Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
I also enjoyed Petrefax but I can see big pormise for Lucifer.
  

    
Congratulations, Neil!
A nice thing to bring home from a convention, that's for sure!

Given any more thought to what questions you wish interviewers would ask?
  

    
It's no longer than many movies these days.

How did your voice hold up?
  

    

Tori Bat, from BatsNeedFriends@aol.com, responds:

"Hi--> Ron you've been espcially wonderful about sending my posts along!
*smile* thanks... I have another if you'd be so kind! *hugs*

Hello again Neil--> glittery congrats about your award! and a 3 hour reading
sounds wonderful! you know how greatly I loved the reading you did at
concat! its not offten that I get read to lately being older... but I have
always loved being read to, my mother is a wonderful reader and I think that
really
adds to the story- so your audiences are very lucky--> you are a excellent
storyteller!  Oh! and yes, thanks again for telling Tori I exist... you
mentioned you had on the last message board around new years~ *smile*
although (and I could be wrong) but I think she really did read my letter I
gave her at the sept buffalo show... but a reminder from a nice little birdy
like yourself doesnt hurt! ~laugh~ although I could be wrong so in any
case--> you were very kind to do so! *smile* well I hope things are well
with you! *hugs* ~~> Tori Bat!"
  

    
Elise -- I think the trouble with the 'what question would you like to
be asked" thing is it's like the people who tell me I can write a
story about anything I want, of any length... and are always puzzled
that the people who ask for a story  for an anthology of stories about
Brownian Motion got a story when they didn't. When there are no
boundaries I go blank.

Martha -- I think my voice held up okay for the reading although after
my throat felt as if it was sandpapered, and I was a little short with
the gentleman who suggested that I could make his day by talking to
his friend who was a fan of mine on his cellphone, immediately after
the reading...

Toribat -- oh good. I thought I'd told you that.
  

    
Anyway, the most interesting questions are the ones you never would have
thought of, because you already know the answers to the questions you do
think about.  Those people who are really good at asking questions, they can
help you learn as much as they do.

I wonder if someone gave me a story assignment if I'd write something.

What would you write about Brownian motion?
  

    
Neil - -

I was wondering what you thought of comics like "Lenore" and "Johnny
the Homocidal Maniac"?  There seems to be a small sub-genre out there
of hilarious, death obsessed comics (well, I think they're very
funny... maybe I'm the only one :-)  Good Omens was hugely funny and
I'm wondering whether you've been tempted to really go for it and do a
out and out chuckle fest in comic form as well?
  

    
Yvonne -- I enjoy them both very much, particularly Lenore, which is
just sweet.

I always thought that Sandman was a great deal funnier than people
gave it credit for being, but I don't think it was a "chucklefest".

With the exception of the story Shoggoth's Old Peculiar (in Smoke and
Mirrors) I don't think I've written anything that was exclusively funny
since Good Omens. Dunno why not...

Martha -- have you stopped writing, then?

Brownian motion -- not sure. Maybe something about miso soup...?
  

    

Mikel L. Matthews Jr. writes:

"For a little while longer, I'm a teacher north of Chicago. I've a student
in one of my classes who will sneak Angels and Visitations, Sandman, Smoke
and Mirrors or Cerebus out of my bookshelf while we're doing other things in
class. I'm not sure if she knows I know or not (at least most of the time)
but she's not really interested in Julius Ceaser and I think this reading
will stay with her while the other will not. By the time I'd thought about
what was in S&M, she'd already found Tastings. (She turned bright red and
shut the book.)  A few of my theatre kids have been turned on to your work
as well. Every Oral Interp I've done has come from something you've written.
The Satan speech from "Seasons of Mist" and the eulugy from Matthew among
the most effective, though "Upon Being an Experiment..." had my audience in
tears. One of my girls has threatened to steal Angels and Visitations, so if
there's tell of a disapperance in my area, I'll trust to your
secrecy. :)

btw, I think because some of my students are going to be picking up some of
your work and Cerebus, you and Dave Sim may owe me a bit for royalties.
We'll hash out the deal over carmels or something. :) Thank you for having
written some of the most wonderful, magical stories that I know. I find I go
back over them all the time and enjoy them more each time."
  

