Ask the Author: Collin Piprell
Answered Questions (3)
Collin Piprell
The following is from a Kevin Cummings interview with me on his 'Peoplethingsliterature' blogsite (https://peoplethingsliterature.com/20...)
What inspired you to write MOM? When did you first know you had a series on your hands?
* Having read about the “grey goo scenario” – where almost overnight self-replicating nanobots turn the planetary surface into nothing but more of themselves – I found myself trying to imagine how anyone or anything could ever survive such a disaster. Plus I’d encountered intriguing notions related to nanotechnology, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, virtual realities, theories of complexity and novel emergences. As though against my will – I’d never thought of writing a science-fiction novel – characters and settings began to emerge in my mind and I wrote some stuff.
Wisely enough, I then relegated this stuff to a bottom drawer and went back to other writing projects. One of these I showed to a good friend who hated it; he asked me whether I didn’t have anything else to show him. So I dug out some chapters of what was to become MOM, and he claimed that this was what I should be doing. I didn’t really believe him but, what with one thing and another, including his offer to let me use his lakeside cabin in the mountains of Japan for a solitary writer’s retreat from all the chaos of my life in Bangkok, I went back to MOM with a will. And here we are today.
I knew I had a series on my hands the moment I wrote MOM’s concluding chapters. They pretty well demanded I discover what happened next.
(Genesis 2.0, the next novel in the MAGIC CIRCLES series, is being published by Common Deer Press on 5 October 2017. A third novel is scheduled for October 2018.) n
What inspired you to write MOM? When did you first know you had a series on your hands?
* Having read about the “grey goo scenario” – where almost overnight self-replicating nanobots turn the planetary surface into nothing but more of themselves – I found myself trying to imagine how anyone or anything could ever survive such a disaster. Plus I’d encountered intriguing notions related to nanotechnology, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, virtual realities, theories of complexity and novel emergences. As though against my will – I’d never thought of writing a science-fiction novel – characters and settings began to emerge in my mind and I wrote some stuff.
Wisely enough, I then relegated this stuff to a bottom drawer and went back to other writing projects. One of these I showed to a good friend who hated it; he asked me whether I didn’t have anything else to show him. So I dug out some chapters of what was to become MOM, and he claimed that this was what I should be doing. I didn’t really believe him but, what with one thing and another, including his offer to let me use his lakeside cabin in the mountains of Japan for a solitary writer’s retreat from all the chaos of my life in Bangkok, I went back to MOM with a will. And here we are today.
I knew I had a series on my hands the moment I wrote MOM’s concluding chapters. They pretty well demanded I discover what happened next.
(Genesis 2.0, the next novel in the MAGIC CIRCLES series, is being published by Common Deer Press on 5 October 2017. A third novel is scheduled for October 2018.) n
Collin Piprell
Being a fiction writer sensitizes you to finding inspiration almost anywhere. An idea for a character, a bit of color, a snatch of dialogue, an interesting metaphor, and arresting idea or fact — any of these things can in itself feel pregnant with story. Often I have no idea where the words are leading me, yet I’m confident on a gut level that, if only I persevere, the story will emerge.
That makes a good argument for jotting such obervations down and keeping them somewhere to hand.
That makes a good argument for jotting such obervations down and keeping them somewhere to hand.
Collin Piprell
As a writer I get to engage with activities and ideas that interest me and, sometimes, synthesize these in the course of spinning stories. Whatever I learn, and however I learn it, tends in some often pre-articulate way to shape my overall fiction project—both the books I’m writing and those I’m hoping to write in future.
Another pleasure: as I draft and revise fiction I learn more and more about the craft of writing and the art of making prose as readable as I can.
Being a writer can also enrich the experience of reading. Not that I tend to read fiction very analytically, but I can’t help but appreciate good writing on levels I might not see if I hadn’t faced similar challenges in my own writing.
But the real payoff as a writer, at least for me, comes after I’ve been banging my head against some story for days, frustrated with my wooden prose and dumb ideas. Then one morning I go straight to my computer of clipboard and start churning stuff I must’ve been struggling with all night long, on some unconscious level. It can be magical; I have no idea where some of it comes from. This may be the experience that, all those thousands of years ago, inspired the legend of the Muse.
Another pleasure: as I draft and revise fiction I learn more and more about the craft of writing and the art of making prose as readable as I can.
Being a writer can also enrich the experience of reading. Not that I tend to read fiction very analytically, but I can’t help but appreciate good writing on levels I might not see if I hadn’t faced similar challenges in my own writing.
But the real payoff as a writer, at least for me, comes after I’ve been banging my head against some story for days, frustrated with my wooden prose and dumb ideas. Then one morning I go straight to my computer of clipboard and start churning stuff I must’ve been struggling with all night long, on some unconscious level. It can be magical; I have no idea where some of it comes from. This may be the experience that, all those thousands of years ago, inspired the legend of the Muse.
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