Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
It was a fabulous experience, Rip. Very strange and very educational
for a straight young white guy--and mutually strange for guys who had
never spent any time talking to a straight young white guy. You're
certainly right that it's not just cons who think that people who
succeed just know some trick they don't!
  

    
To continue this thought . . . writers are especially vulnerable to
the trap of thinking that writing is something OTHER than work. People
who want to be figure skaters KNOW they have to skate, people who want
to be tennis players KNOW they have to play tennis, people who want to
be concert pianists KNOW they have to play the piano, people who want
to be singers KNOW they have to sing, people who want to be painters
KNOW they have paint, but people who want to be writers very often
think that what they have to do is WAIT . . . for some great idea to
seize them. THEN, presumably, they'll begin to write. But in fact it
doesn't work that way. Writing ideas come to people who are writing,
and they DON'T come to people who are not. 

During the 1980s I was more or less constantly writing short stories
-- and constantly getting IDEAS for short stories. When Ishmael was
finally finished and published in 1992, I began to concentrate
exclusively on book-length projects. Once I stopped writing short
stories, I stopped getting IDEAS for short stories -- I wasn't LOOKING
for them, so they didn't appear. If I were once again to start writing
short stories, I'd soon be bombarded with ideas for short stories. The
most consistent problem I see with aspiring writers is that they tend
to think they can get where they want to go just by waiting.
  

    
When in fact, what they will actually get is more ideas for ways to
wait...

Now, when you shifted your concentration from short stories to longer
work, did you have a sense that the stuff "coming through" the longer
form was similar or different?  Was it an evolution of the same issues
and concerns into a new form, or did you sense a change in what
mattered to you, and somehow figured out the new material needed the
longer form?  I guess I'm assuming part of the process was active, and
part of it was either unconscious or receptive, and I'm wondering if
you could talk about how you experienced/created the transition.
  

    
It wasn't that I was "concentrating" on short fiction during the
1980s. I was mainly focussed on the book that would eventually become
Ishmael, writing versions three to seven before getting to version
eight (Ishmael) in 1990. Short fiction gave me an occasional vacation
from this almost obsessive endeavor. It was also a vacation in the
sense that there was no thematic connection to the book I was
struggling to produce, and most readers would probably be puzzled to
see me writing in a purely literary mode. (One reader of version six
told me, "You're not a writer, you're a thinker." Naturally he never
saw the stuff of mine that was appearing in magazines like The
Quarterly, Fiction, Asylum, and Magic Realism, so he didn't know any
better.)

Writing short fiction is fun. You can produce a short story in a week
or two, but for a writer who's trying to make a living at it, short
fiction isn't going to contribute much to your income unless you're
publishing in The New Yorker, Esquire, Playboy, or two or three other
top-paying markets. Even Joyce Carol Oates (who writes a ton of short
fiction) publishes in magazines that pay just a few dollars -- or
nothing -- so the competition is astoundly fierce. Writing a novel, by
contrast, can bring big financial rewards, but it also requires a
commitment of a year or more to a difficult and sometimes maddening
endeavor.
  

    
Daniel, when you've described the years of doing version after version of 
what ultimately became Ishmael, I'm left with the rather personal question 
of "how did you make ends meet while all this (non-paying) writing was 
going on?" Were you working on the side? Or had an income from previous 
investments? Or...?

I ask because the financial equation is always part of what I have to 
consider when sitting down to write. i.e., is there are market for this? 
Will this pay the rent at the end of the month? and so on...  It isn't 
what I like to think about, but it's part of trying to write for a living.
  

    
During the early years I was working on the book, Rennie was earning a
salary as the assistant to the Goodman School of Drama, and I was
still earning money as a developer of educational materials. Then I
received an inheritance that we decided to use to get out of Chicago
and give me time to finish this project. We moved to New Mexico and
bought a home/retail business in Madrid, about 30 miles south of Santa
Fe. After about three years we discovered we were utter flops as
shopkeepers. With the remnants of our cash we started a weekly
newspaper called The East Mountain News, covering a huge area east of
Albuquerque that was not being served by any newspaper (and whose
merchants had no advertising medium). This was largely Rennie's project
(newspapering being in her blood, so to speak). I gave the newspaper
three days a week and the book the other four. The paper was quite
successful but eventually wore Rennie out (and you can't just shut a
newspaper down to take a month off). We sold it and moved to Austin,
TX, where Rennie landed a good job as an editor at an educational
publisher, and she supported us until I finished Ishmael and won the
Turner Tomorrow Award for it. The whole adventure was quite amazingly
reckless, considering that we were both in our forties when it started.
We put our lives in the hands of the gods, and they looked after us.
  

    
> We put our lives in the hands of the gods, and they looked after us.

Good for them! And it was certainly a blessing that you were able to spend 
several days a week just writing without economic pressure. I've certainly 
toyed with moving to Ireland where writers are apparently exempt from 
income tax. ;-)
  

    
I hadn't heard that about Ireland. After losing two of the twentieth
century's biggest literary lights, maybe this is the country's way of
trying to keep its writers at home!
  

