Jeff VanderMeer: All About Writing 4/6/06

Mary Rosenblum

Hello, all.

Welcome to our Professional Connection live interview.

I'm very pleased to have Jeff VanderMeer with us tonight. He has been a very shiny rising star in the SF and fantasy and magic realism universe

all my favorite playgrounds, of course.

Jeff VanderMeer is a two-time winner of the World Fantasy Award, as well as a past finalist for the Hugo Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, the International Horror Guild Award, the British Fantasy Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. VanderMeer is the author of several surreal/magic realist novels and story collections, including City of Saints & Madmen, Veniss Underground, and Shriek: An Afterword, which have been or will soon be published by Pan Macmillan, Tor Books, and Bantam Books, among others. VanderMeer's most recent books have made the year's best lists of Publishers Weekly, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Los Angeles Weekly, Publishers' News, and Amazon.com. He is the recipient of an NEA-funded Florida Individual Artist Fellowship for excellence in fiction (1995-96) and a Florida Artist Enhancement Grant (2004-2005). In 2001, Locus Online named him one of the ten best speculative fiction writers in the world. International bestselling author

Peter Straub has called his work "brilliant playful, poignant, and utterly, wildly, imaginative, while CNN.com has called it "Darkly distinctive! Not to be missed!" He currently lives in Tallahassee, Florida, with his wife, Ann. He is 36 years old.

Jeff, welcome!

Jeff VanderMeer

Thanks for having me here, Mary. I'm delighted to be here.

Mary Rosenblum

Jeff, why don't we start with the basics maybe tell us a bit about how you got into writing and why you write what you do?

Jeff VanderMeer

I started writing around the age of six or seven. I don't remember why.

Except that I enjoyed writing poetry

and also

retelling folktales.

My parents read to me a lot.

I think that helped.

As for writing what I do, it's mostly I think a way of reconciling all of my experiences as a child growing up abroad.

We visited so many countries that I never had a firm sense of place like some writers do

and the only way to reconcile all of those experiences was to write fantasy.

Mary Rosenblum

That's interesting that your constant move from place to place contributed to your writing. Why did you move so often, if I may ask?

Jeff VanderMeer

My parents were in the Peace Corps. Fiji Islands. India. Visited a lot of places. Nepal. Thailand. Peru. Etc.

Mary Rosenblum

Those are certainly different cultures, languages, ecologies quite a wealth of new universes for a kid. :-)

Jeff VanderMeer

Yes. I got bitten by a monkey in Calcutta.

That was fun.

Lost in Rome.

Also fun.

Sunburnt in Madrid not quite as exciting,

dodged a theater bombing in Thailand,

saw trance dances in Bali,

not the run-of-the-mill kinds of experiences.

I was very lucky to have an unusual childhood.

Mary Rosenblum

No, not your run of the mill experiences certainly. The theater bombing I could live without everything else is pretty cool. :-)

Jeff VanderMeer

About a half an hour after we saw Disney's Cinderella,

the theater was blown up.

I mean, those are some vicious critics.

Mary Rosenblum

There's a weird sort of irony in that the film playing right before the bombing. I mean I have my quarrels with Disney but!

Jeff VanderMeer

Exactly.

Although the funniest thing ever

was

being in Singapore

watching

Planet of the Apes

in some Southeast Asian dubbed language

with German subtitles.

As a kid, I had no idea what Planet of the Apes was about, to be honest.

Mary Rosenblum

Oh, lordy! I'm laughing out loud. And I wasn't sure what it was about when I saw it and I was a teen, I think. LOL.

Jeff VanderMeer

Yes, well, regardless it scared the crap out of me. LOL.

Mary Rosenblum

The Asian dub might have been an improvement.

nextjulia

Is Ambergris based on a real European city somewhere?

Jeff VanderMeer

That's a great question.

I've always thought of it as London and Prague mixed with Shanghai

and some other Southeast Asian city.

The great cities of Indian had an amazing influence on me, too, I think

but there are bits of Rome in it, too. Oh--and certainly Florida, with it's decaying fungal environment.

