Pretend your keyboard is a Faustian magic wand made of crocodile tongues given to you by your fairy godmother. If, starting tomorrow, you could steer your trajectory in any direction you wished, which famous writer's career would yours most closely resemble? Choose any genre, medium or era. The only rule in this thread: NO DREAM SQUASHING. As far as anyone's concerned, we're playing make-believe here. Feel free to rewrite history a bit, e.g. Ernest Hemingway with a prescription for Zoloft. (I'm not making light of suicide here. I genuinely wish he'd had the help he needed.)
I would choose a career similar to Neil Gaiman’s. I’d be getting a decade late start at this point, but basically I’d spend the next thirty years slowly going from a genre-specific cult hit to a genre-defying, multimedia pro with the freedom and clout to choose any project I want, no matter how ludicrously off-topic from my last. I’d pop out a novel ever few years, at least, but in between there’d be comics, children’s books, movie scripts and even TV and audio productions. I’d never be a household name, but I’d have a following, enough to be recognized instantly at Comic-Con and worthy of a Simpsons cameo. Only major caveats: I'd focus more on sci-fi than fantasy, but I’d also wander across genre lines even more often than he does, writing the odd horror, crime drama or less fantastical tragedy, and I’d definitely spend less time on comics (as much as I love them.)
That's a really good question, RZ... None of them. There isn't only one writer whose career I'd want to emulate, for one. Secondly, there's never been a female writer who's had the kind of career and lifestyle I'd want. (Dorothy Parker's comes closest, but that's not it.) It would look something like a combination of Hemingway (not a fan of his writing, but he had the right mix of career and lifestyle), Fitzgerald, and Robert Benchley, and a touch of Dashiell Hammett, minus their addictions and health issues, plus some happiness and good therapy thrown in. I'd want a modern-day version of the Algonquin Round Table in New York and life at the Garden of Allah in Hollywood. The Garden of Allah, by all accounts, was the perfect place to write. And you can't beat Hemingway's choices of locations to write. As for the writing itself...for me, writing has always just been the vehicle to a lifestyle, so what I write is pretty negotiable. Fame terrifies the hell out of me, so I don't care much about that. I'm all about the adventures.
Gotta be Rowling. I mean, I generally advocate against writing fiction as a way of earning money, but if the option of having a billion dollars is on the table, I'd feel kinda dumb for not taking it.
Good call on the round table. If I could also rewrite the last twenty years (which I wouldn't, but for the purposes of this little thought experiment,) it might involve something similar but with more of a Kerouac and the Beats/Warhol's Factory vibe. I'd definitely check out before everyone self-destructed on drugs, of course. Actually, that already sounds a lot like my twenties, only I was missing the literary drive, influence and acclaim. That's an interesting mix of writers too, especially Hemingway and Fitzgerald, both living their art, one a world adventuring ex-patriot, the other the great influencer of his generation here at home. I don't know how you'd reconcile the two lifestyles exactly, but it would be an experience.
J.D. Salinger He lived to be 91 with a networth of 20 million dollars and yet his body of work was pretty slim. As slim as it was he will probably be known for all time.
I especially like the bit where you make up a bedtime story for your kids and turn it into the greatest global media empire in the history of Europe. That's a neat trick. Good call.
Rowling? Sitting in a Starbucks drinking coffee at the keyboard? Maybe Laurie Lee with a bit more of the, y'know, of the, well y'know bumping into Anais and she says he's the best with Simone de Beouvoir at the same time. That'd be okay.
That would be fun. The wonderful weirdness of that would be like constant creative fuel.Your twenties must have been interesting, RZ. As to how to reconcile Hemingway's lifestyle and Fitzgerald's, it's mostly about the travel / setting up temporary residence in a variety of places. That old saying, "You can have it all, just not at the same time" comes to mind.
Mary Stewart. The one who wrote mystery-romances to start her career, back in the 50s and 60s. My favourite of these was The Moon Spinners, but I loved all her books from that era. She is credited with being the first writer to combine Romance and Mystery into one genre. In the early 1970s she then moved on to write one of the best historical fantasies I've ever read ...the Merlin trilogy of The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills and The Last Enchantment. I love her writing, yes even the romances. And she led a very pleasant, and very long life. She died not that long ago in her 90s, living in Edinburgh. She had a really nice husband and a long marriage (I think they were married for 46 years till his death in 2001), made enough money with her writing to live very comfortably indeed, and got to travel to interesting places. Yeah, I'd be her. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Stewart_(novelist)
No-one's. I love my life right now. Writing and learning and finding out stuff. It's fab. I feel like I did when I was eight years old and every day was an adventure in imagination land. If I had to choose a fantasy writing future, it would be seeing a stack of of lovely fat YA novels in The Works with my pen name on. But right now is actually pretty brilliant. Especially with all the ickle Spring flowers peeping up. Yep.
New thread rule. Whoever ends up with the magic keyboard has to let Seven Crowns borrow it long enough to accomplish this selfless and imperative task.