    
Daniel, another thought that occurs to me. Literary purists have often 
looked down on "comics" as an inferior medium. The criticism is that 
showing scenes visually inhibits the reader's imagination from picturing 
it him/herself. Yet you've said that "The Man Who Grew Young" was not 
really feasible as a prose project. Any thoughts on comics and graphic 
novels as a medium distinct from purely text fiction?
  

    
When photography appeared, it was inconceivable that this could ever
become a legitimate art form. When motion pictures came on the scene,
no self-respecting actor would lower himself to appear in one. When
sound came in, film purists wept; when color came in, they wept some
more. 

New media always suffer from the scorn of purist snobs. What in the
world is contemptible about telling stories with pictures? Does anyone
despise Michaelangelo for what he did on the ceiling of the Sistine
Chapel? Should Pope Julius have commissioned a piece of text instead,
so as not to inhibit the imagination of visitors to the chapel?

There are no good and bad media. Paint is a wonderful medium, but does
that mean that, if he was a real artist, Edward Weston would have
ditched his camera? Radio is wonderful medium for drama, but does that
mean that, if Francis Ford Coppola was a true artist, he would have
done APOCALYPSE NOW as a radio drama? 

Artistry isn't a function of the medium but of the USE of the medium. 

Cinema originated as a cheap novelty; no artists were involved in it.
But when they began to see its possibilities as an artistic medium,
they ignored its nickelodeon origins. The same has yet to happen to the
medium of THE MAN WHO GREW YOUNG. According to media snobs, the medium
itself is unworthy of a serious artist.

On the matter of "graphic novels as a medium distinct from purely text
fiction"... To my mind the difference between these media is the
distance they put between the reader and the characters. A prose novel
puts the characters IN HERE--inside your head. This is fine, of course,
but it isn't inherently desirable, isn't always what works best. When
I tried writing THE MAN WHO GREW YOUNG as a prose novel, I found it
just wouldn't work to have Adam Taylor IN HERE. By translating him to
the page graphically, I put him OUT THERE. (Characters seen on a stage
or a screen are similarly OUT THERE.)
  

    
What a profound distinction!  An interesting way to look at history
since the rise of the novel -- you could call it the "IN HERE Period".
  

    
I thought it was pretty good myself. I'd never really thought about
the distinction till you asked the question.
  

    
That's one of the great things about *this* form.
  

    
Daniel, you talk about the Novel as an IN HERE medium, but it occurs to me 
that with modern book marketing and the media that authors' success 
increasingly depends on them being OUT THERE! I know that I'm a kind of 
stay at home guy (as are many writers and artists). Yet book tours, TV 
appearances, radio interviews, etc. all seem to call for the author to be 
an extrovert and performer. How does that sit with you?
  

    
It seems to me that authors who are adept at self-promotion have
always had an advantage--people who have an instinct for attracting
media attention. You can even attract media attention by shunning it,
the way J.D. Salinger (and, more recently, Jonathan Franzen) did. Of
course, you have to have the books as well. Just being a colorful
character wouldn't have made Hemingway a successful author if he hadn't
been writing important books, but being a colorful character certainly
helped get them to a wider audience than if he'd been bland and
boring. 

James Redfield, a terrific self-promoter, single-handedly turned The
Celestine Prophecy into a bestseller, but it wouldn't have become a
bestseller if readers weren't getting something out of it that they
wanted. No amount of promotion (of any kind) will make a success of a
book that no one wants to read. I can give you a great example of this
from my own experience. Oprah once devoted a show to three authors
whose work she loved: Sarah Ban Breathnach, Alive Walker, and me. At
this point no one had ever heard of Sarah Ban Breathnach (or her book,
Simple Abundance). Alice Walker was promoting her latest book, in which
she related her horrible experience with the making of the film The
Color Purple (poor baby!). And of course I was there courtesy of
Ishmael. After this show, Breathnach's book became a monster
bestseller, mine received a nice little boost (it was already a
successful book), and Alice Walker's did nothing. What this shows is
that there was a huge market for what Breathnach was doing, a much
smaller market for what I was doing, and no market at all for what
Alice Walker was doing. The mass market that Oprah reaches wants stuff
like Simple Abundance, is much less interested in philosophical novels,
and doesn't want to hear any author whining about how much she
suffered while becoming famous and earning millions of dollars.

Personally, while I'm no great showman, I enjoy book tours, TV
appearances, and radio interviews. I dislike the travel involved but
know this is the best way to let my readers know that I've got
something new out there. At the same time, I firmly believe that if
you've got something people want, they'll find it. Maybe it'll take a
while, but the word will get out--if you've got something people want.
(And if you don't, no amount of hoopla will MAKE them want it.)
  