Mary Rosenblum

And do you think they're richer because you saw them very young, when you didn't have the larger context of knowing history, politics, etc,

but simply reacted to what you saw around you?

Jeff VanderMeer

I don't know that they're richer.

But I do remember specific details,

and not so much the travel brochure version of those cities.

I remember the piss and heat and crowded qualities of Calcutta

and the huge banyan trees.

Things like that.

Mary Rosenblum

Cool.

So when did you realize 'I am going to be a writer' or were you there before you really thought about it?

Jeff VanderMeer

I've never not wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a marine biologist for a short time but only because I liked looking in tidal pools.

But I can't remember a time when I wasn't a writer.

I was a pretty shy kid

and writing was a way for me to express myself that didn't require putting myself out there, so to speak.

And I was a pretty emotional kid, too, so writing was a natural outlet.

grishamwannabe

Hi Jeff, so great to have you with us! I noticed your Shriek: An Afterward is available in the UK. Have you ever sought the English market out first and can you give some pros and cons to doing so? How is it that your work gets published internationally?

Jeff VanderMeer

Another great question. It'll take a bit of time to answer.

In the 1990s, I had great difficulty publishing my work in the US. The same work now coming out in the US to critical acclaim and good sales couldn't gain a foothold

so I went looking elsewhere.

In part I think my sensibilities are kind of Anglophile, so I had a natural affinity for the UK and for Europe in general

so in the 1990s, a lot of my short fiction and excerpts from novels

came out in the UK and elsewhere. In fact, my first major publisher was Pan Macmillan in the UK

I guess the pros and cons depend on what you want from your writing and your career.

The UK market is smaller than the US market

but I also think they have more devoted readers. There's less influence of TV.

My main point would be, sometimes you need to bang your head up against a brick wall

and sometimes you should seek out other markets.

I find the Brits are willing to accept more eccentric writing into the mainstream.

A lot of their most popular authors are very eccentric.

As for publishing Internationally, here's some practical advice:

Study Locus magazine --

they do a lot of reports on international genre fiction and publishers.

Back in the 1990s, I got a lot of information from them.

And then it's a matter of networking, contacting editors and publishers,

even asking them for further contacts.

To be honest, the most important thing in any field is who you know and who they know.

If you accept as a given that you have fiction that's worth publishing

and now there's the internet,

which makes it a lot easier to do business and find places to publish your work.

People wondered why I was bothering to publish stories in, say, the Czech Republic

but guess what? Now, 10 years later, those contacts have matured into publishers for my longer work.

Mary Rosenblum

Jeff, I think you're making a VERY important point here

and one that I want to dwell on for a moment, since most of our audience is made up of new writers.

And that is, that getting rejected doesn't mean that your work is forever doomed to be ignored that you can find markets, times change the publishers who reject you today may nominate you for awards down the road.

Jeff VanderMeer

Right.

It's a delicate balance.

The problem is, you have to be a weird mixture of humility and arrogance.

Because you have to take criticism non-defensively

but you also have to reject criticism that really has nothing to do with the value of your work.

A lot of the time, you are rejected because you're work isn't up to snuff .

But, I mean, for example, every piece of short fiction I've ever written

has been rejected by F&SF

and a lot of those stories have wound up in awards anthologies and been up for awards.

So in some cases, your work may just not work for a particular editor or set of editors.

Me, I was helped by the (abhorrent) term New Weird, which helps me from a marketing standpoint.

Sometimes you gotta just stick to your guns.

pamla

How do you handle critics, Jeff?

Jeff VanderMeer

With a spatula and a sword-cane.

Well, actually, I'm very bad about this, because I have been known to engage a reviewer

who has written a bad review of my work if I think they're distorting the actual text--taking it out of context,

but that's a young person's game.

As I move ungracefully from Young Turk to Old Fart

I do that less and less

because, frankly, there are so few reviewers who have the guts to even write a negative review

that I prefer to applaud their initiative than to try to squash or sour it.

And the fact is, there is no work of fiction adored by all.

If you write that adored piece of fiction, chances are you've done something wrong, frankly.