    
I'm not sure if I've stopped, but I haven't been continuing for a while.

Sandman is frequently funny.  The lead character, he's funnier than he wants
to be sometimes, poor thing.  But, like most of the writers I like, you
write very little, including the heartbreaking stuff, that doesn't have
humor in it somewhere.
  

    
Mikel -- oh good. I keep getting awards from the ALA for writing adult
books that young adults like to read. Which is pretty heartwarming.
"Being an Experiment..." is a wonderful thing to read aloud, so is
"Babycakes" but from a different direction.

In the meantime, I shall be very grateful that you are out there
infecting readers with the bug. Cosmically, of course, there are enough
students out there infecting their teachers with the bug that the
thing balances.

Meanwhile, I've just agreed to be Guest of Honour, with Gene Wolfe, at
the World Horror Con in Chicago in 2002. And I'll be in Chicago in the
autumn for the Last Guardian Angel Reading Tour.

Martha -- well, I will fight for your right to put down your pen when
you're done. But, selfishly, I wish you wouldn't. You're one of the
good writers.
  

    
Co-guest with Gene Wolfe--pretty darn impressive.  Congratulations.

To move things away from me--as a prolific sort of writer they'd have to
shoot to make stop, how do you keep knowing you have things to say worth
putting down?  You're right, of course, but how do you tell?  Or do you?
  

    
Good question.  Questions.
  

    
Ow, Martha.  I suspect the most painful question you can ask a writer,
especially one who has done it long enough to have a shelf of things,
is any version of "haven't you written enough now?" "Don't you think
you're starting to repeat yourself?" or just "Hush, sit down, let
someone else have their go."

How do I know I have things to say worth putting down?

I don't.


On the good days I'm enjoying writing and storytelling too much to
worry. On the bad days the stories are there and they, sometimes, carry
me.

Occasionally I find myself looking at people with real jobs and
thinking "it must be nice to do something where you don't have to make
the world every morning". I remember Roger Zelazny saying that if he
wasn't a writer he'd own a hardware store, the kind with every
different screw and bolt and nail, each in its own little drawer, with
paper bags to put them in after you've counted them out. And when I
read that in 76(age 15 or 16 wanting to be a writer so bad I could
taste it, even then) I thought "How could you not want to be Roger
Zelazny?"

(But then, there was a period of a decade or more in the late 70s and
80s when he wasn't Roger Zelazny, he was just a guy with some facility
at writing who wasn't working in a hardware store. And then, in the 90s
(I like to think it had something to with Jane coming into his life)
he was Roger again, and if he'd gone off and worked in the hardware
shop he'd not have written LONESOME OCTOBER or the Red Thread
story....)

And it's weird right now -- the bits of American Gods I'm enjoying
most are the mimetic bits, where I get to try and write about America.
The sensawunda stuff is there, and I'm pleased with it, but I know I
can do that. The creating a little American town (which happens in
AINSEL, which is part two of Gods. Part One is SHADOW. I wish I knew
what he was going to be called in part three)is much more interesting,
and I'm having to do stuff I usually fake, like go and research how
things really look -- I'm just about to do a ridealong with my local
police for an evening, I think, because it'll make things work better
for a couple of characters if I do.

Does that answer your question?

If not, you don't. But I'm in too far, have too many awards, and too
many stories I still want to tell to back out gracefully now.
  

    
My father owned a hardware store, so I've always known perfectly well I
didn't want to.  Hard work, small retail.  Though for a time I thought I
should grow up and take over the store because someone had to.  (But no one
did.)

People will ask "Aren't you repeating yourself?", and it wouldn't surprise
me much if along with the people who sigh because you're doing too many
different things there are also people who claim you're just doing the same
thing.  I don't suppose that's avoidable.

