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Prosper writer wins L. Ron Hubbard award
William Ledbetter
For Ledbetter, it is rocket science
By Penny Rathbun
prathbun@starlocalnews.com
On April 15, he was one of the winners in the L. Ron Hubbard Writers and Illustrators of the Future contests held in Las Angeles.
His award was for his short story, “The Rings of Mars.” The lengthy story has been published in this year's edition of the science fiction anthology series, “L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future, Volume XXVIII.
Ledbetter said he writes at least two hours a day before he goes to work at Rockwell-Collins, where he is a mechanical designer.
He grew up in Indiana and moved to Waco in 1995. In 2000 he and his family became Prosper residents. He always enjoyed writing, but didn’t become serious about about taking it on as a profession until the late 1990s.
For a science fiction writer that writes about galactic travel, he is very down to earth. His main advice for anyone who wants to be a science fiction writer or a writer in any other genre is to write every day.
“Don’t obsess over it,” he said. “Keep working, send it out and move on. If you want to be a writer, you actually have to write.”
Ledbetter also recommends belonging to a writers’ group. He leads a group that meets twice a month. All the members are published writers. New members get into the group by invitation only. He said the group would consider admitting a new member who was unpublished only if that person showed major promise.
Ledbetter said learning to write is like learning to play the violin; It takes nonstop practice.
His award-winning short story is about 9,000 words long and is set on Mars. One of the characters is a robot named Nellie.
Nellie may or may not follow classic science fiction writer Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of robotic behavior. Asimov was tired of reading stories in which robots killed their makers for no apparent reason, so he wrote the Three Laws to guide writers and their robots. 1. A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.
Ledbetter also strongly recommends that spelling, grammar and punctuation be correct.
“If editors get two or three pages in to a story and the spelling and grammar errors begin to irritate, they don’t finish reading it,” Ledbetter said.
He writes outlines of his stories before he writes them.
“I need to know the ending before I start,” he said. “Getting from A to B is easier when you know where you’re going.
He said the best way for a new writer to get noticed is to keep writing and sending out stories and get published.
“It’s easy to become a writer. It’s hard to stay one,” he said.
Ledbetter is definitely on the path of continuing to be a writer. He has finished the first novel in a trilogy about the future of the human race.
The Prosper writer is a member of the National Space Society of North Texas and is an editor at Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, and he runs the annual Jim Baen Memorial Writing Contest for Baen Books and the National Space Society.
His further advice for aspiring science fiction writers is to read things other than science fiction: “Ideas come from all over the place,” he said.
To find out if Nellie is a law-abiding robot will require reading “The Rings of Mars.” Visit www.writersofthefuture.com.
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