What Motivates Me to Write?

Currently in the process of editing my first Sci-Fi novel, I’ve been knee-deep in random scientific blogs and trivia for a couple of months. And although my own story leans more towards political biopunk than psycho robotics, one of the topics that immediately grabbed my interest as I was doing my research was artificial intelligence (AI), and the ways in which it can affect the future of humanity.

When we think about AI going wrong, we usually imagine megalomaniac supercomputers with a God complex wanting to enslave (or eliminate) humanity. The idea of an AI trying to take over the world never really made much sense to me, though. I don’t claim to be an expert on AI, so I might well be wrong about this (as with everything else scientific).

But common sense tells me that if I was designing a machine meant to perform domestic cleaning duties, I wouldn’t want to give it a wide enough emotional range that it might one day feel the need to marry my partner and sleep on my bed.

An AI is, at the end of the day, a machine. It must originally have been designed for a particular purpose, like all machines. Why would you design a powerful machine (say for coal mining) that had — or could develop — human desires, such as power, love, validation, etc.? What purpose could that possibly serve?

The Paperclip Maximizer and the Mysteries of Motivation

While wondering about such nitty-gritties of common Sci-Fi tropes, I came upon a theoretical doomsday scenario known as the “Paperclip Maximizer”. For those of you who don’t know what that is, the Paperclip Maximizer is a hypothetical AI that was designed for the purpose of making paperclips and enhancing the efficiency of paperclip-making processes.

Over time, this AI would find ways to make more and more paperclips within shorter and shorter time periods. It would enhance the efficiency of paperclip manufacturing processes and learn/invent more ways to maximize the number of paperclips being made.

The Paperclip Maximizer thought experiment posits the possibility that the AI would eventually turn all matter in its surroundings (including life forms) into paperclips. Eventually, assuming the AI was strong enough, it would turn the entire world (or even the galaxy) into paperclips.

This idea fascinated me. For the first time, I was reading about an AI related doomsday scenario that didn’t rely on a random machine spontaneously developing the motivational structure of a generic movie super-villain.

The Paperclip Maximizer would probably kill us. Not because it hates us or wants to rule over us, but simply because we are made up of atoms and molecules that would be better utilized in the manufacturing of paperclips, which is the only thing that it is motivated to accomplish.

So this got me thinking — what is motivation? Where does it come from? Why are we so motivated to do certain things and not others? Why do some people have more motivation than others, and why would the same person have lots of motivation for one type of activity but very little for others?

Underneath it all, I guess I was really trying to figure out my own motivational patterns — to understand them and hopefully to get a better handle on them.

Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation

I mean, there are of course certain extrinsic things that motivate us, the chief among them being money. We all want money and are willing to work for it, but the extent to which we are willing to do so varies widely.

What is it that we are looking for when we try to earn money, anyway? Not the paper currency, surely.

On a very basic level, money gives us access to other people’s time, energy, and talent. If you have money, you can ask someone else to look after your children, manage your finances, or wash your clothes.

Even when we buy a comb, a video game, or a refrigerator, we’re indirectly paying someone else to design and make those items for us. The more money we have, the more of other people’s time, talent, and energy we can buy, which in turn will make our own life easier and more entertaining.

That’s an understandable desire to have. And yet, we don’t all have it to the same extent. We all know of extraordinary people who serve others for free and even spend their own money to help those in need — with no expectations of reward. But those are not the types of people I’m talking about here.

Everything we do has an opportunity cost. Logically, assuming that money was the primary motivating factor for our actions, we’d plan every step with the goal of maximizing income.

And yet, people write novels in unpopular genres, start YouTube channels on niche subjects that’d never get them a million subscribers, and take up full-time jobs in industries that don’t pay well.

These are not selfless social workers whose only purpose is to serve others. Most of these people are working for some form of monetary reward, so why not work for the highest possible income or reward? Why settle for a genre that’d only allow you to sell a few thousand copies of your book, when you could instead write in one that has a far larger potential market? In fact, why write books at all? Why not use those same writing skills to write copy for brands (a far more lucrative market)?

