Fiddler Fair (anthology)

mechanics of writing. Ray Bradbury has also written an excellent book on the subject. You only learn the soul of writing with practice. Practice will make you better—or it will convince you that maybe what you really want to do is go into furniture restoration and get your own television show on The Learning Channel.

Here are the answers to a few more frequently asked questions:

How do you develop an idea?

Mostly what we do is to look at what we have done in the past and try to do something different. As for finding ideas, I can only say that finding them is easy; they come all the time. Deciding which ones are worth developing is the difficult part. To find an idea, you simply never accept that there are absolute answers for anything, and as Theodore Sturgeon said, “You ask the next question” continuously. For example: one story evolved from seeing a piece of paper blowing across the highway in an uncannily lifelike manner, and asking myself, “What if that was a real, living creature disguised as a piece of paper?” The next questions were, “Why would it be in disguise?” and “What would it be?” and “What would happen if someone found out what it really was ?”

Do you ever get “writer’s block” and what do you do about it?

When I get stalled on something, I do one of two things. I either work on another project (I always have one book in the outline stage and two in the writing stage, and I will also work on short stories at the same time) or I discuss the situation with Larry. Working with another person—sometimes even simply verbalizing a snag—always gets the book unstuck. There is a perfectly good reason for this: when you speak about something you actually move it from one side of the brain to the other, and often that alone shakes creativity loose.

How do you do revisions?

I may revise the ending of the book between outlining and actual writing, but that is only because a more logical and satisfying conclusion presents itself. I am really not thinking of anything other than that. The only other revisions are at the request of the publisher, and may vary from none to clarifying minor points or further elaborating a minor point. In the case of clarification, this amounts to less than 1,000 words in a book of 120,000 or more. In the case of elaboration this usually amounts to the addition of 5,000 words to 10,000 words, generally less.

Would you call your books “character driven?”

I think that is quite correct, my books are character-driven. To me. How people react to a given situation is what makes a story interesting. History is nothing more than a series of people’s reactions, after all, and many “alternate history” stories have been written about “what would have happened if.” The idea—the situation—is only half the story. What the characters do about it is the other.

Do you base your characters on people you know?

With very rare exceptions I don’t base my characters on anyone I know—those exceptions are ­minor ones, where I’ll ask permission to write a friend into a walk-on role. They do come out of my observation of people in general.

When did you know you wanted to write?

I knew I wanted to tell stories from a very early age—in fact, I told them to the kids I babysat for, then wrote them in letters to friends and pen-pals. It was only when I “graduated” from amateur fiction to being paid for what I wrote that I realized I did have a talent for writing—and I had the will to pursue it. That was some thirty years later.

Where do you start?

Plotting is usually done with Larry, and one of the first things we do is determine what the characters will be like, then what the major conflict of the book will be. Then we figure out the minor conflicts, the ways that those characters will deal with those conflicts, and ways we can make their lives even more complicated. The resolution generally comes at that point, but not always; sometimes it doesn’t come to us until we are actually writing the book, and we change the way it ended in the outline.

When did you start reading science fiction?

I started reading sf/f when I was about eight or nine. As I recall, it was the “Space Cat” books, followed by something called The City Under the Back Steps, a kind of ant-version of “Honey, I Shrunk The Kids,” followed immediately by a leap into Andre Norton, Heinlein, and my father’s adult sf. Daybreak 2250 AD by Norton was one of the first things I read, James Schmidt’s Agent of Vega was another. Mostly I read Norton, all the Norton I could get my hands on, saving my allowance to order them directly from Ace. Little did I guess I would one day be working for Andre’s editor (Donald A. Wollheim)!

Who were your influences?

In order of influence: Andre Norton, J.R.R.

Tolkien, Robert Heinlein, Theodore Sturgeon, Thomas Burnett Swann, Anne McCaffrey, C.J. Cherryh, Marion Zimmer Bradley. As for editors, I learn something from every editor I have. My three main editors, Elizabeth Wollheim, Melissa Singer, and Jim Baen, have been incredibly helpful.

What do you choose to write?

I write what I would like to read, with a ­caveat—after thirteen years in the marketplace, I am beginning to get a feeling for things that will sell, so obviously I do tailor what I would like to write to the marketplace. I never wrote intentionally for any particular audience, but I seem to have hit on a number of things that are archetypal in nature, which may account for the appeal. The other possibility is that I tend to write about people who are misunderstood, outsiders . . . people who read tend to think of themselves that way, particularly sf/f readers, so they can identify with the characters.

Do you answer fan-mail?

When possible, we do. We always read it. When mail comes without a self- addressed stamped envelope for a reply, we assume the writer doesn’t want a reply; it is only courteous not to waste the time of someone you supposedly like by including a self-addressed, stamped envelope if you want an answer. We don’t answer abusive mail, but it does get filed in a special file for future reference. We return manuscripts unread; after some trouble Marion Zimmer Bradley had with a fan-writer, our agent has advised both of us that we can’t read unsolicited manuscripts anymore. This is an awful pity, but life is complicated enough without going out and finding ways to add trouble!