But at the hard practical level, for writers at least, when it comes to actually getting out there, Never Say No Today. If they ask you for the impossible revision, ask for a day to think about it first.
Where do you see yourself in the framework of modern writers?
To tell truth, I hardly think I’m over the edge of that radar yet. I’d like to be one more surviving mid-list fantasy writer, but that’s a wish.
How do you define “success”?
Knowing what you want and love to do, and being good enough at it to live on the results, in an environment that doesn’t have to distort your work.
Do you see any of your works as noble failures?
Oh, yes, my first historical novel. It took an overseas trip and x years research and 5 years writing and taught me heaps about history and the craft, but in the end it was fatally internally flawed, and I gave up on publishing it.
Is there anything that has surprised you about the audience for your book?
Not yet, I must admit, but I hardly know the audience -- except for Paula Guran and Sean Wallace at Juno -- it did surprise me, first that they actually liked it, and then that they’ve backed it as they have against buyer doubts – and, now also, that people have responded so well to Paula’s request for support. And I’m extremely grateful to them/you as well.
It's interesting that you're a writer and a professor. I used to be a teaching assistant. As a writer, I want to create works of great art and beauty. But as a teacher I always wanted to make sure that everything I wanted to communicate — about race, class, etc. — would be understood by all who spoke with me. Should the author be too concerned with who her readers may be?
The Wave in the Mind
I know what you mean about communicating. I teach too, and I try to make lectures, and papers, as fail-safe clear as possible. But for creative work, I’m happy if what I produce gets past the internal gatekeeper with the stamp, Good. That’s unmistakeable if unconveyable. Though a lot of it, as I find Le Guin also thinks, is in the rhythm, rather than the sense. If the rhythm goes out, she says in an essay from The Wave in the Mind, the work will be mediocre. Overall, though, I don’t think the author can make what readers think the ultimate test. For one thing, you can’t predict what any reader will think, so how can you second-guess a whole mob of them? The best you can do, for me, is to find a compromise between your own final arbiter, and the requirements of the publisher/editor. I’ve been very, very lucky in having Paula for Amberlight. I do trust her sense of what readers can and can’t cope with, so I try to match her revision requests whenever possible. But really, readers vary so much, it’s just one more ball on the publishing roulette wheel. I do know I wouldn’t re-write a whole work just in the hopes that it would sell.
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