So maybe extrinsic, reward-based motivation isn’t the only kind we need. After all, the hypothetical Paperclip Maximizer isn’t being paid to turn the entire galaxy into paperclips. So it must have a built-in reward system that makes the creation of paperclips intrinsically rewarding. To use a cliché, it’s something he’d do even if no one paid him to do it. (Yes, the Paperclip Maximizer is a guy now. Deal with it.)

So what internal reward system makes the creation of obscure books and videos, or the performance of low-paid administrative tasks, inherently rewarding for humans — so much so that they’re willing to forgo higher paying opportunities in a different domain?

A Case Study

Well, I’m something of a massive introvert. The last time I had an actual human interaction was in 1997.

So, I can’t speak for you guys. But there’s one case study I do feel comfortable exploring — my own.

I’m a writer. It’s taken me quite a few years to admit that (and that’s a blog post for another time), but now, here we are. I write. And I do so in a variety of ways, for a number of reasons, some more obvious than others.

But what motivates me to write? What do I get out of it? And would I turn the entire galaxy into tropey, angsty fiction if given the opportunity?

Well, that’s exactly what we’re here to discuss today, isn’t it?

I’m a professional copywriter/web content writer by day, freelance writer by night, and a novelist/poet/blogger by midnight. Needless to say, I write A LOT.

Why?

Well, that’s complicated. I have a 9–5 job because it pays the bills, a freelance side-gig because I like the extra money (and hope it’ll replace the 9–5 sometime in the future), and a creative writing hobby/career because I like expressing myself in words and hope to create a source of passive income a few decades down the line.

Realistically, I could earn more from a single job than I do from all the three combined, if I ditched this whole writing thing and got myself an MBA or something. So why don’t I, then? It’s certainly not because I don’t like money. Spoiler alert: I fucking love it!

So, what’s keeping me from ditching this hamster wheel for a “real job”?

Initially, I thought maybe it was because I just loved writing so much! You know, the old cliché about loving your job so much you’d do it for free? Yeah, I wouldn’t.

There are people out there who write high-quality, 100k word fanfics for fun (with no expectation of ever earning a penny out of it). I’m not one of them.

Which brings me to my next point. Writing isn’t always fun for me. Sometimes it is, but most of the time it’s difficult and tedious. It’s WORK. Given a choice, I’d much rather be reading somebody else’s book than writing my own.

I do, of course, have the hope of one day making a living from my fiction. But, at least for now, that’s all it is. A vague hope. I certainly don’t expect to make any significant amount of money from my novels in the near future. The same can be said of my poetry and this blog.

So if it’s not the sheer, intrinsic joy of writing or the guarantee of monetary payoff, what keeps me plugging away at the keyboard, day in and day out?

Well, the answer is that it’s a strange and complex combination of all of the above.

Am I passionate about writing? Yes. Do I want to make money out of it? Yes. Would I do it without one or the other? Maybe. Certainly not to the extent I’m doing it now.

What It Means to be a True Artist

There’s a pervasive myth in the arts (including writing and literature) that if you’re passionate about something, you’ll always like doing it. That if you’re a true artist, you’ll always enjoy the process of making art.

That’s a lie.

The truth is, passion can be a double edged sword. It can put the burden of perfectionism on you, where you get stressed out and anxious — not just about doing good work, but great work.

If I was just writing a diary to pass the time, or writing web copy just to earn a living, I wouldn’t agonize over every line of prose. I wouldn’t spend hours wondering if my message was clear enough, if my language was flawed or my presentation amateurish.

I wouldn’t constantly compare myself to other bloggers, novelists, and poets, only to find myself wanting every step of the way. If this was just a job, I wouldn’t care so much.

But I care with every fiber of my being whether what I write is good or bad. Whether I can connect with readers or not. Whether I can express myself with clarity or not. And this slows down the process of writing.

There was a time when the self-doubt was so overwhelming I couldn’t write a word for days. This is no longer the case, and I have overcome the problem to a great extent. But I daresay a lot of authors would permanently get rid of writer’s block if they could just get their passion (and the associated perfectionism) slightly under control.

I learned this mainly from my day job and freelance copywriting work. The deadlines with these are always tight, and there’s rarely enough time to agonize over the placement of every word and the structure of every sentence. You need to churn out a certain number of words every day and volume is oftentimes more important than perfection.

