I am sometimes asked, but the answer is not necessarily easy or short.

Can engineers write? Am I allowed? Perhaps a belief held by some would lead to the answers, “No, not really,” and “Sure, I guess, if you must.”

There are some intrinsic personality traits that led to my chosen career. Others have been dormant until later in life, but all contribute to my urge to get stories out of my head and onto paper.

It’s not really a choice

There is something writers will understand very well that others who know me may not.

For someone who writes, the urge to do it is not always voluntary. Observing the world, given the tools of language, I write not so much as a conscious choice, but a compulsory reaction.

Whether I write is independent of whether my stories are any good or make money.

Thinking of them is something that just happens whether I command it or not. Putting them on paper is like steam escaping from a boiler. It cannot be contained.

Prophecy

Part of the engineering process is to predict what might go wrong. It has become a habit both inside and outside work, causing me, sometimes, to be labeled as a pessimist.

My car doesn’t have spare tire but instead one of those air pumps that you plug into the lighter to blow adhesive into a flat. What could possibly go wrong? It makes me a nervous wreck.

The desire to predict extends from deep in my imagination out to the world around me. What will the future look like? What if it goes well? What if it does not? What might unseen pasts have looked like?

We have an innate desire as humans to hear stories and learn from the experience of others. Our brains crave stories as much as immediate sensory input. We want to know of future trouble and what to do about it when it occurs. Maybe we will not be attacked by a bear. Maybe people will not slander our character without cause. Or maybe they will. Stories of danger give us courage to face our fears. Watching and learning from characters who are having far worse days than we are gives us hope that if they can prevail, we can too in whatever tribulations we are facing.

What better genre to explore fears than horror? Dialing up the contrast between good and evil accentuates the storytelling process. Usually the evil is some combination of something I have encountered or imagined, and my villains pose both an imminent and symbolic threat.

Invention and Discovery

Part of my duty has always been to create solutions to problems, applying knowledge that has been used before, and in some cases, creating new approaches. Then, in the real world, whatever is created must actually work. Getting thing to work is exhausting. I have been constantly called upon to figure out why one machine or another is not working, how to make new designs function, and how to troubleshoot old designs. Wouldn’t it be nice, with the stroke of a pen, to invent something that does not have to be proven?

The inventions in my stories only need to function in the fictional worlds where they live. Now, some hard-core science fiction fans will talk about the virtues of feasibility. I sometimes do that as well, but it is not always a black and white evaluation. Plausibility gets grayer in uncertain futures and worlds, and the more distant, the more in question.

And in the genre of horror, imagination trumps feasibility. I like it because I can extend the boundaries of reality to make my points while still maintaining plenty of realism.

Learning

The topics I studied in my career are so broad that nobody could learn everything about them in one lifetime. I strived to learn all I could, but I always wanted more variety: psychology, linguistics, history, and more. These were some of the things I needed to learn to support my stories, and I wouldn’t want it any other way. I had to learn more to create rich content—complex characters and interesting plots. Relying only on what I knew would be too monotonous and limiting.

I have always enjoyed learning despite the hard work it sometimes takes. Other life-long learners will understand. Knowledge is enrichment for the soul, and it’s a game of numbers: the more you learn, the higher probability you’ll know something useful when you need it. And it’s a never-ending process: the more you know, the more you uncover to learn.

And the more I learn, the more intricate—and horrific—situations I can create.

Surprise and Entertainment

Sometimes devising characters and stories is much like reading somebody else’s work. You never know where the journey will lead when it starts. My ideas seem to occur in quantum leaps, and they don’t come every day, but when they do, the writing comes easily for a while until the next idea occurs.

In the meantime, it gets difficult again. The hard times are part of the process. You read, you think, you explore, and then a plot twist or a character trait hits you again.

Exercising creativity is amusing self-entertainment, and this is one of the unique and new things about writing for me, something I would not have predicted I would enjoy so much.

Since I enjoy the speculative genres, and horror in particular, that’s what I tend to dream up.

Sharing and Helping

Neither do I write only for myself, nor do I expect everyone to be enriched by my ideas, but I do want to be thought-provoking for those who are interested. The notion of creating a community of ideas is appealing to me. An appreciation of art, something I possess, is also something I long for in my own work.

My legacy might be noticed by some, measured by fewer. To be recognized by fans of like mind would leave me smiling.