disclose what the grant actually is, I should have started that way. But this is not exactly a very organized... This is more of an organic interview.
The Good Story Grant. We decided that writers know best what they need, and so we decided to hear proposals from writers about the project that they're doing and what they feel they need to get there, right? There's where you are right now and there's a cliff that's a little bit above you, where you want to get to, and the goal is just organic personal and creative growth for a writer on a project where they feel they need a little bit of assistance.
And when we received your proposal, this is exactly what I felt was fully in the spirit of the grant which is I've always wanted to go to this insanely amazing-sounding conference. I just need a little help. And for us personally, Good Story Company is a women-owned, most women-operated company, and we just felt such a rush in the publishing industry and in our culture right now of championing women and girls in STEM and STEAM. And we just felt that this amazing opportunity for a female writer to go to this conference and then work this into a book for young readers, girls among them, you know, was just it hit on so many levels of interest for us. Hence you were chosen.
And then it was January of last year when we ran this grant, and then February and March happened. February and March 2020 happened. So in-person conferences, like I was joking earlier, travel, all of this was suddenly thrown into disarray, and plans changed. So how did this conference change and how did you adapt?
Cidney: Well, it didn't happen in person clearly. I think as late as maybe the first week of April or, for sure, through March, they were still hoping that it might be able to happen live in D.C., in mid-May, but, you know, as things progressed, we realized that wasn't going to happen. So then they said, "Okay, we're going to have it at the end of August in D.C. Still going to be a live event." And that was okay. It was, you know, disappointing to have to wait, but at that point, I was still thinking, "Well, hey, at least it's still happening."
Mary: Oh, how naïve we were...
Cidney: I know.
Mary: ...once upon a time.
Cidney: Right? I'm sure we've all seen that video of, you know, the girl who comes future self talking to present self, "Your idea of what's a big deal is going to change." So anyway I think the organizers of the conference did something that was so, gosh, prescient. They said, "Hmm, we've got all this enthusiasm. We have all these people who've signed up. Let's start meeting together ahead of the conference. Wouldn't that be fun?"
And I think at first they were just thinking of it in terms of just something fun to help all of us as we're all quarantined, you know, to have some connection in the community. So I think the first thing they started was something called Drinks with Explore Mars, which was a Tuesday evening. You bring a beverage that could be space-related or not and have a speaker that would, you know, just talk casually about some area in which they had expertise. So we had, you know, actors from Star Trek. We had...
Mary: What?
Cidney: Yeah, Jonathan Frakes, he was fantastic.
Mary: Oh, my goodness.
Cidney: Yeah, and some of the first private astronauts who have flown to the space station. We had people who create spacesuits for a living, all kinds of interesting folks, and...
Mary: Now, can you define private astronauts? This has nothing to do with writing. Is this like SpaceX people, not NASA people? Is that the distinction?
Cidney: The distinction, as I was trying to make it and I hope I'm using the right designation, would be people who have paid to get a seat on a rocket to take them somewhere. And the somewhere could be low Earth orbit. It could be ISS, International Space Station. It, you know, just depends.
And there are a handful of individuals who, you know, have amassed some wealth in their life and realized, "You know what I really want to do? Besides all of my charitable endeavors, etc., I want to go to space." So, you know, like I say, a handful of individuals have done that. And their training is still intense, of course, because you're not going to send someone out into space without a lot of training.
Mary: I guess I didn't think about that element.
Cidney: Yeah, yeah.
Mary: So you don't just sign up for a Virgin Galactic ticket and then just, you know, roll in for your departure day, right?
Cidney: Right, right.
Mary: I suppose not.
Cidney: Yeah, yeah. So, you know, they have to undergo training as well and contingency plan. And, I mean, everything from, you know, how do you use a, what do they call them, maximum absorbency garment, which is a fancy word for diaper. You know, everything from that to what do you do if your helmet won't seal correctly or just, you know, contingencies, all those things that as writers we find ever so useful.
Mary: It's the details and we're going to talk about research later, but that's what makes fiction so realistic and so accessible. Sometimes it's the details that really hook the character. So when you talk about a character strapping on their diaper, these are the things that we don't think about that you learn in the course of research that can be the thing that connects a reader to your story.
Cidney: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I love that stuff as a reader myself.
