The Never Ending Interview: Day Five

One question a day will be addressed, for as long as it remains interesting to me, and the questions keep coming.

Today’s question was asked by a fellow writer who came cloaked in disguise.

Mystery Writer: Do you ever worry that you’re just sending your stories out there and they simply disappear, or fall off the face of the Earth, unread and unappreciated?

Bill: Of course. Writing isn’t performance art, done in front of an audience, while they scream and dance in the aisles and throw their panties up on the stage. We do it alone, in varying degrees of silence and shame, separated from everyone we hope will eventually see what we’ve wrought.

And while we do travel to comic shows and bookstores and conventions and conferences of diverse types, at which we will occasionally meet some of those who’ve actually read our work, it’s not enough. They aren’t enough to keep at bay the suspicion that these things we craft are in fact sent directly out to the lands of lost and forgotten things, where nothing grows and everything is clouded in mist.

At such times I try to recall every writer whose work I’ve loved, and how few of them ever knew it. Edgar Rice Burroughs, like Kipling and so many others, died long before I discovered his works and could tell him. Zelazny I met exactly once,

and didn’t want to spend those precious moments gushing about his stories, like some overzealous fan. Damn me for that. I should have at least mentioned something. I’ve met a few writers whose work has moved me. Many more, by a factor of hundreds (if not thousands), I will never meet and never get to tell.

Somehow I use those examples as an excuse to hope the same holds true for me. I suspect it’s one of the few areas in which I willingly let un-provable faith influence my life.