Ask the Author: Mark Ferguson
Answered Questions (3)
Mark Ferguson
When the writing's good for me, I don't know how a chapter will end. When the next paragraph is a complete mystery to me, or even the next sentence, it's getting really good. The feeling of having no control, just witnessing something that's already there flow out, is probably an illusion - Stephen King has spoken of stories as 'found objects', excavated as if by bulldozer, which is a elusive and illusive state that I can approach on occasion, when the story doesn't feel like something I've designed on a blueprint. It's a very nice illusion, maybe comparable to a good experience with hallucinogens (haven't tried yet, but I've heard some interesting things). I'm a control freak in life, so relaxing completely is perhaps the most enjoyable thing I can do. Or perhaps I'm mistaken, and the fact that the story is something I do completely control satisfies my anxious mind - meek people have dominant fantasies, after all. And I have a place for all sorts of dark stuff that would otherwise pile up in my brain. All told, I'm less concerned with the social aspect than many authors, instead using writing as a sort of meditative and stress-relieving tool; everything I do in public feels like a desperate 'hey look at me, aren't I smart' plea. This is still showing off, no doubt, but I'm actually at my least self-conscious when the writing's flowing.
Mark Ferguson
I have been downright floored by the poorly-thought-out nonsense that actually does well. In the field of comedy there are the hacks, who relentlessly put out album after album, convinced that the country needs to hear what they're saying. The obscene confidence! Meanwhile, there are people who are more funny effortlessly, just talking to themselves in the shower. And of course they remain obscure. Being unwilling to play the game is kinda respectable, and I used to be in full agreement with Bill Hicks against the Man and the System or whatever ... but the establishment is hated because those good people don't participate, while hacks become prosperous. It's self-fulfilling, self-censorship and self-sabotage. So while humility has its place that feeling of 'I'm can do better than this hack' is also needed. It's better to overshoot than to never shoot. If nonsense gets published, you have no excuse - the fact that you can recognize nonsense already means you're better than the hacks.
Mark Ferguson
I am polishing a draft of another sci-fi work called Zenith, a thinly-veiled examination of the dysfunction at play in our world with the ascension of Trump, the MeToo movement, and other male/female difficulties that run deeper than any politics. Hesitant about sequels, I have made Zenith a stand-alone story which is compatible with the first work and resides in the same universe, Terra Incognita, with hints that a reader of both would notice. I am also tightening up an older unpublished work called The Council of Larry, a sprawling space-opera with no ambition to comment seriously on anything that only does so by accident. This will be truly stand-alone. After that I might actually plunge into an undisguised sequel to TI, probably to be called Terra Nullius. (The Inrisus are winning ...)
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