And yet, there are people reading these articles, typos and all, for the information that they provide and the value that they add. Realizing this gave me the confidence to start approaching my fiction in the same way–

Like I have something to say to my readers, and I’m going to try my best to say it well, but I don’t need to wait until my diction is perfect and my oratory world-class, before I can share my opinion or my story with the world.

The Different Types and Sources of Motivation

But despite all the learning and growing I’ve done over the past two years as a full-time writer, I still like ‘having written’ way more than the actual ‘process’ of writing.

Half the time, when I’m writing a book, I push through the most difficult scenes dreaming about what it’d look like as a finished product — on a bookshelf with a gorgeous cover, sitting next to the works of some of my favorite authors. (A girl can dream, right?)

The point is, motivations are complex and multi-faceted. They don’t spring from a single source, and they’re not always ‘pure’ and unidimensional. I don’t write just for the money, but I don’t write just for the love of it, either. The expectation of future income certainly plays an important part in motivating me to finish my manuscripts, approach publishers, write blog posts, etc.

I was super unmotivated as a student, and always saw myself as an inherently lazy individual. I wrote my first full-length manuscript in high-school. And after I failed to find any traction with it (receiving more than 30 rejections from various publishers), I lost all motivation and didn’t do much creative writing for the next 2–3 years.

Then, I graduated from college and got my first real office job. And BAM! It hit me like a train. This was it. This was my life now. This is what I would be doing for the next 40 years.

And frankly, it was quite underwhelming.

I’d spent the first 23 years of my life as a student. For as long as I could remember, there had always been something to look forward to, to prepare for and focus on. Either it was high-school or college or university or — the grand prize — a real job!

There was always something I was running towards, something just out of my reach that I was trying desperately to catch. Hence, it was easy to forget, to distract myself. To tell myself that there’s something better waiting for me just round the corner, and that this writing thing was just a distraction from the ‘real world’.

And then, real world came and hit me smack in the face. And it wasn’t bad. Just…kind of meh.

And it dawned on me that there was no pot of gold waiting for me at the end of this murky rainbow. I’d arrived at my destination, at the promised land of gainful employment that parents, teachers, and sundry relatives had all lectured me about for all these years.

There was nowhere else to go from here. But “here” wasn’t exactly where I wanted to be, forty years down the line.

The Urge to Escape Irrelevance

And so, I began writing in earnest. Not because I expected greater success than I’d had before, but simply because failing at this was better than staying stuck and unmoving, with little to look forward to other than the once-a-year vacations that rarely lasted more than a week.

Overnight, I went from being an unmotivated student who barely managed to secure a passing grade most of the time, to a highly motivated professional writer (albeit one who was still making very little money)! And exactly why that happened in the way that it did is still, to some degree, a mystery to me.

What I do know, however, is that writing regularly and calling myself a writer (if only in my own head) has changed my life in a way I’d never anticipated. It’s given me something to look forward to and feel excited about in my day-to-day life.

And that’s not because writing is easy (or even fun) most of the time. In fact, the most fun I have is during the brainstorming/outlining process. The actual writing is often stressful and always effing hard!

And yet, I’m happier and more confident than I’ve ever been before. I now have a general sense of satisfaction, purpose, and wellbeing that I’d never experienced in the first 23 years of my life. It’s not that I was particularly unhappy before. Far from it. I had a blast in college and made some fantastic friends; those will always be some of the most memorable years of my life!

A Reason to Get Out of Bed Every Morning

It’s just that, I have something now that I never did before — a reason to wake up and get out of bed every morning. I no longer have to wait for a vacation or a party to feel excited about my day. I always have something awesome or interesting to tell my readers, and that’s the best reason to get out of bed I’ve ever had!

And then, of course, there’s the more immediate monetary reward associated with my day job and freelance work. That’s a different kind of high, knowing that I’d get paid for every word I write. Sometimes, it’s a struggle not to let it eat into my creative writing time.

I suppose it’s not hard to tell where I get the motivation for that!

And the great thing about it? Freelancing as a web copywriter has taught me how to sell my writing — something no writer today can do without, no matter what their genre or format.