Mary: So this Drinks with Explore Mars was a virtual run-up to the conference?
Cidney: Yes, and those happened at least every other week during April, May, June, and then extended July and August, and we've even had a few recently since then. They also did a more formal kind of program where you would, again, be bringing in an expert in some area. And they would present, you know, more like you might have at a conference, do a workshop on some area that would be interesting, you know, whether that's the architecture of planning for trips to the moon, to Mars, challenges in growing food on Mars. Somebody spoke on the Perseverance rover that launched this summer.
And so we would have, you know, more... And those were more formal events. Again, tons of great information. And I think at the time they just thought of it as supplemental to this live conference that we were still going to have in May or then August, but as the summer wore on, you know, we kind of realized, "Well, all you guys paid your money and signed up and we're not going to have a live conference for you."
So then, you know, we began to plan for the virtual event, which they carried it off beautifully. It wasn't the same but, oh, my goodness, it was... I'm still going through videos of... because they would be running segments concurrently just like you do at a live conference, so I would have to pick and choose which event am I going to attend. And I think there must be like 60 recordings, and I'm making my way through them still now in, what, December.
Mary: Oh, my goodness. So did it happen around September or August?
Cidney: Yeah, I think it was August. They were just going to do two days, and then last-minute, they decided, "No. You know what? We're going to expand to four days. We've got the people who are interested. Everybody's stuck at home. You know, let's make this a bigger event."
So it became a four-day event and, you know, for about 6, 8, I guess about 8 hours a day, it was all Mars all the time. And just, yeah, I'm so impressed with what they were able to pull off considering the challenges that they were facing.
Mary: And let me make a wild assumption. Most of the people in the audience were not fiction writers. So did you have a sense of what the mix in the crowd for attending was? I mean, obviously, we have a lot of Mars experts comprising the panels, the speakers, the experts, but did you get a sense of your fellow attendees? Was it tech people? Was it science people?
Cidney: Yes and yes. I met one other woman who writes fiction, but she does it quite peripherally. She's a scientist. She's a literal rocket scientist. You know, so the people that I was a co-attendee with I would say probably 90% space science and the other ones were probably still science but possibly manufacturing industry where there would be some crossover between let's say space and something else.
Mary: Getting the scoop on getting some Mars contracts perhaps.
Cidney: Uh-huh. Yeah, or saying, "Hey, guys. Here's what we've come up with this year that we told you last year we would spend the year working on. Here's how it's looking now." And, oh, Mary, there are some wild things that people are doing.
Mary: I can't even imagine. Would you share just a couple of the things that really caught your imagination?
Cidney: Yeah. So here's one of them that I loved. How about 3D printing your food? Right? I mean, what?
Mary: I have about 10,000 ideas for how I would kill myself with food if I had one of those in my house.
Cidney: So, you know, when you think about it, you've got your stock, right? A 3D printer needs something, some form of material with which to print. And when you're transporting food into space or even to the ISS or on a long, you know, multi-month journey like to Mars, you're limited in what you can bring. You're probably talking about rehydrating. A lot of things are freeze-dried so that you can, you know, conserve space and weight.
So let's say we've got some flour, and we've got some water, and we're going to make a dough and, you know, put some salt in there. So anyway this one company 3D-printed some pizza and the first batch that they made after months and months of researching how they were going to do this, you know, down to the tomato sauce and the cheese and everything, and apparently, it tasted god-awful.
Mary: I'm not surprised.
Cidney: Right? So then they consulted with a very famous pizza chef from New York City who said, "Okay, let's look at your ingredients," and helped them out very generously. And so then for the conference prior to mine, I understand that there was some 3D pizza printed and people got to sample it. And apparently, it was not bad, so there you go.
Mary: I think "not bad" in this context is a huge achievement.
Cidney: Right? Yeah, yeah. And I was like, "Okay, if there's pizza, I might have to rethink my remaining on Earth for the rest of my days," because, you know, I'm kind of all about pizza.
Mary: My base would be cheese. Like, the cheese would be the sort of medium and, on top of that, I would probably add three different more cheese.
Cidney: I would eat that with you definitely.
Mary: Perfect.
Cidney: We'll have to connect.
