How Writing Changed Me
I posted this on my Facebook page:
A lifetime writing novels has shaped my understanding of who I am. When I talk to my genre-fiction colleagues, we don't quote the sublime metaphor or the perfect sentence; we talk about hooking the reader and keeping him hooked. We talk about royalty checks. I grew up in a bourgeois family but ended up writing blue-collar books.
It's been a dozen years or so since I've seen a title of mine in any Barnes and Noble. Long ago I walked into a Scribner bookstore and asked to see the western section. The lady raised an eyebrow and frostily told me that Scribner stores don't handle westerns. But I see my titles all the time in supermarkets and WalMarts.
I was sent out on many long tours, but only rarely did I sign books in a bookstore. I would show up at magazine distributors at six in the morning to share a doughnut with the truck drivers, and sign some paperbacks. (Their loyalty was crucial because pocketbooks stuffed in the racks at toe level don't sell as well as ones at eye level.)
I deplore violence and high body-count westerns, but one of my secondary publishers always changed my titles into something that included "blood," or "massacre" or "slaughter." The covers depicted guys flaunting revolvers and rifles even if none existed in the stories. To my mind resolving a plot conflict with a bullet is dull. Even duller is a story full of corpses, all unnamed, their character undeveloped (so no one need care about them when they croak), and whose only purpose is to raise the body-count. If I wrote a story about Shirley Temple, they'd put her in a cowboy hat, put a tuft of black beard on her chin, and give her a pair of six-guns with smoke belching from both.
All of this influenced my perception of myself. I gave up notions about writing great literature, and became what I now am: an able storyteller who has enjoyed a rewarding life that was completely unexpected and didn't rise from any of my youthful yearnings.
A lifetime writing novels has shaped my understanding of who I am. When I talk to my genre-fiction colleagues, we don't quote the sublime metaphor or the perfect sentence; we talk about hooking the reader and keeping him hooked. We talk about royalty checks. I grew up in a bourgeois family but ended up writing blue-collar books.
It's been a dozen years or so since I've seen a title of mine in any Barnes and Noble. Long ago I walked into a Scribner bookstore and asked to see the western section. The lady raised an eyebrow and frostily told me that Scribner stores don't handle westerns. But I see my titles all the time in supermarkets and WalMarts.
I was sent out on many long tours, but only rarely did I sign books in a bookstore. I would show up at magazine distributors at six in the morning to share a doughnut with the truck drivers, and sign some paperbacks. (Their loyalty was crucial because pocketbooks stuffed in the racks at toe level don't sell as well as ones at eye level.)
I deplore violence and high body-count westerns, but one of my secondary publishers always changed my titles into something that included "blood," or "massacre" or "slaughter." The covers depicted guys flaunting revolvers and rifles even if none existed in the stories. To my mind resolving a plot conflict with a bullet is dull. Even duller is a story full of corpses, all unnamed, their character undeveloped (so no one need care about them when they croak), and whose only purpose is to raise the body-count. If I wrote a story about Shirley Temple, they'd put her in a cowboy hat, put a tuft of black beard on her chin, and give her a pair of six-guns with smoke belching from both.
All of this influenced my perception of myself. I gave up notions about writing great literature, and became what I now am: an able storyteller who has enjoyed a rewarding life that was completely unexpected and didn't rise from any of my youthful yearnings.
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