Charles Stross

(continued)

Interview by Alyce Wilson

You say that the most important to do, after you've finished a novel, is send out there and start another one.

It can take a long time to hear a simple rejection. The novel that was retitled Singularity Sky subsequently, spent 18 months on the desk of a senior editor at Tor. And I withdrew it in the end, because a friend of mine set up a small publisher in the U.K. and said, "Oh, you can give it to me. I'll have a look at it," and then said, "OK, I'll give you a contract for this," at which point I withdrew it. Well, I would not have simultaneously submitted it to him, but he asked to see it, specifically. I gave the editor at Tor first refusal. I said, "A friend of mine has said he wants to actually publish it, if you don't. But you have it first."

But he hadn't got around to actually reading it. This isn't unusual. The classic story I've heard is of one novel, which finally got read, and actually sold, when the author sent it a birthday card, a third birthday card. Just as a little ironic [...] "How are you doing?" And that guilt-tripped the editor to actually at least picking the thing up and, [realizing] "Oh, shit. This is a good book."

It used to be that you would expect it to turn around in three months. But there are fewer publishers reading random, unsolicited submissions, and there are lots of them. The sad fact is, the invention of word processors, in combination with paranoid schizophrenia...

I know where you're going with this.

Yes. Paranoid schizophrenics write, and they want people to hear their story. And they will mail them out to publishers. And I think it's reasonable to say the volume of submissions publishers are getting has gone through the roof at the same time that they're more and more overworked and get less time for reading the submissions. So it's not surprising that it takes a very long time to get attention to a manuscript, if it's unagented and unsolicited and somebody who hasn't a track record.

If, in my current position, I were to send a novel directly to a publisher, without going through my agent, what I do is I send a preliminary letter. It almost certainly [would] get read immediately. But somebody with no track record, "Who are you and why should I pay attention to you when there are 50 pieces of slush coming in every day and I have a job to do, publishing real books?"

I'd like to hear more about your process for writing a book. How does the idea come to you? Where do you go from there? Are you an outline person?

Every book is different. I have written one book where the outline was 10 percent of the length of the finished book before I started. Other books where there was no outline at any state; I was just doing it by the seat of my pants.

And then there were several novels where one of my techniques is to write from the seat of my pants but develop a detailed outline, scene by scene, as I go along. So when I come back to redraft it, or if I run into any plot structure problems, I know where I've been. Because if you write an outline in advance, it's a bit rigid and a bit straight-jacketing, and I tend to end up driving off the beaten path and go driving through the bushes to either side of the road, rather than follow it directly. I like to leave some flexibility to the creative process.

But having an outline is very valuable. So even if you're writing by the seat of your pants, you want to write the outline as you go along, [...] so you can refer back to it. Because trying to hold an entire novel in your head is hard work. You can't write a novel instantly. And you've got about 100,000 words that you've written over a couple of months. You forget little details. Characters' names change from one scene to another, this sort of thing. And that's where the outline comes in really handy.

I suppose does it also help getting past a writer's block to review what brought you here?

Writer's block? What's that?

You don't have that problem?

What I do have is headaches where I realize I've written myself into a corner and there's a problem.

But you wouldn't call that writer's block?

No. What that is, is I realize that I've made a mistake somewhere, and I'm going to have to go away and think about what the mistake was and try and figure out a way around it. But that's basically a self-criticism thing, rather than an inability to write.

It may manifest itself as an inability to write beyond a certain point, but then you start looking and realizing why. And that's because you've got a subliminal feeling that you've done something wrong and made a mistake structurally. You need to go back and figure out what went wrong and how to fix it.

So am I right in thinking what you do is sort of charge ahead and write what you think you have to write and then go back and make it work in revision?

Yes, very often. Word processors are your friend.

Well, you did say that you found that to be a very good tool for writing, because it's good for revision.

Yes, exactly. Compared to the days of a typewriter, when you basically had Tipp-Ex or Wite-Out and cellophane tape, and then you had to retype everything, it's a boon when you don't have to go through the same process.

The common working method I use when working on a book is write a regular chunk every day and, beginning with the next day, go back and revise what I did the day before. So that, firstly, everything has already been edited up to the previous day. And secondly, when I go on to write the new day's work, that's continuity, because I've just read what I did the day before.

And then you go back and you look at the whole book over again before you send it to your editor?

Yes. In some cases, I would send it to test readers. I have a private setup on the Web whereby I can expose it to selected readers and get feedback from them.

People you know?

People I know. In some cases, people I only know through the Internet but people who did have valuable insights into it, not the unfiltered public.

And sometimes I get useless feedback. Sometimes I get feedback that is a list of typos on different pages, and sometimes I get really useful insights into stuff that I haven't realized. And that feeds back into the editorial process, again.