Mary: Maybe on the International Space Station, we can meet up there. If we can afford a ticket one day, we could have a cheese party.
Cidney: I know a guy.
Mary: Amazing. So I mean, obviously some of the content would have been very high-level, but you're getting all of this information that you probably never, in your wildest dreams, would have been privy to otherwise.
Cidney: Exactly. Yeah, there's only so much printed material out there that I, as an ordinary person, can access. You know, and whether it's a paywall or, you know, a members-only or whatever, there's just stuff that I don't have access to.
Mary: You're not at an institution personally where you have access to some of these materials, and a lot of them probably make for very dry reading.
Cidney: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I've read my share of dry.
Mary: So before you had access to this conference, was that the only venue for you to do research is just what you found in the printed world?
Cidney: Yeah, and then lots of asking my husband, "Hey, does this mean what I think it means? What are they talking about here?" and just trying to reverse engineer what a paper might actually be addressing, what question are they addressing, and is it what I think it is, is it not. So the wealth of information at this conference, it was phenomenal.
And I think the other thing that really struck me was how excited everyone was to share with everyone else. There's an enthusiasm and a joy that supports all of the hard work. And that turned out to be such a great thing for 2020, you know, to be surrounded by people who are hopeful, optimistic, who are looking beyond, you know, just the next 12 months and are talking about 2033 because 2033 is going to be a time when it would be great to launch a ship with humans to Mars just in terms of...
Mary: That specific year, 2023?
Cidney: Yeah, yeah, 2033.
Mary: Oh, 2033, my goodness.
Cidney: Yeah, sorry. I might have said that wrong.
Mary: No. I'm not even conceptualizing something that's to me so far away, but for them, it's kind of like publishing. We're always thinking a couple years ahead because that's really where the publishing calendar is. They're thinking, you know, a couple decades ahead.
Cidney: Exactly, exactly. And some of the mission architecture plans that I got to look at visually, some of them had been created in the 1960s and, you know, they were able to put these up and go, "Well, you know, we've had to make some changes. We've learned a few things," but at least some of the plans that were in place during the Apollo era are still in place today and are still a part of how we get, you know, to other places within our solar system. So kind of fascinating to have that longer view of time at a time when I myself was just like, "Please next month can we please?" So that was wonderful.
Mary: That is fascinating.
Cidney: Yeah, yeah. Just a different way of experiencing or thinking about time.
Mary: Yeah, I wouldn't have thought that some of the science from an era when a computer took up a room would be as relevant today when our technology has grown by leaps and bounds.
Cidney: Right, right. Yeah, yeah. But some things don't change. You know, Earth has always and will, knock on wood, always have a nice, thick atmosphere.
Mary: I don't know. I wouldn't jinx us at this point.
Cidney: You wouldn't. Yeah, okay. But, you know, we've got a great, thick atmosphere here in Earth that does a fantastic job of slowing incoming objects, whether those are rockets or meteorites. We have no atmosphere on the moon to slow things at all and then we have Mars which has an atmosphere that is 1% as thick as that of Earth.
So, you know, given that those were things we've known for a long time, you know that you have to land differently on Earth than you do on the moon and differently on Mars than you do on either Earth's moon or Earth. So those kinds of things don't really change. Now, the technologies, you know, that's obviously something that is... Change is always part of what's happening there.
Mary: That being said, and this is not to make light of any of the tragedies that we've obviously had in our pursuit of space, I'm surprised that there hasn't been more. If a lot of the time we're going from the theoretical to actually landing, for example, people on the moon or a rover onto Mars, it's amazing that we've actually been able to take the science, apply it with such relative success.
Cidney: Yeah, I would agree. I think it is phenomenal what people have been able to do. And, you know, their tolerance... NASA for instance, their tolerance for risk is very low. I'm assuming you saw the movie "The Martian."
Mary: Yes, ma'am.
Cidney: Yeah, I may or may not have read the book six, seven, eight times. Certainly would not confess that on a recorded medium.
Mary: I have bad news for you.
Cidney: They did a nice job in the movie of kind of describing acceptable risk, and I think at one point pointing out that 2% possibility of failure was not acceptable. And I think that helps us to understand, "Oh, so we're not talking about let's cobble something together and see what happens. We're talking about testing again and again and iterations and having, you know, a risk factor of way under 2% is what's acceptable." Whereas, you know, "A 75% chance will do this okay," is just not even, you know... It's not what they're talking about.