Mary Rosenblum

Well it would have to be pretty darn broad to appeal to the wide range of human sensibilities out there, that's for sure.

nextjulia

Dan Simmons says that new writers should learn to "read critically." Do you have any advice on how to do that, writing reviews, taking specific types of notes?

Jeff VanderMeer

Hmmm--that's an interesting question. I'm not sure I agree, if I'm thinking of the same definition of "critically."

I don't think writing reviews has anything to do with being a fiction writer.

I don't think it does more than define what models a writer does and doesn't follow.

I think it's not so much reading critically as emotively,

putting yourself in the place of the writer and trying to figure out why they did what they did

but it's not analytical,

it's more organic than that .

For example, I used to transcribe my favorite scenes from my favorite books.

I'd type them up word-for-word and try to inhabit those scenes from the writer's point of view.

Kind of re-live them.

You get a real sense for how it's put together just by the physical act of re-creating them,

and when I was done with that, I would type up the first paragraph again

and then put the book aside and try to recreate the scene from memory.

Then I would compare my version to the writer's version

and note the variations

and ask myself why I made the decisions I did.

Another trick I use is, any time I see a technique I really like, I'll plug it in to whatever I'm doing

just kind of artificially, to see how it works.

And sometimes I'll delete it afterwards cause it isn't right for the story I'm working on

but I'll understand the technique a lot better .

I think that answers your question? I hope so.

(Re feeling like an Old Fart at 37, as someone mentioned--I've been writing seriously since I was about 10. I feel old sometimes. LOL!)

Mary Rosenblum

I'd like to ditto that technique I think it's a very valid way to learn, and it's something I did quite often myself or try to recreate the author's style in something I was working on. I think you learn a lot that way.

Jeff VanderMeer

Right--definitely.

But it has

to do with inhabiting the work in question..

sure you can also analyze that work and break it down

but you have to know how it works on a holistic level, too.

nextjulia

How do you do research, generally? Do you do a lot?

Jeff VanderMeer

I do a lot of research, yes,

depending on the story. The Ambergris stuff, like for City of Saints

took a lot of research,

but I'm not doing straightforward research.

I'm looking for the odd fact, the strange, funny, beautiful piece of information that's the perfect detail

and I don't even care if it's accurate hearsay and innuendo in old documents are wonderful sources

because I'm transforming it all into a fantasy setting.

So I look for eccentric, weird sources of information.

I look for the people who during their time were shouting on street corners about the end of the world.

And then I layer that into the text.

I don't really worry about it in the rough draft because the rough draft is all about passion and

allowing yourself to make mistakes,

and then I try to layer in any research,

but, ideally, I'll have internalized the research so it comes out naturally.

For example, the novel after the next one has a huge erotic component

so I’ll do that research now

and by the time I write the novel

I won't need to actually consult any texts.

Mary Rosenblum

You started with the small presses and now you're coming out with the NY houses how do those experiences compare?

Jeff VanderMeer

Depends on which way you like being screwed

Just kidding

There are differences of scale, of course,

but not as much as you'd think.

I'm not sure how they compare.

There are the obvious differences.

Large presses have specialized people doing tasks and indie presses have like one guy with a pen

but I'm always pro-active with my PR and marketing

so it feels like I'm doing as much work with the large houses.

It’s just different kinds of things. For example, with the small presses, I need to make sure copies go out to the primary reviewers, etc, but  

with Bantam, I'm providing subsidiary support.

I don't need to worry about that primary level of PR. It frees me up to do other, more inventive things.

I love indie press, but I love the leverage and chain bookstore penetration you get through the large presses.

The print runs are not as far apart as you might think, but they are still larger for the big presses.

I really enjoy the challenges of both experiences

because with the big presses, they're putting out 20 books a month and the same publicist is handling all of them

so in a way it's sometimes the same as indie press in terms of time they can spend on you

but they have way more resources.

Mary Rosenblum

Speaking of PR you have a very active blog. Has that helped you, PR-wise? Or does it become yet another deadline at times?