Is it easy trying to balance a full-time job with two side-hustles? Lol, no! And it’s not like I’m doing it that well anyway, which you can probably tell by the epic frequency of my blog posts!

But you know what? We’re all hanging out here anyway, creeping along on a tiny dust-ball suspended in space, waiting to die. Might as well throw ourselves against the wall of impossibility and give it everything we’ve got.

After all, what do we have to lose? Not like anyone’s getting out of this alive anyway, is it?

Human + X: Creating Believable Aliens in Fiction

(source image)

So today I want to talk about aliens. More accurately, I want to talk about a subset of aliens.

The fictional variety.

The type of aliens that appear on the pages of science fiction novels, and in the episodes of space operas.

If real aliens exist, Hola to them too! Hope we see you guys soon. But for now, I’m gonna limit myself to the aliens created for our entertainment. AKA book and movie aliens.

In fact, now that I think about it, the points I’m about to discuss can apply to any non-human, sentient species. They don’t necessarily need to be alien, as in inhabitants of another planet. Earthly beings such as elves, dwarves, vampires, and were-animals of all sorts also qualify – although these are more likely to appear in fantasy than sci-fi.

The point is, the thingy needs to be not human, and self-aware enough to realize that it is not, and what that entails.

What Measure is an Alien?

The thing that first got me thinking about aliens was the need to create versions of them for my own stories.

You see, one thing that had always bothered me about fictional aliens was just how…human they seemed. Aliens in fantasy and sci-fi seemed to me to just be humans, plus something extra.

For example, Vulcans are humans plus excessive logic and pointy ears. Elves are pretty and wise humans. Dwarves are short and mechanically inclined humans. Werewolves are humans with sharpened senses and (sometimes) heightened aggression. You get my point. What was so alien about these aliens anyway??

Points of Difference

The problem I often seemed to encounter in fantasy and sci-fi alike was that the results of these differences were never discussed. For example, how would a race that lives for thousands of years view time? I mean, if an elven species lives for thousands of years, why would they even feel the need to go to war with humans? It’s like humans going to war with goldfish. What’s the point? The humans would die of old age by the time the elves have decided on the type of arrow to use.

Similarly, would a species that never dies consider murder a crime? If yes, then why?

How would a race that is overly dedicated to logic design clothing? Would their perception of beauty also be influenced by their preoccupation with logic, so that they see the most logical attire as the most beautiful one in the given climate? Would they even understand the concept of subjective attractiveness?

These are just some of the questions about aliens that have haunted me for quite a few years now. This affliction was only made worse when I started world-building for my own novel.

My Own Personal Alien!!

For my novel, I’d created an angel-like race called Aeriels that were essentially peaceful by nature, but had been driven – through a series of events – into a destructive war with humanity. The question then was, why were they fighting if they were so peaceful? But more importantly, why were they peaceful in the first place?

This question was easily answered by the fact that the Aeriels did not need food or water, they sustained themselves with sunlight. And they came from a world where the sun literally never set. So the Aeriels had never learned to fight because they had never needed to compete for scarce resources. It’s like if humans could survive simply by breathing air. This, of course, led to all kinds of confusion on their part when they realized the humans wanted to settle scores with a good old fashioned war!

Some Examples of Awesome Aliens in Fiction

And this is not to say that none of these questions were ever satisfactorily answered in the world of mainstream science fiction or fantasy. I once read a novel about a hive-mind species that didn’t mind if individual members of their race were killed, because to them each individual is just an extension of the planet-wide hive-mind. I mean you wouldn’t really care if somebody cut off a bit of your hair (even without your permission). Sure, you might be annoyed with them, even temporarily angry, but you wouldn’t want to send them to prison over it. That was pretty much how this species viewed the murder of its members…like cutting off bits of hair!

I also really liked the explanation given in a very popular vampire novel, for a family of vampires having a lot of money. You see, they invested in the stock market. And because they live forever, they’re basically reaping the benefits of centuries’ worth of compound interest. I thought that was quite a brilliant piece of detail. I mean, the only thing hotter than rich vampires is rich vampires who’re savvy investors, amiright?!!

The thing with alienness, of course, is that there are different varieties of it. What is it that makes an alien, alien? Therein lies the question.