Mary: Also, I mean, not to be mercenary about it, but the toys that are being played with cost in the millions, maybe even billions of dollars. Like, a rocket is not cheap. I read somewhere that a spacesuit helmet alone was, you know, several hundred thousand dollars. A spacesuit may be $2 or $3 million, just one spacesuit that you're peeing inside of. That's where the diapers come in.
Cidney: Yes, because we're all about the diapers. Yeah, I think, you know, in the last 10 years, SpaceX and other innovative companies have been making some real inroads into bringing those costs down so that space becomes more affordable not just for nations but for industry and then, you know, hopefully, my grandkids, great-grandkids will be able to take a trip into low Earth orbit, you know, in the same way that I have been able to fly to Europe or the Middle East, and that's something that my grandparents wouldn't have dreamed of as children.
So, you know, any time you have technology that gets shared and you make more and more of it, you're bringing your cost down. So SpaceX having reusable booster rockets, that saves millions for sure. I don't know if I can say billions, but hundreds of millions of dollars of savings.
Mary: So let me sketch out where you are so far in your process. You have gotten so much inspiration. You have gotten so much information and sort of an attitude boost about the whole thing.
Cidney: Mm, absolutely.
Mary: Now you have this body of kind of research that you're still going through from the sound of it. You're still watching some of these videos. You're still kind of taking notes so re-watching things, maybe re-reading things. Now how do we take this experience in your writerly experience and translate into the fiction work on the page?
Cidney: So, when I went into this project as I shared with you and the committee, I had an extant first draft, and I had blank patches in it where figure out if this is possible or not, you know, that I just hadn't been able to find the answers to. And since then, I've been doing additional Mars writing and so the information filters through into my writing kind of in two ways, one looking backward at a first draft or... It's probably more second, third draft at this point. So, on the one hand, I'm looking back and I'm filling in, "Oh, now, I know that actually the architecture for our mission would look like this instead of like the way that I had imagined it or read about it, you know, from a paper that was 10 years old and not current." So there's that backward look, but then there is also... As I am doing new storytelling, I'm aware now of other things that could go wrong. I'm aware of other ways in which... Well, one of my favorite things about the space program today is that, when we solve for Mars or we solve for the moon, solve problems, we also solve for Earth at the same time.
Mary: How so?
Cidney: Cellphone would be a great example. We would not have cellphone technology except for NASA. NASA needed this in order for the astronauts and mission control to be able to communicate and so we have cellphones today. So solve for space, solve for Earth.
Remote doctors. This is something that, you know, we see a need for here on Earth, but who's solving for that? Well, guess what. You know who's solving for it is people who are looking at how are we going to provide medical assistance to somebody on Mars when there is no brain surgeon or there is no, you know, anesthesiologist or whatever. And so they're solving these problems here and now.
Mary: I have never thought about that in my life, and now it's all I can think about. That's an incredible... Oh, my gosh, robot surgery.
Cidney: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, not only that. There are people who are developing virtual reality technologies that allow you to, you know, slip into a suit and be seen in 3D by an actual surgeon who can then tell you, "Okay, you know, do this. Do this. Do this."
Mary: Wow.
Cidney: Yeah, and can virtually be in the room with you looking in three dimensions, not just from one fixed location. So all kinds of technologies are being developed that will allow somebody to 3D-print equipment that they need for surgery or for life-saving procedures and then instruct someone how to carry out that life-saving procedure.
So, you know, somebody in Nepal, somebody in places that don't have access to big hospitals and the surgeons and physicians that come along with those will be able to benefit from the technologies that are being developed now to care for our astronauts.
Mary: Amazing.
Cidney: Yeah. So all of that sort of information then also feeds forward into the stories that I'm telling and, I think I said this at the very beginning, you know, you're always looking for how do I make my character's life more difficult.
Mary: More miserable, yeah.
Cidney: Yeah, more miserable. And so, you know, the things that I've learned both the... And mostly they're positive, "Here's how we're solving for this." But, you know, your imagination as a writer just starts going crazy as you realize, "Oh, but what if it broke down this way or this way or...?"