    
E-mail from someone on the Internet, who did not choose to identify 
himself.
                       mr. quinn
      america, since sept. 11, seems to be opening their minds to other
views, besides our one track view of the world, on politics, religion,
freedom, etc. do you think,maybe, something good could come from this
horrendous event we as, americans are dealing with? for example, we've
heard so much about one of the reasons americans are so hated in the
world, our foreign policy in dealing with american interests in the
middle east and elsewhere. what i'm getting at is do you think there will
be any change in the way we view american culture as more important than
other cultures, in that when thousands of americans died tragically, on
sept.11, it seemed unthinkable that such an event could happen in this
day and age, but when thousands of afghanistanians were tragically killed
in response to 9-11 it seemed like no one in the west even noticed, i
never once, seen a daily count on how many people were being bomb to
their graves in afghanistan. doe! s this mean, to our leaders and the
general population, that an american life is worth more than a
afghanistan life. what are your thoughts on this situation and do you
think 9-11 was another example of the cauldron begining to boil over to
the point of evaporation.           peace
  

    
E-mail from Art Slade:

Hi Daniel,

I just wanted to post to "the well" and say how much I enjoyed "The Man Who
Grew Young."  It was quite an eloquent piece, full of surprising
revelations.  You must be quite proud of it.

Art
  

    
No, I don't see 9/11 as "another example of the cauldron begining to
boil over." It was not, in other words, an expression of despair over
what the people of our (worldwide) culture are doing to humanity and to
the world in general. It was simply an expression of hated toward
Americans. And I'm afraid I don't see the possibility of "something
good" resulting from it.
  

    
Hi Art--

Glad you enjoyed TMWGY. I found it a very satisfying book to create,
especially to watch the art come together so beautifully (over a
three-year period!). In some ways, it's my favorite of all my books,
but ISHMAEL casts a long, long shadow!
  

    
E-mail from Roger:

Daniel,

Is it frustrating for you that ISHMAEL overshadows the rest of your body of 
work?  It seems that none of your later books have appealed to people as much 
as that one.  I'm not sure why, since I think they're all great.

Thanks,

Roger
  

    
E-mail from Pablo Contreras:

In your book "The Story of B", you talk about our culture currently "collapsing"; 
do you think that if this notion was broadly spread, we could change our doings 
to open the space for some new vision to arise? In other words, would you advise 
to tell every age group in our society that our culture is death and that it's up 
to us to find how we ought to live, and that this is a good thing?
And could you further explain the implications of this collapse? 
  

    
Roger--

If I admit to being frustrated by this, I also have to admit to this
being a bit irrational. ISHMAEL's success is due in large part to the
fact that it has caught on in the schools in a big way, being used at
every level of the curriculum from midschool to graduate school, and
later books (though they're used here and there) don't lend themselves
to this use nearly as well. I'm rather in the position of J.D.
Salinger, whose later work all stands in the shadow of THE CATCHER IN
THE RYE (which the schools have made an enduring classic). Neither of
us really has any ground for complaint!
  

    
Pablo, I guess you could say that the task I've set myself is to show
people that the chaos and catastrophe that we're experiencing (from the
dissolution of the nuclear family to the phenomenon of children
plotting to commit wholesale murder) is not just a bad patch we have to
put up with until a good patch comes along. This is something we've
been building toward for thousands of years, and every day we march out
and put our shoulders to the wheel to push the trend further. In other
words, we got us INTO this mess by following a certain path, and it's
absurd to think that we can get OUT of this mess by CONTINUING to
follow that path. We MUST get our feet on a new path--and soon. (And
this path isn't something we have to invent; it's just the path we were
on before we embarked on the strange adventure that has led us to this
point of crisis.) 

I think my clearest statement about all this was made in a speech
called "The New Renaissance," which you can find on my website at
http://www.ishmael.org/Education/Writings/The_New_Renaissance.shtml.
  

    
Email from Tony:

   mr. quinn,                         with tmwgy, i guess you could say, 
you used a different format to get the same message across, wich to me
is a excellant idea because you've reached out to a crowd (comic book
readers and writers) that not many writers of your caliber would do.  
earlier this year i read somewhere that you were working on screenplays
for "the story of b" and "after dachu". are those screenplays still in
the works and are there any other mediums you would like to experiment
with in the future to get your writings out to other generas. also do
you plan to release anything in 2002? i greatly respect what you do and
hope for much more in the near future.
THANKS, TONY 
  

    
Thanks back, Tony, for your encouraging words. It's true that, in
between books, I spent some time writing screenplays. There was some
early interest in After Dachau in Hollywood, but that didn't blossom,
and I didn't feel there was much future in that screenplay. There was
also some interest in The Story of B from an independent filmmaker, but
a few weeks of work persuaded me that I'd ultimately have to falsify
the book to turn it into a 100-minute motion picture. Meanwhile . . .
yes, there will be a new book in the fall of 2002, a novel called The
Holy--something very different from all past work (but still within my
thematic territory).