SF-Forum

SFS: That's really fascinating. Does this digital revolution allow you different freedoms than before when it comes to expanding your own works? Were novellas such as the ones that you're thinking about really marketable to any magazines or other print sources, or does this completely open up what authors can write about?

MS: I'm not the first author to notice that this is the arrival of a golden era for writers. We can explore our worlds and characters in ways, as you suggest in your question, that haven't been open to us since the days of the pulp magazines. Because of some projects, and as research into ways we can approach fiction, I've been dipping back into the stories from the 1890s up through the 1950s. If Robert E. Howard were writing today, we'd never have heard of Conan because he only wrote one Conan novel in his life, and that was a paltry 75,000 words long. Right now traditional publishing doesn't have a use for anything that doesn't fit into the 100,000 word long novel box; but readers have a voracious appetite for it. Shorter and medium-length works will be coming back with a vengeance.

More importantly, writers get to return to being what we have always been: entertainers. Sure, stories can deal with lofty themes that illuminate the human condition; but they can do that in short forms as well as massive novels. Readers get to vote directly with dollars and with their opinions because of the net. Every author's website becomes his living room, and readers can interact with him there, asking questions, letting him know what they'd like to see more of. And the digital age makes it so much easier to interact with other authors, sharing things back and forth.

And my remark about the living room is never more true than when you look at being able to do a Twitter #hashtag chat in real time; or when you use something like Second Life where folks can come and actually hear an author doing a reading. I hold weekly office hours in Second Life, where readers and writers can come into one location, as questions about stories and their writing, hear about what's going on in the industry and all. And I do readings there, affording folks a chance that they only get if I come to a convention near them.

Contrast that with Robert E. Howard living in the middle of nowhere in Texas and only being able to interact with his fans and peers by snail-mail or when someone like E. Hoffman Price decided to drive to Cross Plains to meet him. Heck, I've had conversations in Second Life about some of my books with people who've read them in translations I didn't even know had been made.

It is an incredible time to be a writer, and is only going to get better.

Shorter and medium-length works will be coming back with a vengeance.

And my remark about the living room is never more true than when you look at being able to do a Twitter #hashtag chat in real time

It is an incredible time to be a writer, and is only going to get better.

TT hat geschrieben:Vor allem lösen all die neuen Publikationsformen das eine, entscheidende Problem nicht: Dass die Texte gelesen werden.
Denn es ist ja nicht so sehr das Problem, dass sie ihren Weg nicht vom Schriftsteller zum Leser finden, sondern das diese ihn in zunehmendem Maße überhaupt nicht finden möchten.

Wir leben in einer Welt, in der Ruhe und Muße abhanden gekommen sind. Überall lauern Ablenkungen, die alle nur das eine Ziel haben: unsere Aufmerksamkeit zu binden. Da hat ein Text - leise, unaufdringlich und mit Mühe behaftet - schlechte Karten.
Es sei denn, es bestünde in naher Zukunft eine Möglichkeit, ihn direkt mittels neuronaler Verbindungen auf unser Gehirn zu übertragen. Knopfdruck, Buch einspeisen, ausloggen.

Thomas Wawerka hat geschrieben:Dazu fällt mir ein Zitat des Dude aus "The Big Lebowski" ein: "Also ich wichse immer noch mit der Hand."