And the nice thing even as I'm inflicting misery on my characters, you know, hopefully, it's providing a good experience for the reader, but even more my hope, of course, my deeper hope, is that somebody who's reading this story is imagining themselves into that situation and, you know, maybe this read is the moment where they realize, "I would really like to work in medicine," or, "I want to be the person who's telling the pilot, you know, 'Okay, try this. Now try this,' from mission control," or, "I want to be the pilot who is piloting the ship."
And so, you know, my deep hope, of course, is that young readers... And, you know, 10, 11, 12-year-olds are reading young adult oftentimes and so they're still at a place where they're deciding, "What do I want to do with my life?" I mean, to an extent, we all decide that every day of our entire lives but, you know, you're that much more in that space when you're 10, 11, 12 deciding what is interesting to me, what is fascinating to me, what am I curious about, and what do I want to learn more about.
And, you know, so my hope ultimately is to inspire. And, you know, I'll be honest, especially those young girls like myself who maybe had a hard time seeing space for themselves, you know, in the space industry or even the motion entertainment industry. I remember watching, you know, my first making of Star Wars when I was still a teenager. Somebody had cobbled together some kind of, "Here's how we did the special effects," and it was dudes. It was all dudes.
Mary: Right?
Cidney: For sure. And so I did not... Even for a little bit, I never imagined myself in that entertainment space because I wasn't there. You know, I wasn't represented.
Mary: You didn't see yourself there.
Cidney: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. Now, Star Trek, God bless them, you know, Lieutenant Uhura, she was smart, she was a woman, she did important things. So I did see myself thanks to Star Trek but, you know, it's an industry that has been very heavily male-dominated for a long time. So my hope is that all kinds of humans would see themselves in the stories that I'm telling and would maybe latch on to, "Oh, I want to know more about that."
Mary: I mean, even I'm sitting here slack-jawed at some of these ideas that you're talking about and deeply regretting giving up on math and science. That has never been... I'm in the humanities, I'm in language, and that has never been an interest of mine in terms... because I just felt that I didn't have the ability for it but just hearing what some human beings are doing is so incredibly inspirational.
Cidney: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think we need that. This year more than ever, we need that kind of inspiration and just the hope that it provides. You know, we're not always going to be where we're at right now.
Mary: Well, no wonder they're in such a great mood. They're not even planning on being on Earth in 16 years.
Cidney: Yeah, yeah. Some of them. It was interesting. I would every now and again run across an actual, you know, astronaut in training whose life goal is to go to Mars. So that was way cool. And then, for every one of those, there would be another 50 to 100 support people that I would run across who are figuring out how to help you have a safe tooth extraction should you need one in space and figuring out solving all of these issues that you would run into.
Mary: So it sounds like the experience was incredibly substantial in terms of the research, inspiration. It's not just research that lies flat on the page either for you to plug into, you know, "Oh, I just need the density of Mars' atmosphere here." It's impacting your plotting. It's impacting your character development. It's research that comes alive in the creative process because you're using it to create obstacles. You're using it to stymie your character. You're using to make the story better, more authentic, and to raise the stakes on it.
Cidney: Absolutely, yeah. All of the above.
Mary: So what is next for you in terms of your pursuit of Mars, your pursuit of research? Is there ever a time when you have to stop researching? How do you know when you've reached that point?
Cidney: Oh, well, that's a really good question. I think because I do have a lot of curiosity, I'm not going to say, "Oh, okay, now I've done enough research." However, there is a point in writing where writer me has to be willing to say, "Okay, I've explained this sufficiently. To go on would interrupt the experience for the reader. You know, it would be too much." So those are kind of two separate areas of my life. There's, you know, the creative work that's ongoing where I have to kind of pick and choose and I can only use, you know, the best of the best ideas and things that I'm learning. And then there's the part of me that's, "Okay, my creative brain is done for the day, but, oh, I want to go see that... I want to check out that article that, you know, [inaudible 00:41:53.051] told me about. I want to go listen to, you know, that video that Bill Nye put up." And so things like that, that's my playtime.
