'Talent, determination . . . and sheer luck'

 

 

“If people ask me for the ingredients of success, I say one is talent, two is stubbornness or determination, and third is sheer luck. You have to have two out of the three. Any two will probably do.” – Fred Saberhagen

 

Born on May 18, 1930 Saberhagen is most famous for his Sci-Fi Berserker series of short stories and novels.  He also was one of the first writers to put together a series of novels where vampires (including Dracula) are the “good guys.” 

 

A native of Chicago and a Korean War veteran, Saberhagen started writing science-related pieces and then fiction “around the age of 30.”   His first novel The Golden People came out in 1964 following a series of successes with magazine articles and short stories.  He said he was “filled with ideas” and felt the urge to write every day.

 

 “Ideas are everywhere,” he said.   “It's the paperwork, that is, sitting down and thinking them into a coherent story, trying to find just the right words . . . that can get to be a writer’s labor.”

As a writer of “serious science,” too, he served as both editor and writer for all the chemistry articles in the Encyclopædia Britannica from the late 1960s through the mid-1970s.  But, from that point until his death in 2007 he only wrote science fiction.

 

His advice to aspiring writers: “Keep writing, and keep sending things out, not to friends and relatives, but to people who have the power to buy. A lot of additional, useful tips could be added, but this is fundamental.”