If you can interest yourself and not let other people convince you you're
spoiling the interest, then you've got it made, is what I think.  Definitely
must be interesting to put together a town, and I'll definitely be
interested in seeing how you did it.

You know, when I started finally writing in the first place, my only real
concern was that I'd be just repeating _other_ people--

Oh, working in a mature artform.  What must it be like to work in a new,
wide-open artform?  Early silent film, the first comic books, the first
novels?  But maybe it takes a different kind of person to do that.  Or not.

There's sort of a question in there somewhere, I think.
  

    
(yes.  and a good one.)

(enjoying)
  

    

Me, too!!
  

    
I think there's a lot to be said for both sides. The fun of doing
Sandman is that one was standing in the shadow of, what, a dozen or so
people, and knowing that no-one had ever done THAT before. That, win or
lose, no-one had ever made something like Sandman.

But the fun of writing short stories and novels is that one is working
in a tradition, with hundreds of thousands of brilliant ones written
-- it's like being in a populous city rather than a tiny village. And
when one does something good in the city, then one really has done
something fun.

Is that an answer to a sort of a question?

n

who did his 2400 words today, and has no idea what's happening in the
story right now.

But I was deeply pissed off that in the Weekly World News there was
actually something about black goods train carriages which take
american political prisoners around the country. Seeing I'd made this
up as a complement to the black helicopters four months ago it seemed
in very bad taste for them to creep into reality before I've so much as
finished the book.

If you view the weekly world news as reality, anyway.
  

    
Very bad form for them to make it look like you got the idea from them.

That was an answer to a sort of question, yes.  That must all be fun.
  

    
Of course it's fun, martha. If it's not, one ought to go and get a
real job. Of course, for that one needs some kind of talent or
qualifications, neither of which I possess, so I may as well keep
writing.

In a sad and desperate attempt to grow pumpkins this year I've taken
to trapping the groundhog colony, a groundhog a day, and driving them
out to my writing cabin and letting them go.

Three groundhogs down. Two or three to go.

I've got the giant scion of the 740lb pumpkin plant growing under a
plastic tomato-protector, while the godiva pumpkins (naked seeds) have
been sprouted and planted.
  

    
It's definitely fun when it works, whenever that is.

Haven't you managed pumpkins before?  I'm sure I have a picture of you
around here somewhere with a beard and a pumpkin.  Wherever it's wandered
to.  Maybe you can train the groundhogs to straighten up my stuff.
  

    
Now I'm definitely having GEnie flashbacks.  I'm pretty sure pumpkins were
discussed a fair bit in Neil's topic once upon a time.  Unless I'm
confusing them with the zucchini!
 
  

    


Gary McArthur (anotb@earthlink.net) writes:


Hello Neil.  I'm here following a thread from Toribat. I don't fully
understand the memberships at the Well, but IJwill know with this if my
questions are posted.  I am GaryM on the Tori Amos Atlantic records newsgroup
and this is a  random walk down that street.  I contacted ToriBat after
searching through the hundreds of Tori Amos sites out there.  I'm glad I
found her and we shall see where this takes me.J

I need some time to become familiar with this and I will be back. Thanks.
  

    
Martha, yes I've managed pumpkins very successfully until two years
ago when the groundhogs came en masse. i was trying to grow exotic
pumpkins then including thai purple pumpkins and chinese box pumpkins,
and failed to grow everything, due to out little grey friends gnawing
them as they came out of the ground.

This year I'm growing the exotic ebay pumpkins, with a simple agenda:
i want to grow a pumpkin big enough to put Maddy in.

laurel -- Lorraine was always the zucchini growing person, not me.
Honest.

Hi gary.
  

    
Groundhogs are cute.

At least.

That's an interesting challenge.  If you don't succeed, every year it
becomes harder.

Also, I've always been told anyone is a zucchini growing person--that if you
look at a zucchini and then at your garden, you will have more of them than
you can give away--