Mary: Really nice. I love that you... When we were scheduling this interview actually, you told me that the mornings were off-limits. Those were your writing time. But it seems like... which I really admire, by the way. I just think that life's too short not to set time aside for your pursuits and your writing and really be very serious and protective of it. So actually I love that about our exchange setting up this interview, but it looks like that carries on into your life and you're just learning for the sake of learning, not just for a specific end goal. And I would imagine the things you run into in your playtime "feed into the creative work" as well.
Cidney: Oh, yeah, absolutely. That happens all the time, "Oh, there's that solution I was looking for. I didn't even know I was looking for it but there it is," and those moments of serendipity, those are the best. I love that.
Mary: So to wrap up, I wanted to sort of bring us back to the grant for a little bit. Like I was just saying, I really, really admire that you advocated for yourself not only in applying for the grant but kind of on a daily basis protecting your writing, making time for writing. How would you recommend to a writer to determine what they might need, to sort of take a moonshot? Do you have any words of wisdom or advice for sort of taking someone's pursuit more seriously and maybe taking it to the next level, maybe somebody who's thinking about applying for this grant, or going for another opportunity?
Cidney: You know, I think that one of the pieces of information that I got early on about being a writer is that you have to show up for it just like you would show up for a boss and a job where you're working outside the home or inside the home this year of 2020.
Mary: True, true.
Cidney: You have to show up for the work. And one guy whose talk I was listening to, he was describing how, as a journalist, he had to turn in a 1,200-word story every day or, you know, 5 days out of a week, he had to turn in 1,200 words no matter what, and that that had prepared him really well to be a writer because, you know, there was no longer anybody breathing down his neck with those short-term deadlines.
But as writers, if you want to get something out there, you have to impose deadlines and so, you know, it's not an endeavor for the faint of heart. You have to be willing to be by yourself a lot in this job, but I think that if you're somebody who's able to establish some discipline to say, you know, whether that is, "It's 1,200 words a day or die," or whether that is 25 really focused minutes a day or 3 hours a day or whatever your life allows you because of course that can look really different depending on an individual's circumstances.
But I think that discipline of saying, "I'm going to treat this like I would treat... as if I were showing it for a boss." Now, you are the boss, but, you know, you've got to treat it like a job as if you're showing up for somebody who's counting on you. And if you can do that, then, you know, I think that's one of the biggest obstacles that stand in people's way, making that commitment to just do the thing to show up.
Mary: And I couldn't agree more, and I just think everything that you've done and this sort of world that you've enmeshed yourself with is just so inspiring. People are taking literal moonshots and Mars shots and you are also thinking big by taking yourself seriously, and I just think that is... Like you said, one of the biggest obstacles that we have is just not honoring ourselves enough to be as committed as we can be.
Cidney: That's a really good way to put it. Yeah, because you are honoring yourself in doing that. And if that's too hard for you, maybe this can be for a beloved grandmother who always loved your stories that you used to tell her. You know, if you can't quite bring it into yourself yet, is there somebody in your life who loved you, advocated for you, and you can say, "Well, I'm going to do this for them"?
Mary: And remember that there are human beings on this planet who are actively preparing to go to Mars. I mean, you can't think any bigger. I'm going to use them for my own inspiration. Now that I know the sorts of things that people are planning for the not so distant future.
Cidney: Right. Yeah, it is inspiring. I think for me one of the huge inspirations has been the 12, 13, 14, 15, 16-year-olds that I got to have a little bit of interaction with who were virtually attending the conference. And they can't wait. They have such focus because they know where they want to go. They want to go to Mars.
Mary: That's amazing. Thank you so much for sharing your stories of attending this conference and using it to its fullest. It sounds like they were able to make a great pivot despite this crazy year, and thank you for bringing it to me and to our listeners. And I can't wait to see where you go next virtually or hopefully in person.
Cidney: Mary, thank you so much.
Mary: Thank you. And to everyone listening out there, here's to a good story.
Thank you so much for listening. This has been the "Good Story Podcast" with your host Mary Kole. I want to give a huge shoutout to everyone at the Good Story Company. You can find us online at goodstorycompany.com. The team is Amy Holland, Amy Wilson, Jenna Van Rooy, Kate Elsinger, Kathy Martinolich, Kristen Overman, Michal Leah, Rhiannon Richardson, and Steve Reiss. Also a shout out to our Patreon supporters. And to everyone listening out there, here's to a good story.