Jeff VanderMeer

The blog's a pleasure to do, frankly. I love doing the blog. I'm just glad a substantial audience has accreted around it. I sometimes do features on the blog

rather than review websites because I get more visitors

so that's cool

and it allows me to bring new and eccentric writers to the attention of readers, so I can pay something back.

But PR-wise, I hope it doesn't help me too much

because I have a real problem with writers whose persona rather than their work sells books.

It’s still all about the fiction writing at the end of the day.

And as Luis Rodrigues likes to point out

I get a lot of help on the blog from Evil Monkey.

Mary Rosenblum

I was going to ask about Evil Monkey? :-)

Is this the Evil Twin?

Jeff VanderMeer

Yes. Evil Monkey is my alter ego I found that sometimes Jeff VanderMeer would say things that were a bit acerbic.

And people would say, "Wow--Jeff VanderMeer is an ---hole."

But when Evil Monkey started saying the same things

people said, "oooh--look at Evil Monkey--he's so cute. "

So now Evil Monkey is kinda the person/animal who says the things we all would like to. And he's actually pretty funny sometimes.

Mary Rosenblum

Hmmm maybe we could all use an Evil Monkey.

Jeff VanderMeer

I think we all have one.

Not all of us use them, though.

janecj333

How did you get in at Pan MacMillan? Was it because of 'who you knew'?

Jeff VanderMeer

No, that was my agent's doing.

Let me re-state: the work is still the most important thing. But you do have to be aware of the leverage issue.

And also Liz Williams recommended my work to Peter Lavery at Pan Mac.

So it was kind of a confluence of things.

That's one thing that is important to note: saturation.

So I had my agent working on it, writers recommending me

and the US indie press editions of Veniss and City of Saints

did extremely well, which made the large publishers take notice.

It was no one thing.

(But ultimately, Lavery had to read and like the work. Which he did.)

Mary Rosenblum

Which is, I think, a very good argument for going to conferences, talking with other writers, and doing the networking?

Jeff VanderMeer

So long as it doesn't consume your life

and so long as you go because you like to meet people and you're not going to cynically sell yourself .

I genuinely love to meet people and talk to them and find out what they're about

and then anything else that happens is secondary.

It'd be terrible to force oneself to hang out with people one didn't like.

Mary Rosenblum

Jeff how much of yourself is in your writing, and do you ever have trouble maintaining distance between self and story?

Jeff VanderMeer

It's funny--people think fantasy writers don't deal with autobiographical issues

but that's not true for me.

Every story I've ever written, just about, has a secret biography of me or me and my family in it,

it may not be entirely on the surface, but it's there.

I think it's important that fiction be grounded in the personal, especially fantasy fiction, which can become too diaphanous and unmoored in anything real.

But I have had problems maintaining that distance--it's why my latest novel, Shriek, took so long to write.

It is very autobiographical in certain ways

and I had to wait until I could think about an re-imagine certain real-world events before I could write the novel.

It's important to let some novels and stories simmer and reach their full potential over time.

Several times I've tried too early to write about autobiographical things

and wound up with a still-born story.

Mary Rosenblum

I think that's very important. A little distance gives some perspective or a lot of distance!

nextjulia

What books are on your reading list now and why?

Yes--it provides the writer with the ability to layer things.

What book isn't on my reading list? LOL! .

I'm a judge for the World Fantasy Awards, so I'm deluged in books.

But in terms of reading for my personal pleasure,

a few I'm really excited about reading, though:

The Town That Forgot How to Breathe by Kenneth J. Harvey

The Empire of Ice Cream by Jeffrey Ford (story collection)

The Vengeance of Rome by Michael Moorcock

Alan DeNiro's short story collection from Small Beer

Theodora Goss's collection from Prime

oh---and a reprint from Night Shade that I'm doing the intro to

The Dread Empire Trilogy by Glen Cook

Some amazing heroic fantasy there.

Also, the next George RR Martin

and whatever K.J. Bishop is cooking up right now.

The Kevin Brockmeyer (sic) novel that's out now,

Tamar Yellin's Kafka in Bronteland collection,

there are so many

But first I gotta read all of the WF Award eligible stuff.