The Various Types of Alienness

Of course, there’s the obvious. Those who are physically alien. If a spaceship lands on your backyard, and a creature emerges from it that has five heads and three pairs of wings, you can be reasonably sure that it is an alien.

Then there is psychological alienness, which is slightly more subtle. A creature that does not consider lying a problem because it can read people’s minds. Or, like I said above, a creature that doesn’t think murder is wrong because it cannot die.

The thing about depicting profound psychological differences is that they would also lead to differences in motivation and goals. Much of what humans do (working, socializing, etc.) is at a fundamental level geared towards survival. The survival of the individual and his tribe. So how would a species behave that is not motivated by the need to survive, because it cannot die?

Psychological differences can also arise from physical differences. To take the example above, would a creature with five heads be more intelligent, or would it have multiple personalities? If it has a brain inside each of those heads, would those brains always work in tandem with one another, or might they sometimes be in conflict? Would a hive-mind be capable of understanding the value of an individual life?

Finally, there are cultural differences. Cultural differences are a culmination of both physical and psychological differences. Cultures are created by the individuals of a species. For instance, humans have a culture that considers stealing a crime, because we value the concept of personal wealth. Would a being belonging to a hive mind even comprehend the concept of stealing?

On the other hand, would a race that relies exclusively on logic, consider it illegal to steal from someone who has something in excess, and would therefore not really miss the thing that was stolen? I mean logically, if a person who earns a hundred bucks a day were to steal another hundred from someone who earns a thousand a day, then the theft would effectively double his income while only making a small dent of 10% on the income of the person from whom the money was stolen.

From a purely logical point of view, might that not just be seen as efficient allocation of resources? If it was, then might we have a culture of hyper logical beings that actually encourage stealing as a form of income redistribution for efficient resource allocation? Or would that responsibility fall to the government in the form of tax collection? What might Vulcans have to say about that idea?

I once watched a movie about aliens that could see the future. They also looked like octopuses and had multiple legs/tentacles. They wrote in a circular script, where they began to write from two ends with both hands at the same time. The sentence ended in a perfect circle, with both hands meeting at exactly the same place.

Now imagine trying to write one sentence with both hands at once, your left hand starting at the beginning of the sentence and your right hand starting at the end. You’d have to calculate to perfection, exactly how fast both of your hands would write, how much space each letter in the sentence would require, and how many words each of your hands will be able to write before it meets the other one in the middle. Moreover, you will also have to know before you begin a sentence exactly how you’re planning to end it.

When you think about it, isn’t that language and script the natural consequence of a culture that can look into the future, just as tools are the natural consequence of a culture that has opposable thumbs?

The Problem of Relating to Truly Alien Aliens

The problem with writing truly alien aliens, of course, is that they’re not very relatable. It’s one thing to have a morally grey protagonist, but how do you deal with a morally orange love-interest? Black and white characters might well be boring, but if the spectrum of your character’s morality starts at bright pink and ends at fluorescent green, readers might have a bit of a hard time trying to understand their motivations, much less relate to them.

And I suppose that is one of the major reasons why writers and movie makers choose to create aliens that are basically: Human + X.

Because they’re relatable, and it’s hard to get readers to care about a character who is difficult to relate to on a fundamental level. Most people seek early on to establish a connection with the characters that they are reading about (or watching, for that matter).

And that connection is hard to come by when you’re trying to imagine a creature that has access to the memories, thoughts, and experiences of every member of its species that has ever been born – as would be the case for a hive mind. How would a being like that think or act? And as a very human writer with a very limited ambit of accumulated experience and knowledge, how can you even begin to depict such a creature?

How, for that matter, can you accurately guess the emotional conflicts of an immortal being, when you yourself are very mortal, as is everyone else you know? Personally, I would think immortal vampires would struggle far more with culture shock than any romantic angst. I mean, my grandmother can’t stop talking about how different things were in ‘her time’, and she wasn’t even alive a hundred years ago. Can you imagine how much worse it would be if you lived for a thousand years?!

Well, those are just my ideas, anyway. You can, of course, think differently. Let me know in the comments below what kind of aliens you’d like to see in science fiction and fantasy!