Mary Rosenblum

The price of getting to make those choices, heheh.

canyon

Have you read any of the Chris Paolini novels. And if so, what are your thoughts on them?

Jeff VanderMeer

They're crap.

But he's 18 or 19.

It's sludgy heroic fantasy.

Put it up against a Martin novel to see the difference. He’s a PR phenomenon who may mature into a good novelist or may not.

pamla

Do you have a lot of friends who are writers?

Jeff VanderMeer

Yes--I have a lot of friends who are writers --

probably too many.

It's a tough business. You have to band together. LOL.

nextjulia

Do you use a Windows PC or a Macintosh? (Sorry to bring up religion)

Jeff VanderMeer

Neither.

I write longhand

on legal pads

then when I type it up, I type it up on a PC,

but then I print out that draft and write it up longhand again,

and I keep doing that

until the dough is perfect. LOL.

(Or at least not full of little annoying bits.)

Mary Rosenblum

And how do you know that? How do you know when that dough is ready? What keeps you from just polishing it forever?

What is 'done' for you?

Jeff VanderMeer

That's a great question. It depends on the story.

If it's first person, probably less revision to keep a loose style,

if it's more stylized and third person, probably more drafts.

I average about 10 to 20 drafts, layering the whole time.

It really just depends. You just have a sense of it after awhile,

you know what effects you're trying to achieve and you know if you revise too much it'll be too perfect and if you revise too little it won't be fully realized.

I do think a lot of writers who use computers don't revise enough

because it looks too finished to begin with,

but that's just me .

I gotta do the longhand to really do substantial revisions.

gskearney

Just reading a writing book by Ted Kooser and he recommends longhand also. --gk

Jeff VanderMeer

It does make you slow down, which is important.

But the other thing is--whatever takes you out of your comfort zone is good. Try doing things in a different way and you may be surprised at the result.

foxx

What is layering?

Jeff VanderMeer

For me, it's the process of adding depth to the story.

You don't want to be worried too much about anything other than getting the rough draft down so you have a complete if flawed story in front of you.

That's the first step

and you don't want too much conscious thought involved,

you want to get at the essence of the story,

but then you want to let it sit a bit

and you look at it

and you try to see what's working and what's not.

You try to see if there's anything unexpected that you want to emphasize,

what you want to de-emphasize, too,

and so in your next draft you smooth things out, take things out, put things in

and that's a very basic level of layering .

And then you add more stuff in your next draft,

stuff to do with character and things to do with setting,

little details that weren't there before or weren't precise,

then maybe you think about the political and social implications of what you're writing about,

and you layer some more--add some description, change some dialogue,

you think about what your themes are, etc.

And you just keep layering.

For me

this is most acute on the Ambergris stories

where I need to also add a layer of history or historical detail

while not clogging the story up with it .

In a way, I’m like a historical novelist when I'm writing about Ambergris.

and it's also like tuning your stereo, too.

You want to get the balance right but if you change the bass, that means you have to adjust something else

so you're continually tinkering with the balance to get it just right, because every part of a story is affected by every other part.

janecj333

With computers, you can't tell how many drafts you're doing, because you don't print out any revisions. The revising just goes on and on until you're not stumbling over any lines anymore, and the story's not entirely fragmented.

Jeff VanderMeer

That's not a question. LOL!

But to address that

I don't know if you're saying that's a good or a bad thing, but you can certainly keep drafts on your computer. I do, when I work on the computer just as you can throw away your longhand drafts.

Mary Rosenblum

So what is your writing life like? How do you work? In spurts long stretches? One new project at a time? Multiples?

Jeff VanderMeer

I'm not a big proponent of the "write 1,000 words a day," although that might be helpful when you're just beginning. But I figure, if you're a writer, you're going to write.

If you don't write naturally because it brings you joy, who am I to say you should be forced to go to the computer every day.

But for me it is in spurts.

I have long ago forced myself to abandon any rituals or times of day when I write.

I write when I have the urge to write, whenever that is.

So, for example, last September, I didn't write anything for two weeks

and then I wrote a 10,000 word story in about a day and a half ,